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Jan. 12, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:26:43

WHY WOMEN DIVORCE!

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	Thank you everyone so much for your very kind birthday wishes, sorry, anniversary wishes, not anniversary of rotation around the sun, anniversary of rotation around my wife.
	So yeah, we had, it's funny, so yesterday we were going out for our 20th wedding anniversary and I got somebody, a friend of mine just said, hey your Twitter account is back.
	Did they let me know?
	No! That's way too much customer service.
	So, yeah, it's back, and I guess they just had a whole thing, right, where...
	They just have a switch and it goes away.
	They have another switch and it comes back.
	So all Elon Musk has to do is buy every other social media company now in demand.
	And we are...
	And justice can prevail in this universe.
	But yeah, no communication from Twitter.
	And you know, it's fine. I mean, it's fine, so...
	Yes, it is. I've gained about 8,000 followers since the Twitter account came back online.
	Well, I'm sure that they'll be just a tiny smidge disappointed.
	So, yeah, fire up your questions.
	I would love to hear from you.
	Love to see what beautiful things...
	Philosophy can do for you.
	Let's see here. Live now!
	Let's just post it around so that later I have something to delete.
	Hit me up with your questions and I am happy to hear it.
	Happy to hear them.
	I like that the Twitter account is back, in a sense, in that there is a place where...
	Why are you not taking this?
	I'm sure the caps lock is on. Okay, hang on.
	You know, there's a place where, you know, when people tell the inevitable lies about me, there's a place where people can link and say, no, this is not true, blah, blah, blah.
	So, I mean, I guess that's nice, and of course people want to have a look through, they can do searches for.
	I don't recall anything on that Twitter account that I was like, oh no, that was a terrible bad thing that I did or said.
	I don't remember anything like that, so it could be any number of things, but let's see here.
	Sorry, one sec. But of course, there are a number of people who have said to me, Steph, dear God, you must go back on Twitter.
	It is a philosophical imperative that you return to Twitter.
	But I don't feel any temptation whatsoever, like not even a bit.
	Not even a bit. Yeah, both in their court if they want to apologize and tell me why I was unjustly banned, you know, and give me some free advertising, you know.
	Tell me how it's not going to happen again.
	I would be very happy to rejoin the conversation, but Philosophy does not really allow you to just create your own rules for various different situations, right?
	And if you're in a relationship that has been abusive, and that one certainly was.
	But yeah, I mean, if I had just gotten back together with my mom, and oh, I'm hanging out for Mother's Day, and oh wow, you must have really had a great conversation, you must have really apologized to me, and it's like, no, no, didn't do any of that.
	I'd be like, I think you guys would have some questions.
	I certainly would have some questions for myself, like, What on earth?
	Yeah, it's not tempting.
	Not even a little bit.
	And I'm so enjoying the work that I'm doing at the moment that it's a little tricky to make the case that I should get back into the hurly-burly of this nonsense.
	All right. So, let me skip your questions.
	Regarding marriage, I was wondering how you built a happy marriage without having successful examples to follow.
	Well, I did have one family that was sort of happily married when I was a kid, and I did to some degree.
	I mean, it's funny because I remember there were three sons in the family, and I remember one of the sons talking about the other son.
	One of the sons was very intellectual.
	And the other son was talking about how, you know, the eldest intellectual son was reading von Mises by the pool while he was hacking away with his shears, trimming the hedges and so on, and just how unjust it was and how the, you know, the golden boy was just, oh, the intellectual future of the family and blah, blah, blah.
	And the mom didn't engage.
	The mom was like, well, I'm sure that your brother would have his own version of events.
	Just very mild and very non-engagey.
	So that was a pretty happy family.
	So I did see that.
	I did see that. But, well, how you build a happy marriage?
	Well, with principles. That's why philosophy is so important, right?
	With principles, with philosophy, with reason, with evidence, right?
	I mean, non-aggression principle and so on.
	No, I have no plans to use my Twitter account, no.
	Twitter is the background noise made by birds.
	Yeah, that's true. Has a call or a debate opponent ever changed your mind about something?
	If so, what did they help change your mind about?
	Well, for sure. I mean, if I make a mistake in my analysis of something, like let's say somebody has a dream analysis and I say, well, it could be this, it could be that.
	And then they say, no, it's not, or it doesn't feel that way.
	I just immediately abandon the hypothesis and move on.
	So that definitely has helped.
	The thing that changed my mind the most is the new book that I just finished.
	Of everything I've ever done, That has changed my mind the most and given me a really surprising degree of calms and acceptance.
	and when you get to read the book, I think you will understand why and what happened.
	See here.
	Congrats on your anniversary.
	Thank you very much. How do I confront my often verbally abusive dad about mistakes that I think he made as a parent when the response will be more verbal abuse?
	Well, you can choose to confront him or not confront him.
	If you are absolutely certain that any direct honesty on your part will result in verbal abuse on your father's part, then isn't that what they call a deep and closing understanding of the relationship?
	Why would you want to be in a relationship with somebody who verbally abuses you?
	I mean, why? Life is short.
	And if you let people tear you down...
	Then you will simply be viewed as self-hating, ashen, self-striking tentacles to anybody with perception and depth.
	If you let people put you down, nobody else can lift you up because you're doing that to yourself.
	You're voluntarily putting yourself in a situation where you're going to be emotionally harmed.
	And it may even escalate to physical harm if you continue.
	So you don't have to confront somebody who, if you're 100% certain that your dad is only going to escalate with regards to verbal abuse, then you have a certainty about the relationship.
	And I, personally, would never in a million years let someone in my life or have someone in my life who verbally abused me.
	Not in a million years. And obviously everybody can make their own choices, but your choice is going to have particular consequences to the kind of people who are in your life.
	See, you know they say like bad money drives out good.
	Like if you have a bad fiat currency and there's a gold-backed currency, the gold-backed currency will move out of the way, will be driven out by the fiat currency because people will hoard the gold currency or will move it to some safer location or something like that.
	But bad money drives out good.
	Bad people drive out good people in your life.
	If you want to have good people in your life, you can't have bad people in your life.
	It's just a basic equation.
	Or to put it another way, you can never have better people in your life than the worst person in your life.
	Because that's your lowest common denominator.
	That's what you're willing to accept.
	That's what you're willing to do. See, if somebody really cares about you and you're self-abusing in this way, in other words, you're knowingly putting yourself into a situation where you're going to get verbally abused, people do not want to see you hurt yourself.
	I mean, imagine seeing someone you love just slowly cutting themselves with a razor-sharp knife or making a fist getting a cheese grater and rubbing it all over their fist to the point where they've got bloody, bony knuckles showing through.
	Wouldn't that be the most horrible thing that you could imagine?
	Someone you really love and you really care about self-harming in front of you.
	That would be just awful.
	And people with sensitivity and morality and compassion They don't want to see that.
	They will do just about anything to avoid seeing that.
	So if you're going to put yourself in situations where you are going to be harmed by someone for sure, anybody who genuinely loves you is going to talk you out of doing that.
	If you continue to do it, they will simply leave.
	They will just simply leave because it's too painful to watch someone you love.
	I mean, it's really painful to watch someone you love hurt themselves accidentally, but when they're doing it with full foreknowledge of the pain to come, it's horrible.
	You're torturing the good people in your life and rewarding the bad people in your life.
	All right.
	What do you think of Bergson's statement that democracy is the only system compatible with dignity but has a small flaw?
	It doesn't promote meritocracy.
	Democracy is a pitiful substitute for a reason.
	How do we make decisions in society?
	Democracy is the idea that people vote.
	The idea that people vote and so on.
	But people don't vote based upon any free will or knowledge.
	I mean, you could really make the case that people didn't really have a chance to choose to take the vaccine or not because informed consent was absent.
	A friend of mine went to get the vaccine, didn't actually take the vaccine, but said to the drugstore, the pharmacist, right?
	Said, hey, open up the insurance.
	And it was like, well, you're supposed to get the informed consent, the side effects and so on.
	It's all blank. You know, information was viciously suppressed.
	Censorship costs millions of lives and millions of injuries.
	So when you're raised by the government and you're propagandized by the government and you're propagandized by the media and you simply are programmed to violently, emotionally reject anything that goes against the central narrative of your society, do you have free will?
	The whole purpose of propaganda is to try to erase your capacity to make any kind of informed consent.
	And I mean, it's what Churchill said.
	He said, five minutes conversation with your average voter should kill you if any of you delusions about democracy.
	And here's the thing. Not only do you propagandize, but you're bought and paid off, right?
	So in France right now, they're looking to raise the retirement age from, what, 62 to 64?
	People are out there rioting.
	It's just they're being bought, right?
	They're being paid for. They're being bribed.
	So you've got propaganda.
	You've got coercion.
	You've got programming. You've got cultural programming.
	You've got bribery. You've got threats.
	And then, oh, no, but people are free to vote for whoever they want.
	I mean... It's horrible.
	So, I don't know what it means to say democracy is the only system compatible with dignity, but I would assume that that's just a bunch of mealy-mouthed garbage from somebody who doesn't want to ask any fundamental questions.
	Would you ever want your program carried on shortwave radio?
	It would instantly get your message out to a greater audience that is likely open to the message of freedom.
	Any reason to not go on the air?
	I have no idea how to do that or what that would mean, so I haven't really thought about it.
	The only thing I know about shortwave radio I learned from Malcolm in the Middle many years ago.
	Can someone in their 30s have a personality change?
	Is it possible for an introvert to become an extrovert?
	Is the term introvert an excuse me and others use to not do the work of socializing?
	Parts of which are challenging, or do you think this is created at a more genetic level?
	Can I be extroverted and make a massive personality change in this stage of my life?
	Have you heard of the concept of athletes and performers using an alter ego?
	Oh yeah, without a doubt, right?
	When people met Freddie Mercury in private, he was kind of shy and self-effacing, and you see this man-god striding the stage.
	He says, oh, that's just a character, my dear.
	I wish I could imitate my singing as well as I can his speaking voice.
	So yeah, alter ego for sure.
	You absolutely have to do that kind of stuff.
	Show no fear and master everything and so on.
	So I think you can.
	I think you can have quite a bit of a personality change.
	If you are not who you are because of fear and you confront that fear and you overcome that fear, I was quite shy as a child and I really worked hard to overcome that shyness and put myself out in front of people and be willing to fail and all of that kind of stuff.
	I joined debating teams and did plays just to really get more comfortable being out there in front of people.
	I remember doing live streams that had like 6,000 or 7,000 people watching and I felt very comfortable with that and of course I've spoken to a thousand plus people live and all of that and been confronted by on media and being ambushed on Joe Rogan and you know all this kind of stuff, right?
	I'm pretty much okay with it.
	So you can definitely change these things.
	You can't manufacture something that isn't there.
	But if what is there has been buried under fear or some sort of trauma or avoidance, and then you embrace that instead of avoiding it, then you can, I think...
	It's not like you have a personality change.
	It's sort of like if you have a picture that has got dust, like a painting, it's got dust and grime and all of that, and you hire someone, like an expert, to...
	Gently cleanse away that dust and that grime and so on.
	It's like, well, the picture, you look at that before and after picture and it's very much different.
	But the picture was already there.
	The picture was always there. It just had to have the interference removed.
	So I think that can definitely happen.
	Thank you for your tip. I will be very happy to take more tips if you would like to, I don't know, help me celebrate my 20th wedding anniversary.
	That would be lovely. Regarding marriage, why do you think the divorce rate is so high?
	Is it because up to 45% of relationships aren't built on virtue?
	The number of relationships who are built on philosophical virtue is tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny.
	So, why is the divorce rate so high?
	Well, there's a number of things.
	It's a great question. The divorce rate is not quite as, like, it's not 50% of marriages end in divorce, because, right, that's not an accurate statistic.
	If you look at educated people who get married a little later in life who don't have a lot of prior sexual partners, the divorce rate is 5%.
	It's very low.
	So, why is the divorce rate so high?
	So there's a couple of reasons. The first, and possibly the most important, is the propaganda.
	And I'm dealing with this in my new novel called The Present.
	My last novel was called The Future.
	It was science fiction. This novel is about the present, called The Present.
	So that's a lot of propaganda.
	A lot of propaganda. And if you see...
	I don't know if this... I think this is a bit more of a female thing.
	If you change people's yardstick, it's easy to make them feel...
	Dissatisfied. I mean, I remember when I was in my late teens, I went to go work up north, a friend of mine came to work with me, and he had one extra year of university, got paid $200 extra a month.
	I was outraged. Outraged!
	We're doing exactly the same work.
	Now, for me, I can't remember what I was getting, but it was like maybe $1,500, $1,600 a month, and all of the other expenses, like they paid for the tent, they paid for the food, they paid for the transportation, and so on.
	So all that money was being deposited back in my bank account at home, I did it for 18 months, had enough money to go to college and all of that.
	So I was getting, I don't know, $1,600 a month, but he was getting $1,800 a month, which was outrageous to me.
	Now, I was happy to get $1,600 a month.
	I mean, that's a lot of money back, you know, 40 years ago or whatever, right?
	So I was happy to get that amount of money a month.
	It was good money. And I remember when I went to the National Theatre School, my tuition for the year was like $900.
	Was it a year or a semester? Either way, it was like one month covered either a double or at least the tuition.
	So I was like really happy to be getting that money.
	Until I know that my friend was getting 200 bucks more and then I felt dissatisfied.
	So all you need to do to make people unhappy in general is to move the yardstick, right?
	Somebody might feel like, oh, wow, you know, 30 grand a Bitcoin is fantastic.
	But if you think, well, Bitcoin should be half a million dollars a Bitcoin, then that's, you know, it's not a lot of money, right?
	You think, oh, well, Bitcoin relative to when it started or even like five years ago, Bitcoin is through the roof.
	What is it? Like 2017 US, 22 Canadian, something like that.
	Anyway, so you say, you know, relative to, but if you think it should be, or you think it was when it was at 80 Canadian, you say, oh my God, it's only a quarter or whatever, right?
	So your yardstick is really important in life, and it's very easy to make people unhappy simply by removing their yardstick, right?
	Changing the yardstick, right?
	Somebody may be very tall in Indonesia, right?
	But then they go to Sweden or Denmark.
	I think Denmark are the tallest people in the world.
	And suddenly they're no longer tall, right?
	So you're changing the yardstick.
	And you've got to watch people who are manipulating your yardstick, right?
	And so a great way...
	And you see with women...
	That the yardstick has changed, which is why two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women, and the number one complaint is not infidelity, not abuse, not lack of provision, not drunkenness, not substance abuse.
	The number one cause of divorce, the vast majority of which is initiated by women, the number one reason for divorcing is dissatisfaction.
	Now, dissatisfaction happens when you move the yardstick.
	You move that yardstick.
	I thought I was doing well.
	Then I wasn't, right?
	So I thought I was making good money, but then I ran into an old friend of mine who's making three times as much, and now I feel like, you know...
	So the yardstick...
	Now, the yardstick is natural, and there's nothing wrong with comparing yourself to others.
	It's kind of an inevitable thing, no matter what.
	But you just... There's this weird thing that women have.
	You heard this, right?
	The soulmate. The soulmate.
	There's a big debate going on online at the moment.
	Some woman came across the idea, and tell me what you guys think.
	Hit me with a why if you agree with this.
	Some woman came across the idea and said, when a man is ready to settle down, when he's done dating, when he's ready to settle down and become a dad and become a husband and have kids, when he's ready to settle down, the man will just marry the woman in front of him.
	He doesn't go looking for the one, the perfect, the soulmate.
	He just marries the woman who's in front of him.
	And this is a fierce debate and so on.
	And one of the things that happens is women have this weird idea of the soulmate.
	Now, the soulmate is like Erica Young's Sorry for the Coarseness.
	This is a book that was around in the 70s called The Zipless.
	It was called, I can't remember the name of the book, but the concept of the book was the Zipless fuck.
	It's when you just, you have sex and nobody fumbles with the zippers and nobody wobbles and you don't need lubrication or...
	Like, it's just perfect, right?
	The perfect sexual action with no issues, no problems, no whatever, right?
	And Fear of Flying was the name of the book.
	And... So, women have this idea of the soulmate, that a soulmate for a woman is the man with whom there are no problems.
	Why? Because you're the soulmate.
	And that creates an expectation.
	A concept of the soulmate is responsible probably for more divorces even than feminism, which is to say quite a bit.
	Because the concept of the soulmate is the concept that you're just going to have someone in your life.
	Everything's going to be easy.
	Everything's going to be perfect.
	Everything's going to be wonderful. You're going to wake up birds singing in the bedroom and every night is a shattering orgasm and every morning you spring out of bed fully in love.
	So you create this yardstick that's just wildly high in terms of what a quality relationship is.
	And it's destined for tears.
	It's destined for heartbreak. It's destined for divorce.
	Because... No man can compete, right?
	There's a reason why those Prince Charming stories end with, and then they lived happily ever after.
	Well, no, there's stress in life, you know, parents age and get sick, people have bad moods, bad tempers, you get fired, you get whatever.
	There are things that happen, financial stressors and health issues and so on, there are things that are difficult.
	And so creating this whole romantic comedy, soulmate, he's the one and so on, right?
	Well, the one, of course, means that women would go to bed earlier with the man, sooner with the guy, and also it means that when issues arise, they're like, oh my god, issues have arisen, and you don't have the patience and the maturity to work through things well on a mature level, so you just run away.
	He's the one. Oh no, we're having problems.
	Well, that means he's not the one, and you've got to run away and look for the one.
	And you end up running, looking for this perfect relationship, but there are never any problems, and everything works out beautifully, and then you end up dying alone, right?
	And this was Kevin Samuels doing his God-given work of trying to remind women who were a five that looking for a ten is not going to work.
	It's not going to... And by the by, I just wanted to, reading up on some of the horrors of the Tate brothers these days in Romania, I wonder how many of these girls, these young girls, these young women, I wonder how many of these young women who ended up in these horrible, sadistic relationships were primed and programmed by Fifty Shades of Grey.
	Just a thought. No idea.
	So, yeah, the idea of the one and the perfect man and all of that.
	Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope.
	It's looking for perfect love is to raise the yardstick so high that no man can compete.
	The one-itis of the soulmate and so on, straight-up depopulation agenda.
	It's a straight-up depopulation agenda, and it's really, really been successful.
	Promoted hard.
	So, there's that.
	The other thing is that women are programmed to feel that any man who does less than 50% of the housework is exploiting them.
	It's a terrible thing.
	It's a terrible thing to think. I've told this story before, so I'll keep it brief.
	I was living with a woman in my 20s, and I was paying the bills, and she was still demanding that I did 50% of the housework.
	I'm like, nope, it's not going to happen.
	And we went through the math.
	I said, you know, we just lived in the fairly smallish ground floor of a house, and You know, it was maybe on the outside an hour or two of housework a day, right?
	And I said, well, I'm working, like I was starting a business at that point, I'm working 10 to 12 hours a day.
	And you're working one to two.
	So no, I'm not. You know, I'll pay the bills, but don't expect me to do any housework.
	Like, that's crazy, right?
	She's like, well, I'm working on this, that, and the other.
	I was like, yeah, and that's great, but you're not paying the bills, right?
	And even in my 20s, I demanded respect for paying the bills.
	And so a woman looks at the work that she does.
	It's encouraging a kind of narcissism to say, well, look, I spend two or three hours a day on, you know, or four hours a day on cleaning and cooking and laundry and running the household, this and raising the kid and chauffeuring them around, right?
	It's like, well, so I'm being ripped off.
	And literally, literally, there's this insane thing that goes on in the world that All the woman's work in the home is unpaid labor.
	Oh, God, that pisses me off.
	Unpaid labor. Really?
	Unpaid labor? You've got to be kidding me.
	Unpaid labor. I tell you what, ladies.
	Go find an abandoned house in the woods and go clean it and tidy it.
	Nobody owns the house, just an abandoned house in the woods.
	Go clean it and tidy it and see who pays the fucking bills.
	Unpaid labor. Oh, women's work is unpaid.
	Really? What do you live on then?
	What do you eat? Who puts gas in the car?
	Why is there a car in the driveway?
	Why is there heating coming into the house?
	How is there electricity? How do you have a cell phone that works?
	It's all unpaid labor.
	And that's just making people insane.
	It's raising this yardstick.
	I've got to be paid on an hourly basis.
	Guy makes $100,000 a year.
	He's got a wife at home. Let's say it's pre-kids, right?
	She works at home.
	She's being paid $50,000 a year.
	Unpaid labor.
	God spare us from people who don't have the economic literacy of a fucking goose feather.
	God spare us from people who just, oh, yeah, it's unpaid labor.
	I'm being taken advantage of.
	I'm being ripped off. Literally, people, women, will take money out of a man's bank account to pay their bills and consider that unpaid labor.
	So they feel ripped off. They're exploited.
	I feel exploited. I'm exploited.
	They literally will be on their cell phone complaining to a girlfriend that they're being exploited by a man who's paying their cell phone bill.
	Well, you know, I take care of the dishes and I do the laundry and I clean the house and I raise your children.
	It's all unpaid labor. Well, you must have starved to death years ago.
	Oh, you didn't? In fact, you're gaining weight?
	Well, I guess someone's paying for all those calories now.
	So, yeah, it's nuts.
	And so when you can convince women that everything that they do has to be shared equally with the man, but the man's financial income, financial contribution, doesn't have to be shared equally by them, well, you're just setting up a situation for complete discontent and frustration.
	Another reason, of course. I mean, hit me with a Y. Really should have been the name of the show.
	Hit me with a Y. With a W-H-Y. So, hit me with a Y. If you were still paid for your job, would you still go?
	If you were paid, whether you paid, whether you showed up or not, you still got paid, would you still go?
	I mean, I'd do this.
	You know, I'd still continue to do this, even though my...
	Pay has gone down a smidge, right, since the deplatforming.
	But would you go to your job if you were still paid?
	Got the paycheck no matter what.
	Would you still show up? A lot of people wouldn't.
	A lot of people wouldn't.
	So a woman can divorce the man and still get paid.
	Alim-only child support, whatever, right?
	Gets his pensions, right? So the woman can still...
	Get paid, even if she quits the job of being a wife.
	She quits the job of being a wife, she divorces the guy, she quits the job of being a wife, she still gets paid.
	So if you're going to pay people, you know, one of the amazing reasons people go to work is they don't get paid if they don't go to work.
	So, if you pay people whether they go to work or not, I mean, we know this factually, right?
	We know that in Canada, some places in the Maritimes or whatever, If you work for 10 weeks of the year, you get unemployment insurance payouts for the other 42 weeks.
	In fact, it's called Lotto 1042.
	There's Lotto 642, Lotto 1042, work 10 weeks of the year, and then you get unemployment for the rest of the year.
	And of course, for seasonal work and all, it's supposed to be for seasonal work.
	In fact, I think there was a beer company on the East Coast that got into trouble because they had a coupons.
	They had a coupon in their case of beer that you could win the lottery in a sense, right?
	And what would happen is they'd say, hey men, we'll hire you just at our plant at very high pay for 10 weeks and then you can just get the rest on pokey on unemployment insurance, right?
	So if a woman's going to get paid, you know, if you quit the job, you don't get paid.
	If you quit the job of being a wife, you don't get paid.
	You shouldn't get paid. Of course, right?
	With regards to kids and so on, it's a different matter, but certainly alimony is completely insane, right?
	You quit the job, you don't get paid.
	Well, I sacrificed so much for you.
	Well, the man sacrificed all this money for you.
	So if you're going to pay someone who quits, they're much more likely to quit.
	And the last thing that I'll say is that old age pensions, right?
	So the man sacrifices a lot of his money, right?
	A man with a wife and kids spends 90% of his income on those wife and kids.
	Understand this. A man with a wife and kids spends 90% of his income on those wife and kids.
	In other words, he'd have 10 times the money if he was single.
	Yet somehow women are being exploited.
	See, a man spends 90% of his income on his wife and kids, but all of the woman's labor is unpaid!
	How do we survive as a species with just people who believe this shit?
	It's just unbelievable to me.
	Unbelievable to me.
	It's unpaid labor, says the woman in her 4,000 square foot home.
	I'm just unpaid. She says while putting away the Swarovski crystals.
	It's also unpaid, she says, while smoothing down her Vera Wang dress and her Gucci purse.
	It's also unpaid.
	What, did you steal everything?
	No, no, it's just, you know, there's stuff around me that's paid for, but I'm unpaid.
	There's heat in the house, but I think it's just a volcano.
	I'm clothed, but I think it's just leaves that blew to me.
	My hair is perfectly done, but I think it's just a windstorm.
	Sticky stuff that comes from trees.
	Crazy.
	It's just mad, so... Yeah, so because there's old age pensions that the women get and all of that, then they don't have to save money, they don't have to please a man.
	Oh, well, it's independence from men.
	No, it's not independence from men.
	Because the vast majority of money going into the old age pensions comes from men, and the vast majority of the money coming out of old age pensions goes to women, as is the case with health care.
	Women require a lot more healthcare over the course of their lives than men.
	And so you're not independent of men if you're taking men's stuff through the government.
	You're just predatory on men.
	You're not independent of men.
	I don't know. It's crazy.
	All right. Actual question.
	If there are no minor children involved, how do you feel about keeping your word remarriage vows for better or worse than staying married even when unhappy as was tradition versus breaking up a marriage when no one is actually trying to improve things?
	What do you mean no minor children?
	What do you mean minor children?
	What are you calling minor?
	Do you mean like nobody 18 or under?
	So, before you get married, you say, is divorce an option?
	If we're unhappy, will we get divorced?
	And if the woman says, well, if we're unhappy, we'll get divorced, then she's just telling you she's going to divorce you.
	Because, look...
	Let's be honest. Let's be adults.
	Let's be mature. Life can really suck sometimes, and it can suck for quite a long time.
	I mean, we aim at happiness.
	Pretty happy guy. I've got a wonderful life.
	But there are times when life sucks, and not for a short amount of time.
	Life was not super fun when I was developing cancer.
	It wasn't super fun when I had cancer.
	It wasn't super fun going through chemo and radiation, and it wasn't super fun getting my strength back.
	Now, that was not a week. That was not a month.
	That was not a year. That was quite a long time.
	So, if it's like, well, you know, if we're unhappy, we'll just get divorced.
	That's just guaranteeing you're going to get divorced.
	That's a self-fulfilling prophecy, if ever I've heard one.
	Before you get married, you look each other, across the table, across the candlelight, across the handcuffs, and you say, across the twist ties, and you say, if we're unhappy, we're going to get divorced. Any other answer than hell no is you're going to get divorced.
	Divorce is not an option.
	When divorce is not an option, you work it out.
	No, I mean, I've obviously worked hard to be a good person.
	I wasn't super born that way in some ways.
	So I would say both worked hard and been somewhat lucky with my wife that it's always been great.
	But yeah, you're going to get married and...
	You're going to have a much beloved father or mother who's going to get sick for a long time and it's really going to weigh you down.
	Life has its millstones that just hang around your neck and drag you down.
	You might get married and someone has health issues, whether you or someone in an extended family.
	You have a sick kid and that's going to be really tough.
	Maybe you're having trouble conceiving and you have to go through to fertility doctors and it's like, you know, cross your fingers every month, period or not, and maybe you lose a bunch of kids.
	Like, there's just going to be some tough stuff in your life.
	That's life, man. And you're going to age.
	That's going to happen. And that's for sure going to happen.
	That's the best case scenario, right?
	I remember when I was, even in my teenager, you see some 80 or 90 year old guy shuffling down the street and you're like, that's the most successful human being around.
	He made it to 80 or 90 and they're shuffling down like a crypt keeper doing the do-si-do.
	And you're like, well, that's the best you can hope for.
	The best you can hope for is to shuffle around like you're carrying the weight of time on your shoulders.
	Right? That's your best option.
	Are you going to be super happy when you're that old?
	Well, there is, like, happiness generally is kind of an inverted U, right?
	So you're happy when you're a teenager, you're happy when you're young, in your 20s and so on.
	30s, 40s, 50s, there tends to be a real trough of happiness, and then after that, there tends to be a great deal more happiness, right?
	So when you're young, you've got all that youthful energy.
	In middle age, you're dealing with a whole bunch of career stuff, uncertainty, financial issues, raising kids, which for a lot of people is not nearly as much fun as it should be.
	And then, you know, as one of my business partners said to me when I was in my late 20s, he said, you know, enjoy your 20s, enjoy your 30s, because 40s and 50s, it's teeth and parents, teeth and parents.
	Your teeth get screwed up and your parents die.
	Your parents get sick and die.
	And it's tough, you know.
	And then, you know, I guess 60 and plus, your kids are raised, your career, whatever it is, you don't have big decisions to make, what am I going to do with my life and so on.
	And then there's, I think, quite a bit of upward.
	As long as you stay healthy, which I obviously recommend you do, there's kind of an upward trend in happiness that goes on from there.
	So, you know, brace yourself, man.
	The bowling balls of life are just gonna smash your fucking pins from time to time.
	I'm a buoyant person.
	I'm an optimistic person.
	I'm a happy person in general.
	My general level of happiness out of 10 is 7 to 8.
	That's my baseline. I think that's fantastic.
	I have no particular...
	I'm not going to put...
	Oh my God, I'm missing 2.
	And look, every now and then you just look around and it's like, what's that sound?
	Oh, giant fucking bowling ball has come to smash up my life for whatever reason, right?
	And you roll with it and you work with it and...
	You judge it as good or bad when you actually don't know because sometimes stuff that you think is bad at the time turns out to be really good and so on and vice versa.
	You know, somebody's like, hey, I won the lottery and it turns out to be a complete disaster or whatever, right?
	If you sit across from your girlfriend, your fiancé, and you say, well, we'll stay married until we're unhappy, guess what?
	You're going to be unhappy, and some of that unhappiness is going to last months, and some of it might last even longer.
	If you've got a much beloved parent who's facing a five-year battle with a deleterious disease or a degrading disease, it's going to be kind of tough to be joyous, spontaneous, and carefree during that process.
	It doesn't mean five years of hell.
	It doesn't mean five years of misery.
	But it's going to be tough.
	Right? So, if you're not in there with the knowledge that, you know, happiness is not the level of your commitment.
	Oh, we're unhappy with each other.
	Well, fix it. Sit down.
	Be honest. Talk through things.
	Work things out. Figure things out.
	So, this idea is like, well, we should be staying in an unhappy marriage or break up.
	That's called a false dichotomy.
	It's the very definition, really, of a false dichotomy for me.
	Make your marriage happier.
	Oh, well, we can't make a marriage happier because the other person...
	Well, then you really fucked up in who you married.
	And I almost married the wrong woman, so I say this with sympathy, but you really fucked up in who you married if she or he is making no attempt to improve levels of unhappiness.
	You are really, really...
	You've made a terrible mistake.
	And, of course, it is the goal of this show...
	One of them to help you avoid making those kinds of mistakes, right?
	A forced choice is no kind of choice.
	Yeah, that's absolutely right.
	That's absolutely right.
	All right, I'm so sorry I missed a bunch of messages, but this is important stuff, right?
	Boy, did I miss some messages.
	And listen, I don't mean to lag you, but there's a tip button right there.
	This is great stuff.
	You know this is great stuff.
	All right. Well, I think it has a lot to do with have you processed the trauma of being occupied by a foreign power?
	Which is particularly malevolent to Christians, right?
	Have you processed that, in which case you've got a kind of immunity that is set up.
	Let's see here. Hey Steph, not a question, more of a comment.
	We got our first family pet last month.
	A puppy! It's been so much work, but such a sweet amount of joy for us and children.
	I didn't consider myself much of an animal person before, but that's quickly changed.
	I think you guys are more duck people than dog people, but it's been so sweet to hear how Izzy is connected with her pets.
	Yes. Yes, she is mad for ducks and would always want more.
	Yeah, average IQ. I think Poland does have a high average IQ, despite the fact that everyone in glasses was shot by the Soviets and the Nazis during the Second World War.
	All right. If love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we are virtuous, does this also apply to parental love?
	If so, what virtues do children display to make parents love them?
	Well, children don't have to display virtues in order to make the parents love them.
	You love the creation of life.
	You love the growth of the mind.
	You love a brain being there that wasn't there before.
	And the love that...
	A child manifests is the love between you and your wife or you and your husband, that you join together in love to make one or more new human beings.
	So children don't need to display virtues when they're babies, when they're toddlers.
	There is an expectation of virtue that is necessary as the child grows up, right?
	So you don't go, well, they have no expectations of virtuous behavior until you're 18.
	Then I'm going to throw you out into the world, which does have some reasonable expectations of virtue and good luck with all of that, right?
	So you do have to start increasing your requirements for virtue, right?
	So when my daughter was a couple of years old, I expected her to keep her word.
	Of course, she expected me to keep my word, so I expected her to keep her word, right?
	We don't expect our children to steal and so on, right?
	So you do have to...
	And look, you have to be honest with your children.
	If your child does something that really upsets you, you have to be honest, right?
	And say, this really upsets me.
	This is a really negative experience for me.
	So just being honest and all of that.
	And, you know, if you're a decent parent worthy of respect, your children are going to love you and they're going to desperately want to please you.
	And you have a very light touch with that.
	How much your children want to please you can scarcely be overestimated.
	You have to be very, very gentle with that.
	Virtues, never expect your children to obey you, because that's mindless.
	you might as well program them like a computer, but you want to model the virtues, you want to encourage the virtues, and you have to start demanding reciprocity from those virtues as part of good parenting.
	It's to train your child, or sorry, not train, it's to encourage and model behavior and reinforce all the positive things that your children can do that is going to make them honorable when they're out there making their own decisions.
	All right.
	Is it acceptable under peaceful parenting to take a choice from a child to pay a debt they owe for being badly behaved?
	Is it acceptable under peaceful parenting to take a toy from your child to pay a debt they owe for being badly behaved?
	Right.
	Why would there be a debt that they owe for being badly behaved?
	I'm trying to figure that out.
	So why would a child behave badly?
	A child would behave badly.
	I mean, there could be a free will element involved, but a child in general would behave badly.
	Because bad behavior has been modeled to them, right?
	You know, every time I've talked to parents, I say, oh, my children has a temper tantrum.
	It's like, well, have they seen their parents raise their voice and yell?
	Well, yeah, well, then they don't have a temper tantrum issue.
	They don't have a bad behavior issue.
	They have an imprinting issue, which is the parent's issue, not the child's issue.
	So you pay a debt they owe for being badly behaved.
	Here's the thing you don't want to do as a parent.
	This is foundational to peaceful parenting.
	You absolutely never, ever, ever want to abstract yourself and judge your child as an atomic or autonomous individual.
	You never want to say, well, you, as the child, you did something bad, you did something wrong, and I must punish you like you're some external judge that's just bungeed in from hyperspace to evaluate the child.
	You never want to do that because you're the parent.
	You're the parent. What is it they say in this whole pitbull controversy?
	well it's not the pit bull it's the owners the first place to look if your child is behaving badly is in the mirror What have I done? That allows this to happen or encourages this to happen or has modeled for this to happen.
	Why would you punish a child for what is most likely your fault?
	Your responsibility. Now, again, as the child grows, the child's going to have free will.
	The child's going to have outside influences.
	It's going to have friends and all of that.
	So that is going to raise a little bit more.
	But take a toy from a child?
	What are you proving to the child?
	I'm bigger and I can take your shit.
	I can take your stuff, man.
	And what if the child resists, right?
	What if you're trying to grab the toy from the child, the child just resists?
	What are you going to do? And then what?
	Are you going to pry their hands open?
	Are you going to elbow them inside? What if you're going to break their fingers?
	Are you going to bloody their nails?
	What are you going to do? The child doesn't want to give up the toy.
	Are you going to escalate until they comply?
	Well, kid, I guess I proved to you that I'm bigger and stronger and willing to use violence.
	Pay a debt they owe for being badly behaved.
	No. You don't create this ledger of, well, you know, you don't get tablet time tomorrow because you were bad today.
	What does that teach the kid?
	That you disapprove, that you're bigger and stronger and willing to use violence.
	Because if the kid grabs the toy that they're not supposed to grab, what are you going to do?
	You've got to think these things through.
	What are you going to do? What are you going to do?
	Pull! What if the child gets hurt?
	You pull it apart, right? You don't use violence with your children.
	And taking things from them is using violence with your children.
	Why is the child badly behaved?
	You've got to ask those questions. Why is the child badly behaved?
	Ask the child. Because if you simply correct the behavior, so to speak, through punishment, through aggression, through violence, through negative stimuli, you haven't learned why the child did what the child did.
	You want to avoid the demonic aspect or the demonic theory of human motivation.
	We're all born sinful and evil and bad and you've got to be whipped into shape and the primitive lord of the fly savagery has to be scoured from you like burnt on eggs on the bottom of a rusty old saucepan.
	Peel and grind and punish and channel.
	No, no, no, no. Children are great.
	Children are wonderful. They want to please.
	They want to be good. They want to be happy.
	They want to do things well.
	I mean, if you leave a kid alone and they've had good modeling in general, the kid will want to...
	Expand their skill set, learn new things, right?
	Kids love to learn, they love to explore, they love to figure things out.
	So children, you know, they grow towards it.
	You don't pull. It's like, wow, this rose is not growing fast enough.
	I'm going to yank it up! It's like, well, you just uprooted the rose and killed it, right?
	So, no, I don't...
	Again, I'm happy to hear more circumstances.
	I have no idea why you would just take a toy away from a child for being, quote, badly behaved.
	You've got to figure out why the child is doing what the child is doing.
	Just punish the child.
	It's like, okay, well... I don't understand why the behavior was bad.
	I don't understand why I did it, but I do understand that my parent will threaten me and use violence against me potentially if my parent disapproves.
	So the child will suppress that behavior.
	And then what happens when the child turns 18, grows up and moves away?
	Have they internalized anything?
	No, they have not.
	When the cat's away, the mouse will play.
	If you become the conscience, the external punisher of the child, the child internalizes nothing.
	You want to grow that conscience in the mind of the child.
	Anytime you apply external punishment and reward, you are throttling the conscience in the mind of your child because now the child is not attuned to his own judgment of whether he's doing right or wrong.
	wrong he's attuned to whether he can get away with shit whether you're going to find out and punish him or what all right um 50 of marriages include second third marriages Funny line from Justice League cartoon.
	Preacher trying to get people riled up.
	Did you know that half of all marriages end in divorce and the other half in death?
	Yeah, yeah, you've got to look at this 50% thing, it's not.
	You know, listen, you guys are top couple of percent in IQ at least.
	You've got the value philosophy, you've got real-time relationships, the whole idea.
	If you have the right conversations with your partner, your odds of getting divorced are virtually zero.
	I'm telling you this.
	The people who get divorced are the people who marry for lust, or the people who are just, well, we've got to get to the next stage, the people whose family is rooting for their failure, the people who don't have those challenging conversations because of codependence and insecurity.
	You guys ask the right questions.
	You get married. Your odds of getting divorced are virtually zero.
	Statistically. For me, the concept of soulmate doesn't mean no conflicts.
	It just means that they're the most compatible partner.
	They're still going to trigger your fears like no other because you're really getting close to someone and stakes are of the highest possible.
	No. Compatibility is bullshit.
	Compatibility is a total lie.
	It's like saying, well, you know, you just have to...
	It's like a jigsaw puzzle piece, man.
	You just got to find the right jigsaw puzzle piece.
	No. No. No.
	My wife has never triggered my fears.
	I don't trigger her fears. I don't know what you're talking about.
	You align based on virtues and values.
	We're going to tell the truth. We're going to resolve conflicts.
	We're not going to separate.
	I want to have kids.
	Here's the kind of life I envisioned for myself.
	Here's what I want out of life.
	Here's what I'm going to know if I have a successful life.
	You have these conversations based on virtues and values.
	And you work towards manifesting those virtues and values.
	But looking for this magic thing called compatibility...
	Now, I'm sorry, I know I always bullshit.
	Of course, you know, you need to have similar levels of intelligence and, you know, but compatibility is based on virtue.
	Marriage is a bond forged in the fires of morality.
	You can't have a successful marriage without morality at its core.
	Like, you can't have a successful life without morality at its core, in terms of being good and adding good to the world and so on, right?
	It doesn't always mean a happy life and you can be very much persecuted for your virtues, but Morality is, to a large degree, under your choice and control.
	Whether you tell the truth, whether you're honest, whether you're open, whether you're dedicated, whether you combat your own fears and continue in conversations that are difficult.
	So these are all under your control, as long as you know the right balance of risks and rewards and short and long-term trade-offs.
	So, compatible?
	Hmm, no.
	Since you can only meet and love in virtue and virtue is under your control, the quality of your relationship is under your control and it's under your partner's control.
	Love is virtue and virtue is under your control to a large degree.
	And so if you will and manifest virtue and your partner wills and manifests virtue There's no, got to find the right jigsaw puzzle piece.
	You both work towards virtue and it fits and it works.
	And you have security.
	And you have a bond.
	The bond is not biochemical.
	The bond is not dopamine, oxytocin.
	The bond is trust in integrity, which requires virtue.
	I mean, do my wife and I fear that there's ever going to be an affair?
	No. Do my wife and I ever fear that financial ups and downs are going to tear us apart?
	Nope. My wife and I fear that we're going to get divorced?
	Nope. Never going to happen.
	Because we had all those conversations.
	And we weathered our storms.
	And I still feel like it's our honeymoon, honestly.
	All right.
	Yes, this has been a big problem in my house.
	My wife always pulls the I'm not getting paid card.
	Yeah, so if you're paying the bills and your wife says she's not getting paid, then stop paying her bills.
	I mean, yeah, you can try that.
	Not getting paid. So she has a credit card, right?
	So... Don't pay the credit card bill.
	Then she gets a letter from the credit card company.
	Your bill is passed due!
	It's a phone call, so you're going to pay your bill, man.
	At least the minimum. Your wife comes to you and says, what the hell?
	My credit card bill is not paid.
	It's like, well, yeah, because you're not getting paid.
	You told me you're not getting paid.
	So you're not getting paid either.
	This is what it is to not get paid.
	I mean, I don't understand what the issue is.
	You said I'm not getting paid, so you're not getting paid.
	Well, no, you've got to pay your credit card bill.
	I can't pay your credit card bill because you told me you're not getting paid.
	So, with what am I going to pay your credit card bill?
	Oh, by the way, you also owe me half the mortgage.
	You owe me half the electricity.
	You owe me half the gas, the heating.
	You owe me half the cell phone bill, half the internet bill.
	You owe me half the property taxes.
	So, I mean, you've got to cough up, man.
	He's like, I don't have any money.
	Well, no, no, hang on.
	This stuff was all getting paid before.
	And you said you're not getting paid.
	So, who was paying your half?
	There's got to be some secret money magic going on.
	Hopefully not OnlyFans, but there's got to be some secret money magic.
	Because you're not getting paid, but half of the bills were getting paid.
	So where the hell was the money coming from?
	Oh, is it coming from me?
	Well, then I guess you are getting paid now, sugar, aren't you?
	So let's not have any more of that.
	Plus, you owe me a huge apology.
	Then, see, she says, I'm not getting paid.
	Have great sex with her and then say, well, I'm not getting laid.
	She says, what do you mean you're not getting laid?
	I'm not getting laid.
	You just got laid.
	No, no, no, I'm not getting laid.
	Sorry, honey, you don't seem to understand where I'm coming from.
	I'm not getting laid.
	You just got laid.
	Hey, man, I just paid all your bills.
	You said you weren't getting paid.
	We just had sex. I say, I'm not getting laid.
	What's the difference? I could literally do that for the rest of the night, so I won't.
	I won't. Hey Steph, are females and males equally propagandized?
	I'm curious if there's a biological basis.
	No, no, no. Women are much more propagandized than men.
	And it's not, you know, it's just the way it is.
	Because men are pulled along like water skiers behind the ship of what females want.
	This is why females are allowed to have these completely ridiculous beliefs.
	Astrology. Karma.
	They say, it's my truth.
	It's not the truth necessarily objectively, but it's my truth.
	It's like, oh, it's...
	We already have a word for that. I don't know why you need my truth.
	Why do you need two words when one word will do?
	What you mean to say is it's your opinion.
	No, no, no. That devalues it.
	It's my truth. It's like, no, no, no.
	If it's just yours, it's an opinion.
	I like BTS. I can't wait for the Backstreet Boys reunion.
	I feel it's very important to answer to every statement should end with a question.
	No, it's not your truth.
	It's the truth or it's your opinion.
	It's not your truth.
	Someone was talking about...
	Well, you know, twerking is like this totally spiritual thing.
	Like, twerking...
	We have all this trauma which, like...
	What epigenetics tells us is totally trapped in the hips.
	And so when you swivel your hips, and you'll notice that just about every dance in twerking and salsa and marangi, they all have hip movements.
	So it's actually intergenerational ontological trauma that you're releasing when you swivel your hips.
	So twerking is a form of spiritual enlightenment and healing.
	And of course, before you can read this thing and you say, okay, is this an ugly woman or a pretty woman?
	You know! You know!
	Having absurd opinions is a form of vanity display for women.
	It's a way of saying, like, I can afford to believe in astrology because I'm hot.
	Men will put up with any nonsense that I say because I'm hot.
	Right? So, for a woman to have rational beliefs, for a woman to have self-restrained, sensible beliefs, is a confession that she's not hot.
	I'm not kidding about this.
	I'm not kidding about this.
	So, if you want to change the culture, you propagandize women, and then the men will keep their opinions to themselves.
	How did you open Europe's borders?
	You showed the picture of that drowned boy on the Turkish beach, even though the dad put his kid on an overloaded boat to try and get to, so he could try and get to Canada to get some free dental care.
	Women have so much power in the dating and reproductive realm.
	There were times in human history where Ten women reproduce for every one man that would reproduce.
	So men don't contradict women that much.
	So if you want to propagandize, you want to propagandize women.
	Because for a man to say, that's crazy, man.
	That's crazy. You look at most insane beliefs, they're propagated by women.
	And again, it's just because women have so much, when they're young, so much sexual market power that men don't tend to contradict them very much.
	Yeah, I remember this. This is me, man.
	It's a little harsh, but it's kind of funny, like, how in the 50s, like, women gave up, like, sitting on the phone, having coffee with their friends, doing a little bit of housework during the day, and having, like, coffee clutches, and meeting with, you know, going to play golf and all of that, and play tennis, and they gave all of that up to go and work in an office.
	Like, how insane!
	They had it so made!
	That is beautiful, perfect life!
	And I gave it all up to go wrestle with stupid spreadsheets under fluorescent lights.
	Or as the man, the husband in my new novel, right?
	He says to his wife, I'd like you to stay home.
	Our kid's having behavioral issues.
	I'd really like you to stay home. She's like, but the hospital needs me.
	And he says, well, why is it liberated to obey your boss, but enslaving to obey your husband?
	Or mother your kid?
	So, yeah, it's a big question.
	What do we got here, my friends?
	Thank you for these donations.
	I would be happy to...
	If you were to keep them coming, I'd be thrilled.
	And I can eat. I'm just kidding, right?
	Right.
	So let's see here.
	Spent four years with the wrong person, not getting married to her.
	It's going to be tough starting over again in my 30s.
	Well, I started over again in my 30s, and it was great.
	It was great. Let's see here.
	And like I say all of this, I have huge respect for women.
	Love women. Delightfully incomprehensible.
	I love women. And so telling the truth and, you know, being kind of blunt about it is, well, I don't think you can love people and lie to them at the same time.
	Enjoy your anniversary. Yeah, it was wonderful.
	Thank you. It's just wonderful.
	If unrealistic expectations are harmful to long-term relationships, does this include the idea of romance?
	What are your thoughts on the concept of romance and its relationship to virtue, if any?
	Look, women like to be wooed.
	Men like to be blonde, right?
	So, I meant, you know, in a sailboat, obviously, technically is what I'm saying.
	A big, long, hard sailboat with spray coming off the end.
	Anyway, so... If your wife likes to be wooed, then woo her.
	Why? Because her happiness is your happiness.
	Not that she's holding you hostage or anything, but if your wife likes flowers, then bring her flowers because it makes her happy and you want her to be happy because you love her.
	Let's see here. In order for a model of virtue to be understood and accepted by society on a large scale, does it need to be embodied in the form of a story or human life like that of the Buddha or Jesus?
	God, I hope not. Because we've been trying that for a couple of thousand years, and how's that been working out?
	So, no. No, I don't think so.
	People need to internalize, not emulate.
	And, you know, my daughter at two and a half was smart enough to understand UPB. Now, she's a smart kid and all of that, but if a two-and-a-half-year-old can do it, adults can do it as well.
	So no, it's got to be reason.
	It's like saying, can science spread and provide value if people just emulate the work of good scientists?
	No, you have to think for yourself and practice science yourself.
	You have to internalize and understand it and act on it.
	Somebody says, I was abused that way as a kid, punished for talking back, verbally abused, physically abused for that and worse for reasons I did not know or remember.
	Just learned to fear my father and to feel betrayal and utter confusion.
	Learned to hate myself. Learned to hate as well.
	They did not teach me morality. I think TV did that.
	Oh, no, it didn't. Guaranteed you.
	Do you think being good at philosophy is a superpower?
	If so, why aren't there any superheroes who are great philosophers?
	So the superpower in philosophy is just bottomless levels of humility.
	You know, for me, I was in philosophy for like 20 years, and I was like, wait a second, I don't think I quite understand virtue at all.
	I don't think I've got a good answer for morality.
	So just real digging down to humility and wiping the slate clean and starting again, my only superpower is wild humility that allows you to actually achieve things, right?
	If you think you have an answer, you stop looking, right?
	But as you know you don't have an answer, you'll look and find things that are amazing, right?
	Let's see here. My truth is yours is BS woman.
	Well, you don't get to say my truth.
	My truth is a contradiction in terms.
	Truth is objective. My is personal.
	It's like me saying, my objectively favorite song is X, right?
	My objectively universally favorite song is X. It's like, well, if it's my favorite, it's not objective and universal.
	If it's objective and universal, I can't just say it's my favorite.
	It's a completely contradictory statement, and the fact that it's not...
	Point it out with this sort of nonsense is because men want to get laid, right?
	Just got out of a relationship with that a couple of months ago.
	Most attractive woman I've ever dated.
	Absolutely down with the woo-woo.
	Yeah, so it's a test, right?
	So it's like a shit test, right?
	So a woman who just spouts all of this nonsense, well, I have psychic powers, you know, I just have dreams.
	Okay, well, let's, you know, if you have psychic powers, my God, let's go pick up the million dollars that the amazing Randy has set up in a trust fund in Las Vegas.
	Let's go pick up that money.
	It doesn't work that way. Okay, well, tell me how it works.
	Tell me the logic. Tell me the proof, right?
	So, understand this.
	When some women, and this is vainglorious women and all that, and there are vainglorious men and all that, right?
	Andrew Tates, I'm the smartest man in the life, right?
	So, when a vainglorious woman Says nonsense.
	And you say, no, no, that's not true.
	That's not valid. No, that's not.
	No, no, no. No, no, absolutely not.
	That's false. I'm sorry, you're wrong.
	Do you know what she hears? You're ugly.
	She gets offended.
	She gets upset. There's a reason why, in particular, white liberal women tend to be the most censorious.
	The most cancel culture comes out of white liberal women.
	So there's a reason.
	It's because when you tell a woman that she's wrong and false...
	Or you don't defer to her intellectual or emotional preferences, what she hears is, I'm unattractive.
	Because if she were attractive, you would agree with her.
	And so when you disagree with certain kinds of vain women, they experience that.
	I'm not kidding.
	I know it sounds crazy. They experience that as they're not attractive.
	Not just... You're not attracted to them.
	They're not attractive. Because if they were attractive, you'd shut up and swallow all the nonsense they were spouting, right?
	I just want to thank you for helping change mine and my wife's lives.
	It took us both 20 years to work through a childhood trauma that immobilized both of us.
	Now we have a marriage. I wouldn't change for anything.
	We want kids, but we're in our 40s and it took a long time to get here for us.
	Well, thank you. That's very kind and absolute massive congratulations.
	Thanks for the answer on questions, Steph.
	Always enlightened. Well, I'm very glad that it is...
	I'm very glad that it is helpful.
	Alright, what do we got here?
	Why do I have no messages?
	People are typing. Steph, I asked a lady I'm dating what's her salary and she refused to tell me.
	me.
	We've been dating for a month.
	Have you had sex?
	Have you had sex?
	You can nut inside of my vagina, but you can't possibly ask me about my bank account.
	So...
	Yeah, I mean, people who hold that kind of secrecy and so on.
	I don't... No thanks. No thanks.
	Disagreement means lack of attraction.
	Wow, I've experienced this so many times.
	You're right. Right, so, I mean, you know, it was voted the worst tweet on the internet, my tweet about Taylor Swift's eggs, right?
	Or how I hope she's going to become a mom because 90% of her eggs are dead by 30.
	So, and women would come at me with the most crazy stuff there and I would just, like ninja style, right?
	Just, nope, that's false. No, that's certainly not true.
	No, I can disprove that very easily.
	Blah, blah, blah, blah. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right?
	And they got really angry and upset and offended.
	Why? Because I was saying...
	Well, no, if I'm not going to just defer to you, it's because you're not attractive.
	and this is an emotional crisis for a lot of women, right?
	Dr. Laura got the concept.
	Wives keep hubby happy and he will be happy to do all the little things and big things that will make you want to be happy.
	For example, look at him like your knight in shining armor and act like it and he'll cross the burning desert barefoot to bring her a lemonade.
	The power to be happy is within her own power.
	They cancelled her 20 years ago.
	You're in great company. Yeah, I want women to be happy.
	I want men to be happy. I'm an absolute moderate.
	This is a funny thing, you know, I'm painted as some kind of rabbit extreme or something.
	Absolute, completely, a complete and total moderate.
	Jordan Peterson believes that the Bible was successful because of its story of telling capacity and embodiment of virtue in the form of a person like Jesus.
	He's skeptical of Sam Harris' approach to objective morality based on science because it's too sterile.
	Is it possible for immorality to be too sterile?
	Well, Sam Harris was saying that with regards to the Hunter Biden laptop story, he said, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said, you know, we could find literally the bodies of dead children in Hunter Biden's basement and it wouldn't be 1% as bad as anything Trump did.
	Let me get the actual quote.
	I want to be fair to our good friend, Mr.
	Harris. He said, Sam Harris says it's okay to conspire against Trump getting elected because he was the equivalent of an asteroid headed towards Earth.
	And he says, at that point, Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement.
	I would not have cared.
	At that point, Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement I would not have cared. I, honestly, Sam Harris is an important thinker and he's had a big influence on me when I was younger and it's really, you know, it's honestly heartbreaking.
	It's honestly just tragically, awfully sad.
	It's tragically awfully sad to hear something like that.
	Now, in a moment of heat, in a moment of, like, wild, lost control, you know, maybe you could say, I don't know, I can't even imagine how you'd say that Hunter Biden could have been a literal child serial murderer.
	He could have been Jeffrey Dahmer, but with kids.
	And he wouldn't have cared. That's, um...
	I mean, honestly, I wish I could be outraged almost.
	It's just so tragically, heartbreakingly, awfully sad.
	Really heartbreaking.
	Really heartbreaking to hear somebody who is very intelligent and seems to genuinely care about morality to say he wouldn't have cared about if Hunter Biden had been a serial child murderer.
	Wouldn't have cared. Wouldn't have cared.
	I would say that that is not a great advertisement for a moralist myself.
	It's honestly very, very sad.
	honestly very very very sad so you can derive an alt from an is because the moment you say you can't derive an alt from an is you just did right So the ought not, then you get the ought, and then you go from there, right?
	And of course, too, I just talked about this in a little video I did today, like just a 10-minute one on subjectivism and relativism.
	The moment that somebody assembles their arguments or ideas into a coherent, grammatically correct, comprehensible sentence, they've already got a whole bunch of oughts that they've accepted, so you can't, right?
	We ought not be comprehensible, he said, in a comprehensible fashion, right?
	Okay, there's no ought that says you ought to fashion comprehensible sentences that's not written into the laws of nature like gravity, but the moment somebody does assemble comprehensive sentences, they can't say that there's no ought there because they've just manifested that ought.
	Is there any hope for someone who has had all the boosters and loves the government to marry someone from this community, doesn't like the government, doesn't trust the jabs, both the devout Christians and love nature?
	I don't know. I don't know.
	It depends really the journey that people are going on, right?
	So there are a lot of people who ended up being anti-Jab, not because of any reason and evidence, just a knee-jerk response to a commandment from authority, right?
	So it's not like everybody who's pro-Jab is anti-rational and everybody who's anti-rational is pro-Jab.
	Wait, I don't think I formulated that correctly.
	I think I heard a bump in the car as I drove over something, so let me try that one again.
	It's not like everyone who was anti-vax did so for rational reasons.
	Now, I think the people who were pro-vax were imagining that you could get long-term safety data from a couple of months in a trial where people were unblinded, where people went missing, and so on, right?
	So, I don't think you could be pro-jab and be rational, but you could be anti-jab and not be rational.
	So, it really depends on the journey that people are moving towards, right?
	I mean, listen, I was not as rational 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 10 years ago as I am now.
	And I will be more rational as time goes along until I ascend to pure reason at the end of my life.
	Whatever, right? That's from my Dungeons& Dragons character who ended up becoming a demigod.
	He was a paladin who fought evil and became a demigod.
	It really is my business plan.
	Let's see here. Is society in conflict because we can't agree on whether moral truths exist and whether they can be derived from reality?
	Yes. Fundamentally, society is in conflict because we can't agree on morality, and also society is in conflict because people live off the forced contributions of other people.
	We have a new aristocracy, which is both upper class and lower class, military-industrial complex, government workers, people in power.
	And lower class into welfare recipients, single mothers and so on.
	And there's the middle class in general who's just getting squeezed from both ends.
	So we have two predatory classes in society.
	And then we have people in general in the middle.
	And there's lots of overlap and so on.
	But people, we're already in a state of coercive redistribution of wealth.
	So society's in conflict, both philosophically and in terms of just coercion and redistribution.
	Harris wrote a whole book saying there's no excuse to ever lie, then said he and his friend should lie to stop Trump from being re-elected.
	Yeah, I don't...
	The mania to stop Trump from being re-elected was so wild that...
	And I wouldn't put Sam Harris anywhere close to this kind of thing.
	This is a completely separate conversation, but Trump is really going after child traffickers.
	And all of those who are significantly...
	Anti-Trump is...
	Anyway, so...
	I want to keep the tips going.
	Thanks for another great live stream. Thank you very much.
	Thank you very much. Let's see here.
	As for my last message, I thank you for your help on behalf of me and my wife.
	Would you be willing to offer advice that might help us conceive?
	I know it's late in the game, but we want to give ourselves the best chance given our age and circumstances.
	Well, it's not a philosophical question.
	That would be a medical question.
	So I would consult a fertility specialist and see what you might be able to get done.
	Ahoy there, Steph! How are you?
	All right.
	Do you think voting is immoral or undesirable?
	Well, I mean, as you know, I thought the voting in 2016 was very interesting.
	It's become progressively less interesting to me as things have gone forward.
	Yeah, it's like the Rob Reiner thing.
	It's just wild. I can accept making informed choice, read the jab.
	For an adult and for themselves, I was against forcing it on others.
	Right. There was no possibility of informed consent.
	I mean, the documents were supposed to be hidden for 75 years, right?
	There was no liability.
	There was no possibility of informed consent.
	Now... It's funny because, of course, the people who took the jab were against the unjabbed, the unvaccinated.
	Some of them were against the unvaccinated having access to healthcare services.
	Because they had just irresponsibly refused, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Now, of course, the unjabbed could say, I'm not saying I would say it, but the unjabbed could say to the jabbed, well, listen, you rolled the dice, you took the risk on something we repeatedly told you could be dangerous, so if you get vaxxed injured, you shouldn't have blah, blah, blah, access to blah, blah, blah, right?
	By your logic, right?
	So, nobody likes things turned around, which is why bite-napping all of these top-secret documents is almost inevitably tragic and...
	Well, won't get acted upon, right?
	Pirates practicing the NAP would be really bad pirates.
	Well, unless they were attacking other pirates.
	So, all right, let's see here.
	They just found a second batch of classified documents at another location.
	Yeah, and didn't the DOJ hold on to this stuff before they knew about it prior to the election?
	Anyway, this might become sort of boring to focus on politics because it's just too much of a shite show, so...
	All right. Last questions.
	Crack them in there before the door comes down, baby.
	Door comes down.
	It's closing. Don't be like that person running at the subway.
	Steph is the G-O-A-T. That's the original title of that Nat King Cole song, wasn't it?
	Is it immoral to work for the government in transport, healthcare, and education?
	What relationship should people have with an institution that isn't moral in its collection of the money they're paid?
	Yeah, I would go with Murray Rothbard on this.
	He was very smart about this stuff, as he was about many things, of course.
	But he said, look, if it's something that would be in the free market anyway, then it's not so bad, right?
	In general, the reason I only worked for the government once when I was very young, and I was just a contractor, and it was just for a month or two, but...
	I worked for...
	There was this big complicated document and I was there managing the document and so on because everyone else had to have lots of smoke breaks and chatter sessions and so on.
	So, you know, they had work that needed to be done so they got massive amounts of budget and then they just hired consultants to do the work.
	I couldn't work for the government just...
	I mean, the morality question is interesting.
	Everybody has to make their compromises.
	Nobody gets out totally clean or anything.
	But... I would say that I couldn't do it just because you'd be around people who wanted to work for the government for the most part, and that to me would be too depressing.
	Just too depressing.
	Yo, Steph Maestro, greatest anniversary memory outside of wedding night?
	Oh, that's a good question.
	Greatest anniversary memory.
	I mean, every anniversary has just been so much fun.
	I mean, honestly, I just get all kinds of emotional if I talk about this too much, but I'm just so inevitably...
	I'm fundamentally grateful to have my wife and my daughter in my life.
	They're just lights of my heart, apples of my eye, and center of my being.
	They are just the most amazing thing.
	They're the most amazing people to go through life in and to make everything worthwhile.
	Steph, I live off military disability, and I'm trying to work on self-employment stuff.
	How do I deal with the morality of taking money from the government?
	I don't know. I don't know how to do that.
	I'm not on military disability and so I guess you went and you fought or you got injured or something like that.
	I would certainly try and work on the self-employment stuff as much as possible.
	I have sympathy for, and I wrote this article many years ago, I have great sympathy for people who ended up fighting for the government because a lot of propaganda goes into these things and it's really hard to get to the truth.
	Do you support Prince Harry exposing the truth about the inner workings of the royal family?
	Oh my, oh my, that's a big topic, isn't it?
	That's a big topic. No.
	No. No, you've got problems with your family.
	Go and talk about it with your family.
	Now, people could, of course, say, well, I'm exposing problems with my mother.
	And it's like, well, that's... I'm a philosopher.
	I'm trying to help people. And I'm exposing principles that are helpful to other people.
	So... And my mother was, like, absolutely evil in her parenting, right?
	Very violent and destructive and so on.
	Like, physically violent and... And, you know, one day I may tell the entire truth, but let's just say, pretty, pretty damn evil.
	If you have issues, he's not exposing the truth.
	How on earth do you know Prince Harry is exposing the truth about anything?
	How do you know Prince Harry is exposing the truth about anything whatsoever?
	I mean, people are saying, Prince Harry writes in his book and he says, oh, this is where I was when I found out that the Queen Elizabeth II had died and so on, and there's somebody saying, well, no, I was with him some other place completely.
	How on earth do you know?
	What's really tragic is the book sold 400,000 copies in its first day.
	It's like the biggest non-fiction release in history and it's like, you know, ginger military killer who married narcissistic mess writes books.
	It's like, well, you know, maybe in the next round of civilization philosophers will sell as many books as spoiled, violent, addicted people who just married terrible partners.
	No, Prince Harry is just an example of the most important decision you'll ever make is who you marry as an adult.
	And really, that's the only way you can't really make that many decisions as a kid.
	Yeah, without a doubt.
	People put much more effort into choosing cars than choosing brides.
	He should absolutely...
	Well, I mean, you can see the quality of his marriage.
	He's married to a real mess, a really manipulative, in my view, and destructive person.
	He's just a warning, man.
	You... I just want to be left alone.
	It's like, okay, here are all of these salacious secrets.
	We don't know what the truth is about the inner workings of the royal family.
	I don't trust this guy. Why on earth would you believe what he has to say?
	They said, oh no, it was racism.
	Oh no, it's not racism.
	Oh, I was here. No, somebody else says, oh, how on earth do you have any?
	Exposing the truth. Come on.
	He's not the oracle of Delphi.
	He's just a guy who took a bunch of drugs and came to America.
	Let's see here. Well, my brother said that there aren't bad people, only bad actions.
	How do I process this? He harmed some people as a teenager, so maybe this is the way of processing his dark past.
	But is this indicative of the skepticism towards moral truths?
	Well, there aren't bad people, only bad actions.
	But a person and his actions are not separate.
	I mean, if you kill some guy, they don't send the action to jail, they send you to jail because you're responsible for the killing.
	You strangle some guy, they don't send your gloves to jail, right?
	They send you to jail. So, yeah, I don't know.
	Let's see here. I would offer another tip, but I've used them all here already.
	You provide the best value for my coins.
	Add free domain. Well, thank you very much.
	I can't help but concur.
	My strengths and my weaknesses are legion, and this is my strength.
	So this is kind of what I focus on.
	Yeah, it's interesting. Bad people, only bad actions.
	Actions originate from people.
	Now, one bad action does not make a bad person.
	I mean, everybody has something in their life that was not ideal, not good.
	Whether, you know, as a teenager, I was, you know, not always the very best of people.
	And so...
	Oh, best of person?
	But I'm not a bad person.
	So I wouldn't say that, you know, one bad action makes a bad person, but...
	In...
	You know, let's say that you were a kid and you shoplifted once or twice.
	Does that mean that you're a thief for the rest of your life?
	No, I would say not.
	But if you are a professional thief, then you're a thief.
	As an adult, you make your living, you're a thief, right?
	So we are what we repeatedly do.
	Repeatedly do, as an Aristotle saying.
	We are what we repeatedly do.
	So if you are repeatedly a bad...
	Repeatedly have bad actions, then yeah, you're a bad person.
	So... I would definitely talk to your brother whether he feels guilt about what he did and if there's any way he can make amends.
	All right. We are, I'm afraid, out of time.
	But thank you everyone so much.
	Yeah, artoftheargument.com if you want to check out the book, freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
	Really, really appreciate it. We can buy this later.
	And don't forget freedomain.locals.com for my book, The Future.
	A great, fantastic novel.
	It will really open up your mind about peaceful parenting and what we're really fighting for.
	And I will this week, I think, or maybe this weekend, start working on the edits to my chapter.
	I'll record that of the new book so that you can see how it works.
	Lots of love. Take care, everybody.
	Thanks, Emil. Talk to you soon.

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