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March 2, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
46:55
Locals AMA 27 Feb 2023!
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All right. Great questions from subscribers at freedomand.locals.com.
First question, actually, is very interesting.
First question was around liking people.
Because I said the other day, I really like people.
And I do. I really, really like people.
And somebody said, well, what do you like about them?
It's a perfectly fair question.
There are certainly aspects of people that are unlikable, or some people who seem to be almost entirely unlikable.
But... Because I approach people with great delight and curiosity and openness and honesty and, you know, I dare say a slight sprinkle of virtue, they respond in kind.
Most people will reflect back to you what you bring to them.
You bring hostility, they'll just be hostile.
You bring friendliness, they'll be friendly.
They just are mirrors in a sense.
And I think I like people because the way that I interact with people is very positive and direct and And it, to me, creates a mirror or a reflection in a way that that's what the future is going to be like, that the future is going to be more friendly and positive and curious and direct and so on.
So I feel like as I sort of sweep through life, interacting with people, I create a benevolence within them and a vision for the future.
And I dare say that I'm always fishing for people's better selves and often coming up pretty solid with that.
So... Any suggestions for dealing with overthinking and performance anxiety?
Yes. We don't have performance anxiety in and of ourselves.
Performance anxiety is something that is inflicted, almost always, it's inflicted on us from outside.
So you have to identify the people who wanted to cripple you for whatever reason and identify the thinking that occurs within you that is inflicted from outside.
You say, I have performance anxiety.
It's like, no, you don't.
No, you don't. Nobody is born with performance anxiety, and I say this as a parent who stayed home watching my daughter grow up.
You're not born with performance anxiety because my daughter did not have performance anxiety when it came to learning to roll over or to crawl or to walk or to learn letters and so on.
She attacks performance. Challenges with great gusto.
So, and again, you know, because this is one person, but babies all the world over don't sit there, bite their nails and figure out whether they can try and walk or not.
They just attack with gusto.
The next challenge, the performance anxiety is inflicted from outside.
It's usually inflicted by people who are threatened by your enthusiasm for success, for competence,
Thank you.
Thank you. Overthinking is when you are in a situation where you're going to be punished randomly, you end up overthinking, which is trying to figure out where the punishments might be coming from, how they might manifest.
When my mother was in a bad mood, she'd just come home or she'd get up and she'd just storm around the place looking for something that she could get mad about.
So you can overthink these things or not, right?
And so recognize that overthinking is generally a defense mechanism designed to give you the illusion of control when somebody's just on the warpath that you can somehow change it or avoid it, and usually you can't.
In 5120, FDR 5120, you mentioned men talking women out of their neuroses.
Do you have any advice on how I can be more effective at this?
So, this is not just women.
Women tend to be a little bit higher on the neurosis scale.
And neurosis is not a bad thing.
You know, I mean, you want to be neurotic about dangers to your baby or your toddler.
So, I don't say that female neurosis is a bad thing.
It just needs to be balanced with these things.
So... Math can be very helpful, like what are the odds of this happening?
What are the odds of this disaster occurring and so on?
And is it worth it?
And you try and compare it to what are the odds that we're going to drive to the mall?
There are some odds that we could get into some terrible car accident, be maimed, paralyzed, killed, whatever, right?
But we take on those risks.
So it's just reminding people that there are just risks to being alive.
And try to proportion those risks to some degree mathematically or proportionately, right?
All right.
Right? Hi, Steph, says someone.
Okay, I'm going to assume this is real.
Might not be. Hi, Steph.
My prisoner, Palpal in California, Penpal, who is 33 years old, got released from prison four months ago having served his seven-year sentence for burglary, baloney theft, and abruptly went off the radar.
he doesn't know anybody except me and his sister. I'm pretty sure he has a touch of autism.
He's not socially outgoing. He is still alive. I found his arrest warrant for vandalism last week.
Also, he decided he was a girl that went on transgender hormones last year, and I believe he is sh...
Okay, so this is, um...
Uh, this is, uh...
I assume this is a joke and a troll, right?
I mean, I do see there was somebody in there.
There's a free domain premium at free domain one.
You can find this on Telegram.
And he was saying, you know, a friend of mine is having real trouble with this, that or the other and so on.
Listen. It's very, very important in your life as a whole that you don't become the infinite social worker for everybody.
I mean, I assume this is just somebody being silly and it does get kind of exaggerated.
I assume this is not real. But there's sort of an important thing in here as well.
So you may have somebody around you who's severely underperforming, who would be traditionally called a loser or something like that.
You really, really have to ensure, you have to make sure, you have to work very hard to ensure that you don't become somebody who props up other people.
You can inspire them, you can encourage them, but don't try and solve other people's problems.
Don't try to prop them up.
Don't try and substitute their lack of energy for your enthusiasm.
They'll just bleed you dry.
You know, it's like trying to make the ocean overflow by peeing into it.
You just end up without any liquids and the ocean barely changes at all.
So that is an important thing to remember.
Uh, hey Steph, when's the Nietzsche and Schopenhauer philosophy episodes coming?
I hope you don't have some sort of prejudice towards old German guys with mustaches.
I hope it's because you're preparing to deliver the richest and deepest insight into the philosophy of these two guys ever, and that is the reason you're taking so long to get around to them.
If so, I understand.
Take your time. Make sure to include Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence.
Imagine being born in the same life in the exact same circumstances over and over again forever.
Yeah, I'll get to them.
them, I'll get to them. Freedomain, in general how much do you think a woman
cares about the prestige or social value of a man's job versus his earnings? For
example a plumber making a few hundred K a year versus a more white-collar job
making far less but with more impressive title. Although I do feel the blue-collar
man is due for a big comeback in the years ahead. Right, some women care for
prestige and some women care for the practical aspects of life.
Yes, a plumber can make a fortune, particularly if he's self-employed or starts his own business versus somebody with a degree in philosophy, probably not making that much, certainly making a bunch of lattes and stuff, but not making that much in terms of scratch.
So... I remember when I was in the business world, I was working with a big corporation, and one of the guys who was pretty senior said openly at the beginning of the presentation, he said, you know, unburdened as I am by the doubt and confusion of higher education, right?
So he had openly addressed that he didn't have higher education, but he was very competent.
What he did. This credentialism is really just brutal.
It's just absolutely brutal.
And it's to a large degree.
Credentialism has arisen because IQ tests have been banned, right, for figuring out who's good at jobs.
So rather than taking an IQ test for an hour or two or three, or maybe whatever, right, and then taking that around to various employers, you have to go and spend hours.
A quarter million dollars of spending and lost earnings and so on to get a piece of paper that now isn't even that much of a proxy for an intelligence test anymore.
In fact, it would be a proxy for a lack of intelligence test in many circumstances, particularly in the arts side.
If I was hiring people still, I interviewed 1,000 people, probably hired about 100 people over the course of my business career, most of whom worked out really well.
I would never in a million years touch anyone with an arts degree.
They'd be too volatile, too touchy, too resentful.
They've been taught that you just don't have to work, that bosses are jerks, and, oh, no, they would be pretty toxic as a whole.
So, yeah, it was different back in the day, 30 years ago, when I was doing my stuff.
But, all right. So, yeah, I mean, some women will care about prestige rather than...
A lot of people care about the appearance rather than the thing itself, right?
They won't listen to my arguments.
They'll say, well, does he have a PhD in philosophy from Harvard or Stanford?
And some people will talk to you directly and figure out the value of what it is that you do.
I remember when I was growing up, I didn't...
Sit there and say, well, have the members of the band that I like been to Juilliard and been well-trained in their instruments?
Have they attended elite classes for songwriting and performances?
Like, no, do they write good songs, sing them well, and perform in an exciting manner, right?
Perform in an exciting manner, Queen, and at least a lighting show for Rush.
Perform in a non-exciting manner, the chorus and men at work.
Anyway, so...
Yeah, there are some people who prefer appearance and prestige and some people who appreciate the practical.
And you want to try and steer clear from the people who focus on prestige and appearance rather than substance and practicality.
All right. Yeah, for the person who's returned from Texas, call in at freedomain.com.
C-A-L-L-I-N. Call in at freedomain.com.
We can do a call-in about this. Hi, Steph.
I'm currently listening to the UPB audiobook, and I have a question.
If two universally preferable behaviors contradict one another, which is the one we default to?
Take this example discussed at the 2 hours, 25 minutes, 40 seconds timestamp.
Everyone would rather steal an apple than starve to death.
Thus, everyone universally prefers stealing apples to death by starvation.
Thus, it is universally preferable to steal apples rather than starve to death.
Thus, survival is universally preferable to property rights.
Thus, what is good for the individual is the ultimate moral standard.
Here, the contradiction is between survival and property rights.
You've used biological mutations, not disproving biological classifications as a rebuttal.
But usually, biological mutations don't contradict the essence of a biological classification.
You have also said that a survival-based morality doesn't offer answers to questions such as, if it is morally permissible to steal food when you're starving, how much food can you steal?
How hungry do you have to be? Are you allowed to steal meals rather than look for work or appeal to charity?
However, if according to UPB self-defense is justified, surely there are also similar questions such as how do you know whether or not a threat is eliminated?
Can you preemptively defend yourself or is self-defense only reactive?
So surely the completely or potential complexity or potential for abuse exists in both cases.
You have also said survival-based behaviors use mere biological drives as justifications for behavior.
It is an explanation of behavior rather than a proposed moral theory.
UPB, however, is also driven by the biological drive to live.
No, it's not. And it is also an explanation of behaviors, so I don't understand how on a technical level the desire to survive as a UPB is less valid than other UPBs.
If the desire to survive isn't a UPB, can you talk more about why?
If it is a UPB, how do we organize it into a hierarchy with all the other UPBs?
Thank you in advance. Okay, so I mean, I talk about this and then I discuss the invalidity of it, right?
So yeah, people would rather steal an apple than starve to death.
And most people would rather, I mean, everyone except a complete and total sociopath, if someone's starving to death in front of you, and you have a bunch of apples, of course you're going to give that person an apple.
Can you imagine coming across somebody starving to death, like thin as a rail, ribs sticking out, you got extra food, of course you're going to give them some food.
Right? So, it's not really stealing an apple if you're genuinely starving to death.
So, because nobody...
I mean, nobody's really going to refuse you an apple.
I mean, that would just be insane.
And would not be part of any society that anybody would recognize.
You'd have to be a complete sadist.
You could, I guess, dangle the apple of somebody starving to death, have them jump at it, and then die in front of you.
That would be completely sadistic, and that's extraordinarily rare.
Like, the one in probably 100,000 people is that sadistic.
So... It's not really stealing if you want an apple or you take an apple.
Or the other thing you could say is, let's say you've got an apple cart and somebody's starving to death and they take an apple, are you going to press charges?
Well, you would have the right to because the person had stolen from you and perhaps this person would be better off in jail because they'd been so incompetent in their life that they'd ended up starving to death.
for whatever reason. They didn't have any friends, didn't have any family, couldn't get a job,
couldn't get any charity. Like they obviously are really mentally deficient to the point where
they're literally starving to death and haven't organized anything better or
more rational or more sensible. So it's really kind of impossible to think of somebody
stealing. Because if somebody's so incompetent that they're starving to death
in a city where there's food and and and apples and so on, if somebody is so
incompetent that they're starving to death then it's arguable that they're insane
or mentally deficient in some massive manner and therefore not morally
responsible for what it is that they do.
So the survival thing...
Survival can't be UPB because UPB is specific to human beings because only human beings can create and argue for and enforce UPBs, universally preferable behaviors, morals.
There's no morals in the animal kingdom.
There's some reciprocal altruism but that's just genetic and that's evolutionary.
That's not moral. So...
Survival-based morality?
No. If it's survival-based, it's every living organism in the world strives to survive and to reproduce, to eat and reproduce, right?
And so morality can't be survival-based because every creature seeks to survive, but morality is specific only to human beings.
No, this is an argument which says survival is universally preferable to property rights.
Basically, there we can steal from people, right?
They say, oh, well, human life is more important than property rights, so if somebody's starving to death, they can steal, and it's justified, right?
Now, justified or not, we can certainly say if somebody steals...
That we will not press charges against them because they have a mental illness or some sort of brain deficiency to the point where they can't organize and run their own lives.
Okay, that's fine.
So then we would put them in some kind of home or we'd put them in some kind of assisted living facility or whatever it is, and we would not let them out because they can't run their own lives, right?
So this is not something that...
If a three-year-old takes from a candy store, do we press charges?
No, because the three-year-old doesn't really understand property, just sees, oh, there's a shiny piece of candy here, I'm going to eat that, right?
So the three-year-old is not morally responsible, and if somebody's starving to death as an adult, they have a severe mental deficiency or some sort of mental illness or something like that to the point, but they're not really morally responsible, so they don't really fall under UPB. All right, so do you follow much politics and just not talk about it on the show, or have you cut out most of it from your life?
I will, yeah, I do keep track of politics to some degree.
I mean, I need to know what's going on in my country and around the world and so on.
I need to, you know, stay alert to potential threats or restrictions or whatever it is.
So I will follow, but I don't, I don't, I view it more like as a movie rather than as something I'm participating in.
So yeah, I will keep track of it, but I don't have much emotional investment and I'll generally just skim and all of that.
Just a humble request.
Never speak about or answer questions about boomer music again.
Simply ignore the time-wasting weirdos that ask them.
Not a big deal. It's irrelevant and useless.
Yeah, yeah, I know you'll probably say that useless for me doesn't mean useless for everyone, blah, blah, blah.
But a sequence of words won't change the fact that it's going to be worthless and thus probably irritating for 98% of people here.
Who have no interest in others, often unheard favorite bands, singers, songs, and lyrics, especially from the times before they were born.
And let's see here.
Somebody else writes, It's fine once or twice a year to hear Steph's musical and artistic interests, but this is a habitual thing every live stream.
Decreases the value. So is it a humble request?
Never speak about or answer questions about boomer music again.
Simply ignore the time-wasting weirdos that ask them.
Not a big deal. It's irrelevant and useless.
Well, I mean, that's fine.
I'm sorry that it's irrelevant.
And you're right, of course, it's irrelevant and useless to you.
So I went through a phase when my mother went to...
And family members all scattered.
And I was alone with a friend's grandparents.
The grandmother was ill and I spent, I don't know, six months there or something like that.
It was a very strange time for me as a whole.
And, I mean, this is how awkward the conversation.
I was walking with the granddad and...
This is how awkward the conversation was.
There was a store which had donuts, D-O-N-U-T-S, right?
And I said, oh, isn't that odd?
You know, they spell it donuts without the O-U-G-H, like doughnuts.
Isn't that strange? This is how awkward it was.
And he just turned to me and said, you want a donut?
It was just very, very awkward.
And... I was listening, and they would take me up to their cottage.
And again, I didn't know these people.
The grandmother was old, and it was just a place to be dumped.
I have no idea really how it came about.
Of course, they'd be long dead by now.
But they would play, I remember they played Engelbert Humperdinck's greatest hits, and they played Ray Karniff, and they played, they're just treacly old music, right?
And although Engelbert Humperdinck does have a great voice and a courageous choice of not changing his name, so, but then, so I was into all of this treacly music, And then a friend of mine turned me on to more modern music.
And that was a real revelation to me.
I remember he turned me on to Paul McCartney and Wings.
And I got a 10cc album.
I got Sticks as Paradise Theatre, which I played side one and two of forever.
I got really into the wall. So I just got into more modern music.
And music has brought me such enormous pleasure.
Like yesterday, I was just sitting there and eyes closed.
I was listening to... Song of Seven by John Anderson.
Beautiful song that he did with his kids, singing with him.
Just lovely. So music has just given me such enormous pleasure that opening up musical tastes, because modern music is largely trash.
I mean, it's largely garbage. There's very little that's complicated that's going on.
There's very little that's jazzy. There's very little that's experimental.
It's all, you know, girly-voiced male singer, rap in the middle, girly-voiced male singer, and that's it, right?
So I do want to expose people to music that is more sophisticated, more complicated.
You know, a little bit of early Pink Floyd is probably real good for your brain, and it was good for my brain as well.
So, yeah, music is a source of great joy and great pleasure in my life, and breaking people out of the monotony of modern music, probably a really good thing.
And I, of course, have got emails from people who say, oh, I listened to this song, man, what a great artist, I just loved it, and so...
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what's wrong with bringing happiness.
And what do I do?
I do like a couple of minutes at most.
If it's a song lyric analysis, it's more about poetry and meaning.
But yeah, it's a couple of minutes at most.
I guess the question is, like, why does it bother you?
Why would it bother you?
Why would it bother you if something...
Well, first of all, go try and listen to the songs that I recommend.
Maybe you like them, maybe you don't.
But at least go and see how they make you feel.
Why would it bother you if I spend every...
I mean, I do live streams for like an hour and a half, two hours, sometimes two and a half hours, and I don't talk about music every live stream.
So let's say that out of nine hours, I talk for five minutes or maybe ten minutes about music, right?
Why would that bother you?
I mean, that's an interesting question.
There's no self-knowledge here, right?
There's no, I don't know why it bothers me, or why would it bother me?
Obviously, if you found music really boring, and I talked about it for like half the shows or whatever, I could understand that.
But why... This is something to do with your dad, something to do with your dad's music tastes, something to do with...
Like, there's nothing to do with me, right?
This is nothing. It's just so disproportionate to be this upset about something that is like 0.01% of the show as a whole, and which brings genuine pleasure to a lot of people.
So, you're just going to have to deal with it yourself.
I'm not going to change. Sorry.
All right. Let's see here.
Freedom A. The amount of evil and deceit.
And war is going on. People in our society just supporting it and rabidly attacking people who question it.
We are at the verge of nuclear war with Russia and people still cheering on Zelensky.
What the hell is going on? It's absolute insanity.
I mean, the Milgram experiment and Stanford prison experiments, I mean, some of them have methodological issues, but it's very true as a whole.
There was an experiment done not super long ago where you had a line that was like, you know, five centimeters tall, and then you had three lines next to it, A, B, and C. One line was 2 centimeters, one line was 10 centimeters, and the third one was 5 centimeters, right?
So they were really different. And they asked 10 people, and 9 of them were actors, and 9 of them said A or B is the line that matches the line on the left, right?
When they were wildly different.
And, of course, the answer is C. C is the one that's the same height.
And it was obvious. It's not even subtle, right?
And 75% of people went along with the crowd.
75% of people have no particular identity.
I mean, we know this from the Stanford Prison Experiment that the vast majority of people will maim or kill someone if they're told to by someone else.
So they have no particular identity.
They have no moral center.
They can't think for themselves.
All they can do is conform and either be bullied or bully others or both.
I mean, it's just a fact. That's just a fact, right?
On average, if there's four people in an elevator, you're in an elevator, there are three other people, and you can think for yourself, they can't.
That's just one of these basic facts of life, facts of reality that you have to be aware of.
Scott Adams says 25% of people get things wrong on a consistent basis, whatever, right?
But no, they can't think for themselves.
So if they're told that, you know, Ukraine before 2022, that the media was all like, oh, it's got a huge neo-Nazi problem, which I guess it does.
It's the most corrupt government in Europe.
And like, you know, they're really down on it.
And now it's become this, you know, heroic David versus Goliath, struggling for a peace, reason, democracy, freedom, blah, blah, blah.
And people are just like, okay.
They don't have any opinions of their own.
They don't think for themselves.
They don't have any standard by which to compare information to other than, will I get in trouble for disagreeing with this?
And will people like me if I agree to it?
I mean, Ayn Rand called them social metaphysicians.
They don't ask what is true. They ask what is acceptable.
They don't ask what is right. They ask what is popular.
And they are useful idiots for people in power.
Easily programmed, the NPCs mean, right?
So... And statistically, most of them would rather take extraordinary risks with their very survival than think for themselves.
I don't know if they don't have the muscles anymore.
I don't know if it's like asking an 80-year-old person to become a gymnast.
I don't know exactly why, but the fact and reality is that they don't have any foundational personality that is independent of The opinions of those around them.
They are yes-men, they are toadies to whatever is popular, and the reason that people put out this propaganda is so many people are so easily programmed.
So, that's just a fact.
Now, with peaceful parenting and with better education or any kind of decent education and so on, this can all be changed.
The birthright of every human being to think for himself or herself can be restored.
But right now, I mean, there's a reason why zombie movies have become really popular as government education has dumbed down, right?
So... What is your opinion of confession that churches tend to promote?
I believe there is some value to this, but at the same time it can be a problem if you come from an abusive environment where morality is subjective.
I confessed to a priest on Ash Wednesday last week before your live Q&A about my choice to be too comfortable with my living situation.
I confessed that it has brought me further away from God and that has a compounding effect regarding sin.
I don't quite understand that last.
So confession, it's really, I don't know if it's orthodox.
I think it's Catholic as a whole.
Confession is when you go to the priest and you confess your sins and the priest says, you know, say ten Hail Marys or donate something to the poor or go and tell the person the truth.
So it's a way of breaking down isolation.
Secrets are a giant moat that isolate you from others.
And so telling a secret to someone is a way of diminishing the isolation and bringing people closer together.
There's a relief from secrets.
You can put your secrets in the past, go forward and sin no more is pretty important.
So you don't repeat the behavior and so on.
But if you keep a secret, I mean, to take an extreme example, if Bob is some guy who killed someone 20 years ago, Bob is not going to be able to spontaneously relax and chat about his past.
He's always going to be on guard. He's always going to be distant.
He's always going to be evasive in some manner.
And he's always going to be cautious about...
Curiosity on the part of others.
So, he's going to be distant.
And so, can you confess your sin?
Can you find absolution?
Can you find a way forward?
It is going to dissolve the distance between you and others.
So, I think that's one thing that attests to it, right?
In what ways do you consider behavioral addictions like television watching different from substance addictions?
How are the antecedents different or similar?
Should different methods be used for breaking the substance versus behavioral addiction?
Well, I mean, the behavioral addictions, television watching is not the introduction of a foreign substance or chemical into your bloodstream, into your body as a whole, right?
So, people watch television because their lives are boring.
And television provides the sense of stimulation and the sense of excitement and the sense of adventure for the most part, right?
So, yeah, people watch television because their lives are boring, and then television makes their lives more boring, so you get into the spiral.
All right. Do you think there is benefit in taking a dedicated day off each week like a Sabbath?
Do you prefer to strike whenever the iron is hot no matter what the day?
It depends. I mean, I work on inspiration, so if my brain is feeling fertile, I'll drop whatever I'm doing and go do some work, right?
So I certainly think that for...
And of course, we homeschool, and so we're around each other a lot, so it's not like we need a day to reconnect, right?
We connect all the time every day.
So if you are...
Certainly if you're involved in physical labor, you need the day of rest.
If you work a lot, you need a day of rest to reconnect with your family, but it's not the case for me.
All right, freedom means morality.
This is a quote from Solzhenitsyn.
Morality is always higher than law, and we cannot forget this ever.
Yeah, except you can manipulate the law, you can't manipulate morality.
You can legalize anything you want, but you can't change what is morally virtuous.
And so people don't like objective tests, like they want something they can manipulate like grades in university, not something they can't manipulate like an IQ test.
We forget this always.
And people grow up obeying their parents rather than obeying a morality, and this just transfers to them obeying the state rather than obeying their own conscience.
All right. So, Nastra...
Yeah, I mean, occasionally I'll dip my toe into, like, blockchain, social media platforms, and so on.
I published a lot of videos to Stromanity, and then they went tits up, so they're gone.
So it's tough, you know?
I mean, to build an audience in a new social network, the network effect is very small, and it's very tough, too.
All right. Hi, Steph.
What are your thoughts on children having different last names?
My wife and I have a son with my last name and made an agreement prior to marriage that we would alternate.
We're expecting our second son, who will be getting hers.
I've been having second thoughts about this due to societal pressure, but wanted to know if there's something we're missing.
Thanks again for everything you do.
Yeah. So, men get the last names because it's mama's baby and daddy's maybe.
So, women know for sure that it's their child.
They're 100% sure that it's their genetics being passed on, right?
A man is never 100% sure if it's his genetics being passed on.
So, he gets the name.
I think it's ridiculous to give children different last names.
You... Okay, ladies, come on.
I mean, this... Oh, I've got to be independent.
I've got to not rely on a man.
I've got to have my own identity.
It's like, no, you don't.
No, you absolutely don't.
And neither do men. Come on.
When you get married, you become one flesh.
I don't have a separate identity from my wife.
She doesn't have a separate identity from me.
Why would we want that?
If I want a separate identity, don't get married.
I mean, we literally have a child who is a blend of us both.
So this idea that I want to get married, but I want to retain my own separate identity.
I don't understand that at all.
You merge together to become a force greater than yourselves as individuals.
Well, I want to join a doubles tennis league, but I want to play as if I'm single.
Nope. When you join a double tennis league, you work together with your partner to win the game.
And you'll cover each other when you move.
One goes to the net, one drops back.
You cover a space where somebody's out of position, you cover that space.
You're not just sitting there saying, well, I want to play doubles as if I'm single.
I mean, go to your wife and say, well, I want to be married, but I also want to have a fair.
She's going to be outraged. Well, why?
Because, you know, when I was single, I dated women and now I'm married.
I still want to date women. She would say, no, we're married now.
We're a monogamy. It's like, okay.
So I've surrendered my singleness.
I've surrendered the choices I would make when I'm single.
I don't know why this needs to be said.
I don't know why. Like, I guess there's just so much propaganda.
Women, you've got to retain your own identity.
It's like, nope. Nope.
It's like someone works for 10 years to become a doctor and then they say, well, I want to become a doctor, but I also want to have an identity that's completely removed from ever wanting to be a doctor.
It's like, no, you can't do that because you just spent 10 years trying to become a doctor.
So there's no part of you...
That's not a doctor.
Because to be not a doctor would be to not have spent 10 years trying to be a doctor or becoming a doctor.
Or somebody who's been a doctor for 20 years, spent 10 years becoming a doctor, they've been a doctor for 20 years, and they say, well, I want an identity completely separate from ever having been a doctor.
It's like, that doesn't... Can I have an identity separate from...
I want an identity as if I never wrote a book.
I want an identity as if I never made a moral argument.
It's like, I've blended with philosophy.
That's now... That is my identity.
Being married is your identity.
Being one flesh with your partner, that is your identity.
And you're saying to your kids that you're married and not married.
You're married and not married.
That, yes, you should love someone, you should trust someone, you should merge your life with them.
But you have to retain something completely separate.
The other reason why the man gets the name is not just because he can't be sure of his paternity, but also because he's paying the bills.
He's going to work. And being home and raising children is more fun than going to work.
I have done both.
I can tell you this for sure.
Staying home and raising children is more fun than going to work.
Now, if the man were to say to his wife who stays home, well, I'm going to keep all of my money in a totally separate bank.
I'm getting all my money put into my bank account and my bank account only.
And, you know, you just figure it out from there.
She'd be like, no, we have to merge your finances.
They'd be like, no, no, no, I want a separate identity.
Like if I was single, I wouldn't be merging my finances with everyone.
And she'd say, no, no, no, we're married.
What do you mean if you're single? You're not single.
You got married. You make the choice to get married.
You merge your finances.
You merge your bodies. You create children.
You sleep together.
You take care of each other when you're ill.
You are one flesh.
You have merged. God, what is so bizarre to people?
I want to keep my own separate identity.
It's like, no, your identity, if you want to get married, your identity is who you choose.
I chose to get married to my wife.
I choose every day to stay married to my wife.
That is my identity. The idea they're going to carve off something.
It's totally solitary.
And solitude is like, nope, then don't get married.
Jeez, I don't understand this at all.
I'm just baffled. I'm just baffled.
And if anyone can explain it to me, it's just a way of causing problems.
I mean, it's just propaganda. It's causing problems in marriages.
For God's sakes, merge.
If she gets access to your money, she can take your name and the kids could take your name too.
Jeez. All right. Why is wage slave a term reserved for people who do jobs a leftist wouldn't?
Would it be a label better suited to people who can compromise their values for fear of getting fired?
Parrot woke ideology buckling the vax mandates.
Feels like the right is missing a golden rhetorical opportunity here.
Yeah, a wage slave is a contradictory term.
It's an IQ test, right? A lot of these things are IQ tests, right?
You know, like people say, well, you can't make collective judgments about races.
And then they say, why privilege?
Well, you just made a collective judgment about a race.
So you don't get to say that anymore.
I mean, it's just, it's a basic IQ test, right?
Somebody says wage slave.
Well, a wage is something that you voluntarily choose when you don't have to work.
A slave is somebody who's owned and works whether they like it or not and is not paid a wage.
So wage slave is like voluntary rape.
It's like charitable theft.
It's bizarre.
And it's just an IQ test.
Are you, not you, but is someone dumb enough to think that wage slave is not a completely contradictory term?
If someone says, oh, no, I really wanted to have sex with him, and I said, yes, I do want to have sex with him.
He had sex with him, but it was still rape.
It's an IQ test.
It's just an intelligence test.
Wage slave is put out there to make sure that smart people stay away from the conversation.
Yeah, man, the fact that I have to have a job as a feature of capitalism, the fact that I have to produce in order to consume as a feature of capitalism, that's just an IQ test.
And the people who are pushing this kind of ideology, they don't care if they offend and alienate smart people.
That's a feature, not a bug.
So when they say stupid stuff like wage slave, they're driving the smart people away and the dumb, resentful people who think that an economic system is the imposition of something that is just fact-based.
In order to consume, you have to produce.
In order to consume, you have to produce.
Or somebody has to. I mean, babies don't feed themselves.
If you want to eat, somebody's got to provide you food.
Or you have to provide yourself food.
That's a function of reality.
So somebody who says, like, I can't believe that, you know, under communism you wouldn't have to have a job, that's just driving away the smart people so that they don't interfere with the implantation of propaganda into the minds of dummies.
Wage slave is just one of those things, right?
Anybody with half a brain would just run screaming from there, right?
Any philosophical thoughts or practical tips on raising kids at noticeably different IQ levels?
My daughter is on the average side, started to read around age six, typical.
My son, four, already reads, can add and subtract without us pushing, he just absorbs it, and
in general shows signs of above-average intelligence.
What we do is to instill in our kids the joy of achieving stuff, like my daughter was practicing
balance on a pedal-less bike deliberately to later switch to a normal bike.
She's in general very good with physical, balance-y things.
And we try to focus on stuff like, remember how it was difficult before, and then you
tried more and learned.
I'd appreciate if you shared your thoughts.
Listen!
This is not unusual.
Siblings, the average difference in sibling IQs is eight points.
Eight points. And so, yes, it is a challenge.
The purpose of parenting is not the instilling of practical habits that children can learn themselves.
The purpose of parenting is to instill moral values in the children.
And Your daughter probably has a bit of an advantage in the pursuit of moral values and virtues because if she's not quite as smart as your son, she's going to be less likely and able to talk herself in and out of things, right? Smart people can talk themselves in and out of things.
The great temptation is to live in the world of words rather than the world of reality.
So you can say...
Yeah, he's going to be smarter at some things for sure, and that's fine, but the important thing in life is not how smart you are, but how virtuous you are.
And you may, in fact, have a significant edge on him because he'll be able to talk himself in and out of everything.
He's like the rabbit and the hare, sorry, the tortoise and the hare kind of thing.
So, yeah, the purpose is moral instruction.
And, you know, the practical stuff definitely is part of it.
I'm not saying it's unimportant, but as a whole, it is moral instruction.
Thoughts on dating apps.
Stats show that the odds are against most men.
My experience has been that many women use the apps for attention and validation and have little intention of beating up, or they're paralyzed by too many choices.
Much like when I'm trying to decide what to watch on streaming services, it can be demoralizing at times.
I would not focus on dating apps.
If I were a single man at the moment, I would not focus on dating apps.
I would focus on going to places where the kind of woman that I would want to date is going to be.
So, as I said before, I like sports and I couldn't be with a woman who wasn't sporty because I just do very sporty stuff.
And so go to places where the kind of woman that you're going to be interested in is most likely to be.
And for me, it was sports.
It could be any number of things.
It could be, if you want a more homey woman, you might want to take a cooking class or whatever it is, right?
So... There is a...
Just go and meet people in the flesh, and then you can evaluate them face to face, and you don't have to worry about, you know, flattering angle photographs from 10 years ago or something like that.
All right.
Despite being called a cult leader, do you think you won the battle culturally on the issue of family relations?
From what I have been seeing, while it's still not the dominant opinion, it's not as taboo as it once was to say that you don't have an abusive or dysfunctional family in your life.
I think progress is being made.
Yes, yeah, without a doubt.
It has gone from an absolutely verboten taboo topic to there are mainstream publications talking about the value of voluntary family and the value of not having abusive people in your life.
Even if you are...
Even if they're your parents and so on.
So yeah, it's becoming more mainstream.
The one thing that you have to understand as a moral pioneer...
There's a couple of things you have to understand.
One, you will be relentlessly and viciously attacked.
Number two, you will never get any credit when the consensus emerges and partly as a
result of that nobody will ever ever circle back and apologize to you and the accusations
will not be withdrawn.
So when I say you can spend time with abusive people or not, but you don't have to spend
time with abusive people, nobody's ever going to circle back and the accusations will never
It's just the price you pay for being a moral pioneer and a moral innovator to bring up basic things like you don't have to spend time in abusive relationships, whichever one accepts, with chosen relationships like husband and wife.
If your husband is abusive, yes, you should leave him.
Girl power, right? And you chose your husband.
You didn't choose your parents. If your parents are abusive, you owe them everything forever, right?
So... Yeah, so it will, the accusations, the condemnations will never be withdrawn, and nobody will ever give me credit, and nobody will ever apologize.
And that's just a fact.
And if you can't stand that, then you've just removed yourself from the people who progress morally, like mankind, maybe in 100 years or whatever, right?
But all right. Let's see here.
What do you think of video game sports?
Is it even worse than regular physical sports or better?
I feel like it's just pure entertainment, no value.
Video game sports?
Yeah, I mean, video gaming is huge, right?
As everybody knows here, video gaming is huge.
And I've never watched a video game sport.
Oh, no, I did watch.
Because my daughter was into Rocket League for a while and became very good, I think.
She showed me a video of one guy taking on, like...
Five other players and winning and so on.
Yeah, I was incredibly skilled.
The amount of time that it takes to become really good at video games is enormous, right?
And I guess if you can make a living at it, more power to you.
I really can't think of much more boring than watching somebody play a video game.
I mean, I know I just released my daughter and I playing a bit of a horror game, but that's two people kind of joking and having fun.
But, you know, just watching one person play a video game I mean, maybe if you recognize the high level of skill and so on, it's not my particular thing, but obviously it's a very big thing for a lot of people, and I mean, it's perfectly legitimate.
If you could become good at it and make a living, more power to you.
You know, I saw this meme not too long ago, which was a woman who drew a picture of some guy from The Witcher.
And she just posted the picture and it got almost no likes.
And then she was very pretty and she posted herself holding the picture and it got like upvoted and awards and got like, you know, 50,000 comments and just stuff like that.
So the tit subsidy for online stuff is, you know, I mean, obviously in my 50s I'm trying to grow my man boobs a little, but I'm having some tough time.
But yeah, the tit subsidy for this sort of streamers and stuff like that is ridiculous and just brutal.
All right. Well, listen, I appreciate your questions.
These are the ones from Locals.
I'll get to the ones from the other platforms as well.
And I really appreciate you guys giving me such great questions.
I hope that the answers are of interest and of use to you and lots of love.
If you're listening to this later, freedomain.locals.com.
You can use the promo code, all caps, UBB2022, and you can get a free month and try it out from there.
But I really do appreciate it.
These great questions.
The community is wonderful.
You are the reason I'm able to do what I do.
I'm incredibly grateful and deeply thankful every day for this opportunity.
So if there's more that I can do, anything I can do better, please let me know in the comments below.
Lots of love. Take care, guys.
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