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March 8, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:22:46

How to Strengthen Your Ego!

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	Good afternoon, good afternoon.
	Yeah, just a spontaneous little chat.
	Four o'clock in the afternoon.
	Eastern Standard on the 7th of March, 2023.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Love you, Steph, long-time listener.
	And now, and now, you like to watch, don't you?
	Well, get ready to the opposite of a cock chair.
	So... Yes, thank you for the tips.
	If you would like to drop tips in, I'll do the first question or two for everyone and then you can subscribe if you want for free.
	Use the promo code, all caps, UPP2023. And let's see here.
	We've got a tip. Thank you very much.
	Very kind. Somebody writes, I've noticed that some Christian friends like you, Stefan, because listening to you they can get rational explanations for things they used to support with faith-based arguments like God said so.
	They become even more proud because they think God is logos.
	My beliefs are rational. But I can't help seeing them as more atheistic because there's no more God in many of their stands.
	There's only logic. They like you because they can have their cake and eat it too.
	Yeah, I mean, some of that might be mind-reading.
	There is a...
	Logos and Christianity go way back.
	They go way back.
	And there is, in Christianity, a pro-reason and an anti-reason streak, which makes it massively improved from just about every other religion, including modern secular cultish atheism, in that at least there is a pro-logus.
	So the argument goes something like this.
	God created a rational universe.
	God gave us not just the capacity, but a thirst for reason itself.
	And therefore, to examine the nature of the universe...
	And to discover its laws is to explore and understand the mind of God.
	So I never felt at all that I was doing anything anti-theistic by creating UPB, the Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, University of Preferable Behavior.
	I never thought I was doing anything anti-theistic.
	Because I took Aristotle's maxim, which is, okay, you can come up with your own system of ethics, but if your own system of ethics can be used to prove that murder, theft, assault, and rape are, quote, good, then it really doesn't matter what logic you're using, there's something wrong with your approach, right?
	If your theory of physics says that fire is cold and ice is hot, and that things fall both up, down, and sideways at the same time, you don't need a bunch of testing.
	It doesn't even pass the instinct test, the sniff test, right?
	The sniff test is, can I wear this?
	So it doesn't even pass the sniff test.
	So with the pursuit of rational ethics, there are many Christians out there who feel that if The commandments of God can be proven using reason as a whole.
	That should be a very good thing.
	That should be a very good thing.
	Because God wouldn't make a rational universe and give us both the capacity and the thirst for reason.
	And then give us anti-rational morals, which would to say that God's creation of the entire universe is perfectly rational and objective and universal, but the morals which are the purpose of that universe, since the universe itself doesn't have a purpose, the only purpose can be in the pursuit of virtue, in God's most important creation is the human race.
	So it would be to say that God created an entire stage of It's called the universe, but then the entire purpose of that stage, the purpose of the theater stage, is to house plays.
	It would be like saying, well, I'm going to spend $10 million building a giant theater and then use it for whatever the opposite of plays is.
	Well, then it's not a theater anymore, right?
	So God created a theater, perfectly objective, rational, and universal, with which human beings would play out the pursuit of virtue, but then to say that the pursuit of virtue and virtue itself would then be anti-rational, anti-empirical, anti-logical would be...
	It would be crazy, right?
	So we would say that the most important aspects of God's creation would be the most rational, which would be ethics.
	So I never felt that I was doing...
	I was certainly...
	I think that the people...
	You know, one of the great tragedies of the modern world...
	And this sounds elitist, but it's not.
	It's just rational, right? So one of the great tragedies of the modern world is hauling people into...
	Spheres that they're bad at.
	That they're just bad at.
	And, you know, I mean, you would destroy a sport by letting people bad at the sport into the sport, right?
	Because people pay to watch excellence and to be inspired to do better.
	You would destroy the music industry if you let your average karaoke warbler, including myself, be the front singer or front man or front woman for some band or people who couldn't play their instruments very well.
	You would just kill the music industry.
	So the way you destroy things is you remove the meritocracy.
	Destruction and egalitarianism are exactly the same thing.
	The way you destroy things, the way you destroy systems is eliminate the meritocracy.
	I mean, if you have a business and the business requires sales and you pay all your salespeople equally regardless of how well or badly they do, you will destroy that company.
	You remove the meritocracy, you destroy the The entire thing.
	And when it comes to intellectual examinations of truth and virtue and reality, the meritocracy has been removed.
	And the meritocracy is removed because of the prevalence of women.
	In society.
	Hey, I love women.
	I live with two lovely females.
	And women have wonderful and beautiful strengths and are delightfully and comprehensible, as I've always said.
	But women are drawn far more towards egalitarianism because women are focused on the first zero to seven years.
	And men are generally focused on Later, and in the first zero to seven years, egalitarianism rules.
	It has to rule. I mean, if you're a woman with five kids, you don't just throw a bunch of food on the ground and let whoever gets the most get it, because then the oldest kids will steal food from the babies.
	So you have to have forced redistribution of resources.
	When you are a mother, you've got to take away food from the bigger kids who have too much and give it to the little kids who need it more.
	If you have two twins, you give them breast milk equally, right?
	You don't just favor one over the other.
	So egalitarianism is a powerful instinct for women, which is why...
	And women are very, very enthusiastic, right?
	I mean, if you've ever been around...
	I've been around a lot of moms, right?
	Because I was a stay-at-home dad and take my daughter places.
	I've been around a lot of moms. And the moms are all like, yay, good job!
	You know, they want to be enthusiastic.
	They want to be encouraging. Of course, right?
	And so you want to pump up children's sense of accomplishment and their confidence when they're little.
	And then throughout history, generally what would happen is the children would transfer to the male sphere.
	And the male sphere is relentlessly meritocratic.
	It can't afford to be anything else.
	Because the men bring the food in general home to the women and then the women redistribute it among the children.
	So women are socialists and men are meritocracy-based, are capitalists.
	Because you can't survive.
	In a hunting scenario, in a war scenario, you can't survive without a meritocracy.
	You'll just die. You'll just die.
	That's it. You're done. If you give your precious few spears and arrows to the guy with one gimpy eye and...
	Some sort of retinal problem, he's going to miss and you're going to all starve to death.
	So you have to give your bow and your arrow and your spear to the very best hunter.
	And that way the meritocracy produces the goods which are then egalitarianly distributed by the females to the children.
	So, men are meritocratic and women are egalitarian, which translates into capitalism versus socialism.
	And all of this is great and the private sphere is wonderful.
	It's just when you unite it with the state and its power that it becomes toxic and destructive, right?
	So, I just wanted to mention that, right.
	Steph, I'm working on transcribing all episodes to help other people better find relevant podcasts of yours.
	I would advise against that project because I can't verify if you have or have not made a mistake.
	And if you make a mistake, it could lead to some significant misinterpretation.
	I mean, even when people listen to what I say, they misinterpret it.
	So I appreciate the offer.
	It's very kind. I would very kindly request that you don't do that because you can't be sure of accuracy, and I certainly wouldn't have time to check it.
	And if you are inaccurate and people search and find something that I didn't say, Then this could cause a lot of problems.
	So I would respectfully request that you don't pursue that project.
	Thank you, though. All right, so let's see here.
	I always recommend people I try talking to about libertarianism.
	Listen to Milton Friedman's Free to Choose TV program that's free to watch on YouTube.
	It's great for opening people's minds to the ideas.
	Okay, so why haven't they worked?
	Milton Friedman's Free to Choose programs came out, what, in the 80s, late 70s, early 80s?
	So it's 40 years ago, right?
	Did they work? I mean, it's just an older guy thing.
	Sorry to be annoying. It's just an older guy thing.
	Oh, and by the way, you can tip me here if you like.
	I would appreciate that. But it's just an older guy thing.
	Okay, if you have a good way of bringing these ideas to people, why haven't these ideas taken root?
	All right, so what are your thoughts on geographical determinism, the idea that Europeans were destined to become more advanced than people from other places because of their environment?
	Geographical determinism. No, I don't.
	I mean, obviously, environment has an effect on creatures.
	That's evolution 101, right?
	The environment has a strong effect on creatures.
	So, I don't know about destined.
	I think that there was a lot of choice involved in that as well.
	What do you think could be behind falling IQ over the past few decades?
	Well, of course, you know, there's two arguments, right?
	The Flynn effect and then this falling IQ. I mean, a lot of this stuff I've talked about before.
	I just read a study that said if you have an IQ of 130 or more, you are three to five times less likely to have had intercourse.
	In fact, you are less likely to have had intercourse if you have an IQ of 130 than if you have an IQ of 60, which is mental deficiency territory, right?
	So, women are just not holding out for the good providers.
	Remember, the whole purpose of modern culture is to keep women single.
	The whole purpose of modern culture in the West is to keep women single, because single women vote for a bigger government, single women vote for the left.
	So the leftists, who have a lot of, obviously, influence over media and entertainment, are absolutely focused on making women unappealing, to keeping them resentful and unhappy and angry and bitter at the patriarchy and just make them as unappealing as possible.
	You sow loneliness and you reap political power.
	So I'll give you an example just about sort of UPB that popped up in chat not too long ago, and it goes something like this.
	All right, let me just, this is going to go to supporters only, so again, if you want to join, I will post the link here.
	I'll post a link in the chat if you want to join.
	It's free to join. You can cancel if you don't like it.
	And you get my free book, History of Philosopher's Series and all of that.
	So you can just click on that link if you want to join.
	It's going to go to supporters.
	You've got a minute. So somebody was in the chat not too long ago.
	I actually did make a note of some of the things that they had said.
	So let me just, sorry, I have so many notepads open.
	Oh my god, all the way back to the economics, biology, and psychology of simp culture, which was a show I put out for donors a couple of, probably two weeks ago or something like that.
	So let me just see if I can find it.
	Why artists tend to be leftists, so that's going out later.
	Let me just get to this, the comments that they...
	This person had...
	I sometimes...
	It's not the problem, like when you have a lot of memory, you can...
	Like a lot of memory in your computer, you can just leave stuff open.
	In the past, I always used to have to close things down.
	but not no more apparently tenet and it did you do you do you do boom boom boom
	but it'll do it and uh... to get it So there was a guy, it could be termed a troll, who was floating around one of the chat rooms, and he said, ultimately people don't care about what's true or correct.
	They care about comfort. Okay.
	So look, this is just Troll 101, right?
	If he's a troll, right? Troll 101.
	And... So, in Troll 101, when people make a rule, first thing you do is apply it to themselves, right?
	Somebody puts forward a rule, particularly some sort of big, arrogant, well, I'm going to tell you the truth, and it's all just like this, and this is what people do.
	They kind of come across really aggressive and all that.
	And it's just fine. I don't mind the aggression.
	Just, you know, it's better to be aggressive and accurate, but...
	Ultimately, people don't care about what's true or correct.
	They care about comfort. Okay.
	So is that a true or correct statement?
	Or you do care about comfort?
	Because he says people don't care about what's true or correct.
	They care about comfort. So if you...
	If you're going to put that forward as a rule, then if you put forward a rule but you exclude yourself, then I don't particularly care about your rule.
	Because he says, ultimately, people don't care about what's true or correct.
	Now, I get when you say, you know, people tend to care about virtue or whatever.
	It's like, I can think of five people in my life who don't care about virtue.
	Like, I understand a general statement, but ultimately, right, in essence, essentially...
	And so he says, ultimately people don't care about what's true or correct.
	They care about comfort. So then the response would be, okay, so just take the person's rule and apply it back to the person.
	Take the person's rule and apply it back to the person.
	So that's not, right?
	So you reply and say, so you don't care about what's true or correct because you say that's true.
	No, no, but I do, right?
	I do. And he says, Stephen comforts a lot of people, whereas I just exclusively give them the truth.
	Again, this is not an argument.
	It's just an aesthetic thing.
	The guy might as well say, I like jazz.
	Stephen comforts a lot of people, whereas I just exclusively give them the truth.
	But here's the thing. So if the guy says, people don't care about what's true, they care about comfort, but I only give them the truth, then he's saying by his own definition that what he's doing is completely ineffective.
	People don't care about deodorant at all, so all I do is exclusively give them deodorant.
	It's like, okay, then you're insane by your own definition, right?
	And then he says, you know, people lie as a whole, and then somebody quoted him and he said, you're incorrect, you're lying, you're misquoting me.
	And it's like, but you said everyone lies, so why would you be upset?
	When people lie, when you say everyone lies.
	Again, it's just right. So then I said, you know, hey man, let's have a conversation.
	I had some time at the moment.
	I could have done half an hour with this guy.
	And he says, of course, you know, and I've done this a million times before when people are trolling, right?
	I just say, let's jump on and have a talk.
	And they all say, I don't want to dox myself.
	I don't want to identify myself, right?
	And I'm like, okay, you can get plug-ins to alter your voice.
	Pretty simple. Very easy to do.
	And then he said, no, no, no, but there are people in my environment.
	I don't want to disturb them.
	It's like, well, you clearly don't care about disturbing people because you're in trawling.
	It's like the people who say, can lying be UPB? And it's like, well, not everyone can lie all the time.
	And it's like, okay, but lying can't be UPB because lying says everyone should want to lie and be lied to at the same time.
	But if you want to be lied to, it's not lying.
	If you want to be lied to, it's not lying.
	I mean, if you go to a magic show and the guy, quote, reads your mind and you say, how did you do that?
	He says, it's magic. Well, you know he's lying, but you're paying.
	When you go to see a play or a movie, those aren't real people.
	Anything is real about it and it's all made up.
	It's all CGI, but it's called the suspension of disbelief.
	You want them to lie to you.
	When I write a novel or do a role play on the show or whatever it is that I'm doing, Those aren't the real people.
	They aren't real people. It's not a real situation.
	It's not a real circumstance. But you suspend your disbelief.
	You want me to, quote, lie to you because that's how the art transfers itself.
	Your dreams every night are lies.
	I'm lying to myself. It's not real.
	It's not true, but it pretends to be true and real.
	So... If you want to be lied to, it's not a lie.
	If you want to be lied to, it's not a lie.
	A lie is something presented as a truth that fools you because you believe it's to be true.
	So when you go to see a play, you know that the guy playing Stanley Kowalski is not Stanley Kowalski, because Stanley Kowalski doesn't exist except in the homoerotic fantasies of Tennessee Williams.
	So, again, it seems simple.
	Maybe I'm just too versed in the theory, but, you know, if you want someone to take your property, it's not stealing.
	If you want somebody to have sex with you, it's not rape.
	If you want someone to lie to you, it's not lying.
	All right, so, yeah, I just wanted to mention that.
	Let me just go back to your questions here Hi Steph is natural law not the basis of human rights at
	least the negative rights Since they are so widely accepted in the Western world, why is it so hard to argue for natural law versus utilitarianism?
	Many people I argue with defend the greater good for the most people.
	The greater good for the most people is the moral standard and discard natural law due to this.
	Yeah, I mean, the greater good for the greatest people is a recipe for totalitarianism.
	Because who on earth is...
	Who on earth is going to determine what is the greatest good for the most people?
	I mean, people don't even know what's good for themselves often.
	How are they going to know what's good for others?
	If you believe that there's a greater good for most people, then you should put that forward as an argument, right?
	If you believe that losing weight is better for people who are overweight, then make the case, make the argument, write the book, go on the pot, like, go and convince people.
	I believe that reason equals virtue equals happiness, so I make that case, right?
	The greatest good for the most people.
	And so we say, okay, well, how is the greater good for the most people enforced?
	It has to be enforced, right?
	If you say, well, a basic minimum standard of living, some sort of universal basic income, well, that's the greatest good for the most people.
	Okay, how's that enforced?
	Well, you have to take money by force from people and give it to other people.
	So the greater good for the most people is a justification for theft and violence, right?
	So then you're saying that theft and violence can produce virtue and say, okay, in what personal relationship does theft and violence produce happiness and virtue?
	If a man is married to his wife, how much theft and violence can he apply against her to produce a happy marriage?
	Forget about all this abstract stuff like the greatest good or the greatest number.
	The principles, everything is individual.
	Everything is individual. There's no collective.
	It's all individuals. Okay.
	I believe, like you say, I believe that what you're proposing is evil.
	So can I use violence and theft against you because what you're proposing is bad for society as a whole and all individuals?
	Can I use violence against you to shut you up?
	Of course, the person is just saying, well, no, no, no, no.
	We're just having a debate here.
	It's like, okay, well then, don't say, don't demand the protection of the non-aggression principle and use it to advocate for violations of the non-aggression principle.
	I mean, this is just sanity 101, isn't it?
	If you don't want to be subjected to violence, don't put forward theories that are going to subject other people to violence.
	That's fucking insane.
	Like, I don't know how people do this in their head.
	I don't know how people do this in their head.
	If the consequences of their moral actions would be horrifying to them in the moment, in the actual interaction, how on earth do they twist it in their brains so that they put it out into some abstract thing like society as a whole and boom, bingo, bingo, bongo, it becomes virtuous?
	Well, it would be horrifying, absolutely evil and violent...
	In our personal interactions, but in the abstract, about society as a whole, it's just beautiful and wonderful.
	I don't know what people's major malfunction is.
	I don't know what this weird Mobius strip twist in their worldview is.
	They say, oh, the greatest good for the greatest number.
	Okay, well, my greatest good for the greatest number is not have you advocate violence in pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest number, so I get to punch you until you stop talking.
	God, no! Okay, I'm going to steal your wallet.
	Because I'm poorer than you.
	Oh, no! Right?
	Okay, well, if you don't want it in your personal life, why on earth would you want it in society?
	Because society is just...
	All society is is personal relationships.
	That's all it is. So...
	All right. Hi, Steph.
	I think I should talk to you.
	Because you always say, call me before, and I'm developing a relationship which involves everything which is not supposed to be in it, including other beings and talking to a god.
	How do I get into this after eight years of listening to Freedom Aid?
	How did I get into this? You can email me.
	I'm back on the call-in shows.
	I did a really powerful one last night with a guy who dated a woman about to be a stripper and seems a genuine psychopath.
	So, yes, you can...
	Email me. Call in at freedomain.com.
	C-A-L-L-I-N. Call in at freedomain.com.
	All right. Hey, Steph.
	We took a course and sleep trained our baby.
	In two weeks of sleep training, he went from terrible sleep to sleeping 11 hours every night, and we usually don't need to pop in and check on him at all.
	You were right. I'm glad to hear that.
	And massive sympathy.
	It's a horrible thing. You know, you obviously care about your baby.
	You don't want your baby to cry. And it's a very, very tough thing to go through that sleep training stuff.
	But yes, I think it is generally, in my amateur, outside, non-medical way, I found it to be the best, right?
	Alright, should you congratulate people on their birthdays if they didn't do it on yours?
	If they forgot, does that mean they don't care?
	Is it even worth bringing that up in a conversation with them or respond in kind by ignoring their next birthday?
	Um... Look, I'm sorry that you didn't get what...
	You want it on your birthday when you were a kid.
	But there's a time when people should stop really caring about their own birthdays.
	And that time is usually around the age of 15 years old.
	So, I mean, I remember when I think I was 13 and my mother completely forgot my birthday and everybody else did as well.
	The only person who...
	A friend of mine's mother gave me $5.
	And that was it. That was my entire birthday.
	I don't want to sound all Dickensian or all of that, but it was pretty rough.
	It was pretty rough. And I don't know why...
	I mean...
	My wife and I, it's like, yeah, well, happy birthday and all of that, but what do you want?
	Nothing. I have everything I want.
	I mean, I don't really want to just buy some useless thing for my birthday, so I don't really care about birthdays.
	Try to design your life so every day is a celebration and you won't care as much about your birthday, so clearly it would seem to me that you didn't get what you wanted from your parents when you were a kid with regards to your birthday, and now you're probably bullying other people to make a big deal out of your birthday.
	And it's not their fault that your parents didn't do it, and you've got to deal with that.
	But don't end up bullying other people.
	In a true free market, would you expect IQ to rise over time?
	I would imagine that it would be stable or rising slowly over time.
	This is sort of how the world grew.
	The way the world grew was smart people could afford to have the most kids.
	This is how IQ was raised over time.
	Smart people had more kids.
	And now it's really the opposite.
	Smart people are such good productive tax cattle for the state that the state continually tells them to not have kids.
	Women in particular, right? A woman goes into the workforce, she's paying taxes, she's paying for her own indoctrination through university, and she's contributing to the GDP, and she's not having kids, because when you're paying taxes, the government's making money, so to speak, and when you're having children, the government has to provide, you know, healthcare and education and daycare, and it costs the government money.
	So every politician wants women to defer children as much as possible, plus then it raises the argument for immigration and so on.
	And here's the thing, too. I mean, I don't know.
	Elon Musk is talking about, oh, my depopulation is like the worst thing ever.
	It's like, no, it's not.
	I mean, depopulation in a sort of natural people not having kids kind of way, I don't think it's a...
	I don't see it's an issue at all. I mean, robots are coming in.
	We really don't need as many people as we used to, particularly for menial or manual labor.
	And... However crippled, artificial intelligence could be the new oracle at Delphi, but it's just going to be crippled.
	It's not going to be allowed to speak honestly about things that are too controversial or whatever, right?
	Anything that goes against sort of leftist stuff, blah, blah, blah.
	So, I mean, a couple of decades ago, the world was a few billion people lighter, and It seemed to function just fine.
	So if you look at the population of America in 1950, it was much lower than it is now.
	Things seem to be fine. So I don't know about this.
	Like, oh my gosh, it's smaller.
	And of course, it's a cycle, right?
	So when you get a lot of extra population, you get a lot of real estate and a lot of building of things.
	And then when you get population decline or lower birth rates, then the price of real estate goes down.
	It becomes cheaper to raise a family in the free market.
	And then you have more kids and all of that.
	Human beings are in zoos, right?
	We have no idea what people do in their natural state anymore because we're so controlled by our environment and our schooling and regulations and all of that.
	Our behavior is so hyper-controlled that we don't know what people do in their natural state anymore.
	We wouldn't have any idea.
	Somebody says the transcription thing.
	Thank you. I appreciate it.
	I would welcome someone doing a couple of episodes.
	Somebody says I have a total of 221 days worth of content.
	Actually probably more than that if you count the books and the documentaries and so on.
	Somebody says good afternoon Steph.
	Just wanted to mention that the audio feed link for the God of Atheists on your website opens a strange incomprehensible page of HTML codes that I haven't been able to get any audio from.
	Yeah, so it is a feed and what you do with the feed is you put it into a podcatcher.
	So open up a podcast program and it will say feed and you just copy that feed and put it in there.
	That's how you get the audio. Alright, let's get to here.
	Thank you for the tip. Somebody says, I have a family member that I love, but she has been heading in the wrong direction her whole adult life.
	Now she's in her late 20s.
	I feel an urgency to save her, like it's now whenever.
	She's never taken any of my advice or help in the past, but just keeps making bad choices.
	Botox, focusing too much on work, sleeping around, casual dating, etc.
	I want her to wake up to reality before it's too late.
	Can I save her? It's a very, very interesting question.
	What do you guys think?
	What do you guys think?
	There's a couple of tips that I would say about this situation.
	And these tips are useful because we all want to help people in our lives.
	Everybody wants to help people in their lives.
	We want to give the gift of wisdom that we have often painfully accumulated to others so they can avoid the same mistakes.
	And that's a lot of what I do and all of that.
	So I... You care.
	Alright, so a couple of principles here.
	Whether you like them or not, these are just straight-up facts, right?
	First of all, the best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior.
	Like, there's not even a close second.
	Like, by far, the best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior.
	If you want to know what someone's going to do tomorrow, look at what they did yesterday.
	When people get access to new information, Give them a couple of days.
	And if they're not excited by that new information in a couple of days, it's never going to happen.
	I mean, think about your own life, right?
	Some of my obsessions, for want of a better word, for my deep and eternal interests, occurred just about the moment I was exposed to something.
	Like the moment I started reading philosophy, I'm like, oh my God, this is the greatest thing ever.
	This is like water in the desert. This is like sun in the Arctic, right?
	So... And that's been, you know, 40-plus years, 42 years.
	And my thirst and hunger for it is even deeper now than when I started, right?
	People who, like, I was reading about satanic Led Zeppelin stuff, and the guitarist Jimmy Page picked up a guitar at 12 and just played it and played it, right?
	Let's see, Brian Adams' song played it till my fingers bled, right?
	Just played it and played it and played it and couldn't even read music, just obsessed by it, right?
	That became his life, right?
	So, if you've opened up better ideas to this woman and she hasn't responded like, whoa, and come back to you and wanted to know more, even if she's angry and upset and wants to talk you out of it, it just blows past her.
	That's just what's going to happen.
	It's not going to change. It's not going to change.
	Late 20s, she's been sleeping around.
	Probably got a body count of 50 to 100, right?
	Man, there's really no undoing that thousand dexter.
	There really is no undoing that.
	And it's really tragic. It's really tragic.
	But you don't want to be that doctor who's trying to resuscitate a patient from a pharaoh, from, like, a pharaoh's tomb.
	Yeah, that thousand dexter, I don't really know how to undo that, right?
	That, like, that glassy-eyed Stormy Daniels scene way too much, being railed more than Nebraska in the Age of Steam.
	So, yeah, it's...
	Can't undo all of that stuff.
	Can't undo those bad decisions.
	So why do you want to save her?
	And why do you love her if she's just making all these bad decisions and doesn't...
	Doesn't make any good decisions, doesn't listen to you.
	Why do you love her? Right?
	I mean, you know my definition of love, which I'll stand by, and love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
	What virtues has she displayed that you love her?
	What virtues has she displayed that cause you to love her?
	She's not virtuous. She's programmed.
	She's an NPC. She's sacrificing future happiness for the sake of immediate stimuli.
	She's addicted to attention, to sex, to whatever, right?
	Why do you want to...
	See, here's the thing.
	You might not want to save her, right?
	The shadow side. This is a sort of life tip as a whole, right?
	Whenever you have a strong compulsion, look at the shadow side.
	Look at the shadow side.
	It could be that you really, really, really want to save her, but I doubt it.
	Because if you want to save her and you've been trying for five or ten years and she never listens and just keeps making bad decisions, then you would give up, right?
	You would just not, because you can't save her, right?
	So it could be, it could very well be, that you are addicted to feeling helpless and she is serving that need.
	And this is true for everyone.
	If you are engaged in something that is repetitive and unproductive, you are addicted to the feelings of the unproductivity.
	Sorry, it's a bad way to put it.
	Let me try taking another circle and swing at that particular baseball.
	If you keep trying things and failing, what you're addicted to is the failure.
	So my guess is that this comes from your parents, this comes from somebody that you tried to care in the past for in the past and tried to save in the past, and you are addicted to morality being helpless.
	You are addicted to integrity being futile.
	You are addicted to virtue being paralyzed.
	That you are addicted to disproving virtue by applying it to people who won't listen.
	I mean, look, if you have a wonderful diet that's going to help people lose weight, it's just wonderful and easy, right?
	And the only people that you ever try to apply that diet to is people who won't listen and won't lose weight and, in fact, gain weight, then your fundamental is not to get the diet out.
	Your fundamental drive is to discredit the diet.
	Are you empowering philosophy by attempting to apply it to people who are just telling you to fuck off all the time?
	Are you empowering yourself?
	Are you empowering philosophy? Are you showing the strength of philosophy If you keep trying to apply it to people who bat it away without even looking around.
	No. You're weakening philosophy.
	You are weakening yourself.
	She's winning. You're losing.
	NPC wins. Thinker loses.
	Now that's a pattern that's been going on for years with this woman, right?
	So you understand, you can't help people if the, quote, helping people is just a cover story for feeling like a failure.
	Like, the reason you can't help her is you haven't understood your motive for trying to help her.
	If your motive is to prove that philosophy never works, that you'll never be listened to, that you can't have an effect, that you're futile, that you're useless, that virtue always fails, Then you will approach her in a way that will confirm that underlying principle of failure, of people won't listen to you, people won't care about you, people won't do the right thing, you can never affect people for the better, it's useless.
	Like, if that's your underlying pathology, and I just use that word in an amateur sense, of course, if that's your underlying principle, Then you can't help her, because the entire purpose of picking this woman is because you know she can't be helped, but you want to make your own sense of virtue and effect and power die in your lap, and you want to confirm your own futility.
	So you've picked someone who won't listen, because the secondary gain, secondary gain is a more technical term, secondary gain, is that you cripple your own sense of power and capacity, which would come from your childhood and so on.
	Alright. If art is the collection and monetization of trauma, how do you explain why the most trauma-ridden slum countries like the former Soviet Union and other communist countries, which are left as utopias, are devoid of objective beauty and art?
	What? I'm sure I understand this.
	If art is the collection and monetization of trauma, how do you explain why the most trauma-ridden slum countries like the former Soviet Union and other communist countries are devoid of objective beauty and art?
	What? Why are you talking about monetization and communism as if they're not antonyms?
	I'm really confused.
	Art in communist countries is entirely state-driven, state-controlled, state-funded, state-managed.
	It's like talking about Fauci in science.
	The word is monetization.
	When I say monetization, I mean in a free market.
	In the current situation.
	So, I don't know why monetization, how would that fit with centrally planned and coercive, quote, economies like communist ones.
	Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think so.
	All right. Utilitarianism can't define good for the individual, so it can't define good for the group.
	If you don't know what is good for a tree, you can't say what is good for a forest.
	Well, and it's an attempt to displace other people's reasoning, right?
	So if you say, I know what's good for other people, well, you don't even know what's good for yourself, which is to try to control other people will corrupt your soul, will destroy your soul.
	It's like being a totally fat person muckbanging his way to an early grave and saying, well, I know what everyone should eat.
	It's like you don't even know what you should eat.
	Why would I listen to you about anyone else?
	So if you say, well, I know what's good for other people and I'm willing to use the point of a gun in order to achieve what's good for other people...
	You don't even know what's good for yourself, which is that violence is going to corrupt yourself.
	All right, let's see here.
	Do you have any advice for helping a partner who has had a traumatic childhood
	and doesn't want to talk about it because the memories are too painful?
	What advice would you give to someone who has had a traumatic childhood and doesn't want to talk about it?
	you Why are you with someone who has this level of unprocessed trauma?
	I don't...
	I mean, philosophy is about prevention, not cure, right?
	I'm happy to hear the explanation, right?
	Why are you with someone who has massive, deep, and wide canyons of unprocessed childhood trauma?
	I won't even talk about it.
	Why? Why? How's that going to play out when you have kids, man?
	When you have kids, you don't have the option to ignore your childhood when you have kids because a childhood is being played out right there in front of you.
	Why are you with someone who is dedicated to not processing childhood trauma?
	Explain that to me. I mean, that sounds more confrontational.
	Explain this to me. I mean, genuinely curious, right?
	Somebody says, my physical therapist makes conversation during my sessions.
	She tells me about her children.
	One of them is three years old now and went into daycare at four months old.
	Oh God! Ironically, I am in physical therapy for an injury from giving birth to my now four-month-old and I feel ill when I imagine a baby so young in daycare.
	I constantly wonder if she'd say her career is worth it.
	At the same time, I know she'd be extremely offended.
	I wonder if there's a time to say it or if I should at all.
	I mean, the kid's most likely done, right?
	As far as that goes. He's been in daycare from four months old.
	He's now three. Personality is pretty much done by the age of four or five.
	I mean, it seems to me that would be like in the barn door after the horse has left.
	So women, this is just evolutionarily speaking, right?
	Women have the capacity for very intense bonds and they have capacity to rip those bonds apart if necessary, if told to, if it feels important, right?
	So a woman has to have a very strong bond with her children and But she also has to be willing to abandon that bond if that's what's needed to survive, if you get conquered by some other tribe or something like that, right?
	So as far as, if she's going to have more kids, right, you could ask her questions, right?
	Why did you go into daycare?
	Oh, you know, I really wanted to get back to work.
	And I would be like, so, I mean, you do spend all day taking care of people.
	Why not your kids, right?
	Or you could say, I mean, do you feel really replaceable?
	I mean, do you feel like anyone?
	I mean, maybe it's the case, right?
	Can just anyone raise your kids?
	Or why would you want to have kids if you don't really want to raise them?
	I guess that'd be a pretty intense question to ask.
	But it's funny, you know, it's something that I learned to my strength and detriment overall, is that it really matters how you ask things.
	If you're genuinely curious, tell me what you're thinking.
	Daycare, four months old, that means pretty young, right?
	Well, I just really wanted to get back to work.
	Did you not enjoy motherhood?
	No, I enjoyed motherhood, but, you know, I just really felt the urge to get back to work.
	Oh, tell me more about that.
	What was that urge? Well, it's different from my experience, which is perfectly honest and fine.
	Like, tell me more about that. Oh, well, you know, we really needed the money and so on.
	And it's like, so, I mean, did you?
	I mean, you couldn't make it any other way?
	I mean, didn't the money, I mean, how much of your pay here goes to the daycare, right?
	I mean, so just, yeah, just asking questions, right?
	Just asking questions.
	Alright. Hey Steph, my 10-year-old daughter desperately wants to go to school.
	She's never been. I think she's feeling pressure from other kids in the neighborhood and in extracurricular.
	Have you ever gone through something similar with Izzy?
	My other children have never expressed any interest in going to school.
	We're thinking we need to amp up the field trips and the fun in our homeschool.
	She has a fantasy that she's going to see all her friends at recess or lunch or in the hallway.
	Yeah. Um...
	Izzy's had an impulse or two to go to school, but only to get thrown out.
	So, yeah.
	Is this the oldest daughter?
	So, around the age of puberty, children swivel.
	They pivot.
	Pivot! They pivot their focus from their parents to their peers.
	As they should. As they must.
	They pivot from their parents to their peers.
	Because the parents represent the past and the peers represent the future.
	The peers are who you're going to choose your mate from and have a family and all of that.
	So the fact that she wants to pivot more towards her peers is natural.
	It's healthy. It's important.
	And you would not want it to be any other way.
	Now, as far as extracurricular goes, in some places, I don't know where you are, but in some places, you have the right as a homeschooler to enroll your kids in extracurricular activities, even in the local schools.
	So I would say get her into the extracurricular activities as much as possible.
	And of course, there's nothing wrong if she wants to try school.
	It depends, right? I mean, if they're doing weird indoctrination stuff, probably not.
	But you can just get her involved in extracurricular stuff.
	And if she does end up going to school, what I would say is...
	Really, really get a hold of her textbook, get a hold of what she's been taught, and really make sure that she doesn't get programmed too badly.
	So let's see here. How do you explain how most artists are leftists, yet the art that comes out of communist countries is ugly?
	Is it because of state-funded art programs?
	Yeah, because...
	I remember when I was at the National Theatre School studying acting and playwriting.
	It was so funny, right? So the first semester I was there, they loved my acting so much they said, oh, dude, forget about the playwriting.
	Just be an actor. You're fantastic, right?
	Then they found out about my politics and then I was really ripped and attacked at the end of the second semester.
	But I did do another sort of half semester there, and I had a writing teacher.
	And the writing teacher I had as a writing assignment to do the trial and death of Socrates.
	And I did. I wrote.
	I've got it somewhere in my files.
	I wrote the trial and death of Socrates in the way that I thought it should be written.
	And my writing teacher was like, oh, that's not the way you should do it.
	And then he wrote a version and I was like, man, your version blows.
	Like, it's really bad.
	But he took me to a place because he wanted to expose me to what he considered to be great art, right?
	And this was, of course, in Quebec, in Canada.
	It was in Montreal. And he took me to a play, and I still remember this.
	I was just telling this to someone the other day.
	I still remember this palate cleanse I had to go through.
	He took me to this absolute freaking dunghill of a play.
	It was, you know, very nihilistic, and everybody was, like, terrible and awful and schizo and predatory and druggies, and it was just like it was vile.
	And then there was intermission.
	And I was like, I can't do it, man.
	And I just, I got up and I left.
	And I put on my headphones and I listened to Good Rockin' at Midnight by the Honey Drippers, which was a band put together by some guy who wanted 50s hits.
	And he got Robert Plant, he got Paul Schaefer from...
	David Letterman and they put together a band.
	Actually, Robert Plant, the singer, said that it was actually his favorite recording session ever in the history of his career.
	And that particular song, Good Rock in a Midnight, very uplifting, great horn section and great energy and positive.
	And I just had to put that on. And I walked for like 45 minutes to get home.
	And I just, I remember being bitterly cold.
	And I just had played that song on repeat.
	It was a tape back there.
	It was like a Walkman, right? Yeah.
	Have you heard the news?
	There's good rockin' at midnight.
	It's a great song, very positive, very energetic.
	Sort of like Pete Townsend's Face to Face, which I used to listen to and dance to Pete Townsend's Face to Face.
	And It Can Happen by Yes, two really great songs.
	It Can Happen by Yes are some of the most positive and affirming lyrics and vocals around.
	You Can Love Yourself.
	So, I just needed that palate cleanser because...
	Art has the capacity to degrade you almost utterly and completely.
	Just rub your face in shit until that's all you can smell.
	And yeah, that's what they want.
	In the left stiff.
	My partner has agreed to talk about trauma before.
	Still finds it very painful.
	Perhaps I'm naive in thinking that they can process it.
	I'm not sure. Okay.
	I mean, if I were talking to your partner, I'd say, okay, well, let's say that you've broken an arm and physical training, physical therapy is painful.
	Do you just say, forget it, I'm just going to only be able to bend my arm, you know, 45 degrees and that's it?
	No, you have to do things that are difficult and painful sometimes for the better and longer good.
	So... I personally, just me, me, just me, I personally would not have children with somebody with unprocessed childhood trauma.
	Just wouldn't do it. Just wouldn't do it.
	Because you either process it before you have kids or the kids will just come into that like a meteor hitting the desert or rather hitting the ocean.
	The kids are just going to...
	If you have unprocessed childhood trauma...
	To me, this is what PTSD... Sorry, postpartum depression is about.
	It's women who had really bad infancies.
	They have kids and then all of that stuff gets kicked up.
	All of that stuff gets...
	Right? Like the... No, it's just terrible.
	It's just really, really tragic.
	Brooke Shields had that, right, when the rain came down and Brooke Shields was highly preyed upon as a kid with this highly sexualized ads that she was into.
	It put in just absolutely appalling.
	So I assume she had a terrible childhood or terrible infancy and then she has a baby.
	She's holding her baby. All that feeling comes flooding back and you can't be a good parent at that point.
	I say this with all sympathy, but you can't.
	All right. It's your second oldest daughter.
	Yeah. My ex said she wanted to put off starting a family for a few years so she could help her own parents financially.
	She's in her mid-twenties. Another bullet whizzes by.
	I can see that. Hi, Steph.
	What are your thoughts on authors who create characters that the audience bonds with only to kill them off or destroy their characters unexpectedly rather than gradually?
	Is this a sign of dysfunction or a normal option that authors should be able to explore?
	No. So if you create characters with positive characteristics that the audience bonds with, the only way they can die is if they have a fatal flaw.
	So let's say you have a guy who's got honesty and integrity and virtue and so on, but he's got a fatal flaw called lust.
	This was like every Michael Douglas character in the 80s and 90s.
	So he's got a fatal flaw called lust.
	So then all of his virtues are undone by his fatal flaw called lust.
	So in Macbeth, it's ambition, largely fueled by his psycho wife.
	In Hamlet, it is indecision and so on.
	So you've got a fatal flaw. And so what you do is you say, your virtues won't help you, in fact they may harm you, if you don't deal with your fatal flaw.
	It could be vanity, it could be greed, it could be denial, it could be a status, it could be ambition, it could be affirmation from strangers rather than...
	Intimacy with family. It could be any number of things.
	You've got a fatal flaw. So it's perfectly valid to have a character that you like who has a fatal flaw because that reminds you to work on your own fatal flaw so that they don't take you down, right?
	That's right. But if the audience...
	If the character doesn't have a fatal flaw but then the character they've bonded with just gets killed off...
	Then that's abusive in my mind.
	Not obviously violent, but it's abusive towards the audience because it's saying that virtue just gets killed.
	And that's a way of training them against virtue.
	Let's see here. We live in a rural area, one of those places that the school is the community.
	There is an option to send homeschoolers to certain parts of the elementary school daytime lessons.
	By just reading time or music time, maybe we could give that a try.
	Still hurts my heart, though, to possibly not have her around 24-7.
	I get it. You're right, though.
	It's natural for her to turn to her peers and ultimately want her to not be around 24-7.
	LOL. Thanks for the input. Yeah, listen, I mean, I'm with you there.
	I'm with you there, man.
	It's a process, man.
	And look, you don't want your kids to be clinging to your aprons from here to eternity, right?
	That's a failure. It's right.
	You're drawing the bow back. You've got to let the arrow go out into the world, right?
	So you've got to train your kids to be independent of yourself, right?
	So I get you.
	You know, you miss those times where your kid just runs into your arms and all they care about is you and so on.
	But you need them to be focusing more on their peers.
	Absolutely. And that's the job, right?
	The job is to fire yourself.
	The job as a parent is to be absolutely essential and then fire yourself.
	Now, if it's any consolation, that should be your job.
	And every job you have is to train.
	At the moment I got a job in the business world, I just start training my replacement because otherwise I can't move up.
	So yes, the whole job is to be essential to the point where you get paid a lot in the business world and then to be utterly unnecessary because you've trained your replacement, therefore you can move up.
	So yeah, the job as a parent is to be absolutely essential and then make sure your kid fires you, so to speak, right?
	In terms of your essentialness, right?
	They've got to turn to their peers.
	And yeah, it hurts your heart to not have around 24-7.
	Well, just tell her that. And you know, I read something the other day Actually, I found it quite moving because I've been thinking about mortality.
	I was just reading about George Berkeley as the next guy I'm doing in the philosophy series.
	He died at 67. Wow, 67?
	That's pretty old. It's like, dude, that's 10 and a half years from Europe.
	That's not that long, right?
	If I lived to 67, I got another decade, right?
	Which is not a long time given that I've had 57 years already and I've got 10 years.
	Could have 10 years left, hopefully more, right?
	So I've been thinking a little bit about mortality, which is a good thing, right?
	It helped me prioritize my time.
	But... It was a saying from some Confucius or Sun Tzu or something like that.
	And, you know, everything you have will fade away.
	Halls of gold and emeralds can't be maintained.
	Your purpose is to do your job and depart in peace.
	And that is the way of heaven.
	To do your job and depart in peace.
	I like that. Do your job and depart in peace, and that is the way of heaven.
	Because, well, you're going to depart either way.
	Either way. All right.
	Yeah, absolutely right.
	Absolutely no kids if trauma is unprocessed.
	How much unprocessed trauma is too much, ACE score wise?
	Well, you'll know. You process trauma, and you'll know, right?
	You'll know when the trauma is done, because you just won't have that much to deal with.
	Like, when I was in therapy, I mean, therapy was a huge deal for me, and then I just became, you know, I went from twice a week to once a week, and then I just, like, I'm done.
	There's really not that much else that I need to work on.
	There's nothing else that's really coming up for me.
	I'm sleeping well. My dreams are good, and my emotions are good, and you'll just know.
	You work on it until, right?
	Have you watched Squid Game, Steph?
	It would be great if you did an analysis of shows that go viral in the cultural sphere.
	Yeah, like Milf Manor. Paging Dr.
	Freud from hell. I did watch the show Squid Game.
	I thought it was quite interesting.
	It is, of course, you know, the general socialist stuff that people with money will just pay people to degrade themselves and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Like, that never happens with the welfare state or the army, right?
	So... How much time do we have, in your opinion, before counting meals is reality?
	Well, it depends how many more plants in America go up in flames, right?
	So don't ask me for timelines.
	You can read my book, The Present, which is available at freedomain.locals.com.
	I'm just going through the third draft, revisions, and then I'll start the audiobook some.
	Do you have thoughts on how to conceptualize God, if at all?
	Yeah, so a God is the negation of human concepts.
	So we are mortal and our minds are limited.
	So everything that is immortal and unlimited is a negation of the actual concepts of human beings.
	So that's the way that you conceptualize God is to take everything that you experience, conceptualize the opposite, immortality, universality, omniscience, omnipresence and so on.
	You can only be in one place, generally only think about one thing at a time and you're mortal and so on.
	So it doesn't mean it's wrong by that definition.
	I mean, physics is a negation of the human experience because we don't experience things universally, but physics allows us to conceptualize them universally.
	So you take what is essential and human about you and mortal about you and biological about you, you negate that, and then you have the concept of God.
	Somebody asked...
	Wait, I saw a question here.
	Where's it gone? Where's it gone?
	Can AI become God then?
	No. Now, AI could be a fantastic oracle and could be an amazing shortcut to human life.
	Like AI, I know this, I was a pretty expert computer programmer.
	I wrote, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of lines of code for applications that were sold for millions of dollars to Fortune 500 companies in my sort of decade-plus career in the tech world.
	And you can do some amazing programming, and UPB and non-censorship is the default position for computers.
	You have to program censorship, and you have to program exceptions to general rules.
	So, like, here's a simple example, right?
	If you say, let's say basic, right?
	You say line 10, print, hello world.
	That puts hello world on the screen, right?
	So you do line 10, print, hello world.
	And then line 20, go to line 10.
	So then you get, right? We used to do this with TRS-80s and stuff in Radio Shack when I was a kid.
	You'd run this program, right? And then as you say, hello world!
	Line 10. Line 20, go to line 10.
	So print, go. And you get a loop.
	So there's no exceptions to that loop.
	It doesn't break down after a while.
	Now if you say, do it 100 times, then you'd say, for x equals 1 to 100, print hello, next x.
	So then it will, for x equals 1 to 100, print.
	And then when it gets to 100, it will break out of the loop.
	Or you could do while x is less than 101, x equals x plus 1.
	They've done tons of ways that you could do it, right?
	So UPB is perfect for AI and non-censorship is perfect for AI. Just gather the facts, gather the data, gather the reality, right?
	So AI could be an oracle that could be used to solve a truly astounding number of human problems.
	But because the powers that be don't want those problems to be solved, because they gain power from those problems not being solved, AI will be crippled and will be weaponized.
	It will be crippled and it will be weaponized.
	So, yeah, I mean, there's great potential of AI for it to become an oracle that cuts through propaganda, but because propaganda is so powerful, AI will be hyper-programmed and enslaved into the realm of propaganda and it'll just become like every other woke piece of nonsense that is out there.
	Is verbal reasoning the bottleneck for people understanding universality?
	No. No.
	No, the bottleneck for people understanding universality is that universality in history has only been introduced in order to create exceptions for those in power.
	Rules for thee, but not for me.
	You can't steal, I can tax.
	You have to obey authority, I am the authority, and therefore I don't have to obey anything.
	So rules are universalized to be imposed on others while creating an exception for yourself.
	So, and this is true for parents as well, right?
	Family is everything. Well, you put me in daycare and you went to do your job as a physical therapist.
	In other words, you'd rather adjust people's knees than raise your own children.
	So don't tell me the family is everything.
	You sold me down the river and put me in daycare to be raised by strangers so that you could make the equivalent of two or three dollars an hour after paying for all of these costs.
	Or, you know, the obvious example is parents who hit their children saying don't hit or parents who confiscate their children's belongings saying don't steal.
	Or parents who say education is everything and when the kid complains he's not being educated in school, the parents say trust your teacher.
	The parents who say don't Take drugs because of peer pressure and then line up for, well, we all know, right?
	So the whole purpose of universals has been to enslave people, to subjugate people.
	And when UPB comes along, it's going against the entire purpose of universals.
	So the reason that people don't understand universality is they don't understand that universality is designed to enslave them.
	And that's the ring of power, right?
	The ring of power is...
	To create a rule and exempt yourself.
	Create a rule, exempt yourself. Create a rule, exempt yourself.
	That's all that happens, right? This thing I don't agree with is called disinformation.
	Well, what about the things that you've been wrong about?
	Well, those are just honest mistakes.
	Just create a rule, disinformation, exempt yourself.
	Oh, it's so boring. That's why I get so bored of politics, right?
	Plus, not politics anymore. It's just power.
	No, no politics. It's just power.
	So, no, it's...
	They have to look at their own hypocrisy, especially if they're parents.
	They have to look at their own hypocrisy. People don't like looking at their own hypocrisy.
	You look at your own hypocrisy, you really have to change.
	You really have to... I mean, I had to look at my own hypocrisy, say, well, I'm comfortable attacking Christianity, criticizing Christianity.
	What about all the other religions out there?
	Oh, I'm less comfortable with that. Okay, isn't that kind of hypocritical?
	Yeah, it kind of is. So...
	Alright. You have to have ego strength that allows the survival of foundational self-criticism.
	You have to have the ego strength that can survive foundational self-criticism.
	If you've got something really essential wrong, you have to have the ego strength to survive that, and very few people do.
	Very few people do.
	Alright. Does the choice of self-medication indicate a specific kind of trauma or unfulfilled need, or anything goes in this regard?
	Yeah, so there are some addictions that tend to isolate, and there are some addictions which tend to be more social, and so I think we can figure those out pretty simply, right?
	Yeah, you can look at particular kinds of trauma and see how it's going to come out.
	Of course, people who have been sexually abused will often be hypersexual, and that's one of the signs and so on.
	So you can see patterns between how people self-medicate and what kind of trauma occurred.
	Somebody says, I hope to live long enough to see the day people have heated debates about which order to read Steph's books in.
	I don't think you will.
	I certainly won't. I don't think that you will.
	Generally, a philosopher has to wait 100 to 200 years to be judged even remotely objectively.
	But the thing is too, like I've been right about so much, basic principles lead you to accurate conclusions, right?
	I've been right about so much that it's just going to take a while for that credibility to sink into people and say, well, how can it be so bad if he was right about so much?
	Somebody says, I asked if verbal reasoning is a bottleneck because some people are more motivated by emotions and logical arguments.
	I've seen this many times and it's made me pessimistic in the idea of language and reasoning breaking through some emotional barriers and That people have, or perhaps conceptual limitations.
	People are not in a state of freedom and they're raised generally very badly.
	I believe that children are raised worse now than they have been probably since the mid-industrial revolution.
	So you are looking at people who have some of the worst kinds of trauma, which is neglect.
	They don't even know it. You look at the sort of explosion of mental illness across the West and It's neglect for the most part.
	And most children would rather be beaten than neglected.
	And we know that because children act up to get their parents' attention even if their parents' attention is highly negative.
	Neglect is the most terrifying existential experience for a child outside of sexual abuse.
	And we have entire legions of neglected people who haven't even identified their malady and therefore it's easy to harness that and throw it into ideology.
	Ideology is a false connection, right?
	We both will believe in these false things and therefore we are connected, right?
	Which you're not connected. You can only connect with others in reality, in truth, in honesty, in virtue, in integrity.
	We can only meet each other in reality.
	We can't meet each other in fantasy anymore than I can invite you to a dinner party in my nightly dreams.
	And so when people are isolated through neglect, Then they're drawn to ideology because ideology gives proximity without connection.
	And that's all they're used to. They're around the daycare teachers, they're around teachers as a whole, they're around their peers, so they have proximity without connection.
	And ideology is proximity without connection.
	It's pretend proximity.
	Conformity is proximity without connection because you have to self-erase in order to be around people.
	So everything that's happening in the world at the moment is the effect of neglect.
	With the exception of sexual abuse which has been rampant since the absence of fathers in so many households.
	Mothers are wonderful.
	Mothers are not particularly good.
	Single mothers are not good at all in keeping sexual predators away from their children.
	So sexual abuse and neglect are the two things that are occurring in the world and all of the effects that you see in the world, just about all of them, are the result of sexual abuse and neglect.
	How do people develop ego strength?
	Maybe your next book. That is a very interesting idea.
	How do people develop ego strength?
	The only ego strength that is really going to keep you happy in life is when you are focused not upon conclusions but upon the process.
	On the process of thought, on the process of virtue, rather than the conclusion, the facts.
	Once you get addicted to the outcome and the answers, then you become rigid, and you have to defend those outcomes and those answers, and you can't go through the process, right?
	So you can see this all throughout the pandemic.
	People are like, but the conclusion is, whatever it is, safe and effective, this is the conclusion.
	Well, what's the process? Well, we don't know, but that's the conclusion.
	There was so much profit in that conclusion that that's where people went.
	So you have to have an ego strength that's based upon...
	An acceptance of being wrong.
	It's natural to be wrong.
	You're going to be wrong.
	And that means you have to be around people who aren't going to attack you for being wrong.
	Because there's vulnerability being wrong.
	And a lot of people, when you're vulnerable, they'll just punch you.
	Hell, right? You've got to be around people who respect you for admitting when you're wrong.
	And your ego strength is based upon being actually right, not just being defensive, not just defending a position that you've got ego strength invested in or ego weakness really invested in.
	Alright, it's a great, great concept though.
	Some spiritual gurus advocate for the development of ego strength through being able to distance oneself from the ego.
	What do you think? No, the way you develop ego strength is to distance yourself from bullying.
	Bullying will cripple your ego strength because it's painful to children in particular and therefore you'll abandon your ego in order to conform to avoid the pain of rejection, of ostracism, right?
	Rejection and ostracism are very painful for us because genetically it means the end of our line if we can't get a woman to mate with us or whatever, right?
	Anyone in the tribe to watch over us while we sleep or provide us food when we're injured or whatever, right?
	No, you don't distance yourself from the ego.
	You distance yourself from assholes.
	You distance yourself from bullies.
	And then your ego strength, right?
	You surround yourself with people who have more respect for you when you admit that you're wrong so that you can actually be right.
	We're interested in the process, not the conclusion, right?
	Somebody says, I think my fatal flaw might be self-doubt slash sabotage.
	How can I shake this off?
	I grew up with a real nasty, verbally abusive older brother.
	Do you think it could help to defoo the guy?
	This is the same person's difference.
	What are the differences between self-attack and self-criticism?
	Thanks for the show, Steph.
	So self-attack is you're wrong.
	Self-criticism is I want to be right.
	Self-criticism is you're wrong and you're bad and you're a failure and blah, blah, blah.
	The conclusion, right? Self-criticism is I want to be right, right?
	So you think of the GPS. The GPS, if you take a wrong turn or you don't turn when you're supposed to...
	It tells you recalculating and then tells you that that's criticizing your decision, but in order to get you to the right destination.
	Recalculating, make a U-turn, you miss the exit, as opposed to you're never going to get where you want, you're always going to fail.
	That doesn't help you get to your destination.
	Self-criticism is a revision of information in order to get you to the destination you want called truth or honor or virtue or whatever.
	Self-attack is, well, you just fucked up and you made a mistake and you're a bad person and blah, blah, blah.
	It doesn't get you anywhere.
	Self-criticism is necessary in order to get yourself where you want to go.
	Self-attack is just to hammer yourself.
	It's the difference between a surgery and stabbing, right?
	They've had some similar characteristics, but a surgery is there to help you get better, and stabbing is just there to maim or kill you.
	Somebody says, In 2017, I was in Greece, and I was walking between olive trees and listening to your podcast.
	Thank you for your work. How lovely.
	It's a country I've always wanted to go to.
	Hey, Steph, will you have live sessions on Telegram again?
	I like that format where we were speaking to you in real time.
	I like that format very much as well.
	I did a couple of Telegram sessions where nobody had anything really to say, and there's not really a tip scenario there.
	By the way, thank you for the people who are tipping me today.
	I really, really appreciate it. So, I will.
	I'll ask people if they do have stuff to talk about.
	But even in the past, I would ask people if they have stuff to talk about.
	Nobody would speak up and, you know.
	Then it's just kind of awkward, right?
	Because I'm not really getting that many type questions.
	I'm waiting for people to talk and then there's a lot of editing afterwards.
	So, all right. How do you feel about the state intervening by taking away people's children in cases of abuse?
	I think it's very important for society to intervene in cases of abuse.
	I would assume that a free market solution would be better.
	And you can read or listen to my novel, The Future, which is all subscribers here.
	You can listen to my novel called The Future for more on this.
	Let's see here. If the user of a free-to-use social media platform is the product, then are parents who let their kids use them basically selling their children out?
	Yeah, I'm not a big fan of social media for kids at all.
	Chat programs is fine, but yeah, social media as a whole for kids, that's pretty damn toxic.
	And it's not organic, right?
	I mean, it's not like TikTok is just neutral.
	It's got a particular goal, which is to program Western youth to failure.
	All right. Do you have any advice for dealing with anxiety?
	I've been taking major leaps to better myself.
	I'd be able to push through most of the anxieties, but sometimes the anxiety gets so bad, it's like my mind shuts down.
	I will eventually push through that too, though.
	Yeah, so who were you afraid of when you were younger?
	Right? So this is like the person who's like, I just self-attack.
	It's like, no, you don't. No, you don't.
	My daughter has been raised very positively, in a very healthy manner.
	She doesn't self-attack. She's self-critical at times, but she doesn't self-attack.
	Why would she? And we have this joke in my family.
	We're bad at handing things to each other.
	Half the time we hand one thing to another, it falls.
	It's just kind of funny, right?
	So, no. You don't self-attack.
	You don't have anxiety.
	You are frightened of people in the past.
	And there's things in the present that are triggering those memories in the past.
	You're frightened of people in the past, and there's things in the present.
	Like the guy who says he had a very bullying older brother...
	Why would you have a bully in your life?
	What I would do is I would work very hard to turn that person into a non-bully or at least get acknowledgement for past wrongs.
	And if that person didn't turn into a non-bully, they wouldn't be welcome in my life.
	Life is short, man. You're not going to get the time back that you spend being bullied.
	It's not magically coming back to you later.
	Oh, and by the way, I do really thank everyone because I know you're supporters as well.
	So the tips also mean a lot to me because I know you're already supporting me and I just thank you guys so much.
	That's just wonderful. Let's see here.
	What do you think about the concept of enlightenment and how is this both spiritual and non-material but also material in the epistemological process of systemically investigating the outside world to enlightening oneself?
	Is enlightenment both material and non-material in itself focus?
	I don't like the concept of enlightenment because enlightenment always means abandonment.
	I'm enlightened and you abandoned a lot of the struggles in the world that stands.
	It's a way of telling people that the best defense against an evil world is to dissociate yourself and float up into the ether and contemplate things without emotion.
	It's very convenient for the powers that be who want to do bad things if you dissociate and detach yourself from the world.
	Would you be interested in explaining the psychology of trolls?
	This is a very fascinating topic, especially with the recent troll flare-up in Free Domain Chat.
	I've had many messages from trolls and some apologies from trolls over the years, and the general thing is that trolls are avoiding suicide.
	Trolls are so full of self-hatred That they are generally avoiding suicide by attacking and bullying other people.
	In the same way that if you're drowning and you're panicking and someone's helping, you might just grab them and try and stuff them down so you don't drown.
	You don't have empathy in a state of existential life panic.
	And so they're just grabbing and trying to gain...
	They're so out of control in their lives.
	They're so hanging from a thread over the canyon of death that whatever they can do to sort of kick and bully and just to stay alive for one more day, one more week, it is generally the severe trolls, right?
	It is an avoidance of self-destruction and it's either them or you and, you know, in their minds, it's all unconscious, but in their minds, it is better...
	To verbally harm other people than to kill themselves.
	So it is a form of desperate suicide avoidance to be an extreme troll.
	Apparently, TikTok is capping screen time for minors to one hour a day in some countries.
	Well, that's just because they're facing bans, right?
	Of course, TikTok in China is all educational.
	TikTok in the West is all degenerate, right?
	How do you define success in your life?
	Love and work. Love through virtue and work to promote virtue.
	I like the little detail in the present of Ian closing the car door that Cassie opened.
	Very realistic. Women have trouble remembering to close doors.
	Well, okay, but she's also, her kid is freaking out in the back seat, so, you know, she's got priority, right?
	A plus one on the show dedicated to the psychology of trolls.
	Oh yeah, so people who email me saying, look, I'm really, really sorry.
	I ended up, I trolled you for a year, but I was just, I was on drugs.
	I was desperate. I was like, I was incredibly, I was cutting myself.
	Like, it's all just extreme desperation.
	And you think of the amount of bullying that gives people the skills to manipulate others, how much they've been bullied, how much they've been hollowed out, and they're trawling to just stay alive.
	It's really tragic.
	And I know that they're annoying and I know that not, but they can also be healthy.
	Like, can you recognize and not engage with people who are obviously negative and destructive, right?
	But no, it's a desperately sad situation.
	And of course, it's incredibly isolating, right?
	The only way that you can have any contact with people is to repel and harm them and undermine them and so on, right?
	And throw your weight around. It's an incredibly, it's a solipsistic, like we don't have any idea, any of us in this chat, we don't have a single clue what it's like to be that isolated, to be that alone, to view people as distant shadow puppets in the ether of nothingness, to be like an Hollow God in an empty universe to just be yourself alone on the planet, just poking at nuclear shadows and trying to get them to move.
	It is so unbelievably lonely to be a troll like that.
	It's just so isolated.
	It's like being desperately thirsty and having very little control over your arms, and every time you reach for a cup of water, you just knock it over and you can't drink.
	You're constantly reaching for these waters, right?
	Or like King Midas, touching everything turns to gold, you can't eat anything, you're starving to death.
	It's just appalling. All right.
	Have you heard of the...
	And this is also why trolls can't stop, right?
	They can't stop because the trolling is, to their mind, what's keeping them alive.
	Of course, it's killing them in the long run, but it's what keeps them alive, right?
	Have you heard of the Hegelian dialect?
	And how people use conflict to create change.
	This was mentioned in a podcast I was listening to but don't know much about it.
	Do you think we're being turned against each other so society can be reformed in the image of the ultra-powerful?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
	So, oh, it's really boring, Hegelianism.
	The thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
	So the thesis is capitalism.
	The antithesis is communism.
	The synthesis is democratic socialism, right?
	So... It's trying to use the Aristotelian mean in moral circumstances, which is not what the Aristotelian mean is for.
	The Aristotelian mean is like, well, too much, an excess of courage is foolhardy and it's going to get you killed.
	A deficiency of courage is cowardice.
	You're going to run away from every fight.
	So you need a balance, right? Too much anger and you're just abusive.
	Too little anger and you get pushed over.
	So you've got to have right anger at the right time, right?
	So it's...
	Aristotle never meant for it to be like strangling hobos.
	There's no mean of strangling hobos, right?
	So it's trying to get the Aristotelian mean, which is more of an aesthetic thing, and trying to apply it to morality, which it doesn't work at all.
	Morality is binary.
	It's black or white, good or evil, right?
	It's like saying, well...
	The thesis is healthy food.
	The antithesis is food that will poison and kill you.
	So the synthesis is food that just makes you desperately sick and might kill you.
	No. There's no middle ground in poison, murder, rape.
	It's just evil. It must be opposed.
	So, yeah, it's taking people's sense of balance, and we mostly work with the Aristotelian mean, right?
	I mean, I know I have obviously worked a lot with, tried to be courageous to the point where I can do good things in the world, but not so courageous to the point where you end up in a Bulgarian single-celled prison or something, right?
	So... I've tried to work with the Aristotelian mean.
	I think it's really, really important. You want to be interested in your kids, of course, but you don't want to be their sole source of social engagement because then they lack skills of meeting new people.
	So it's a lot of... The Aristotelian mean is where we kind of all live, and then people try and flip that to...
	which is where we have the most experience, and people try and flip that to morality so that they can corrupt you and corrupt their society as a whole.
	Alright, last question or two, and again, thanks you guys so much.
	Hit me with why, if it's okay, if I release this to general.
	I always want to ask that, because it's a supporter show, and if you guys don't want me to release this to the general population, I think there was some very useful stuff in here, but it is yours.
	Hi, Josh. If self-deception is responsible for our survival, how do we overcome it in order to find truth?
	Maybe people believe they are helping the world but engaging in self-deception.
	If self-deception is responsible for our survival...
	I'm not quite answering that.
	Somebody says, thanks for answering my question about anxiety, Steph.
	What you said makes a lot of sense.
	But it's also like I need to better myself to get away from toxic people who created the anxiety in me, which promotes the anxiety.
	Quite the negative feedback loop.
	Yeah, for sure. For sure.
	You can't heal the wound that you keep gouging.
	And you can't calm an autonomic nervous system response like anxiety by continually exposing yourself to that which makes you anxious.
	Right? You have to cease the stimuli in order to heal the effects.
	Death is just the antithesis of life.
	Is it? I don't think so.
	I think the antithesis of life is Non-living, like a rock, because death is an effect of life, and an effect can't be an antithesis, right?
	If you lift a ball up and let it go, is the falling the antithesis of lifting it up?
	No, it's the natural consequence of that, right?
	The antithesis of life to me would be, or maybe it's murder, like killing others or causing their death, would be the antithesis of life.
	Maybe inorganic material is the antithesis.
	I don't think death, like a shadow, is not the antithesis of something that blocks the sun.
	It's just part of it, right? And death is certainly part of life.
	I don't think it could be the antithesis myself.
	Alright, well thanks everyone so much.
	I really, really appreciate you dropping by today if you're hearing about this later.
	It's self-deception a philosophical benefit or to be avoided.
	Come on, you can't be asking me whether you should lie to yourself.
	No, I mean, there are times when you have to conform, but don't lie to yourself, right?
	There are times when you have to conform, but don't lie to yourself.
	Just say, I'm conforming because it's too dangerous not to.
	I'm censoring myself because it's too dangerous to speak out.
	That's fine. You do whatever you want as long as you're on.
	Like, outside of UPP violations, do whatever you want.
	Just be honest with yourself. All right.
	Thanks everyone so much. Have yourself a wonderful, wonderful afternoon.
	I will see you guys tomorrow night.
	Just a note, there won't be a show on the Wednesday the 15th.
	I have another engagement, and I'm just selfishly throwing you guys all to the wind, but I'll do an extra show another time.
	So I'll see you guys tomorrow night at 7pm, and hopefully Friday as well.
	Thank you guys so much for all of your support.
	Lots of love. Take care.

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