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Feb. 11, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:29:37

WHY I LEFT GOD!

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	yes you hear the sound of a man entirely relieved that he's finished the second draft of his new book entirely relieved oh my gosh what a beast and not the length it's actually one of the shorter novels about 111,000 words but emotionally oh my gosh emotionally it's just putting me through the
	It's a book where sleep is light and dreams are wild and the emotions, even when I'm just editing it, the emotions of the book are just wild.
	Anyway, well...
	Hi, everybody. Welcome to your Friday, February the 10th, 2023.
	Good evening, good evening. I'm just going to give people a moment.
	Just a moment. If you want to join, the link is down below.
	I'll post it into the chat here.
	I'll give you a moment to join up.
	You get the first month free.
	Cancel any time. And you can...
	Throw in a couple of A-trits.
	What word processor? I use Word.
	And let's see here.
	Steph, is there any particular reason you tend to use the Japanese language in your analogies when explaining something to listeners?
	Is it just because it's a complicated language?
	Well, there's a number of reasons. It's very foreign.
	It's the other side of the world. It's very foreign.
	I don't have a lot of Japanese, native Japanese speaker listeners.
	If I said German, German listeners and so on, so...
	Yes, it's something that is quite foreign, challenging to learn and all of that.
	And if you think about, of course, if you had grown up in Japan speaking Japanese, as Jared Taylor did, I think, then you would just speak Japanese and you'd be part of that culture.
	I mean, depending on your race, how much you'd be accepted or not.
	So it's just a good way to remind people of all of that stuff.
	Steph, I started reading the present.
	It feels so real. Is Ian a free-domain listener?
	No, I don't. Well, I think Ian might be a free-domain listener.
	That's a very good question. I hadn't thought of that.
	Certainly as far as the peaceful parenting goes, he would be along those lines.
	But yes, I am... I have sweated absolute mind-bending bullets to make this ridiculously real.
	Because fantastical stories, and it's not so fantastical.
	It's funny because it actually, it seemed more fantastical when I started writing the book.
	Spoiler, it's about the collapse of civilization.
	It seemed a little more fantastical when I started writing it than it does right about now, because it seems like half the food processing plants in the world are mysteriously going up in flames!
	So they can blame food shortages on climate change and take the farms, as in the style in Northern Europe.
	So, yes, it is a very good book, and I hope to get it out before society collapses.
	Hi, Steph. Would you raise your daughter any differently if she were in the top 1% of female attractiveness?
	What principles would you give her to stop her beauty from hollowing out her personality?
	So, I actually, some years ago, when I was in the States, a guy, I was having dinner with my wife and my daughter, and a guy leaned over and said, you're going to need a bigger gun.
	And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about.
	He's like, your daughter's so pretty, right?
	She's very pretty. And...
	I do, of course, remind her that it's the character that lasts, it's the personality that lasts, all that kind of stuff.
	So I think it's good that she's attractive.
	Her mother's very pretty and I'm fairly attractive.
	So I think that's good.
	It gives you options, it gives you choices, but you really have to make sure that you don't end up substituting looks for a personality.
	And that's very bad.
	It's like a drug. Looks are like a drug.
	So... Almost.
	My novel Almost was great. Looking forward to listening to your newest work.
	Oh yeah, I tell you, I can't do the audiobook just yet.
	This book absolutely puts me through the wringer in ways I can't even explain just yet.
	Are you a historical figure in your novel, The Future?
	I've got a couple of cameos in the future.
	I've got a couple of cameos in the future.
	Look for the man plowing the back 40.
	So, yeah, I have a third draft, of course, to go through, get some outside eyes on it, and getting some feedback from the listeners.
	And then I will do the audiobook, which will bring it to life.
	I really... I can't tell you.
	Like, if you've been following my edits, I decided to record and broadcast the edits that I'm doing.
	You'll see just how...
	How much work I'm putting in to make the dialogue as naturalistic as humanly possible, because a lot of sort of fantastical scenarios, science fiction and so on, zombie movies, end-of-the-world movies, the more fantastical the story, the less realistic the characters are.
	And I wanted to have a fantastical story with hyper-realistic characters, and oh my god, it's a wallop for me, and I hope it will be.
	David, the character David, in the future, felt he was based on you.
	Haha, based. So...
	David is who I could be if I had been born in the society that I want.
	David is who I could be if I had been born in the society that I want.
	Will you make Rachel more likable, or is her redemption story one which doesn't require us to like her?
	No, I'm not.
	Rachel is one of the biggest story arcs I've ever done.
	Ever done. And I won't make her more likable.
	She's got flashes, but her redemption story...
	Everybody knows someone like Rachel.
	Somebody who's attractive and kind of shallow.
	And also, of course, you have sympathy because there's two characters.
	There are two types of characters in the book.
	It's not a spoiler. It's in the first chapter.
	The daycare kids and the kids raised by mom.
	The breastfed kids and the daycare kids.
	And the daycare kids have bonding issues.
	and they have vanity issues, and they have dissociation issues, and they have hierarchy issues.
	They can't exist as equals.
	It's always got to be better or worse.
	And the degree to which she changes over the course of the book is, again, I honestly don't know it's ever been attempted this bigger change in literature, maybe crime and punishment.
	I'm finding the present to be a terrifying read so far.
	Yes, well...
	End of the world stories feel very detached.
	You know, don't they feel very detached when you watch them?
	I'm sort of thinking like War of the Worlds or World War Z. It feels very detached.
	And I want this to be the little science that you see going through to the characters and having this whole society crack and fall with people that you fully, completely recognize and feel could be real.
	I ask because so far I find it difficult to root for her, and it feels like it's almost impossible to start liking her again.
	I look forward to seeing how you approach this challenge.
	Well, this book is in many ways my love letter to Christianity.
	Sorry, we're going to move this on to supporters, just to remind you.
	So, yeah, if you want to continue in the conversation, please support the show.
	So, this is a love letter to Christianity.
	And again, I was just saying this.
	I did like five hours of edits today because I just had to finish it.
	I need a good night's sleep. And I said, if somebody had told me even a year or two ago that I'd be writing a book which is a love letter to Christianity, I would never have believed it in a million years.
	But I owe the Christians some restitution.
	And this book is part of that.
	So, yeah, you don't have to like her.
	You have to find her interesting. Obviously, if you don't, then that's a bit of a failure on my part, but You can hate read about Rachel at the beginning, but if you don't see that she is to a large degree a victim of her society,
	and that she struggles to do right over the course of the book, and if you've ever known someone like myself or anyone else who has started from a bad negative place, really bad negative place, and then struggled really hard to do good in the world, I mean...
	Maybe there's a bit of Rachel in you, because it sounds like you're judging.
	It sounds like you're judging her in a very hostile and negative way, which I understand, but it means that you are...
	Rachel, a little bit.
	The missing tomatoes in the restaurant scene was spot on.
	At my job, everything takes so long to procure.
	Yes. I really feel Rachel's desperation.
	It's infectious. Seriously good writing.
	But I feel this reality all the more in reality.
	Yes, I'm trying to lift the lid on people's personalities because, you know, how often do we get the truth?
	Oh, my God.
	It's brutal. It's a constant theme in my writing, but in particular in The God of Atheists and almost.
	But how often do we just speak the truth?
	It's what I say in my novel The Future.
	Many relationships are like five minutes away from disaster or redemption.
	I just say to speak the truth.
	And Rachel is very manipulative.
	And she's manipulative because she doesn't feel like she deserves much of anything.
	Because she's relied on looks rather than virtue.
	Because she's programmed that way and her mother failed her when she was little.
	How exactly can we reconcile personal accountability with being a product of environment or indoctrination?
	So, I don't have an answer to that.
	I don't have an answer to that that's intellectual.
	I have a response to that that's practical.
	Is it time for a rant?
	Hit me with a why if in your mind and your heart it's time for a rant.
	I can't necessarily go on full cocaine razor fist, but if you feel it's time for a rant, we are here among friends, just supporters, and I am more than happy to do a rant.
	Well, it kind of looks like...
	Oh look, it's rant clock!
	Okay, alright, alright, howdy.
	So yeah, here's the rant.
	The dissolve into the gray people.
	Dissolve into the grey.
	I will give you an example of a dissolve into the grey people.
	There was a Dungeons and Dragons monster called the Grey Ooze.
	Just goes through and eats up metal and leather and just chews everything up in its path and just oozes like a gelatinous cube made of acid.
	Like a tongue just licking away teeth made of candy.
	So, the dissolving gray people, here's what happens.
	They say, oh, you're saying, so what you're saying is that adulthood is when you turn 18.
	Huh, that's an adult.
	Well, that's kind of arbitrary.
	Why not 17? Why not 19?
	You know, there are some 18-year-olds who are totally immature, and there are some 18-year-olds who are totally mature.
	There are some people who act like adults at 15, and other people who don't even act like adults at 30.
	And you're saying that one tenth of one second between 17 years and 364.9999 days and then 18, that's just this massive difference.
	Dissolve in the gray, right?
	You tell me objectively and universally why it's 18 and why there's a difference between one second and the next.
	Dissolve into the ground. You've heard these kinds of people from here to eternity.
	And they genuinely believe that they're enormously clever.
	So there was a guy who came on the other day.
	And no hate.
	Honestly, I appreciate these questions.
	I really do. Just because I hate the question doesn't mean I hate the fact that it was asked because it gives me a good rant and allows me to discharge sprays of intellectual vitriol out of my armpits.
	Now, the guy came on and he said, okay, well, let's say Bob stole something from Doug.
	And then Bob, he was never caught, and then Bob willed what he'd stolen from Doug to his children.
	And then, let's say Bob and Doug are all dead, and it's the next generation.
	Do, what's the status of the owned thing?
	What's the status of the owned thing?
	And you can't answer that.
	You can't answer that.
	Knowing what are absolutes and what are practicals is really important.
	Okay. I don't know if 18 is exactly the right age where someone becomes an adult.
	I don't know. I mean, it bothered the living shit out of me when I was a kid.
	I'll tell you this, right? You know, it's like all these little places where you go to do little rides and you throw stuff at coconuts and then you try and pop the balloons on the wall with the darts and you...
	And it's like, ooh, okay, well, if you're 11, children 2 and under are free.
	2 plus to 11, that's a child.
	Everything over that is an adult.
	It's like, no, it's not.
	There's no place on earth where 11 and over is an adult.
	So I don't know. Is it with brain maturity?
	Well, for women that would be early 20s, for men that would be mid-20s.
	I have no idea.
	A free society would work it out.
	What you do is you start at the extremes and you work your way in.
	And you say, well, is it okay to say that somebody who's 40 is an adult and not a child?
	Well, yes. Okay. That's fine.
	Okay. All right. What about 30?
	Well, yes. Okay. Well, what about 25?
	Yeah, pretty much an adult. Okay.
	What about five? Is a five-year-old an adult?
	No, it's not a five-year-old. Okay. How about somebody who just hit puberty?
	11, 12, 13, 14.
	No, it's not. Okay.
	So somewhere between 14 and 25 is the answer.
	It's the answer. Should we give people exams and brain scans and tests to figure out their maturity and then assign them an adult forehead tattoo?
	Should it just be an age where everyone's considered an adult?
	Can you find that objectively and universally?
	Of course you can't.
	Of course, it's a rule of thumb.
	You have to have some time, some age in society where someone is an adult and not a child.
	Oh, one second, 18, 17, 18.
	We have to have that, right?
	Is there a universal objective answer, like two and two make four, like the initiation of the use of force is evil?
	No. There is no universal objective answer which is right for every single human being under sun and moon.
	And of course there are people who have meningitis ate away half their brain or they've got some severe mental cognitive deficiency and so they may never become adults.
	People who get massive brain injuries.
	They may be classified as children as far as moral responsibility goes.
	So The way that you answer these dissolve in the grey people.
	They try to take all absolutes and give you some rule of thumb and say, well that rule of thumb can't be completely and totally objective.
	And say, well you can turn it back on them.
	Turn it back on then. So you could say something like, okay, so what age, right?
	What age? Is someone an adult?
	Say, okay, well, is it 15?
	Probably not. Is it 25?
	Yes. Okay, so somewhere between 15 and 25.
	And society has to make a decision.
	There's going to be a convention. I don't mean a convention like a gathering.
	There's going to be some sort of convention that people are going to come up with.
	They're going to have to come up with something.
	They've got to come up with something. Somebody's got to be an adult.
	Somebody's got to be a child. So, knowing that it's somewhere between 15 and 25 and you want to err, if possible, on the side of giving people adulthood sooner rather than later.
	You want to err on the side of giving people adulthood sooner rather than later because people want to get on with their lives.
	They want to get out there. They want to have jobs.
	They want to be independent. They want to be able to sign contracts.
	They want to get on with their lives.
	So if it's somewhere between 15 and 25, say the medium is 20, right?
	That's the medium between 15 and 25 or the middle.
	And then let's shave off two years just because we want to get people started on their life sooner rather than later.
	Because if you choose not to act like an adult and you have people willing to indulge you in that, you can continue to live like a child.
	So the option to continue living like a child is there.
	So let's say at 18 you say, well, I'm still not mature enough to act as an adult.
	Okay, well, if your parents agree, you can just continue to live with your parents.
	You can find somebody else to take care of you to put you up.
	So if you want to continue living like a child, you can.
	But if you really want to become an adult, and you're not allowed, and you're ready by 18, but they won't let you do it till 20, you've got two years of, like, going kind of nuts, right?
	Chomping at the bit. My daughter is very keen to become an adult, which I think is great.
	So... Just get them somewhere in the middle.
	Now, with regards to the question of Bob and Doug's property, right?
	Okay, so let's say there is property transferred through force.
	Stolen property, whatever it is, right?
	Okay. So clearly, if, let's say it's a bicycle, let's say a bicycle, right?
	Bob steals Doug's bicycle, and then Bob wills the bicycle to his children.
	Bob and Doug then both die.
	Does Doug's family get to petition Bob's descendants for the bicycle back?
	Right. Okay.
	I think it's fairly safe to say that five generations is kind of too much, right?
	Like 150, 200 years, whatever, that's too much.
	And I would also say that only going back five minutes is too little.
	So, where is the too muchness?
	I would also say that war doesn't count.
	Because war is not individuals stealing from individuals, but governments stealing from other governments and citizens.
	And stealing from their own citizens in order to fund the war, right?
	The British Empire was funded by a massive enslavement and physical tax on British subjects.
	So war doesn't count.
	And when you knock out war, there's very little that you have to deal with, right?
	I think the Indian government is saying to the British government, give us back our jewels and so on.
	It's like, well, that was kind of war, as far as I understand it.
	And of course the Indian government is probably just mad that the British government was stealing from the Indian citizens rather than the Indian government stealing from the Indian citizens, which it continues to do.
	So, five minutes, no good.
	You can't say, oh, it's six minutes since he stole my bike.
	I can't get it back. It's his now.
	That's too little, right?
	A hundred years? Yeah, probably too much.
	Probably too much. And there's a practical aspect to this as well.
	So to bring some sort of lawsuit against someone or some sort of action to recover your property, it's going to cost a certain amount of money.
	And the longer the time is that you go back, The more expensive it's going to be.
	Also, we have in almost all areas of law, certainly in common law, we have what's called the statute of limitations.
	A statute of limitations, of course, is a time after which the crime cannot be prosecuted because it's very expensive to do so the further back you go in time.
	Witnesses have died, moved away, eyewitness accounts have become foggy through memory and all of that, right?
	So people have lost their reason or whatever it is, they've got Alzheimer's.
	So, except for murder, right?
	So maybe it coincides with the statute of limitations.
	So if you've stolen something, and it's now beyond the statute of limitations, it's effectively yours.
	I don't know the answer to that.
	It's somewhere between probably 50 years and 5 minutes.
	What's the answer? Well, you can't answer that with objective, absolute, total clarity!
	Right. So approximations, where there's no absolute mathematical physics Geometrical answer.
	Approximations is how we work.
	To say to someone like that, I want you to buy a pound of grapes, right?
	Why don't you buy a pound of grapes? And then get an atomic weigh scale.
	Say, oh, you've got to take them back.
	It's not a pound of grapes. It's a pound.0002 or it's a pound minus.0003.
	Sorry, you've got to take them. It's not a pound of grapes, man.
	You take them back. Okay, no, get a pound of grapes.
	Hello, Bueller, are you hearing me?
	A pound of grapes, or a kilogram, if you enjoy ten-fingered, or ten-digit base counting.
	Give me a pound of grapes. Come back.
	Oh, sorry, that's a one-tenth of one percent too heavy, or it's one-twentieth of one-twentieth of a percent too light.
	Thank you for the tip, my friend.
	I appreciate that. So, no, you can't do it.
	Okay, forget the grapes.
	It's obviously too complicated for your little head to buy a pound of grapes.
	I want you to buy...
	Give me a liter of milk.
	No, get yourself a liter of milk.
	You can only drink a liter of milk.
	Oh, sorry, I measured it, man.
	That's a liter and a drop.
	Oh, no, it's light a liter.
	It's light a drop, right? So, we approximate all the time.
	Buy a liter of milk. Eh, you know, that's a liter, right?
	It's not half empty, like vitamin bottles.
	Vitamin bottles these days could be like nine-tenths, eight-empty.
	It's crazy. But that's because people aren't good at math, so they can't read the weights.
	They have to just look at the size of the bottle.
	Oh, there's more. Oh, thank you, government schools.
	So, everybody approximates all the time.
	But I make... $5,000 a month?
	No, you don't. No, you don't.
	You don't. Or they pay me exactly $5,000.
	It's like, yes, but that's worth less than it was a month ago.
	And even by the time you've told me that you've made $5,000, it's no longer worth $5,000 because of inflation.
	They're just approximated, right?
	And if you want a cost of living increase, then you're approximating how much you're going to make averaged over the year, right?
	Everything you buy. Everything you make.
	Everything you build. All approximations.
	All approximations.
	Give me a 2x4! Oh, I'm sorry, that's 0.00001% off from a 2x4.
	I can't take it, right? We all live on approximations.
	This crystalline purity scam of physics, mathematics, and geometry of this platonic ideal is just a form of mental paralysis.
	Oh, well, I can't make any moral decisions until things are perfect!
	It's like, well, there isn't going to be perfect things in the material world.
	There just isn't going to be perfect things in the material world.
	So yeah, these dissolve into the grey people.
	They're simply saying that they have a standard for you, they have a hoop for you to jump through that they never jump through because if they had to jump through that hoop of everything being perfect and exact, they wouldn't be alive because they'd have to keep returning everything they bought because it wouldn't be the exact precise weight.
	And even if it somehow was the exact precise weight when they bought it, they got the atomic weight scale.
	By the time they lift it off and move it, it's changed a little bit.
	Certainly by the time they've got it home, they want to have a nice bit of yogurt and grape.
	It's all different. Oh, so sorry.
	So sorry. So yeah, I'm going to try and give some foggy middle and we're going to throw all truth, all objectivity, all reason.
	It's just going to be cast into the foggy middle.
	So, yes, please do, if you would like.
	And I think you should. James is an absolute unsung hero for this show.
	He has, for many years, been helping me out, technically.
	I used to be a good tech guy, and then I got pretty.
	So, I... Please wish James a happy birthday.
	He's a great friend and a great companion and a great help to the show.
	And he has rescued me from more self and other inflicted tech wounds than I can even possibly say.
	So please join me in wishing James P. a very happy birthday.
	Happy birthday, James.
	All right.
	I want you to talk about Jesuits.
	I don't really know much about Jesuits.
	Forehead tattoo sounds good.
	I've got some room. Space for rent.
	Brothers can remember myself. It's like using Newton's law to model big objects and quantum mechanics for particles.
	Use what's practical. The great people would be arguing about what to use and won't use any theory.
	Well, the other thing too is that language is approximation.
	Language is an approximation.
	I'm trying to describe people's thoughts in my new novel.
	I can't get it all perfectly because thoughts often are nonverbal.
	They're emotional. They're inspirational.
	They're tangential. They're based on colors and so on.
	Like, close your eyes, look at the bright light, and try and describe exactly that orange and vaguely turquoise and blue spiderweb of beetle juice that goes on when light goes through your eyeballs.
	You can't describe that perfectly.
	You can't even paint that. So everybody who uses language to describe a grey middle problem is using language which is a grey middle.
	The word middle, I mean, especially when you have homonyms and you have words with more than one meaning.
	And so my daughter and I used to play a game where it'd be like, the word sail, how many meanings?
	Go! That kind of stuff, right?
	All right. Yes, thank you.
	The film I mentioned the other day.
	All right. I appreciate that.
	Thank you. All right.
	Let me just get to the questions.
	Sometimes two by fours are way off.
	They come all bent, edge notches, steel coming in like garbage also.
	Well, check out my book, The Present.
	It's got three meanings, the title.
	Just so you know. Hey, Steph, what do you think...
	Why do you think...
	Why do you think you get tattoos and many piercings?
	Is that why you think people?
	See? Approximation!
	I'm gonna have to fill in the gap.
	Why do you think people get tattoos and many piercings?
	Is it purely an expression of their personality or is it an attempt to create a personality?
	No. It is a signal that you are not going to work on your dysfunction.
	You're going to act it out and you need a bat signal called a tattoo right there on your body so that you can make sure that other people who are around you don't have self-knowledge either and are going to brand their terrible childhoods on their living skin.
	As a broadcast mechanism to keep good people away and draw bad people towards you.
	So yes. Because when I was a kid, it was like, who got tattoos?
	Like sailors? That's about it.
	And now it seems to be pretty common, but self-knowledge is not exactly high these days.
	So yeah, tattoos and many piercings, it's just a way of saying, I'm not fighting my craziness and all of that, right?
	Steph, how do you manage being assertive for standing up for yourself versus not being a pushover versus not coming across as defensive or sensitive?
	So, being assertive is just being honest.
	Right. Being assertive is just being honest.
	I don't want to do this. When it gets defensive or being a pushover or counter-attacking, when you want to control what the other person is doing, and this again, this is all through Rachel's personality in my novel, the present, if you want to control what other people are doing, then you can't stand up for yourself.
	Standing up for yourself is not contingent upon anybody else changing his or her behavior in any way whatsoever.
	Standing up for yourself is not demanding, expecting, requesting or needing anyone else to change his or her behavior at all.
	So, Let's say that somebody is mad at you and they're, you know, maybe berating you a little or whatever it is.
	You say, well, I don't feel good.
	I don't like it when you talk to me like that.
	You're simply expressing your truth.
	I don't like it. As opposed to, you can't talk to me like that.
	How dare you? Then you're trying to scare them into changing their behavior.
	Right? But the moment you are acting to change somebody else's behavior without directly saying so, you're being manipulative and you're falling into the trap of totalitarianism.
	It's usually a soft totalitarianism or it can be a hard or aggressive one.
	But... Let people be free.
	People are perfectly free to berate you.
	They're perfectly free to raise their voices.
	They're not perfectly free to use aggression like violence against you, obviously, right?
	Or steal from you or assault you or defraud you.
	I'm just talking about interpersonal stuff, right?
	People are perfectly free to yell at you.
	I don't like it when you yell at me.
	I really don't like it when you yell at me.
	As opposed to, I have to find some way to stop this person from yelling at me.
	Nope. Then you're just being drawn into a control matrix.
	See, people are perfectly free to de-platform me.
	They're perfectly free to do so.
	Now, it may be that they end up taking a vax, which they might not have taken.
	Anyway, so... But yeah, they're perfectly free to do that.
	If they don't want me on their platform, they can kick me off their platform.
	I don't have a need to change their behavior.
	I can make a case for free speech and so on, right?
	My therapist yelled at me and then denied it, saying, I spoke to you in a commanding voice.
	Is this manipulative gaslighting?
	Probably. Obviously, I wasn't there.
	It sounds like the way you describe it, for sure.
	I spoke to you in a commanding voice.
	And just say, I don't like the way you spoke to me.
	I don't like the way you spoke to me.
	It didn't feel good. Now, of course, the therapist would be like, well, sometimes therapy is tough, and sometimes it's going to not feel good, and so on.
	It's like, well... And there's stuff which feels good, but then it feels bad, but upon reflection, it's okay, right?
	Like, if you've ever had a personal trainer, right?
	If you have a personal trainer, and the personal trainer suggests you do an exercise that injures you, and you are injured, right?
	And then he says, well, you know, sometimes personal training is uncomfortable.
	It's like, "No, no, no, I'm injured." Let's see here.
	Somebody was...
	Yeah, just tell the truth.
	If you don't try to control people either they will escalate in which case it just gets more and more unpleasant to the point where you don't want to have anything to do with them or because you're not trying to control them they will stop trying to control you.
	If you don't control people back, don't control people back Then either they will escalate, in which case it gets worse and worse until you pop out of the relationship, or at least out of the circumstance.
	Or, because you're not trying to control them, it de-escalates.
	And usually, I found in my experience, usually it de-escalates.
	All right. Can you expand more on why tattoos are a sign of dysfunction?
	I'm not sure why that's...
	What's unclear about that?
	I mean, tattoos are a sign of dysfunction because they're very painful and you are making a decision permanently for your entire future self when usually you're quite young, which means you don't have any empathy for your future self.
	I mean, when I was younger, a friend of mine was getting his tattoos removed.
	Oh my God! His entire arm, like up here, was being turned into like glass.
	The skin looked glassy.
	The hair was all dead. I don't know what happened to him in the long run, but you're being tortured for the sake of staining your skin.
	Why on earth would you want to stain and disfigure yourself and go through bloody torture?
	What are you trying to communicate to other people?
	I'm not good at deferring gratification.
	I don't have any empathy for my future self.
	And I'm willing to spend a lot of money to torture myself to look cool.
	And, I mean, the studies are pretty clear.
	And it's not everyone, right?
	I'm sure some listeners here have a tattoo.
	I'm not trying to trigger you or anything.
	I'm just saying, on average, people who have tattoos have a history of significant unprocessed abuse and often lower IQs.
	It's sort of what you would expect, right?
	What are you trying to say to someone?
	What are you trying to say to someone? And if...
	And you're also saying to someone, if your tattoos are visible, I'm not talking about some little, I don't know, butterfly on your ankle or something like that, even though it's kind of stupid, but if your tattoo is visible, what are you saying?
	You're just saying, well, I'm willing to give up a huge amount of income because people aren't going to take me very seriously in the business world because I enjoy torturing myself and disfiguring my appearance.
	Also, I'm not enough, but me plus a tattoo.
	Me plus self-torture, right?
	I can handle pain. I'm willing to bleed for the sake of conformity.
	I don't have much of an identity.
	It's a black hole.
	And again, if you regret it and so on, somebody said, you hit that spot on regarding tattoos.
	I came to regret mine heavily after becoming a parent.
	Right. Right, of course.
	Of course. I mean, why would you want permanent body modifications?
	Most people get tattoos in their teens and 20s.
	And you're saying, oh, so yeah, by the time you're, say, 50 and your skin has sagged and the tattoo has blended out, it just looks like some bizarre capillary explosion blob under your skin.
	Like, come on. I mean, where's your...
	It's a bat signal for crazy people as a whole, right?
	Do you think morality is built on the foundation of us being able to perceive and sacrifice for the future?
	If so, is the key to a moral society, one that raises children to be able to sacrifice for the future, e.g.
	the marshmallow test? Yeah, my friend, my friend, my friend.
	I mean, I know that you support us here.
	I want to be straight and frank with you.
	But, you know the Aztecs sacrificed for the future, right?
	Hitler sacrificed Germany for a future that he decided was great for the Reich or whatever, right?
	Stalin sacrificed a lot of people for the glorious utopian communist future.
	Sacrificing the future, people with tattoos sacrifice the future, or perceive and sacrifice for the future.
	Yeah, they're making sacrifices in order to get a tattoo in the future.
	So, no. The foundation of morality is universally preferable behavior.
	You really should check out the free book so that you don't wander in the desert in this kind of way, making up words and sounding deep, because...
	Here's the thing. It's just a general tip, right?
	When you have an idea...
	Attack it. When you have an idea, attack it.
	I was going through this whole editing process with my book.
	Every sentence is like, can I cut?
	Is it needed? Can I cut? Is it needed?
	And I view my own text as canon, right?
	Because it comes from such a place of inspiration when I'm first writing it.
	But still, can it be cut?
	Can it be cut? So, same with ideas, right?
	So, you say, oh, sacrifice for the future.
	Okay. Can I think of sacrifices for the future that would be immoral?
	That's the first thing you want to do.
	As Socratic, this has nothing to do with me.
	This is just basic Socratic reasoning.
	And by basic, I don't mean that it's easy or simple or you're not smart for not knowing this.
	I'm just saying that this is introduction to Socratic reasoning.
	So, you propose something.
	Ah, morality is...
	Perceive and sacrifice for the future.
	Okay, well, can I think of sacrifices for the future that would be evil?
	Well, yes. Of course, I mean, I just gave you half a dozen, right?
	Okay, so it can't be sacrifice for the future because I can think of many sacrifices for the future that would be deeply immoral, if not downright evil.
	So, the key to a moral society is peaceful parenting and the application of the non-aggression principle to all facets, levels, and areas of human interactions.
	So that is the foundation of a moral society.
	For more on this, you can read my novel.
	I mean, you're a subscriber, so you can get my novel, read it, listen to it, however you want, called The Future.
	Hi, Steph!
	I have a baby boy due in a month, and my husband and I are debating middle names.
	His first name is Theodore.
	I like James... For the middle name, and my husband likes Joseph.
	Be our tiebreaker, please.
	Thanks. Well, that's interesting.
	So, Theodore.
	I'm trying to think of names that rhyme or sort of trip off the tongue well together.
	So, let's say a Theodore James, Theodore Joseph.
	Theodore James, Theodore Joseph.
	Theodore James. I think Theodore James, not just because it's a syllable less, but Theodore James sounds a little bit like it's descending.
	Theodore Joseph sounds like a speed bump at the bottom because of the seph.
	So I think Theodore James.
	Theodore James. The other thing is that, well, I guess with both names, let's say, because some people prefer to go by their middle names, in which case you can call me Basil.
	My middle name is Basil, right?
	So let's see.
	First name will be Theodore, so he's going to be Ted or Teddy.
	Because you've got to like the short name, right?
	Whenever you pick a name, you've got to, you know, because Theodore, nobody's going to call him Theodore.
	I mean, I'm not sure about Theodore as a name in general because nobody's going to call him Theodore.
	So James, what do you got?
	Jim, Jimmy, right? Joseph, you've got Joe.
	Or Broseph, right?
	So let's see.
	Ted Jim, Ted Joe, Ted Jimmy, Ted Joe.
	Ted James. Yeah, Teddy James.
	Tedda James! I'm thinking Etta James, some swimming boob soul singer.
	Yeah, I would lean a little bit more toward James and not just because it's his birthday.
	All right. But let's see here.
	Thank you for the tips, my friends.
	It was very, very helpful.
	If I spoke to my partner like her personal trainer does, I'd be single.
	Maybe not. Maybe not.
	Maybe she likes him because he speaks of that way.
	I used to hate the new tattoo era.
	Now I love it. It's an instant visible red flag.
	That's so valuable. Yeah, it doesn't mean the afflicted won't or can't fix whatever dysfunctions drove them to tattoo themselves, but they rarely do it in any significant way.
	Well, I mean, people would rather carve insignias into their living flesh in bloody agony than go to therapy.
	So, it tells you all you need to know.
	Hey, Steph, do you know if there was another generation similar to the baby boomers at any other time in history?
	As in ones who were born into relative prosperity, turned to hedonism, and left their children unguided?
	Oh, yeah, of course. So, if you look at my...
	So, go to fdrpodcast.com, History of Rome.
	The truth about the history of Rome.
	The truth about Rome, sorry, the truth about Rome.
	Yes, in the fall of Rome, in mass immigration, cultural fragmentation, massive debt, political corruption, money printing in the form of putting less and less precious metal into the currency, and you had the rise of women as men, men as women, divorce, just everything you can imagine.
	Human beings... are not very well tuned for excess.
	Can we survive our own success?
	It seems hard to picture.
	I think in a free society we could, but certainly with a status society we can't survive our own success.
	Confirmed tattoos are a sign of no self-knowledge.
	Well, it's, sorry to be annoying and naggy, it's a sign of a natural rejection and flying from self-knowledge.
	It's not just no self-knowledge.
	Tattoos are a bit gung-ho.
	I don't know, I've not tried that Chinese food.
	So there are so many people out there with tattoos, it's wild.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I don't have tattoos and I still feel like a magnet for crazy people.
	Well, that's going to be in your posture, in your voice, in your eye contact and so on, right?
	One of the things that happened when I was very young was when I went to the National Theatre School in Montreal, I had a really great teacher for the Alexander Technique.
	Which gave me, you know, better posture and a better way of sort of being in the world.
	And that's really helped me in giving speeches, in dealing with people.
	It's worth filming yourself.
	Film yourself and see how you move in the world.
	It's even better if you get someone to film you without your knowledge and just see, are you kind of hunched over?
	Are your eyes darting around?
	Are you broadcasting distress?
	If you're broadcasting distress, you will...
	Draw into your life other distressed people who want to merge and hopefully erase the distress through merging, which won't work.
	fusion it's called or if you are in distress then you will draw domineering people into your life who will exploit and mine and steal from your distress so this dude is asking about his therapist yelling to him in every live stream get over it already Okay.
	Yeah, that's sadly cold.
	He was not asking about it.
	He was saying this is what happened.
	He wasn't asking about it.
	So you've reframed that to make yourself feel superior.
	You've literally, in real time, I want to go back up and make sure I'm correct.
	But that is not what I read.
	Let me just make sure I get this correct.
	My therapist yelled at me.
	Oh, yes. No, you're right. He did ask.
	Sorry. And then denied it, saying, I spoke to you in a commanding tone.
	Is this manipulative gaslighting?
	Absolute apologies. You are totally correct.
	I'm totally wrong. Thank you for bringing this up.
	The dude was asking about his therapist yelling at him in every live stream.
	Okay, it's not every live stream.
	There's been a couple where he hasn't.
	Get over it already. Here's the thing.
	If you don't want to help someone, that's fine.
	But why would you put that person down?
	So this person is saying, I'm sensitive to being abused, and you're just like, you've got a cry, laugh emoji, get over it already.
	So you have seen his sensitivity and you just decided to put a thumb on the wound, right?
	It really hurts here, flick.
	So that's something you probably want to look into yourself, not because it hugely matters to this guy or on this live stream, but I guarantee you this is a thing in your life as a whole.
	How do you handle vulnerability?
	This guy is vulnerable. And if you've been in a therapeutic relationship, being betrayed by a therapist is absolutely terrible.
	It's really one of the worst things that can happen to someone.
	Because you usually go to a therapist because you have trust issues.
	And if the therapist betrays you, that's really, really, really tough.
	So that's interesting that this man did display or this person did display quite a bit of vulnerability and something's really troubling him.
	And you are laughing at him and saying, get over it already.
	So you are now stepping into the role of the therapist and being verbally aggressive towards him.
	And you may want to look into that as a bad habit, because if you punish people who are vulnerable with you, then nobody will be honest with you, and then you won't be able to connect with anyone in the long run.
	All right. Stefan, thank you for talking to me last month about my marriage.
	Sadly, my wife has decided to end it.
	I regret nothing in how I tried to bring us back together, but you cannot control another person.
	Thank you so much for your advice. You helped me to remain true to myself.
	I'm so sorry to hear about that.
	Honestly, if she wants to talk, I would really be happy to help and do whatever I can to keep the family together.
	Why tattoo when you can just spray it on?
	Oh yeah, like I remember I did a tour with a friend of mine many, many years ago through Belize and Guatemala and Mexico and I had a blast and I got a henna tattoo for a week.
	It was fun. Alright.
	Um... Any thoughts on CBDC? Central Banking Digital Currencies.
	Is it coming? Is it a threat? Yes and yes.
	But it's politics, so...
	Alright. Thank you, Steph.
	When I mentioned sacrificing for the future, I was assuming that it was purely about deferring gratification.
	What do you think about the idea of God sacrificing his son for our sins?
	Is this idea flawed and the reason why the world hasn't found objective morality for thousands of years?
	Or perhaps Christianity was the necessary foundation for your discovery of UPB and this was the end goal?
	So, deferring gratification is not a virtue.
	Deferring gratification is not a virtue.
	It is potentially aesthetically preferable.
	But deferring gratification, you say, ah, well defer gratification when you're young.
	Far better than deferring gratification is learning to love the struggle, is learning to love the challenge.
	Learning to love that which is difficult means you don't have to defer gratification in the future.
	It was very, very hard to come up with UPB. It's unbelievably, this novel has been after Almost, and it's probably at the same level as Almost, which is a brutal, brutal book to write.
	This novel has been really, really tough.
	It's just turned me inside out, man.
	It's just taken everything out of me, which is good.
	I mean, hopefully it's poured in and connects with you.
	But I have to love the process.
	I mean, nobody's put a gun to my head and said, write this novel.
	I voluntarily chose to do it.
	And I was not expecting it to be quite this...
	Emotionally scouring. I feel like a copper pot that's been steel wooled way too much, scratched all on the inside.
	It's just scoured me right out.
	But I have to love that process.
	I love that process. You know, I couldn't sleep last night, really.
	I just got a couple of hours and I got up really early this morning and I was just like, you know what?
	I got six chunky chapters to go.
	I'm just going to finish the edits on this book today.
	And I did it, like four or five hours of editing and that's hard.
	I had to take some breaks because I was tired too, but I love the process, right?
	Is it deferring gratification to exercise?
	I don't feel that way.
	Oh, well, it's less pleasant now than sitting on the couch.
	Well, it's kind of true. It's kind of true, but I also do love the sweat.
	I love the feeling afterwards.
	Even during, it can be great.
	And I have to learn to love it because I do seven to eight hours of exercise a day.
	Sorry, a week.
	I do seven to eight hours of exercise.
	Now, I try and combine it with other things that are more fun, like I'll play a tablet game or chat with someone if it's not too arduous.
	But I haven't been doing this exercise for over 40 years because I'm just deferring gratification.
	You have to find a way to love that which is hard, that which is difficult, that which is unpleasant.
	Find a way to love it. Now I get it by definition.
	It's unpleasant, blah, blah, blah.
	But you can do a lot to reframe that which is unpleasant, right?
	So you can say, oh, it's really uncomfortable to exercise.
	Or you can say, I'm sweating out the toxins.
	My heart is getting stronger.
	I'm going to be a beast.
	I've got an app in there somewhere.
	Whatever it is, right? You can reframe things so that you don't find them as hard.
	I'm not all the way with Hamlet that there's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
	But instead of deferring gratification, why don't you just learn to love what is difficult?
	Learn to love what is difficult, as best you can.
	Deferring gratification is not, let's say that you are 80 and you've got a million dollars and you've got six months to live.
	Should you defer gratification?
	You should not. You should not.
	You should consume.
	Deferring gratification is fine when you're young, in some ways.
	Again, I would learn to love what's difficult.
	But when you get older, it becomes self-punishing, right?
	I mean, if you save up some money or you've made some money, then spend and enjoy it.
	So deferring gratification is one thing when you're young, but it can't be objective and universal because it depends where you are in life, right?
	Thoughts about the SEC banning crypto staking?
	Well, I assume that's related to the earlier question.
	I studied Alexander technique for piano playing.
	I've done EMS fitness training, which helped my posture, but I think I still have a target on my back.
	Well, it may not be posture.
	It may be tone of voice.
	It may be some voice training.
	It could be that you have kind of like a tense situation.
	You have shallow breaths. You speak a little too rapidly.
	Maybe you struggle. Can you have a relaxed form of conversing?
	It could be any number of things.
	You've got something.
	There's no target without something being painted on you in some manner.
	Are there other reasons than love as to why someone wants to tattoo the name of their significant other on them?
	I don't know. Maybe they're in Bulgaria?
	I don't know. I know I am an adult, so I can't use this as an excuse for current behavior, but the present My novel, The Present, I assume.
	But The Present opened up a wound when it comes to being a daycare kid.
	The worst part of my life was daycare.
	My parents divorced by the time I was five.
	I was pretty much in daycare from my earliest memory.
	It was like a Lord of the Flies situation.
	Your new book is going to be great.
	My books are kind of radioactive to people.
	Yeah, I just did a calculation the other day that I do 35 to 3,700 calories a day of food, and I do close to 4,000 calories of exercise a week.
	I mean, some of it's just walking, right?
	Doing a show and walking, right?
	Okay, have you ever made your own board game or wanted to at any age?
	Yeah, I made a board game when I was a kid with my friends, but I don't really remember much about it.
	Steph, I think there are some really interesting questions in the local Shred poster just before the stream.
	Yes, thank you. I will get to those.
	Ooh, time's ticking on.
	Great distinction on deferred gratification and virtue.
	Love the struggle. Amen. Can you talk about the idea of God sacrificing his son for our sins if you have thoughts on this?
	I did a whole show with Dr.
	Duke Pesta on Jesus, so you should probably go and check that out.
	I won't try and reproduce that here because he is better versed in these matters than I am.
	So he had more to contribute to that conversation than I did.
	Alright, let's see here.
	Let me get to these questions.
	All right, what do we got?
	Thank you.
	I'm getting a strong motivation to want to troll as a Bible preacher and interpret the Bible in ridiculous ways.
	Kind of a way of disapproving blind faith and authority.
	Do you think comedy against Western religions can be beneficial?
	No. No, I don't.
	Western religions in general are the only universal moral structures.
	And... Making fun of the universal moral structures that underpin Western society is very counterproductive.
	Really against religion...
	I mean, listen, I get it. I was Mr.
	Fedora and I have some mixed feelings about that as a whole.
	See, my goal, my thoughts with religion and atheism were relatively simple.
	My thoughts with religion and atheism were this.
	Well, religion is an anti-rational construct that's in the way of us developing universal rational morality.
	So what I'll do is I will clear that out of the way and then I will introduce UPB and all of the people who are really into science and reason and logic and philosophy, all of those people will be like, oh my gosh, you finally got the holy grail of rational, objective, secular morality.
	That's going to be wonderful. We could just build this wonderful world based upon that.
	And no, it wasn't the case at all.
	It wasn't the case at all. The Christianity that I criticized, the Christians came back and were fascinated by UPB and were very kind to me, and the atheists scorned and mocked it and ignored it relentlessly.
	So I realized, of course, that the atheists aren't into science because they care about reason and evidence.
	The atheists are into science because science liberates them from morality, because you can't get an ought from an is in the Humean scientific method.
	So they just want to be hedonists, they want to be self-absorbed, and they want to be Arlo in the book, you'll see.
	He's a scientist, right?
	Or at least he's trained in science.
	So the atheists, they like science because it frees them from moral obligations.
	So when I came along with moral obligations in a secular rational context, they veered away from it because it interfered with their hedonism.
	Did anyone approach you about participating in ABCs, the parent test?
	Various parenting styles are discussed and put to the test in daily challenges you guys would probably make joke of.
	I have not been approached about participating in the parent test.
	My reputation remains still somewhat in tatter, so I don't think that they would.
	Do you think it's possible that a society can become so woke and diverse that it will cease teaching mathematics?
	Oh, without a doubt.
	Yeah, without a doubt. The goal is to identify reason and objectivity and all of that with white supremacy and there's other ways of knowing and my story, my truth, and oh yeah, just going down into tribal subjectivity.
	Yeah, for sure. All right.
	Hi, Steph. What are your primary thoughts on the current horrifying tragedy in Turkey and Syria?
	And to what degree are the coercive institutions responsible?
	Let's see here. I too would be interested in Stefan's take on that.
	I noticed that when a powerful earthquake strikes places like Turkey or Syria or Iran, for instance, 20,000 people die.
	When an equally powerful earthquake strikes California, only 200 people die.
	Yeah, I mean, just look at the average IQs and go from there.
	I've been married for 27 years.
	Thought we had a good marriage. Before marriage, I asked them the right questions about values, including...
	Is it a man or a woman?
	Let's see here. I asked the right questions about values, including porn.
	I was assured that my partner had no interest in porn.
	I trusted fully. Six years ago, I found partners porn and instantly regret everything changed.
	Since that day, I have zero respect.
	I realize that values are nowhere even close to being the same, as my partner was completely comfortable to lie and live a fake life with me.
	I've wasted many years living a fake life, and if I leave now, I stand to lose 40% pension and 40% 401k.
	I'm 64 years old and full of rage now every day.
	I've been tricked and trapped and hate myself for being so trusting.
	I refuse to give one cent.
	It's like rewarding my partner and I couldn't live with myself knowing I gave 80% of my retirement to someone who valued me so little to throw me away.
	Any advice? Greatly appreciated.
	I'm just trying to think.
	It looks like you're a male, but I don't know for sure.
	It's a male. That's a male.
	I'm just going to have a look here.
	If there's anything else. Well, you've been married for 27 years.
	You're obviously very angry, feel very betrayed, very hurt.
	I obviously don't want to tell you what to feel or how to feel, but...
	I think, I mean, if I were in your shoes, I don't know what you should do.
	If I were in your shoes, I think I'd try to be more curious about what was going on.
	What were his thoughts or her thoughts?
	These are her feelings. What was his or her history?
	Was there early exposure to these materials?
	Right? So just maybe be a little bit more curious.
	Now, maybe this fixes things, maybe it doesn't.
	But if you're going to have, like you're 64 years old, if you're going to have, you're full of rage every day, that's really terrible for your health, right?
	I mean, especially at 64, man, it's rough on your health.
	So many ailments, like 90 plus percent of ailments are related to stress.
	I mean caused by stress. Related to stress.
	That's harsh, man.
	It's a harsh thing for you to do.
	And I think being curious about your partner.
	Because what's happening right now is your partner is probably using you to inflict shame on himself or herself and all of that, which goes way back to childhood and so on.
	So it seems that it's worth...
	I mean, you can be judgmental, you can slam the person, you can hate the person, and so on, and everybody knows where that's going to play, how that's going to play out.
	I think having a conversation, just saying, okay, judgment aside, just tell me.
	Tell me what's going on. Tell me what's happening, right?
	If you have... Your partner's made a mistake, it seems like, for sure.
	It certainly has deviated from the values that you talked about.
	It happens. You know, people do deviate from values.
	And this is very Old Testament, in a way.
	And, you know, he's not a murderer.
	He's not stolen from the Red Cross or whatever, right?
	So, there's a lot of hate coming out here.
	And I think I also would be curious with yourself and say, okay, well...
	Why do I hate so much?
	And is this similar to any kind of betrayal that you've experienced in the past that may be informing this?
	That would be my guess. Oh, my gosh.
	This one's kind of long.
	I'll read that later. What are your thoughts on polygenic embryo selection, specifically when a young couple may want to increase the likelihood of specific traits by screening their embryo for IQ, height, sex, hair type, bipolar, etc.?
	I personally don't see it as a moral issue, assuming embryo isn't life.
	I think it's not much of a great issue as gene editing.
	Well, it's not a...
	First of all, everybody screens for baby traits.
	Everybody screens for baby traits by choosing a partner.
	You choose a tall man, more likely to be tall.
	You choose a blue-eyed man, you have some possibility of the child being blue-eyed, you choose whatever, right?
	So, in choosing your partner, and this has a lot to do with sexual attraction, in choosing your partner, you are choosing traits for your embryos.
	Is it initiation of the use of force?
	I don't see it that way.
	I don't think that it is. I constantly have imagined that it is so.
	I don't think it's something that would be considered immoral or evil.
	I followed some remarried prior single moms on Instagram.
	They're beautiful, thin, etc.
	They make posts like, I was told nobody would want me with two kids with a video of her and her new gorgeous rich husband.
	I'm happy for them, for sure.
	But most girls don't look like that.
	Most girls aren't rail-thin model like these girls.
	The comments are like, you give me so much hope as a single mom of three and so on.
	I feel like that.
	I feel like that's mean of these cute girls to sell this idea that just because they're a single mom doesn't mean they can't meet some new rich guy.
	What do you think about this? Well, you want to check in with them in five years?
	I mean, it's easy to, in the glow of a new romance, a new relationship, and the sexual endorphin bonding, and all the love hormones and so on.
	Yeah, it's pretty easy to look happy and feel great and so on, but...
	And first of all, the other thing is nobody knows if this is true, right?
	I don't know any of these people.
	I'm not on Instagram.
	I mean, how do you know?
	This could be a guy she just hired.
	Now, again, if there are continual photos or wedding photos and so on, okay, well, so she's beautiful and she married a guy who's gorgeous and rich.
	And so that's the relationship they have.
	It's a relationship based on looks and vanity and money and thinness and prettiness and status and, okay, well, that's...
	And also, what is the work that they've done, right?
	So they got married with two kids, single moms, so they broke up with or never got together with the father of their children, so they have terrible decision-making, terrible taste, or whatever it is, right?
	Can't handle a relationship. Have they done work?
	Have they done therapy? Have they figured these things out?
	Or is it just like, well, I haven't eaten, right?
	And remember, a lot, there was a tweet some time ago now, where somebody was saying, like, yeah, all these hot girls sleep at teddy bears and have stomach issues, right?
	The amount of eating disorders out there is not tiny.
	It's not tiny.
	And for a single mom to be real thin, it may vary.
	I'm not saying 100%, right?
	But there usually is some kind of dysfunction that's going on there, right?
	And that can be pretty exhausting, right?
	She ain't pretty. She just looks that way.
	Hi, Steph. My 13-year-old half-sibling lives in a dysfunctional family with his parents, but wants to keep in touch with me.
	The thing is that I'd like to keep my distance from that family, maybe even separate, but it's not the kid's fault.
	I rarely meet him these days, but we have an old bond from his early childhood when I visited his family more often, although these relationships were somewhat forced on me when he was little by our common parent.
	I was younger. I was the, quote, nicest one of our extended family and couldn't refuse this new relationship.
	I feel like there's a potential guilt trip for other reasons too.
	I feel terrible about the idea of abandoning him to his toxic parents completely, but I can't influence them, and seeing them has a negative effect on my well-being.
	I feel like I can't tell him the real truth about my life, his parents, or anything else important.
	He has to live there.
	Maybe when he's old enough to be on his own, then I could be honest.
	He's even expressed interest in learning what I do for hobby, although indirectly.
	So basically, should I try to explain my feelings towards his parents and the reasons for my absence?
	How much truth can I say?
	Should I reconnect years later?
	Is it even my responsibility?
	I'm going to be a father soon myself.
	Maybe I should just focus on my own family completely and set a good example for a functional family.
	Yeah, I can't even count the number of times this question has come up and I don't say that with any weirdness because it's a really brutal and difficult question and I feel for everybody in this situation.
	If it's any consolation, I've been in this situation myself.
	You cannot spend your life backfilling the holes, the craters left by other people's bad decisions.
	You can't do it. I mean, you can if you want, but it's just going to end up bleeding you dry.
	You know, you have your life to live.
	Other people make their decisions.
	You cannot bleed off your own resources from your own life ad infinitum, especially when you become a father yourself because other parents are making bad decisions and doing the wrong thing.
	And again, I understand the sympathy, the bond, the history.
	I don't want to diminish that.
	I don't want to pretend that that's not real and I don't want to just brush it off like it ain't no thing.
	But your responsibility is to yourself, to your wife, and to your children.
	That's it. That's the end.
	If there are other things that are positive, fantastic.
	And again, I'm not saying there's nothing to grieve, there's no sorrow, I'm not saying you just snap your finger and everything gets better.
	But in my view...
	Here's what you don't want to do for the kid, in my opinion.
	I'm not saying this is some moral absolute.
	Here's what you don't want to do for the kid.
	What you don't want to do is show the kid that virtue is weak.
	That, ooh, I can say this, but I can't say that.
	Well, I can point this out, but I can't point that out.
	And you're kind of under the thumb of the blowback from his abusive parents or his dysfunctional parents, right?
	Because then he's going to say, well, you know, the real power in this world is with the bad people and the good people have to tiptoe around and not get anyone too upset.
	And he's going to lose respect for virtue and he's going to cleave towards those with the most power, which is going to be his dysfunctional parents.
	And they're because all children, especially 13-year-old boys, are drawn to power.
	Drawn to power. The reason why Jurassic Park and the T-Rex are so famous, right?
	So they're drawn to power.
	And if he, and he will, if you're there tiptoeing, ooh, can I say this, can I say that, then he's going to see who's the real boss in the world, and he's going to be drawn towards that.
	You're actually driving him, in my view, potentially, probably, driving him towards the power center of the abusers.
	I don't have relationships in my life where I can't be honest.
	I just don't have those relationships.
	I just, I won't, you know, I spent my entire childhood having to lie.
	I was forced to lie my whole childhood, to pretend everything was fine, to go to school with a smile on my face, to have friends over and not be frightened that my mom was going to do something completely off the wall.
	I just, I had to lie.
	And this is why, you know, I ended up getting deplatformed, because it's like, fuck, I'm not going to lie as an adult, too, and I never get to grow up, right?
	So, my standard for myself, it's like, you know, I'm not going to portray virtue as cowering before dysfunction to anyone.
	I won't do it. Well, then I won't get to see my half-sibling.
	Well, but if you see a half-sibling, all you're doing is communicating to him.
	That dysfunctional people run the world and that good people have to tiptoe around all the dysfunction for creating a problem or setting off a landmine.
	You're showing him that virtue is weak.
	Dear Steph, I've heard you say a few times that men are affected less than women in later life by the effects of promiscuity in their ability to pair bond.
	Is this because the women have become alpha widowed and can't lock down what she had many nights before, while the former alpha male is content to settle with any woman of reasonable attractiveness, but without the baggage, though the man might be more likely to cheat because of his diminished pair bonding?
	Yeah, I mean, promiscuity is not good for either, but it does seem to be worse than, Because, of course, if a man is promiscuous when he's young, then by the time, let's say, he gets into his 30s, he's probably got a decent career going, he's probably got some money, might have a car, you know, he's on his way, right?
	He's on his way. Whereas the woman is aging out of the whole situation, right?
	And so she is trying to get a greater commitment with less value, right?
	Because she's been railed more than Amtrak and she has lost her pair bonding, she's lost her looks, she's lost her spontaneity, she's lost her trust and not 100% but it turns that way.
	So she's trying to get a man to commit to lockdown at a time when her Sexual market value is, trade rings is falling off a cliff, right?
	I mean, if you've ever been in an auction, I went to an auction once, it was kind of fun.
	But if you're in an auction, and let's say you've got a, you're bidding on with a cryptocurrency as your asset, and your cryptocurrency is dropping by like 5% a minute, it's pretty tough to do the auction, right?
	You're kind of panicked because your cryptocurrency is dropping in value, and Or you're in the Weimar Republic or, I don't know, the West in 18 months.
	So... For the man, he is attempting to get into a pair-bonded relationship when he's gone up massively in value, whereas the woman is trying to get into a pair-bonded relationship when she's gone down massively in value.
	Now, because she had the artificial subsidy of offering sex, offering sex for women is a massive artificial subsidy.
	Like, you don't know if you're a good businessman if you get a million dollars from the government to run your business, right?
	You don't know if you're a good businessman.
	Like, there was this fund in Canada that you could invest tax-free, and I think most of the investments just went straight off the rails, right?
	You don't know. There's this joke about, like, here's how I became a multimillionaire at the age of 30.
	It's like, I did this, I did this, I did this.
	Oh, and by the way, I inherited $5 million when I was 25.
	And it's like, okay, well, that's sort of the...
	I'd lead with that. That's sort of the way things go.
	So if a woman...
	Offers sex, she gets a massive subsidy.
	Usually she can go up two to three points in the attractiveness scale just by offering sex.
	So the five can get the eight, the seven can get the ten.
	Just by offering sex, but they can't lock it down.
	Because they're subsidizing.
	If they don't offer sex, now they'll get a man of higher quality.
	I'm just talking about sort of, as you say, the alpha widow, the looks thing, right?
	So you get a two to three point subsidy on the attractiveness scale, just physically attractiveness scale, by offering up sex.
	Guaranteed. And this is why women were encouraged to wait until they got married, so that they would have an appropriate mate for their level of attractiveness.
	And again, I'm just talking physical because it's where it all starts and what it's, you know, it's all down for and all of that.
	So later on, the man in his 30s can get sex just about anywhere, if he's successful, or reasonably successful.
	And so the woman offering sex, that subsidy doesn't matter anymore.
	The subsidy doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter. Everyone's offering sex.
	So she's trying to stagger up when she's gone down.
	Maybe she's from an 8, but by the time she gets into her sort of mid-30s, she's gone down to a 5 or a 4 because she comes with that desperation and that time frame and that come on, hurry it along kind of thing, right?
	That impatience, that tension, that stress, the eggs dropping off like bombs out of a B-52.
	So she's trying to lock down a man.
	She can't subsidize anymore, and her...
	Crypto value is plummeting and she's trying to bid in a highly competitive market, so it's pretty bad.
	Freedom Anne, I'm very stressed.
	My wife is pregnant with her first child and I have to pick up a lot of tasks around the house and she's not as pleasant to be around.
	Do you have anything to say about this?
	I would ask her a lot of questions about what her mother's life was when her mother was pregnant, how she feels, what she's feeling about you.
	If there's any postpartum to be going on of anything that's going to happen with her psychologically after the birth of the baby, you really want to try and nip that in the bud at the moment and just be honest and say, look, I'm I'm scared and stressed.
	And she's going to be like, well, you just have to do more.
	And it's like, I get that.
	And I'm happy to do more.
	But it's tough to do more when you're difficult to be around.
	And I'm scared about how this is going.
	And I obviously want things to work out well.
	And I love you. And I want us to have as happy a life as humanly possible.
	So just, you know, tell me what's going on.
	Tell me what is going on.
	How I don't avoid the conversations.
	And don't be aggressive in the conversations.
	I can't believe you're being such a witch about me.
	Just, you know, genuine open curiosity.
	The big three words of love are not, I love you, but tell me more.
	Tell me more. Tell me how you're doing.
	Tell me what's going on for you. She may be scared.
	She may feel that she had a rough childhood and she doesn't have the skills.
	She may feel that she's got a bad relationship with her parents and with the babies born, they're going to be over all the time and they're going to be in her face.
	There could be six million. She may have hormonal issues.
	There could be six million things going on.
	And just try to dig in and find out what's And do it sooner rather than later.
	Do not avoid difficult conversations.
	That's pretty important.
	All right, let me get up here.
	Open up your mind and let me step inside.
	All right.
	Alright. If possible, could you debate a priest or a theologian?
	I don't really think so.
	Is UPB... I mean, it's possible, but I don't think I'd want to.
	Is UPB the same language or code as Christianity, essentially?
	Well, I mean, there are physicists and biologists and even geologists who believe that by studying universal laws and rules, by studying the properties and behavior of matter and energy...
	There is a belief that when you study universal laws through science, you are studying the mind and blueprints and design of God.
	And, of course, I was raised with universal morality.
	And... One of the things that drove me from the church was the lack of protection of children.
	I didn't know this, of course, at the time, but why did I drift away from the church?
	Because the church did not protect children.
	The church did not protect me.
	There were many Christians on my father's side of the family and those Christians knew my mom was violent.
	Did not ask. Did not say...
	You could say, oh, well, but they were...
	You know, it's when you were a kid and your mom had power over you.
	But even many years later, many years later, I met them again at a wedding.
	Nothing. I was a phone call away.
	I was a phone call away.
	And... When, for various reasons, and I won't get into details, but for various reasons I ended up alone with my mother for a couple of years.
	And I got not one phone call from any of these Christians.
	And Christianity, and this is fairly universal because I knew a lot of Christians, Christianity is not great with child abuse.
	It's just not. It should be.
	Jesus says, whatever you do to the least among us, the children, it's better that A man should be hung with a millstone around his neck and thrown into the deep water than harm the least among us, right?
	And Christianity has not grappled or wrestled with the problem of child abuse.
	And people who are secular have not done a great job with that either.
	You can look at Richard Dawson and his comments about molestations.
	Again, that's one person and so on, but as a whole.
	And the problem of child abuse, the essential reality and fact of child abuse, absolutely, completely and totally needs to be dealt with if we're going to escape this hellscape of a society.
	It's the thing that stands between us and a beautiful world.
	It's the thing that stands between us and peace, freedom, security, independence, choice, free will.
	You can get people to sympathize with the victims of child abuse, but they tend to be hard leftists, statists as a whole.
	Christianity is much better with regards to the state, but still to my knowledge and my experience and my research has not dealt with the problem of child abuse.
	Spare the rod, spoil the child.
	One of the most unfortunate translations in the history of the world.
	in the history of the world I kid you not so while I left the church I
	I fled really to where the heart of the salvation of the species is, which is in the better treatment of children, in the rational treatment of children.
	That's where the salvation of the species lies.
	Is the character of Barbara and Jaspor based off anyone in your own life?
	Yes, it is a combination of my mother and an aunt, who is quite structured.
	Are you interested in getting back into interviews or roundtable discussions in the future?
	Who knows about the future, but not at the moment in particular.
	I just want to say to everyone in the chat, I appreciate this community and people upholding and respecting morality as well as talking about and actively improving their life through positive relationships and behaviors.
	Thank you, my friend. Thank you.
	That's a beautiful thing to hear. All right.
	Thank you for the tips again.
	If you want to throw anything in, we've just got another couple of minutes.
	I would really, really appreciate it.
	Have you heard of the movement called Passport Bros?
	I have seen women of the West get angry at these men online.
	Why is this movement getting traction lately?
	Passport Bros, are they the guys who go and find wives in other places?
	Let's see here.
	Yeah, so I talk about this in my novel, The Present, heavily focused on men's rights.
	When men express preferences, men are really the dray workhorses of society and are not allowed to have preferences, to self-organize, to complain, or anything like that, because they are the dray workhorses that just keep everything going.
	And because men are generally exploited under statism, They can't be allowed to have a voice, otherwise they might wake up to their own subjugation, their own serfdom and go on strike.
	So when a man expresses a preference You know, Matt Walsh the other day was saying that, you know, men are quite simple.
	We just, you know, we want to come home from work to a happy wife and children and a home-cooked meal.
	Okay, men are simple.
	This is all nonsense. Men are very complicated and women are very complicated and that's beautiful.
	If men were simple, we wouldn't be any fun to be married to.
	It would be like being married to a pet computer.
	But of course, he got lambasted because men just aren't allowed to express a preference.
	Men are not happy with society at the moment.
	This is, again, foundational to my book.
	Men are not happy with society.
	You guys are a lot of men here, right?
	The majority of my listeners are men.
	Are you happy with society?
	Are you happy with the way things are going?
	Do you feel secure and respected and cared for and Rewarded reasonably for the efforts you make?
	No. You feel like a tax serf.
	You feel like a potential draft horse, both in the farming and in the military-industrial complex sense.
	You feel scared of family courts, and rightly so.
	You feel scared of reputational destruction.
	You feel scared of unfair, of unjust allegations.
	And it's a rough go for men at the moment.
	It's rough for women too, don't get me wrong.
	Statism is rough on everyone, but we hear the complaints of women and nobody can hear the complaints of men.
	So passport bros are people who are like, I'm so unhappy with the state of femininity and the state of women at the moment that I want to go overseas and find a woman in Thailand or something like that.
	And yeah, do you want to improve or do you want to eliminate competition, right?
	I was talking about this with a friend of mine the other day, right?
	He was saying that his son is in some educational environment and it's a baseball game.
	The way that I did baseball and soccer and every other sport known to man when I was a kid was you got two captains of the teams and then the captains pick from the kids and sometimes you get picked last.
	I mean, I went from being picked first in rounders in England to being picked fairly last in baseball because I didn't really understand the rules.
	It took me a little while to get the hang of it.
	And then I'm a good hitter of balls and I improved, right?
	So the women are all like, oh, we should just assign random numbers and the team should be randomized and so on.
	And the men are like, no.
	If you don't want to get picked last, get better.
	Get better. So women have a tendency to want to eliminate competition and men have a tendency to want to win competitions.
	This is the everyone gets a trophy, everyone gets a prize sort of stuff, right?
	So yeah, women are going to get angry because if men have more choices, women have to improve.
	Pretty clear, right? If men have more choices, women have to improve.
	And so they don't want men to have choices.
	Now, is there misogyny or whatever?
	I don't know, but I'm just saying in general.
	All right.
	Let's see here.
	All right.
	UPP is basically a list of things not to do.
	Is there a list of universally moral things to positively do?
	No, there are no unchosen positive obligations.
	There are no unchosen, I mean, I think that there's aesthetically preferable actions like moral courage, telling the truth and so on, but UPB defines the legitimate use of force, right?
	UPB defines the legitimate use of force, self-defense and so on, right?
	You can't shoot people for lying.
	You can't shoot people for failing to exercise moral courage.
	you can't shoot people for being late, right?
	So, why do we as a culture replace so much of our hopes for the future on improvements in technology rather than improvements in morality?
	Well, because improvements in technology are easy and profitable.
	Improvements in morality are both difficult and shift enormous amounts of resources from existing power structures.
	A passport bros according to Urban Dictionary.
	Men who understand that Western women have drunk the Kool-Aid past the point of no return and got their passports to enjoy happiness and peace with fit, friendly, foreign women.
	Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
	I'm paying a lot of taxes last year as a result of liquidating some crypto.
	Oh gosh, yeah, that's tough.
	Thanks for all you do, Steph!
	What's this error in translation of spare the rod, spoil the child?
	Well, people think that the rod means beat your children or they're going to end up spoiled.
	And the rod is the shepherd's rod.
	It's the rod that you use to guide your sheep.
	You don't beat your sheep with your rod.
	You have the rod and the sheep.
	It's guidance. It's wisdom.
	It's not beatings.
	It should not have been rod.
	It should be spare the guidance, spoil the child.
	Absolutely true, but not spare the rod, spoil the child.
	Every aggressive Christian and others believe that this means that you have to beat your children, you have to hit your children, or they're going to grow up spoiled.
	So it was just terrible.
	Absolutely terrible. Spare the instruction, spoil the child.
	Spare the wisdom, spoil the child.
	Spare the guidance, spoil the child.
	Not spare the rod. Do people have different built-in capacities for morality?
	I don't know what a built-in capacity for morality is.
	We have a built-in capacity to universalize.
	That's fundamental to human beings and many animals, of course.
	I mean, a lion knows what a zebra is, even if you've never seen that zebra before.
	They can categorize an abstract.
	Well, not really abstract in terms of definition, but abstract in terms of identifiable characteristics.
	So we have very much...
	Built-in capacities for morality because we're universalizing and conceptualizing hamsters, which is why people come up with wild stories about how they're always right and other people are always wrong.
	All right. I'm stuck to 90 minutes on this platform.
	The Bible also says, Fathers, do not exasperate your children.
	Yeah, that's not particularly helpful compared to the other one, which seems pretty brutal and obvious.
	So listen, guys, first of all, and I guess last of all, I hope you enjoy the book.
	I'm incredibly pleased with it, and I have found it the wildest thing that I've written in forever.
	And I hope that you will check it out, freedomain.locals.com.
	I hope you don't mind if I'll release this.
	I didn't identify anybody here.
	Release this to the general population.
	And last but not least, thank you guys so, so, so much.
	It is an honor, a privilege, and a pleasure to have these conversations with you and the world for all time.
	And thank you so much for supporting what it is that I do.
	Sandra Bernhardt style, without you, I'm nothing.
	And so I really, really do appreciate that.
	To be able to think and reason with the world for all time is based upon your support, and I really, really, really appreciate that.
	So thank you so much for your support.
	If you are listening to this later and you haven't supported, I really beg and plead for you to do so.
	I'm going back into the truths about which are very expensive in terms of research costs.
	And of course, I'm just giving out a book for free, and I hope that you will support at freedomain.locals.com.

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