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Jan. 7, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:25:26

HONOR THY MOTHER AND THY FATHER! Freedomain Livestream

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	So yes, I'm going through Firefly, and it's a good show.
	It's very clever, and it's very, very good.
	Yeah, fanbase is huge.
	They did, I think, 12 or 13 episodes.
	I think the problem with Firefly was that they had a whole two-hour introductory episode, but it wasn't aired in sequence.
	I think they aired some train robbery thing because it was more exciting, but it didn't introduce the characters or the world very well, so people got kind of lost and never quite caught on to it, so...
	Alright, let me just bring you questions.
	They feed you bad chicken and tomatoes at the Renaissance Fair.
	Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.
	Hey, Steph, I met you at the Freedom Fest back in 2018.
	Boy, does that ever not feel like a lifetime and a half ago, eh?
	Freedom Fest back in 2018.
	You sat with me and gave me some kind words.
	I was very drunk, but I've recently become sober with the help of AA. Do you know about AA's basic ideas?
	If so, what do you think?
	Um... You know, I'm of two minds, honestly, about this kind of stuff.
	Part of me says, and it's a relativistic part of me, a pragmatic or utilitarian part of me that says, hey man, if it works for you, fantastic.
	So AA's basic ideas, as far as I understand it, is a whole 12-step thing.
	You have to admit that you have a problem.
	You have to surrender yourself to a higher power.
	For most people, that's God. You have to have meetings.
	You have to have a sponsor. You have to make amends and apologize for the things that you've done and so on.
	I think that's all interesting.
	That's, to me, a lot of putting a lid on the geyser.
	You need a very strong lid if you're going to try and hold down an old faithful or an 18-year-old boy.
	But... My concern is it doesn't go to the root cause, which is the abuse in childhood.
	I think that a lot of it is self-management.
	The other thing, too, of course, I've cured some bad habits myself in my life, and to me the point of curing the bad habits is to put them in the rear view like you never had them.
	And I guess my concern with AA is it turns into a whole social thing and it becomes your identity.
	Like, once an addict, forever an addict, I can't stop going to meetings, and I don't know how it really goes into the rear view, and so on.
	So that's my question or issue with that kind of stuff.
	Does it become an identity?
	And if it becomes an identity, I guess my concern is that It may be switching one addiction for another.
	An addiction to alcohol to addiction to AA and so on.
	I think there have been some studies that say that AA is not super helpful in terms of like just relative to willpower and so on.
	But of course for people who are lonely and addiction does tend to isolate because you alienate the people in your life.
	For people who are lonely I think it can be very helpful.
	But again the problem being that it becomes a new social identity and so on, right?
	So, somebody says, I lost my obsession to drink there.
	Well, that's interesting.
	That's interesting. And I assume what it does is it creates, and probably for the first time in people's lives, it creates a sort of positive, nurturing social environment.
	Where you are encouraged to not hold secrets and to not distance yourself through having guilt and so on.
	You just, hey, I'm so-and-so, I'm an alcoholic and so on.
	And, you know, I have a problem with alcohol as opposed to I'm an alcoholic.
	It's, again, taking the Venn diagram of the personality and superimposing it on an addiction, so...
	I have an issue with emotional eating, bringing any thoughts on why someone eats that way.
	Had a drinking problem before that, I kicked.
	Yeah, I mean, I have my own eating habits are I don't wake up hungry and I will often not eat until sort of early to mid-afternoon.
	I'm just not hungry, and I'm at that sort of place in life where it's like, okay, if I'm not hungry, I'm not going to eat.
	There's all this crap out there about managing yourself ahead of time.
	You've got to drink eight glasses of water a day.
	It's like, I guess I'll wait until I'm thirsty.
	I think my body knows when it needs liquid.
	So I'll wait until I'm thirsty and sort of take it from there.
	So I don't generally eat, and I won't eat much during the day.
	My problem, if I have a problem at all with eating, is sort of 9 p.m.
	to 11 p.m., right? 9 p.m.
	to 11 p.m. Like I've had dinner and I'm just kind of snacky and I have to sort of remind myself, you know, you're not hungry, don't eat and so on, right?
	It's not some big willpower thing, but...
	Because occasionally what I'll do, I don't know if this happens to you, but occasionally what I'll do...
	I'll go to bed, I'll go to sleep, and then I'll wake up a couple of hours later, I'm just hungry, and I'm too hungry to get back to sleep.
	So I have this sort of thought, okay, if I have something to eat before I go to bed, then I won't wake up hungry and all that, because that kind of messes up my sleep.
	But when I really began to sort of analyze my eating habits or my eating patterns, I have no idea if this is interesting to anyone, but I'll sort of share it because the question is there.
	But when I really began to look at my eating habits, I figured out the following.
	That when I woke up in the morning, my mother was gone, usually, right?
	I mean, she was at work.
	I remember her staccato heels going up and down the hardwood apartment floor.
	It wasn't hardwood, it was some sort of imitation wood or tile or something like that.
	Although we did have a pretty nice apartment in England relative to, you know, there were other ones in the neighborhood that weren't as nice.
	But it was heavily, heavily rent-controlled.
	but my mom would be gone in the morning so when I would wake up and get ready for school it was relatively stress-free during the day at school relatively stress-free but then my mom when she got home from work and sort of after dinner she might be restless she might be grumpy she might be moody and so for me
	I think that my times of heightened eating tends to be around a time in the past when my mother would be home and would be tense or or there would be you know real a real potential for trouble to to sort of kick in So once I've sort of identified that, if you look at times when you're eating more, you might want to look at your sort of personal history and when...
	When was that in terms of stress for you?
	Like, was there a stressor in your life at the time when you want to eat more?
	In general, stress is to do with a scarcity of resources, and I think stress triggers overeating because our body is like, oh, well, if we're worried about stuff, that must mean that resources are not very plentiful, so let's pack on the pounds for the hunger to come.
	So I would imagine that would be, it might be a fruitful place to start.
	Let's see here. I stopped drinking alcohol a week ago.
	I lost six pounds. Yeah, it's a wild thing, right?
	You think of these like the real alkies, right?
	Like the Alice Cooper and so on.
	So you look at someone like Alice Cooper and, I mean, the guy was a serious alcoholic and pretty skinny.
	I don't know what Iggy Pop was doing, but he was also skinny as a rail.
	And, you know, skinny as a rail looks great until you hit 50 and then you just look unwell.
	Just very unwell.
	So, let's see here.
	So, yeah, I don't know how people, because alcohol is just sugar, right?
	So, carbs. I don't know how people who drink a lot don't usually end up overweight, but a lot of times they will simply drink instead of eating, and therefore they just don't get any calories that way.
	Hi, my name is Bob, and I'm a stephanolic.
	That is very productive addiction.
	Addiction to philosophy is not addiction.
	Yeah, AA's approach borders on being a cult.
	Someone says, making their members admit they are an alcoholic and have no power, 20 years since your last drink, and you're still recovering.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I mean... I had a bit of a volatile temper when I was younger.
	Now, I've tried to sort of, quote, temper that into productive and healthy assertiveness, and I think I've done a fairly decent job of that.
	But to me, it's not like...
	And I was not like a rageaholic or something like that, but to me, if you have an issue with having a bad temper...
	The point is not to say, well, like, I'm a rageaholic, and I have no control over it, and I'm still recovering.
	It's like, no, no, no, I dealt with the root causes of ill temper, and I don't have to fight ill temper on a daily basis.
	The whole point of it is to sort of put it behind you, right?
	And so on, right? So, that's being said, if it works for someone, they're better off for going rather than continuing to drink.
	Well, yes, but you don't want to get caught up in these false dichotomies, right?
	You don't want to get caught up in these false dichotomies because then you start looking for third options.
	You say, well, AA is better than drinking, sure, but what if there's something better than both, right?
	Waking up hungry sucks.
	I usually just tough it out and eat sleep.
	Well, yeah, I mean, that's the whole point is that I'd rather not get up to eat anything and then brush my teeth again.
	But, like last night, I finished...
	I finished my novel. I finished my novel.
	Now, it's been a while since I started it, and you lose a little bit of track of what was going on at the very beginning of the book.
	And it's a true straight-up, it's my first straight-up redemption arc story.
	I've always been fascinated by the idea of what happens to beautiful people when they lose their looks, right?
	It's 106,665 words or something like that.
	So it's my shortest novel for sure.
	So I've always been kind of fascinated when somebody has a central characteristic that kind of defines or overwhelms their personality.
	What happens when they lose that characteristic?
	I showed a picture of myself when I was a teenager to my daughter, because she was kind of asking, and she was like, really?
	Because, you know, I mean, I don't look as different as a lot of people who sort of gain weight and so on, but, I mean, there's obviously some difference in 40 years.
	It would be crazy if there wasn't. But I've been sort of fat, and she was, you know, we sort of agreed that I was a very good-looking young dude.
	Actually, can I share that picture here?
	I really can. All right.
	I will share this picture with you guys just on the off chance you find it interesting.
	And I was a tasty little slab of man meat back in the day.
	I mean, I still like my looks enormously, but let's see here.
	Yes, here's the picture.
	You can look at me. This is when I was 17 or 18 or something like that.
	There you go. And yes, little changes have occurred over the years.
	Oh, that's some good skin, man.
	But... So, everyone loses their looks, no matter how beautiful or handsome you are, pretty handsome guy back in the day, you're going to lose your looks.
	And I've always been fascinated by what happens when somebody has a particular aspect to their personality that's really important to them when they lose it.
	And looks is one of those things that you're all going to lose.
	So, I find that quite interesting.
	So, I look like a backstreet.
	Where did you get the fluffy hat?
	I'm afraid that would be youth as a whole.
	Have you said not an argument yet in that pic?
	No, no, no. Not an argument.
	It was something that was post-FDR. I look like a Backstreet Boys member.
	Yes! Or one of the bassists for Aha!
	or something like that. I look like a stunt double for one of the cuckoo dolls.
	Nice. Nice.
	So I have, in this book, I've really worked hard to, there's a woman who's beautiful and then her looks turn from an asset to a liability, for reasons in the plot I won't get into here.
	Anyway, so what I do when I finish a book, I convert the text to audio, have a computer read it, and then I just sort of listen to it.
	When I'm going to bed and so on.
	And anyway, I was really fascinated by the dialogue at the beginning and the scene at the beginning and how much it foreshadows the rest.
	And I was like, wow, this is really good.
	Anyway, I said I couldn't really sleep last night and I woke up and was kind of hungry.
	So I was too excited by my own book to get to sleep.
	All right, let's see here.
	Let's get back to our chats.
	Thank you for your tip.
	You can, of course, tip me.
	I really, really do appreciate it.
	Let's see here. Making friends can be difficult.
	Making friends that don't drink is even harder.
	AA solves that. I personally didn't do the steps, though I have been to a few AA meetings.
	Yes, but if AA is saying here are the, in a sense, the teeth-gritting willpower you need in the here and now...
	Then they're not getting to root causes necessarily, and because they're not getting to root causes necessarily, you're going to end up with a lot of people who are kind of white-knuckling their way through life and have not dealt with childhood issues, and that could maybe not be the very best of social situations to get into in the long run.
	I never had a problem with alcohol, not because I'm so responsible, but I just never liked the taste of beer or alcohol.
	I don't like hard liquor other than I did play pickleball with some people the other day before Christmas and they had like a little vat and it was a fireball, whatever it is, whiskey and cinnamon.
	Have you ever tried that? It was pretty nice.
	Particularly on a kind of cold day.
	So yeah, I've never really liked, I don't like wine particularly and I've never really liked hard liquor.
	A light beer on a hot day, like if you've mown the lawn and it's really hot, a hot beer goes, a cold beer goes down real nice.
	And the only other thing I said when I was younger, I used to occasionally have a sniff of Bailey's, Bailey's Irish liqueur.
	But I haven't had that in, I don't know, 20 years probably.
	All right, let's see here.
	Iggy, I think he was hitting the dragon.
	Oh, Iggy Pop, heroin, so likely alcohol was about all the calories he was getting.
	Yeah, I guess so. Alice Cooper just subsisted off beer.
	He would finish a 24 case of beer before getting out of bed in the morning?
	No, really? That sounds apocryphal.
	What was it that he went to Microsoft?
	Alice Cooper went to Microsoft and he said, well, why not macro hard?
	It's kind of funny. And I always remember with Alice Cooper, people said, oh, you must have had a tough time as a kid to end up this messed up.
	And he did have some pretty messed up aggression.
	A friend of mine who was really into hard rock years ago showed me an Alice Cooper concert and where Alice Cooper was like literally beating up a female sex doll on stage.
	Like really messed up stuff. And people were like, oh man, you must have had a tough childhood.
	And he's like, no, are you kidding me?
	I loved high school.
	I was in a band. We had a single.
	And it was like the best time ever.
	And it's like, I'm not talking high school, but...
	Somebody says, AA has changed my life for the way better.
	Very scary at first, but wow, only a year in, now finally doing the steps, and I recommend it.
	It's wild and has Zoom meetings.
	Okay. Occult.
	You only have to pay a dollar if you want to just for the rent of the space.
	You don't have to, and it's people helping each other because it helps you and them.
	Oh, that's good to hear. That's good to hear.
	Thank you so much. For taking your time to bring philosophy to the world and into people's personal lives if they want it.
	Congrats on the novel. Well, thank you.
	Let's see here. More comments on my picture.
	Jump to recent messages.
	GigaChad Steph versus GigaChad Chairman G.
	Let's see here.
	Let's see here.
	After hearing you talk about fatal flaws recently, I've realized mine is perfectionism.
	My perfectionism is crippling because it causes me to do absolutely nothing if I can't do it right.
	The perfect is the enemy of the good is a good description of my issue.
	Any thoughts?
	Yeah, I talked about this in a show today.
	I'll just touch on it very briefly here.
	This was questions that I got from the Telegram group.
	And so perfectionism is an excuse for abuse.
	Right, so I don't know if you know this, sort of back in the day when there used to be more common domestic servants and maids and cleaners and so on, a lot of them were like, I don't do windows.
	Why? Because if the mistress of the house is in a bad mood, she can find some smudge or something, some problem, some streak on the window and can yell at you.
	This is why I said I don't do windows.
	So perfectionism is a way for somebody to excuse themselves from abusing you On the idea that they're trying to improve you, right?
	But if they're trying to improve you to a situation that can't be achieved, then they're just abusing you.
	So I think that's pretty important to recognize and understand.
	The second thing is that the perfect, the idea of perfect, is a hijacking of your free will.
	If somebody can convince you that something is perfect, then automatically you have to choose that, right?
	She's perfect for you!
	She's perfect for you! If you believe, then you'll date her, right?
	I remember a friend of mine met one of my girlfriends.
	I was like, put a ring on her!
	She's fantastic! She's perfect for you!
	And he turned out not to be perfect for me, but if I'd believed him, I would have put a ring on it and all that.
	So it's a way of trying to hijack you and have your free will taken away.
	All right. Do you increasingly support Christianity primarily because it's a bulwark against communism, even though you prefer that people reach virtue through philosophy instead of religion?
	I am an empiricist and I judge the morality of people to a large degree by their actions.
	And Christians are, without a doubt, the very nicest people around.
	Without a doubt. I mean, no Christian group ever attacked me or denigrated me or lied about me or slandered me.
	And when I was deplatformed, I was still invited to Christian groups and Christians reached out.
	Of course, you know, it's not like they are entirely alien to the concept of a good person being persecuted.
	That's one of the basis of the religion.
	So the empiricism is that Christians are just really wonderful people.
	A friend of mine who's a very devout Christian has been reading this book, this novel, and giving me sort of feedback because it is a...
	A novel about spiritual redemption.
	And it's the novel that's had the biggest effect on me that I've ever written, without a doubt.
	Alright. What are your thoughts on unchosen obligations, specifically the religious obligation to honor their mother and father?
	More generally, are unchosen obligations a necessary good for society?
	Since that has been suggested in a video I just watched by Jordan Peterson.
	So, it's interesting that they say, honor thy mother and thy father, not love thy mother and thy father.
	What does it mean to be honorable, to treat someone with honor?
	Well, to me, it means respecting them enough to tell the truth.
	Honor thy mother and thy father.
	To honor someone is to hold them in high esteem, and if you hold someone in high esteem, Then you believe that they can handle the truth, right?
	If you've had a, I don't know, let's say you're a father and you have an illness that could be fatal, you're not going to tell your five-year-old kid, right?
	You're not. I'm not going to tell your five-year-old kid.
	You're going to cross your fingers and maybe talk about it when they're an adult.
	So if somebody is...
	Immature, weak of mind, weak of character, or just, you know, a little kid or whatever, then you withhold the truth from them because they, Jack Nicholson style, you can't handle the truth or they can't handle the truth.
	You don't view them as honorable or somebody to be treated with honor.
	And so, to me, honor thy mother and thy father is don't treat them as children.
	Don't treat them as weak.
	Don't treat them as weak-willed.
	Don't treat them as spineless.
	Don't give them excuses. Don't let them weasel their way out of the decisions they made as parents when they were in charge of you.
	Treat them with honor.
	And treating people with honor means giving them full free will and the moral respect of self-energized, self-directed, autonomous moral beings.
	That's honor. To act in a dishonorable manner is to act in a manipulative, gaslighting, weaselly way.
	To fog and misdirect and manipulate.
	To honor someone is to tell them the truth.
	Tell me, anyone, that you withhold the truth from that you view as honorable, that you treat with honor.
	No. No. Now, honor thy mother and thy father.
	Don't treat them as children.
	Right? When your parents are your parents and you're little, they are the gods of your universe, they are usually quite strict, they're quite assertive, they tell you what's right, what's wrong, they reward, they punish, and so on.
	Right? And they make their choices.
	And they don't give you excuses as a kid.
	Right? I mean, if you fail to study for a test and you fail the test, You don't get an excuse as a 10-year-old to say, hey, well, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had.
	They say, well, you knew you had a test.
	Why didn't you study for it, right? So that's how they treat you when you're 10 years old.
	Now, when you become an adult and you maybe have some criticisms about how they raised you, which is fine and healthy and right, if you have some criticisms about how they raised you and then they're like, hey, well, we did the best we could with the knowledge we had, what they're attempting to do is they're attempting to be Irresponsible children.
	But they weren't irresponsible children.
	They were parents. We did the best we could with the knowledge we had.
	It's like, well, you expected me to study for a test.
	Did you do research and study and learn and take courses on how to be a parent?
	Well, we thought we knew. It's like, well, I failed the test when I was 10 because I looked through the math book and I thought I knew the answers.
	Turns out I didn't. And I was blamed for that.
	I was held to account for that.
	So, honor thy mother and thy father is, to me, quite simple.
	Don't treat them like idiot children.
	Treat them as autonomous, responsible, moral agents, just as they treated you when you were 10.
	If this is the standard they held you to you when you were 10 years old, how on earth could you not hold them to that standard when they're 30 or 40 or 50?
	My God! People who are in charge of you with authority over you and exercise quite harshly sometimes that authority over you, give them the honor of that authority.
	It doesn't say love. It says, honor thy mother and thy father.
	Yes, treat them with honor.
	Treat them as independent, autonomous moral agents.
	Don't accept bullshit, three-year-old, chocolate-covering-the-faces, I-didn't-eat-any-chocolate nonsense excuses, because that is not to honor them.
	Not to honor them.
	You know, I mean, look, just, I mean, think of me for a moment, right?
	So, just because I'm right here, an easy example, right?
	So, if I had, you know, whined and said, I can't believe that I was deplatformed, I can't believe that all these terrible things happened, there's no way it should have happened, like, I was unjustly and harshly dealt with and there was no way to see it ahead of time, that would be false, right?
	So if I abandoned my choices and played the victim alone, yes, I was unjustly treated, but the world is an unjust place, and I'm aware of that, so it was worth for me burning the income and the reputation among fools to get the truth out for the future.
	That's the deal, right?
	You know, if you had to put your back out to lift a car off your kid, you'd do it, right?
	So you've got to make sacrifices for these things.
	Now, would you consider it honorable for me to play the mere victim and claim to have no knowledge about the immoralities of the world or the injustice of the world and blah, blah, blah, blah.
	I had no idea why this happened, blah, blah, blah.
	No. No.
	That would be dishonorable.
	Now, I mean, the way that I was treated was even more dishonorable, blah, blah, blah, but in terms of just my...
	the facts, right?
	So... A religious obligation to honor thy mother and thy father.
	Absolutely. You treat them as autonomous, responsible moral agents.
	Now, if they try, and this is true, look, we all have the, I write about this in my novel, we all have the excuse-making machine, right?
	Something happens, I'm in the wrong.
	And you feel vulnerable, and you feel upset, and your excuse-making machine immediately goes into overdrive.
	Make excuses, make excuses, make excuses, right?
	That's natural. I don't know how natural it is to humanity because we don't know what humanity is like in the absence of brutality and coercion for the most part.
	So we got this excuse-making machine.
	If you come across a kid, chocolate all over the mouth, and they say, I didn't eat any chocolate.
	I mean, it's obvious, right?
	And you might be somewhat gentle because it's just such an obvious lie, right?
	I didn't eat anything.
	I'm not chewing it again. Right?
	So to honor people is to treat them as adults.
	And if people are tempted, as we all are, by the excuse-making machine to play the victim, we're all tempted to play the victim, and in particular now when playing the victim is so enormously profitable, we're all tempted to play the victim.
	To honor someone is to not let them play the victim.
	When you honor someone...
	You remind them when they're tempted by dishonor and playing the victim when you're not a victim.
	I mean, there are genuine victims in the world.
	Kids who are abused are genuine victims.
	They're not playing the victims. But I'm talking about adults, particularly the victimizers.
	You don't let people make up bullshit excuses For decisions they made.
	Own what you've done.
	Own what you have done.
	It's a Nietzsche quote. Really, I read this when I was 20, stuck with me ever since.
	Do not leave your actions in the lurch.
	Do things and own that you've done them.
	Have you ever heard me apologize, or back down, or weasel out of a position that I believe to be true.
	Have you ever heard me do that?
	Have you ever seen me do that?
	Weasel out of a position that I know to be true or I believe to be true.
	Now, of course, I've changed my mind with new information, better information, of course, right?
	because I'm a human being not a robot of course you could be tempted to back out to apologize to whatever it is right Sure. Take the heat down by bending the knee, bending the knee, bending the knee, right?
	But I'm not particularly tempted by that at all.
	So when you honor someone, you remind them of their strength and their power and you don't let them play the victim when they're not the victim.
	You don't let them play the victim when they're not the victim at all.
	And have you seen me play the victim?
	I've been victimized for sure and lied about and all of that.
	But have you seen me playing the victim?
	No. Have you seen me back down from a position I know to be true, I believe to be true?
	No. Have you seen me change my mind when it turns out that I'm in the wrong?
	Yes, you have. So, to honor people is to not let them make pathetic excuses for their prior choices.
	Now, they can change their minds.
	They can regret that I did things wrong.
	I should have done research on parenting.
	I should have taken a training course on parenting.
	But you don't let people who exercised moral authority over you say, I didn't have any moral autonomy.
	I was just doing the best I could with the knowledge I had.
	You don't let people do that.
	You honor them. You honor them.
	You know, my mother said, well, it was just overwhelming, right?
	Oh, I was so overwhelmed, right?
	It's like, okay, well you knew you were overwhelmed, right?
	So why didn't you get help? Why didn't you get help?
	Why didn't you call people up?
	Why didn't you get social services?
	Why didn't you call dad?
	Why didn't you call your half-brother who lived in Whitby?
	Why didn't you call aunts, uncles, grandparents?
	Why didn't you get help? You knew you were overwhelmed.
	Why didn't you get help? Overwhelmed is not an excuse at all.
	You know, it's like if somebody's carrying something, And they're approaching stairs going down, right?
	They're carrying something heavy. They're approaching stairs going down.
	And they say, this is too heavy.
	I can't carry this. But they keep going and then plunge down the stairs.
	It's like, you knew it was too heavy.
	Why did you plunge down the stairs?
	And also, as a kid, did I ever get to say, well, I'm just overwhelmed.
	I'm not going to school today. I'm just overwhelmed.
	I don't want to do this test. I'm just overwhelmed.
	I don't want to do the dishes.
	I'm just overwhelmed. Get up and do the dishes, right?
	So... Yeah, I honor, absolutely.
	I absolutely have honored my elders.
	I absolutely, completely and totally have honored my elders.
	And to honor people, you don't give them the out of bullshit excuses.
	Especially when they never gave you the out of bullshit excuses.
	I mean, if at the age of five or ten I had these moral rules, which is no bullshit excuses, I'm not going to treat my mother with less honor and less responsibility than she treated me when I was 5 or 10 years old.
	Are you kidding? Yes, honor.
	Honor is essential.
	Honor your mother and your father.
	Don't treat them like idiot children.
	Don't give them weaselly, dishonorable excuses.
	Honor them. I absolutely agree with this injunction.
	How do I deal with someone who's very sarcastic, but very humorous, and the jokes are about me?
	I laugh because it's really...
	So it continues. I don't know what that whole thing means.
	Yeah, no, I've had to deal with this before.
	Yeah, I had a guy I worked with.
	He was my employee, but we became friends.
	And whenever we would get together socially, he would tell stories about mistakes I'd made, or silly things that I'd done, or whatever, right?
	And... It's cowardly.
	It's really cowardly.
	It's really unconscious. It's really tough to deal with.
	These are the people who...
	The writer writes about this, Bridget Jones's diary, right?
	I think she calls her the jellyfish, right?
	The jellyfish, the woman who gives you compliments, but they kind of sting.
	Like, oh, that weight loss looks great on you.
	Still a ways to go, but, you know, the compliments, the negging, or whatever, right?
	It's very unconscious and it's very cowardly because this is someone who has a problem with you, feels low status, wants to pull your status down but won't admit it because it's a trap, right?
	It's a total trap. Everybody knows this trap, right?
	And the trap is they say sarcastic or negative things about you, right?
	In public. And if you call them out on it and say, look, this is kind of hostile.
	It's kind of negative. I don't appreciate this.
	Hey, hey, man.
	It's not my fault. You can't take a joke.
	So it's really a manipulative thing.
	I hate to say feminine because it's kind of an insult to females, but it's a bullshit Weasley way to undermine you.
	And I've never had any luck confronting people on it because all they do is retreat into the, hey man, it was just a joke, just a joke.
	Don't be so sensitive. Don't be so oversensitive.
	You can handle it. You're a big boy.
	It's like, well, why would I want to handle all these negative stories about me?
	Right? Why don't you tell stories about me that elevate me rather than Mock me, right?
	And there's nothing wrong with a little good-natured ribbing and all that, and people do silly things or funny things, so that's fine.
	But no, it's usually too unconscious, and it's too manipulative, and the person usually doesn't have the moral strength or fiber or character to own what they're doing.
	So I just avoid those situations in general.
	I certainly never had enough luck with this guy Alright Sorry I missed a bunch of questions here Uh Let's see here. Why, why, why, why do our parents have such an emotional hold over us as adults?
	Yeah, that never changes.
	That's never going to change.
	That's never going to change. Well, because they birthed you, they raised you, they were your gods, they were your physics, they were your universe, they had control over you, and...
	It's like saying, well, why is it a language that I spoke for 18 years I can still understand when I'm 50?
	It's like, well, because that's your first language and first impressions count for just about everything.
	Your parents were your introduction to the universe, to the world, to humanity, to social life, to physics, to everything.
	So they will always have emotional hold over you and...
	Only complete sociopaths would disagree, right?
	So, yeah, this is why it's so important to have a good relationship with your parents, if possible, and if they're abusive, why you should always take the option in your head and in your heart to not see them if they're sort of relentlessly abusive and won't listen to reason, because they just have such remote control over the bombs in your brain, right? They can just set it off, right?
	They can just set it off. It's sort of like saying, like, if you were born into a prison, right, and you spent your first 18 years in prison, and then people would say, well, you know, why is it that revisiting this prison has such hold over me?
	It's like, well, of course it does, right? I got drunk at a company event the other day.
	Okay, don't do that. And tried to discuss the non-aggression principle, and it went over like a lead balloon, trying to figure out how to walk that one back, even though I was being honest.
	They want to talk to me about it next week.
	I feel like I humiliated myself talking to a bunch of NPCs about libertarian philosophy.
	I avoid alcohol because it makes me a bit too honest when maybe I should hold back on certain topics or be more careful introducing the ideas.
	Yes, so I'm with your bosses on this one.
	A place of employment is not a place for proselytizing.
	A place of employment is a place for people to get along, to be productive, to service customer needs, to make money, to reduce expenses.
	It is not a place, it's not a tent for you to give a sermon or a lecture in at all.
	So, yeah, don't do it.
	Don't do it. It's not...
	Like, if you want to talk about the non-aggression principle, fantastic, wonderful.
	Don't use somebody else's company and somebody else's resources to do that.
	Don't. It's not fair. It's not fair.
	I mean, if you're at an atheist meeting and somebody comes up and proselytizes about God...
	Well, they're taking all of the organization of the atheists and turning it towards religion.
	Conversely, if you're at a church and somebody comes in and proselytizes about atheism and so on, that's not the place.
	You can set up a meetup.
	You can have a group of people together who are interested in this argument or these ideas and so on.
	That's you generating. But don't jump in and try and hijack your boss's environment.
	For your own ideological purposes.
	That's not what the business is for.
	The business is not there to discuss the non-aggression principle.
	So I would just say, if I was in your position, I'd be like, you know what?
	That was the wrong thing to do.
	I would apologize to everyone.
	I'm still working on these ideas.
	This is not the place for it.
	And I'm sorry that I brought this into this business environment because that's not what this is about.
	And yeah, don't drink.
	Now the other thing too, you also may want to look at...
	You know, this could be your way of saying, you know, I'd rather talk about these principles than work at the job I'm at.
	Sometimes the finger of God or the flick of the conscience moves you in a direction that is quite compelling.
	And maybe, you know, because if you got fired, maybe you'd end up starting that podcast or that live stream or whatever it is that you might want to do.
	So you might be sabotaging your work career.
	Because, listen, if there's a possibility of doing something really good and you don't take it, that's going to scar your conscience.
	That's going to not be good for you, right?
	I mean, people are like, hey, how come you got involved in defending Trump and so on?
	It's like, well, wasn't it nice to not have a war for four years?
	I mean, that was kind of nice, wasn't it?
	And it was a chance for an outsider to come in and really show the nature of the state.
	I would have regretted it had I not done it, and that's one of the things I guide myself by, is do I think I'll regret it or not?
	Now politics is kind of boring.
	It's like, well, do you want your socialism faster or slightly slower?
	It's kind of boring, right?
	But if... You know, the world ends up going to hell in a handbasket and you genuinely feel you could have done something different or something better to prevent that, then you'll feel a pretty heavy weight on your soul.
	I think you'll feel a pretty heavy weight on your conscience.
	Somebody sent a dollar saying, thanks for answering my question.
	I've said my piece. Never get drunk at company events.
	Yeah, of course. I mean, it's not there for you to get drunk either, right?
	Hopefully I can find my way out of this problem I made for myself.
	Well, it may not be a problem.
	It may not be a problem.
	It may be an inoculation against worse behavior.
	It also may be a chance for you to say, well, what is it I want to do with my knowledge of philosophy?
	Like, here's the thing, man.
	You ready for a rant? Here's the thing.
	Once you're cursed with knowledge, you're screwed.
	I've said this from the very beginning of the show.
	You don't want to listen to this if you have the common sense that God gave a goose.
	Are you crazy? Why on earth would you want to listen to philosophy and be cursed with a lightning strike of truth and reason and evidence and facts and morality?
	Oh my God!
	You don't think there are times when I wish I'd hid behind a tree or underground or in a mineshaft rather than get hit by this lightning bolt of truth, reason and evidence and philosophy?
	My God! I feel like I had this identity and then, you know, when I was younger, maybe they still do, they did this nuclear shadows thing, right?
	The nuclear shadows is the idea that when the nuclear bomb goes off behind you, you get vaporized and there's just a shadow of darker stuff around you because you blocked some of the smoke or stench or something like that.
	And so they used to do these nuclear shadows.
	They would lie on the ground and spray paint around themselves or whatever against walls.
	Ah, nuclear war, right? Kind of feels that way, right?
	Reason and evidence comes in, you think it's coming in for a landing and it's an airstrike, right?
	You think, oh, great, you know, landing wheel's going to come down, there's a pilot, captain, long runway, nope!
	That you get, man. Or you think it's going to be something that, oh, you know, hey, it's good, it's nice.
	Somebody gave me a can of Coke.
	Oh, that's good. I'm kind of thirsty.
	And then, you know, you don't realize that they put it in a fucking paint shaker for a day before they give it to you and it's basically turned into a sugar-laced hand grenade in your hand.
	So, yeah, just if you think it's manageable, you think it's controlled, I think, you know, I think I'll have a look down here.
	That's interesting. There's some facts, reason, and evidence down here, and then it turns into this giant slide that you can't control, and you end up just scrabbling and trying to grab onto anything.
	Down you go. Or up you go, I guess, whatever you could say, right?
	You think you're going to dance with the devil, the philosophy, and he ends up possessing you and taking you over completely.
	And sometimes I feel like the philosophy hit me like this bomb, and the nuclear shadow, like...
	The original me ain't here.
	Now, the original me was absent and chaotic and confused, but it was all I knew at the time.
	So now I've organized myself according to rational principles, which is great.
	Love it. Wouldn't turn back.
	But, you know, let's be honest.
	There are times when it's like, yeah, I wish I hadn't gotten on that train.
	You know, you think you get on the train and go somewhere, and then you end up tied to the tracks with the engine coming, right?
	So... It is a possession and a replacement.
	Of chaos with order, absolutely.
	That's a better thing.
	It's a better thing. But it does feel like philosophy takes out your brain with a spork and a shot and then you just reassemble the pieces.
	Hey, now that I've blown up this house, feel like making a house?
	Oh, by the way, it's going to be hailing and storming and dragons will be breathing fire on you at the same time as well.
	So, yeah, it could be that you just want to make a change and your unconscious is pushing you in that direction.
	Became a father in December...
	Any advice for taking better care of infants?
	Yeah, just drop everything else.
	Yeah, drop everything else.
	Your baby needs you, needs to connect with you, needs eye contact, needs stimulation.
	Sing to the baby, talk with the baby, show things to the baby, help the baby pick up things, and just hear their colors, and look, this rolls, and just, you want the baby, you want your baby to be just engaged and enjoying your presence at all times, and that way your teenage years are going to be a blast.
	Otherwise, the peers will take over and you'll be doomed.
	It wasn't terrible. I probably shouldn't have forcefully argued for taxation being theft while super drunk.
	I was belligerent and annoying.
	Never again. Right, so even if you had the goal or the idea of putting forward these arguments or these ideas, you have alienated people from these arguments or these ideas, right?
	Oh yeah, I remember that crazy guy who said taxation is theft.
	God, he was obnoxious and annoying.
	And then people just can dismiss the argument because you put it forward in such an impressive manner, so...
	Not to outdo Mr.
	So-and-so, but yes, thank you, Steph.
	You've helped a great deal. Well, thank you.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate that tip.
	That's very, very kind.
	Steph, under what reasonable circumstances a man who broke up with a woman should take her back?
	The fact they broke up in the first place is bad enough.
	But is there any reasonable way it can actually happen and work out?
	Thank you very much. Well, yeah, of course.
	People can redeem themselves, they can learn, they can grow, they can accept their errors, and they can hit rock bottom and they can bounce back and so on.
	I mean, there's no moral obligation to remain broken up.
	It's not like some violation of the non-aggression principle to get back together.
	So, yes, if the woman has gone through therapy or really pursued self-knowledge, has understood her issues, has dealt with her family problems and all of that, Sure, why not?
	Why not? Alright, so let's see here.
	Well, yeah, so when it comes to ideas, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, right?
	So, a friend of mine, when I was in the business world, and he once told me this story, that he had to get a cavity filled, and he didn't take any Novocaine.
	Because he didn't like the groggy feeling afterwards, right?
	And I had to have a filling refilled or something like that.
	And I was like, you know what? I want to try no Novocain.
	Okay, after about 10 minutes, I'm like, you know what?
	I think I can handle some Novocain.
	I'm just... I'm very sensitive, right?
	So... You can...
	You can have your appendix out with anesthetic or without anesthetic.
	Which would you prefer? So there's ways of getting people to the truth that isn't obnoxious, unpleasant, destructive, and destabilizing.
	I mean, I hope that I've been able to do that in the world of these many moons, be able to bring people to the truth with some sort of positive...
	It's an engaging experience, a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
	So just because you're speaking the truth, it's like the surgeon saying, well, you know, I just removed his appendix.
	That's what he wanted. He had appendicitis.
	I removed his appendix. And it's like, did you use anesthetic?
	Well, no. What difference does that make?
	The important point is that the appendix is out.
	That's what matters, right?
	It's like, well, no, because the problem with, I mean, other than the inhumanity of operating people without anesthetic, I mean...
	You're going to jerk. You're going to move.
	You're going to whatever, right? So, it's bad medicine, right?
	Oh, it was for the responsibility to our parents, just to make that clear.
	Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. Once you use the compass of first principles to guide you, it's hard to force yourself to get lost following someone else's bad directions.
	Yeah, for sure. Did any people in your extended family have a positive influence in your childhood?
	I'm an aunt, and I want to be a positive influence for my niece.
	Yeah, and it was actually aunts.
	It was aunts.
	My father has sisters, and his sisters are solid, sensible women, Christian and hardworking, and they work to the land, and...
	And so that was a kind of femininity to me.
	My mom was like this weird Blanche Dubois hysterical caricature of a woman.
	A woman, you know, pure sex appeal, so to speak, and I mean, she just milked her looks and her physique and so on.
	And just, you know, high-strung, hypochondriacal, emotionally volatile, just this, you know, I mean, it was the gay guy, Tennessee Williams, who wrote Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
	And this sort of caricature of hysterical femininity is sort of my mother.
	But on the other side, and I did spend a fair amount of time with my aunts when I was a kid, and one of them was my caregiver when I was born.
	And we had a wonderful bond, which probably served me enormously well throughout the course of my life.
	In my novel, there are the daycare kids and the non-daycare kids.
	And you can really see the emotional difference in the bonding and stability between these two kinds of personalities.
	So, there was some real positive stuff when it came to my aunts.
	They gave me a very solid...
	Foundation in what was more healthy femininity.
	They were still very feminine and did their hair and all of that, but, you know, just solid, sensible, practical women.
	When you fall on the tracks and get lost in chaos, you have a way of pulling yourself back together.
	A good method of centering yourself.
	Yeah, you just return to first principles.
	Return to reorganize according to first principles.
	All right. Do you have personal preferences to help create a universal safety net that encourages hard work that doesn't violate the NAP? Do you have personal preferences to help create a universal safety net?
	Oh, do you mean charity and all of that?
	Yeah, charity is enormously complex.
	The only people who run to the government for the idea of charity are people who've never actually tried to help anyone directly in their own life.
	Once you've actually tried, like, everything looks easy until you try it yourself, right?
	So once you've actually really tried to help people in your own life, at a personal level, really try and help them get better, do better, you realize just how incredibly hard it is.
	If you provide resources to people based on the fact that they're failures, then you're paying them to be failures and whatever you pay, you tend to get more of.
	It's really tough. People who have failures are pretty expert at milking sympathy and empathy and destroying people's resources in that way.
	Some people do respond positively to it and so on, right?
	I mean, I've helped countless people pay for therapy in this show and most of them have done honorable work in that and been really good with that kind of stuff.
	Some people, not so much, but most people here have been really, really good about it.
	So let me ask you guys. Do this for me.
	If you've really poured heart and soul into trying to help someone in your personal life, hit me with a why and then rate 1 to 10 how well it went.
	1 being it was a disaster and...
	No, go minus 10 to plus 10.
	Minus 10 is a real disaster.
	Plus 10 is it went beautifully.
	So a yes, if you've tried to help someone, give me a minus 10 to plus 10 scale on how well it went as a whole.
	I'm curious. So, yeah, charity is really, really tough.
	Really, really tough. Of course, the whole point of philosophy, I think, in the long run of the non-aggression principle is once we apply the non-aggression principle to children, then we won't have as much problem with people being under-functioning and manipulative and milking other people's sympathy for the sake of getting resources free and all that kind of crap.
	If I could just have Steph on speed dial speaking on my behalf every time I get drunk at a company event, that would be great.
	Well, you know, I have installed the software, right?
	If you've listened to a bunch of shows, you have internalized my speech patterns and my thought patterns.
	I'm in there, baby. Living rent-free, so to speak, right?
	So I'm in there. So you can, I wouldn't say, like, you know, what would Steph do or anything like that, but, you know, I listen to my inner Steph.
	Maybe you could as well. Maybe that will help.
	How do we distinguish between unchosen obligations that are beneficial to society and those that aren't?
	I don't know what the philosophical status is of something called beneficial to society.
	Certainly morality doesn't recognize beneficial to society at all.
	Morality recognizes universally preferable behavior, the non-aggression principle, and a respect for property rights.
	You say, are these beneficial to society?
	There's no such thing as society.
	Society is an exploit of fantasy.
	That people have invented so that you don't feel that they're personally stealing from you.
	Oh no, no, they're just taking resources on behalf of this thing called the benefit of society.
	Good for society. The common good.
	That's just a...
	It's a cloud that people will get you fogged in so they can pick your pocket more easily.
	I have no idea what beneficial to society means.
	If you cut welfare, if you cut the government welfare state, that's beneficial to some people in society.
	It's certainly moral. And it's harmful to the immediate self-interest of other people in society.
	You say, what is beneficial to a jungle?
	What is beneficial to a jungle?
	What is some specific action you can do that's beneficial to a jungle?
	Leave it alone. Leave it alone.
	The jungle has its ecosystem.
	It's balanced itself over tens or hundreds of millions of years.
	Just leave it alone. It's the only thing.
	Beneficial to society is leave people alone.
	Just don't point guns at them and make them do things.
	Don't use force.
	Don't steal from people.
	Don't threaten them with the rape centers of prisons to get them to follow your preferences.
	I'm not saying that you would want to do this, but beneficial to society, just leave people alone.
	Like, if you imagine you go into some, oh, you know, there's too many butterflies here.
	I'm going to take some of these butterflies out.
	It's like, well, it turns out those butterflies are very important for this, that, or the other.
	And then you have some imbalance and more pendulum, and it all crashes down, right?
	So, unchosen obligations are beneficial.
	You've got to scrub this from your mind.
	It's beneficial to society.
	No. Don't you want to do things that are beneficial to society?
	It reminds me of this old...
	I remember... A friend of mine really had to talk me into enjoying Monty Python when I was younger.
	I thought Life of Brian was funny, and I thought the Holy Grail was funny.
	Meaning of life, not so much.
	But one of the things that I thought was good, there was some criminal, and he says, all right, it's a fair cop, but society is to blame.
	And he's like, agreed, we'll be charging them too.
	That's kind of funny. Society is to blame, we'll be charging them.
	We can't charge society. I mean, society doesn't exist any more than ghosts exist.
	Well, you know, your medical procedures...
	How do you distinguish between medical procedures that are beneficial to ghosts and medical procedures that are not beneficial to ghosts?
	It's like, what would ghosts have to do?
	They don't exist. Beneficial to society doesn't exist.
	It's not a thing. I mean, there's competing interests, right?
	Some people win, some people lose.
	Beneficial to society? No.
	Just leave people alone.
	That's the only moral thing is don't initiate the use of force, respect property rights, and so on.
	Beneficial to society? No, that's a curse.
	That is a curse. That is a, you know, like in pickpocketing, right?
	Person A bumps into you and distracts you so that person B can steal your wallet.
	Oh, excuse me. Oh, where's my wallet?
	So beneficial to society is just person A to bump into you so that some asshole politician can steal your money.
	Yeah, don't fall for that beneficial to society stuff.
	Let's see here. Oh, we've got the results.
	Okay, so people say, yes, I've tried to help someone.
	Plus 2. Yes, 0.
	Yes, minus 8. Yes, 3.
	Minus 10. He killed himself.
	Oh, yeah, I'm sorry to hear that.
	Oh, plus 9. That's great to hear.
	0, minus 10.
	Why? Still waiting to see the results.
	Yes, one person says, minus 5, minus 7, and 0.
	Yes, I've tried to help someone.
	Minus 3. Yes, minus 7.
	Yes, minus 10 almost every single time.
	Only time it worked was when the person lived with me and had to change to stay.
	So you had a real authority over them, right?
	So, yes, that's pretty bad.
	We've got the one. We had a one that was...
	Let me just go back here.
	I think we had a one that was plus 10.
	Is that right? A plus 9.
	Yes, a plus 9. So good. Fantastic.
	But obviously, for the most part, it's a negative.
	The average of all of these is a negative.
	So... Really tough.
	Really tough to help people.
	And these are people, I assume, family, friends, people who care about you, people who listen to you, people...
	Right? So, let's see.
	I haven't really tried to build anyone up in a charitable sense.
	Is that bad? No, it's not.
	It's not a violation of...
	Guy's got a non-aggression principle with respect for property rights.
	That's the only bad evil right that...
	If you're not doing that...
	If you're not violating property rights and initiating the use of force, you're fine.
	Right? Do you think people are mostly good, bad, or somewhere in the middle?
	No, no, no. People are adaptive.
	People are like water. They adapt to their environment.
	They adapt to their current circumstances.
	If you think of sexual fetishes, right?
	So when you're born, you have no idea what is the most attractive thing sexually in your environment, so you just look for those cues early on, right?
	Which is why some people want to play sexual material in front of kids, because it wires their brain in a particular kind of way, so...
	No, people are adaptable.
	I mean, we adapt to a variety of circumstances.
	We are the only creature that lives in every corner of the world, all the way from the Arctic to the equator and then so on.
	So people are adaptable.
	Most people are very... And we saw this with COVID, right?
	Oh, this COVID is dangerous.
	You have to take this vaccine, but don't worry, it's safe and effective.
	How do you know? Studies.
	Okay, but what about long-term effects?
	Oh no, it's fine. So they just adapt to it, right?
	Okay, I'll take the vaccine. Now, I don't know whether that's innate to human nature or simply based upon how brutally people are in general raised in the world, but yeah, people are adaptable for sure.
	What about the philosophical status of unchosen obligations?
	That part... Also confuses me.
	Well, there is no philosophical status of unchosen obligations.
	I've said this, you know, for you relatively new, which is fine.
	Welcome. I'm glad you're here. But there is no such thing as unchosen positive obligations.
	I mean, if I buy something and put it on your credit card, are you obligated to pay it?
	No. You didn't choose it.
	There's no such thing as unchosen positive obligations.
	Now, there are unchosen negative obligations.
	Don't kill, don't murder, don't rape, don't steal, right?
	Respect property. So there are unchosen negative obligations you're absolutely responsible for, for sure.
	No unchosen positive obligations.
	You must. Thou shalt. Thou shalt not.
	It doesn't really limit you much at all.
	Thou shalt. If I say you're just not allowed to go to the top of this particular glacier in the Arctic Circle, You're just not allowed to go there.
	You can go anywhere else in the world, right?
	If I say you have to go there, that's the only place you can be, all of your other choices are removed or eliminated, right?
	So there's no such thing as unchosen positive obligations.
	None. And you do not choose your parents.
	There is no such thing as unchosen positive obligations.
	They don't have any validity.
	And they can't be universalized, right?
	I talk about this in UPB, right?
	So if you say to me, you have an unchosen positive obligation to pay me $10,000.
	But to be universalized means everyone can create unchosen positive obligations.
	I was like, okay, well, you have an unchosen obligation to pay me $20,000.
	No, $30,000. You can't be universalized.
	And therefore, it's not morally valid.
	My mother used to beat me frequently and my father was distant.
	Twenty years later, our relationship was kind of cold.
	I found it hard to smile around them and show happiness.
	They treat me good now, but that past is still there.
	It's hard for me to open up and tell them about it.
	Why won't parents initiate such conversations?
	I see it as very common that the child always needs to initiate instead of the parents.
	Why would a parent not want to initiate a conversation that is brutal emotionally to the parent and for which the parent is going to suffer, possibly for years?
	And if the parent handles it very badly, the parent might lose the entire comfort of having children in their old age?
	My God, of course!
	I mean, I sort of put it in an extreme, extreme way.
	Why is it that war criminals don't initiate their own prosecution?
	That's weird, right?
	Why is it that murderers don't initiate their own prosecution?
	No, because it's negative results.
	20 years later. So 20 years...
	So you're in your late 30s, maybe?
	Early 40s? Something like that?
	So, your father used to beat me frequently and your father was distant.
	No. Your father and your...
	Like, what do your parents do they're doing together?
	Your mother used to beat me frequently.
	Your father participated.
	You say, ah, well, he never hit me. It's like, well, he had the legal power to make it stop at any time.
	He could have divorced her and taken you to a place of safety.
	He could have chosen someone who didn't beat you.
	He could have talked and made sure that the beating wasn't on the table for parenting, and the first time she beat you, he could have absolutely said, this is never going to happen again, and you need to go and get anger management.
	He could have been assertive. They're a team.
	Don't have a parent who gets away.
	Having a parent who gets away is like being...
	In a rowboat in the Atlantic and saying, well, you drill a hole in your end because I only want you to sink.
	I want to float. You drill a hole in your end because only you should sink.
	Nope. Same boat. Same level.
	Might go down a little bit faster one side, but both sides go down.
	So... What you want to do is, you know, and again, I'm sorry because I'm going to be 57 this year, so this is all really far in the rear view for me.
	I haven't seen my mother in like a quarter century, so.
	And I know it's like I talk about her on the show from time to time because she's a good example for things, but I really don't think about her.
	Maybe once every week or two I'll be like, I wonder if she's still alive, but honestly don't really think about her.
	Now, here's the thing.
	Your primary relationship as an adult has nothing to do with your parents.
	Nothing to do with your parents.
	Your primary relationship as an adult is your wife, your husband, your children.
	That's the deal. Trying to go through life focusing on your relationship with your parents is like trying to drive a car with your eyes glued to the rearview mirror.
	That's all in the past. That's history.
	That's done. I mean, you can say, well, they're my parents, but they don't parent you anymore.
	I mean, it's funny because I, even in my sort of latency period, I'm sort of thinking 8 to 12 or whatever, and people would say, well, where's your father?
	Oh, What happened to your father?
	And I said, oh, I have an ex-father.
	I have an ex-father. When I was in boarding school, we had to write, we'd get a haircut every Saturday and we'd have to write to our parents.
	And I would write, dear Tom.
	And they would get mad at me.
	He says, he's your father.
	I would write to him, he's your father. But he's not my father.
	Because to me, father wasn't sperm donor.
	Father was somebody who parents.
	I never had any memory of my father being in my life.
	My parents separated when I was months old.
	Based upon my father's famous statement that my mother reiterated from here to eternity that he came to visit her when she was depressed in hospital and stared out the window and said, I'd rather be fishing.
	And she's like, that's it.
	So, yeah, I referred to him by his first name because, to me, a parent is not a smoke donor.
	If you literally went to a sperm donor and got sperm donated and you were the result of that sperm, would you look at that File and say, oh, there's my father.
	It's my father. No, there's a sperm donor.
	So my father did not parent.
	Now, I did see him from time to time when I was younger.
	I spent summers. I spent a summer in Africa with him.
	Two summers. Once when I was six, once when I was 16.
	I would see him sometimes for a week or two in Ireland in the summers before we came to Canada.
	But he didn't parent me.
	And he never did. Never gave me any advice worth a damn.
	Like, not once. Never gave me any advice worth a damn.
	And stiffed me with the bill when I was 20 and broke.
	When he took me, he's like, I'm going to take you to a nice restaurant, son.
	Oh, I forgot my wallet.
	I'll be sure to get that back to you.
	And he wasn't poor. So...
	And people would say, what do you mean, your ex-father?
	I have an ex-father. He lives in Africa.
	He's my ex-father. What do you mean he's your ex-father?
	It's like, well, no. My mom has an ex-husband and I have an ex-father.
	And people were like, no, no, he's not your ex-father.
	He's still your father. It's like, no, he's not.
	He's not my father.
	And thank God I kept that definition.
	Otherwise, I would have been very confused and bewildered when I became a father.
	No. To be a father.
	To parent. Parent is not a noun.
	It's a verb. To parent.
	To parent someone. I had an ex-father because he did not father me.
	He did not father me. Never did.
	Never gave me any advice, any feedback, any help.
	And barely any money. So...
	To be focused in your 30s so heavily on your relationship with your parents, you should be pursuing a relationship, maybe you have, right?
	You're pursuing a relationship with a spouse, with your kids, and that's nice.
	It's nice to have. If you can have grandparents, if your kid's around, fantastic.
	It's nice to have. I hope to be a great-grandfather to my grandkids one day.
	But focusing on, I fix things with my parents, I can't do this around my parents, I'm not that happy around my parents, I can't really smile around my parents.
	It's like, dude... In a very real way, they're your ex-parents because they're not your parents anymore.
	They may be advisors. Anyway, so the parenting, and I know this because, I mean, I've been a parent, stay-at-home dad.
	I'm in my 15th year now, right?
	A lot of feedback, a lot of coaching, a lot of listening, a lot of playing, a lot of interaction.
	That's parenting, man. That's parenting.
	Having sex and like your kids play video games in another room later is not parenting.
	How's the book editing going, Steph?
	Well, I haven't started.
	I just finished the book yesterday.
	So I'll take a day or two off and then I may record my sort of editing process just in case people are interested in that.
	All right.
	Let's see here. 20 minutes.
	Steph, did your dad say something about not slurping tea?
	Yes, he did. I love your tea.
	I love your tea. Yeah, he did say something about not slurping tea, because he married an insane woman who was violent and abandoned me to her, but the important thing is that I not disturb his peace of mind with a mild slurping of tea that he serves at 9 million degrees.
	All right. Alright, so some say we should forgive the Covidians who pushed Vax mandates and lockdowns.
	I say no forgiveness unless they seriously apologize and then maybe.
	Yeah, the people who act in an honorable matter in my life, who, if they do wrong, it's very rare, but, you know, whatever, and once in a while we all make mistakes.
	So, you know, I'm so sorry, and, you know, I mean, you may have heard this, if I will occasionally get a call-in show date wrong, oh, I'm so sorry I'm late, and, you know, I really apologize, a thousand apologies and all that.
	So, yeah, I mean, I'm not going to dishonor people by pretending they weren't feral.
	I mean, this is part of honor.
	I'm honoring the Covidians.
	You wanted people to lose their jobs, to lose their rights, to lose their rights to travel, to lose their rights to move within society.
	You wanted them punished.
	Some people wanted them to go to jail.
	Sean Penn, complete stone-faced asshole from another planet.
	But, yeah, it's like, no, that's what you wanted.
	That's what you did. I'm not going to pretend you didn't.
	I'm not going to dishonor you by pretending that this didn't happen.
	Right? Yeah.
	People who wanted people forced to take this experimental drug.
	I mean, that's straight fascism, right?
	So, yeah, the people who apologize and make restitution, absolutely.
	You know, I pay what I owe. I pay my bills.
	People make apologies and restitution.
	I had a guy email me not too long ago just rabidly apologizing.
	He just felt like hell because he had been trawling me for years and hated me, but he had a drug addiction and it was just a mess and terrible and so on.
	I'm like... You know, hey, I appreciate that.
	I mean, that's a tough thing to do.
	It's a very honorable thing to own up to that kind of stuff and all of that.
	And, you know, go in peace, right?
	No hard feelings. But the people who apologize, you don't dishonor them by giving equal forgiveness to the people who refuse to apologize.
	Apologies are promises to not do it again.
	Because apologies are tough.
	They're unpleasant. To apologize to someone is unpleasant.
	Because you're putting yourself in a vulnerable position.
	They have power over you. They can really twist the knife if they want to.
	It's a painful thing to do.
	It's an unpleasant thing to do. And so if somebody has a habit of apologizing, it means that they have serious negative stimuli to bad behavior, which means that they're much less likely to do it again in the future.
	People who skate off Without having to apologize and don't have any suffering and in fact get mad at you for bringing up what they did, they're just absolutely promising they're going to do it again.
	We've got to help people.
	You don't take apology, like you don't pretend that bad things didn't happen because that's taking away from people the negative stimuli called an apology which means that you're virtually guaranteeing they're just going to do the same shitty stuff again.
	Love, like here's the thing man, love is a tough thing in this world.
	You don't let people get away with terrible behavior.
	You don't participate in unreality with bad people.
	Yeah, the people who wanted Vax mandates, you're seriously bad people.
	In that moment, you failed every single moral test that the entire 20th century was designed to instruct you on.
	You got scared, you got frightened, you got vicious, and other people had to suffer to manage your own panic.
	And you wanted to strip fundamental human rights away from people who, it turns out, had a real point, had a real point about these vaccines.
	The hesitation had real meat behind it.
	And you failed. You failed that moral test completely.
	And you can never look in the mirror and say, I did the right thing in a desperate time.
	You were lured into hating and viciously advocating for the stripping of rights, liberties, and money from people because you were told.
	You know exactly who you would have been in the past.
	And who you would have hated because people in power pointed at them and said, they're the bad guys, you're the good guys.
	You know exactly who you would have been.
	That's really tough, man.
	It's really tough. But to love people, you don't let them get away with bad things.
	That's called enabling. If you love someone who's an alcoholic, you don't call in sick for them.
	Right? You don't go out and buy them alcohol.
	You don't cover for them.
	You give them the honor of their own choices and you respect the choices they made, which means don't hide them, don't bury them, don't pretend they didn't.
	The rush to punish those who were hesitant in the face of a radical medical thing, I don't know what to call it anymore, The rush to demonize those people is...
	A huge opportunity for moral growth.
	It's a huge opportunity to realize where the weakness is in your moral stature, in your moral nature.
	How is it so easy for people to just get on the bandwagon and demonize others?
	You know, there are studies out there that the most despised minorities in the world are pretty much on the same par with the unvaccinated for a lot of people.
	Okay, so you now know where your weakness is.
	You now know where your moral horror resides.
	You can learn from that.
	You can become a really good person because of that.
	You can figure out your susceptibility to propaganda, the ease by which you are taught to hate others and revel in that hate, which is, you know, it's a human condition, right?
	The divide and conquer, and these are the bad guys, and you're the good guy, and you get rewarded, and they get punished, and join us in, and let's go and get that ogre, and let's go with our pitchforks, and our brands, and our torches, and our knives, and let's burn the witch.
	This is a human condition. I mean, look at the 20th century.
	It was all this stuff.
	All this stuff.
	They're the bad guys. You're the good guys.
	We're the positive people.
	They're the negative people. We're saving society.
	They're destroying society.
	They're a danger to you. We've got to get them.
	Being whipped up into a frenzy is 99.9% of human history.
	It happened in Rwanda.
	It happened in Yugoslavia.
	It happened in Germany. It happened in Russia.
	It happened in China. It happened here.
	In the place you live with the people you know.
	Don't be arrogant and assume that you're just magically different from everyone who did bad things all throughout human history.
	That's a surefire way to end up being lured down to the dark side.
	The conversation is...
	It's a hard conversation to have with yourself, you know?
	I mean, I was, you know, fortunately, and because of training and knowledge and experience...
	I said from the very beginning, it's not right, it's not right.
	I remember very early on just saying, okay, just tell us what steps you're cutting.
	We need to have a discussion about this.
	What steps are being cut? What steps are being jumped over in order to get these things out this quickly?
	And what happened when they tried over the 20 years or 30 years prior to the COVID vaccines?
	What happened when they tried testing this on animals?
	Why would you need immunity from liability for something that's safe and effective?
	How can they sign away our rights like that?
	That's weird, right? So, I don't have, you know, obviously I have regrets in my life and so on, but I don't have this, yeah, I really jumped on the bandwagon and really wanted people who were trying to maintain their bodily integrity and make their own medical choices.
	I didn't want them thrown in jail or broke or locked in their homes.
	So, I mean, I'm sure that you and I and the people listening to this, we acquitted ourselves with great honor during the most powerful psychological propaganda war ever waged against the civilian population.
	Without a doubt. Without a doubt.
	And this is not even my theory.
	This is, well, out in the open. It's a tough call, man.
	I don't know what it's like to live with knowing that you're that kind of person.
	I don't know. I don't know.
	I don't know. I don't know that there is a lot of...
	There is a lot of, wow, new information and so on, right?
	But there's not a lot of going back, right?
	There's not... I mean, social media companies who banned people for saying things that have completely turned out to be true, right?
	They should be going back and providing restitution and apologizing and making sure it doesn't happen again and...
	Nope.
	Nope.
	All right.
	Let's see here.
	I've just got another couple of minutes.
	Let's do something relatively short.
	I feel like I have an obligation to help towards my mother as she seems powerless or stuck in her relationship to my father.
	Definitely resonate with the current topic.
	Yeah, but that's her choice.
	That's her choice, her life.
	You cannot be some appendage to your mother where you just try and make her life better or save her from her own bad decisions.
	It's like, no, no, no. You have to have your own life.
	Your mother has made her choices.
	She's had her life. It's time for you to make your choices and have your life.
	I would hate the idea that my daughter would cripple her future in order to shore up some negative experience of mine.
	It's terrible. Why did your father abandon you with your mother?
	Was he afraid of your mother and just ran away?
	Well, who knows, right?
	I mean, I'll never get the truth about this stuff in any objective way.
	My father couldn't stay in England or Ireland because his training was in gold exploration, which of course is mostly Africa, and that's where he did his PhD thesis and so on.
	So he had to go to Africa, and I think that the odds that he was going to get...
	Custody would be very tiny, and so I think he basically had to leave for economic reasons, and I didn't try to get custody.
	It's all relatively understandable.
	It's just that there are people who make sacrifices, and he really wasn't one of them.
	All right. Do you think the trauma of World War I and World War II was the primary explanation but not justification for the dysfunction of the boomer generation?
	The boomer generation was targeted by socialists and communists and intelligence agencies and so on, so they had a tough time with it from that standpoint.
	How do we manage our instincts towards obligation?
	For example, men feel obligated to protect women and women feel obligated to nurture life.
	Do positive obligations have an evolutionary root?
	Or are some of them branded into our psyche by our culture?
	And those are the ones we should reject.
	So, this is what philosophy does.
	Philosophy will say that obligations are exploitive if they're not mutual.
	So, if you order something online, it costs $100, they send it to you and you don't pay them, then they've sent it to you and you've stolen from them if you don't pay for them.
	If, on the other hand, you send them the $100 and then they don't send you, then you're no longer obligated to send them more money or whatever it is.
	You may give them a negative review or you may ask for the money back and so on.
	So, obligations are mutual between adults.
	So, A man protects his family and the women protect him and his children.
	I mean, in the sort of traditional evolutionary sense, right?
	So, yeah, but if it's not mutual, then it's exploitive.
	So, what you do is you use UPB with regards to obligations, right?
	You use UPB with regards to obligations.
	Now, with parent-children, it's different and so on, but you use UPB. Are the obligations mutual?
	I mean, as I've said before, I remember a friend of mine having a baby and I spent all weekend cleaning his house and so on.
	And I just remember thinking later, I said, you know, if I ever have a baby, is he going to spend the weekend cleaning my house?
	And you just know deep down whether it's reciprocal or not.
	So if it's not reciprocal, you're just setting yourself up for exploitation, which is going to kill any desire, any quality woman has for you because exploitation on the part of men in particular is a great turn off for women because they need those resources for the kids.
	I was baffled at the response to not go out and exercise in order to quarantine.
	Don't be baffled. Don't be baffled.
	It was a huge money and power grab.
	Huge money and power grab.
	There's nothing baffling about it.
	All right.
	It's an emergency.
	People are dying, etc., etc., etc.
	For sure. But there's no cost-benefit justification when the money can be printed out of thin air.
	There's no cost-benefit justification at all.
	I mean, do you have a cost-benefit justification for whether you should take your next breath?
	No, because air is pretty much infinite, right?
	So, yeah, when you have infinite resources through the illusion of debt and money printing, there's no cost-benefit analysis.
	And when there's no cost-benefit analysis, you're going to get ripped off.
	just going to take time it's going to come through inflation and all that stuff alright I think we're almost done here pick click Um... Media reports are the opposite of the truth.
	Safe and effective. The answer is too easy.
	Well, you know, and of course the idea that the media can evaluate novel mRNA, rewire your RNA to produce spike proteins that go on forever.
	The idea that the media can evaluate this, or me, I can't evaluate it, right?
	I mean, I just know that it hasn't worked before and, you know, after 100 years there's no vaccine for...
	Cancer, after 40 years, there's no vaccine for AIDS, but there's no big vaccine.
	So it's the idea that the media would have any idea what is safe and effective with regards to some novel.
	I mean, what are they just reading the press releases from?
	And the moment that the socialists were suddenly very, very pro-giant megacorporations, I'm like, okay, don't do it right.
	Why do you think anti-homeschoolers use socializing in public schools as a con for homeschooling?
	Well, because they've put their kids, you know, I saw this, Leslie Stahl was interviewing, I don't know when this happened, interviewing Elon Musk, who had an absolutely terrible childhood and violence.
	He was beaten up by peers in school so badly in South Africa, he was put in the hospital for weeks.
	And, you know, Leslie Stahl says, oh, you were bullied.
	In school, and he says, I was almost killed, if that's what you want to call that, bullying.
	And she just had this blank stare, like absolutely zero empathy.
	It was like when Barbara Walters was talking to Corey Feldman, he was talking about pedophilia in Hollywood.
	She's like, well, you're harming an entire industry.
	Like, no empathy, no rights.
	So people who've done wrong by their own kids are going to have to make up some voodoo as to why it wasn't wrong.
	So... And socializing in school has nothing to do with socializing in government schools.
	Socializing in schools has nothing to do with socializing as adults because when you're an adult, you choose your own companions.
	When you're in school, you're just locked into a room with 25 or 30 other kids.
	And that's not...
	It has about as much relationship to socializing as an adult that socializing in prison has to socializing when you're not in prison.
	Nothing to do with that, right?
	Don Lemon can evaluate if a vaccine is safe.
	Don Lemon can't even seem to evaluate if his own hands are safe.
	Aren't megacorporations just prosecute the extensions of government power these days?
	Yeah, I mean, it's the...
	Thomas Sowell talks about this, that the corporations are handy because if the government's in control of everything, you blame the government when things go badly.
	But, like, if the government's in control of everything, you get inflation, that's the government's fault.
	But if you have Walmart and so on that raise the prices in Walmart, you get mad at Walmart, not at the government, which is the government's fault, right?
	So, yeah, it's fascism, which is the union of corporate and state power, so...
	All right. Does the state have obligations towards citizens?
	You can say anything you want, but they won't listen.
	All right. Well, thanks everyone so much for a wonderful evening of great questions and comments.
	Lots of love from up here. I hope that you will help me out at freedomain.com slash donate.
	And yeah, do let me know.
	If you see people who are posting the Covidians who are like, I'm sorry, and here's what I'm doing to make sure it never happens again, and I'm Really going to examine the dark midnight of the soul of how I ended up being a proxy for this kind of immorality.
	I would love to see it.
	I'd love to see it. And so, yeah, have yourselves a wonderful evening.
	I look forward to sharing my new book with you at some point relatively soon.
	And lots of love from up here.

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