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March 11, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:37:48

WHY BOTHER BEING GOOD?

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	And here I had some questions from locals, which I will get into here while I wait for people.
	I'm going to just, yeah, if you've read my novel Just Poor, I had an original ending, which I'm just going to paste in Telegram here so you can check it out.
	I think. I mean, it's a lot of great writing, I think.
	And it was certainly stuff that I was wrestling with psychologically at the time.
	But let me just put that in there.
	You can get that alternate ending.
	I actually found it. You know, you ever just look for things like, oh, I wonder what's in my old files.
	And it's like, oh my gosh, I completely forgot about this.
	Like the original ending of Jasper.
	So, yeah, it's a little bit one for the archives if you want it.
	So let me just get to the questions, and again, if you have anything you want to ask, I'm all ears.
	Actually, I'm mostly all forehead, but for you today, I will be all ears.
	And let me get to the questions here.
	So yeah, if you're joining me over on Locals, you will just be able to hear me.
	That doesn't seem to be able to do system audio, which I thought it did, but that must have been some other app.
	All right. So let me get to your questions here.
	And how are you guys doing today?
	Nice to chat with you in the middle of the day.
	I can't do a show tonight.
	I have another engagement.
	So I've heard I can't do a show tonight, but I'm sure I'll catch you on the weekend.
	All right. So questions are, I want to cease acting a victim.
	Just because I can hear myself in my own headphones.
	Not hear myself, but it's kind of clamped on the old skull.
	I'll take those off for now. Somebody said, I want to cease acting a victim.
	How do I achieve this as I face tax and regulatory aggression and 1,001 other aggressions that state functionaries will escalate against me if I do the peaceful things that I'd like?
	Should I want other things?
	How do I choose to want only that which I judge feasible?
	All my attempts to answer to this feel superficial, failing to reach down into the heart of the matter.
	Right, right.
	So, yeah, this is a big thing.
	It's a big question that you have there.
	And I happen to have been born, I suppose, in a bit of a glorious time.
	The glorious time...
	I was growing up in the 70s and 80s.
	I mean, the 70s were a nihilistic cesspit of hypersexuality and so on.
	The 80s had a kind of coolness to them, though.
	I mean, honestly, after school, I mean, I almost never did any homework.
	Just in school, I'm sure that's not the most uncommon thing around.
	I almost never did any homework.
	And what I would do, I mean, I had jobs from the age of 10 onwards, but, you know, weekends and so on, I'd hang around with friends.
	We'd get on our bikes of 12 different colors that we'd all rescued from garbage heaps and put together on our own.
	We'd just bike around.
	We'd bike to places. We'd bike to malls.
	We would bike to the woods, bike through the woods.
	We'd set up jumps. We would just do funky, cool stuff.
	Now, in the 90s, that all came crashing down.
	Like, Whether it was a function of increased diversity or the media making parents frightened.
	But the fear factor of parents in the 90s just kicked wildly in.
	And you just couldn't go out on your own for the most part.
	Most kids just stayed home. Could have been video gaming got better.
	I don't know. But I mean, video games were around when I was a kid.
	I had a little Atari 800 with 8K of RAM, which I then up to 40K of RAM. My God, it was a beast.
	So I grew up with the sort of glorious anarchy of a combination of free time, neighborhood mobility, which was all bike-based, and, you know, some bus stuff, but mostly bike-based.
	I had free time, neighborhood mobility, and a neighborhood full of kids that were all interesting to hang out with.
	So... It was really a paradise, and I don't know that people can really kind of grasp.
	Like, I remember when I was in the business world, just long before I had kids, I was in the business world, and I was good friends with another manager, and we went for lunch all the time, and he introduced me to Argentinian food, which is cool.
	But I remember him saying to me, he said, you know, when I was a kid, you just hung out.
	And he said, now, like anytime my kids want to go anywhere, it's 50 bucks, 75 bucks, 40 bucks, 100 bucks.
	Because nobody just, it's not like just go out and play, go out on your bike, figure something out, and, you know, just be home when the streetlights come on.
	Or my mom had a big cowbell she used to ring to call me up for dinner, like any other lifestyle.
	And he said, yeah, now, every place to you, it's got to be Chuck E. Cheese, it's got to be the movie, it's got to be the mall, it's got to be an arcade, it's got to be something that's just, you drive them there, you spend your 50 bucks, and you bring them home.
	It was incomprehensible to me when I was a kid.
	I mean, I remember my friends and I, we'd, like, look under the couch cushions and so on, see if we could come up for, like, 30 pence or 30 cents, I guess, for a dented can of beans, which we would then cook in the woods and share around.
	Like, if you could get pork, that was super special.
	I don't want to get all kinds of John Steinbeck on you, I mean...
	But it was a childhood poor in resources but rich in play.
	And some of it was ridiculously dangerous.
	That was not good at all.
	We used to cross giant train tracks.
	Train track bridges was hundreds of feet down and that was just retarded and very dangerous.
	And I think back with an occasional body goosebump chill of the risks that we took.
	But... There was a real gloriousness to that.
	And then, you know, what happened was, you know, friends of mine, they moved to the suburbs, right?
	And they'd say, it's what's called a bedroom community.
	So a bedroom community is people only sleep there.
	So when you had little kids, toddlers, babies, and so on, the parents would get up, they'd take their kids to daycare, they'd be gone at work all day, they'd pick their kids up from daycare, and then they'd be home by 6 or 6.30, and then they'd have to have dinner, and then they'd have to clean up, and then, you know, it's 8 o'clock, And then it's bath time.
	And you just never go out.
	You never go out. I mean, honestly, I know this sounds ridiculous.
	I remember roaming my neighborhood at the age of four.
	I remember roaming the neighborhood at the age of four.
	I remember roaming London at the age of five and six.
	I know it's because before I went to boarding school, I used to just get a handful of pennies.
	I think it was three pence to get on the bus.
	I used to go down to the War Museum.
	I used to go down to the Natural History Museum with friends.
	We just roamed, man. We just roamed.
	And that, in the 90s, that all came crashing down.
	Whether it's absence of fathers and, you know, women tend to be, not my mom, all the moms of my friends, but women tend to be a little bit more nervous about child danger.
	And, of course, when you have fewer kids, right?
	I mean, that's going to be the case.
	So, I grew up in a real paradise.
	Listen, honestly, at least once a week, if you're a man...
	It's really important to be grateful for where you are in history, I think.
	So, think of men throughout history, And think of the weird time dodge that you've had as a man where you didn't get drafted.
	You didn't get yanked to go and fight in some stupid war of inter-familial aggression, like the First World War was a war between mostly related families who ruled Europe.
	Some banker's crap, some fiat currency cover-up debt crap, some absolute, some paint the world the color of your underwear, kind of imperialistic garbage.
	People have just had to flee all of this stuff.
	You're not born in a time of plague or starvation or invasion for the most part in the West, right?
	So I do think about, you know, my...
	I write about this in my novel almost.
	In my father's family, you know, we were aristocrats until my grandfather.
	We were aristocrats. And then he, my understanding is he drank a lot and sold off the land to feed his epic debauchery and so on.
	So we were landowning aristocrats, came over with William the Conqueror from France in 1066, Battle of Hastings, which is why I have a French name.
	And my great-grandfather's generation, I mean, First World War, I mean, they almost got wiped out to a man.
	Almost got wiped out to a man.
	I mean, it was a real Saving Private Ryan scenario just in terms of the number of men who just got wiped out in the trenches.
	Didn't have to do that. Didn't get drafted into the Second World War.
	Wasn't around for Vietnam.
	Wasn't around for Korea. Wasn't around for all of this other stuff.
	And Vietnam just ended the draft because the army was falling apart.
	I mean, they ran out of people.
	It was called McNamara's morons, right?
	People with very low IQs were drafted into the military and they ended up just absolutely catastrophic.
	I mean, absolutely catastrophic as you can imagine, right?
	They forgot passwords. They thought it was funny to roll grenades, like live grenades into tents.
	I mean, just it was a complete disaster.
	So... Of course, there is that sense of death by a thousand mosquito bites, right?
	It's not one vampire, it's just mosquitoes, right?
	And, you know, we're like David Bowie in Merry Christmas, Mr.
	Lawrence, right? Just buried up to our neck with sandflies and eyeballs.
	I get all of that, but it's really important to be grateful.
	I think of the historical twists and turns that have resulted in you, as a man, not being drafted.
	Look what's happening in Russia, look what's happening in Ukraine.
	You, as a man, just not being drafted.
	And going to fight where the best case scenario is you come back severely traumatized even if you're physically not damaged, right?
	Your mental state is messed up and your entire neurological system has been rewired to be usually in a state of constant low-grade panic.
	Shortens your lifespan, right?
	So I get all of that.
	Most people throughout history have been hiding and flying from the expansions of oligarchical power.
	This is what most of history is.
	This is what America was founded on, was people fleeing oligarchical power and wars and famine and all of that, and plague.
	So, I know it's tough.
	I know that the arc is not bending towards a better place.
	But, I mean, you name me a time that you'd rather be alive in human history.
	You name me a time when you would rather be alive in human history.
	If you had teeth problems, like I had a tooth that was ankylosed, it was sort of, the tooth was still fused to the bone.
	I was able to get that dealt with, with painkillers and, you know, relatively...
	I've got a bit of a droop on my lips, but, I mean, that was dealt with relatively pain, painlessly, could have killed me a hundred years ago, right?
	Probably would have. So, I get, you know, you can look at the negatives in life, but I'll tell you, in most of history, I mean, I think for most of history...
	The extraordinary, to me, very common sense but unusual thinking approach that I have to the world would have just vanished in history.
	Would have just vanished in history.
	I mean, I was recognized in undergrad and to some degree in grad school as one of the most talented people who'd ever come through there, but people just avoided giving me any kind of support because what I was talking about...
	I mean, I was saying this in a call-in show the other day, like, my whole life, like, since I was a kid, I've just been saying to me what are, to me, obvious and non-controversial things, and everybody's just been losing their shit on a continual basis.
	It's like it happened long before...
	I got into. Like, when I was a little kid, some kid was sneering in my face about, you know, his West Ham is the best football team and your Crystal Palace team sucks.
	And I honestly, I know this sounds precocious and all, but I remember as a kid, not just thinking it, but saying to him, you're just born there.
	I'm just born here. Like, it's not your team.
	It's just an accident, right?
	It's nothing. Very true, right?
	I remember when I was in boarding school, every Saturday I would get a buzz cut because I was never allowed to enjoy hair apparently apart from six months when I was 17.
	But when I was a kid in boarding school, I would get a buzz cut every Saturday and they would say, you have to write to your parents.
	And I would write a separate letter for my mother and a separate letter for my father.
	And for my mother I wrote, dear mom.
	And for my father I wrote, dear first name.
	People got really mad at me.
	Like, he's your father. It's like, no, he's my ex-father.
	He's my mother's ex-husband and he's my ex-father because he's moved to Africa and I'm in England.
	So he doesn't parent me.
	To me, father was someone who fathers you, someone who parents you.
	It's not sperm donor. It's not a guy who impregnated your mother and then couldn't have got further away from you than if he drilled directly underneath you to the other side of the world.
	I mean, the only place he could have got further away from me is on the space station, which didn't exist back then, right, in the early 70s.
	So, just saying basic and obvious things, and people would just lose their shit all the time.
	I just say basic and obvious things that aren't particularly controversial to me.
	I don't know why. It's not autistic or anything like that.
	I don't fundamentally know why.
	I mean, certainly when I was a kid, I didn't really understand why people would just get mad at blindingly obvious things, right?
	But yeah, I mean, insanity is the general rule of mankind.
	Madness and hostility to truth, hostility to reason.
	People make so much money off lies that telling the truth is like burning a farmer's crops in the fall, right?
	It panics and lashes out, right?
	Lies are extraordinarily profitable.
	So I get this.
	Are you a victim? Okay, tell me what other time would you rather have been alive in history?
	What other time? And, I mean, you could certainly think of some times where there's pluses, but there are also minuses to those times as well.
	So, would you rather have...
	I mean for me the fact that I came to my intellectual powers at a time when a global communications
	medium like this was being developed and I was one of the first people to seize upon
	it and I saw the, I mean this I can take very honorably, in the 90s I was talking about
	podcasting long before it was ever a thing and video vlogging and video casting and all of that
	long before it was a thing. I saw immediately like if I could talk to the world directly boom
	no gatekeepers man I could flick some serious searchlights deep into the retinas of the species
	which I did and I'm very happy that I did.
	I'm very proud that I did. And thank you again for your support in making it possible for me to do this.
	So, yeah, I get, you know, things are not looking great and so on.
	But you have also mobility for the most part, right?
	I mean, you have mobility.
	You can find ways to land in a place in the world where things will be freer.
	But... Try not to look at only the negatives of your environment because there are huge numbers, a huge amount of positives as well.
	It's really, really important. Alright, let me just check in here.
	Again, if you want to have a chat, just raise your hand.
	Is there something that can be done about a father who regrets being one, which translates into absent-mindedness and a lack of interaction with the child?
	I just saw some studies that up to 17% of people regret being a parent.
	What can make parenting more positive?
	Why are there so many people who seem to hate their kids?
	Is it also all the entertainment we have nowadays?
	I'm very sorry. That you have that experience.
	I'm very sorry. And thank you.
	By the way, at freedomand.locals.com on the live stream, you can tip me, and I very much appreciate that.
	I'm going to resist.
	I'm a little incandescent over there on Locals because I had to reset all my camera settings from the past, so I will avoid having to do all of that.
	I will let that go because going down the hole of adjusting your camera settings is not my major skill.
	So, and I will get to the questions in Locals That Are Live in a second, but...
	Yeah, a father who regrets being one.
	Up to 17% of people regret being a parent.
	Well, up to 17% of people admit to regretting being a parent.
	What can make parenting more positive?
	Why are there so many people who seem to hate their kids?
	Um... So, a lot of people are very empty, and it's not emptiness like an absence, it's emptiness like a black hole, like a vacuum.
	They're staggering through life, and they feel this desperate need to be propped up, to be reassured, to be praised, to be supported, and all the things they didn't get as a child.
	Childhood is supposed to be a time when you're filled up with enough resources to last you for the occasional deserts of adulthood.
	If you're going hiking, you go to the store and you fill up your backpack with everything you need for the hike.
	Childhood is supposed to be filling you up to give you the resources so that you can survive the inevitable buffets and tragedies and deserts of resources that life has.
	Betrayals and corruption in the part of others and Unjust firings from your job.
	These things are going to happen, right?
	And you're supposed to be filled up as a child with enough resources to get through the hike called life.
	Now, I would say most people in the world emerge into adulthood broken, burnt, barred and scarred.
	Right? Broken, burnt, barred and scarred.
	Barred means kind of in a prison, right?
	And so they stagger.
	So imagine, you're supposed to go on this long hike, some Appalachian Trail hike, and you've got nothing.
	Well, what are you going to have to do?
	Well, you're going to have to try and find some food to eat along the way, but you don't really know how to hunt.
	So what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to try and get resources from other hikers.
	From the people who have resources, you are going to be staggering from place to place, trying to ingratiate yourself, trying to make friends, maybe bullying, but you absolutely need those resources and you can only get them from other people.
	And this is why it's a very dangerous thing to have energy and positivity and resources in this life.
	Because people will just fasten upon you, right?
	The vampire stories, the need brains, zombie stories, they're all very real.
	Very real. So, childhood is supposed to fill you up with resources.
	Of course, if you're loved as a child, if you're loved as a child, Then you take that love with you throughout life.
	You take that love with you throughout life.
	I was saying to a guy who's in the creative fields, he's a music producer, a music creator, and he says, you know, how do I handle criticism and so on?
	Well, you work at things until you're so positive that they're great that anybody who fundamentally criticizes you is just plain wrong.
	Just plain wrong. So, that doesn't mean you can't take criticism, but it means anybody who just hates your work is just plain wrong or weird or whatever.
	And that's the way I did it. I took lots of criticism from writing tutors and coaches throughout my life.
	Wonderful stuff. On a fairly regular basis, people would literally viscerally loathe my work.
	Well, you've seen this with philosophy. I get a lot of kudos and a lot of hatred.
	And I know what I do is honorable with good intent that I want to make the world a better place and cool tensions between various groups.
	And, you know, we can only meet in reality and peace and reason and speech.
	So I know that the honorability and the honor and the dignity and the virtue of what I'm doing is without question for me.
	It doesn't mean I'm perfect, of course, but it means that I will always adjust to that standard.
	Which means that everybody who hates me is just kind of weird.
	It's just kind of weird, right? There's nothing to hate.
	I want the best for the world and for every group and every race and every gender.
	I want the best for everyone, but not to the point where I will deny reality or truth or facts or reason and evidence because you can't get the best by denying reality.
	You can only get immediate relief from negative stimuli.
	And this sort of reverse cognitive behavioral therapy that's going on in universities these days where instead of saying, Is my magical thinking unrealistic?
	It's now, well, words are deeds.
	The whole point of CBT is to dissociate words from deeds, at least in my interpretation or opinion, to say that just because I have a negative thought about something doesn't mean that that thing is actually negative.
	The thought is not the deed.
	The thought is not reality. And now it's like, well, if you feel angry, if you feel upset, you're being aggressed against, and you have the right to then use aggression and violence on people.
	This is the opposite of...
	Anything rational.
	So, if you are a parent, you have a kid, and you are short on resources yourself, because imagine you're short on resources, you're hungry, your belly is hollow, your backpack is empty, and now you have to carry someone as well.
	Well, that's exhausting.
	That's debilitating. You don't have any resources.
	You don't have any energy.
	You're not overflowing with happiness or positivity or love.
	You've not been filled up as a kid.
	You're on this endless hike.
	You're just catching stuff from other people.
	I remember when I was a kid, my mom would go away for a week or two in pursuit of some guy.
	She'd leave me with like 20 bucks and I'd run out of money and I would have no food.
	And I would, what would I do?
	I would go to friends' places and I'd be really friendly and charming to the parents in the hopes that I would get to stay for dinner.
	And then I would just eat like Pac-Man, right?
	Gotta fill up.
	Who knows when you're going to eat again, right?
	So, I mean, I know what this is like when you just don't have, even the just calorie resources, you don't have food resources.
	So... Imagine you're on this endless hike.
	You don't have any food.
	You don't have any water. It's dangerous to drink stuff.
	What are you going to do? Take a straw to the moose tracks?
	And now, when you're hungry, when you're tired, when you don't have enough to feed yourself, now you have to carry a baby.
	It's really stressful, right?
	You don't have any resources.
	And I'm not just talking money.
	I'm talking emotional resources.
	You don't have any joy, any positivity.
	You can't love because you're stressed.
	And I mean, there are some arguments that stress lowers intelligence or at least performance on certain cognitive tests.
	So instead of, like, if you have enough resources, you're like, oh, I've got a baby, now I can show this baby, this toddler, the world, and I can explore the world with my child, and it's delightful, I'm going to play with my child.
	It's like, I don't have enough to eat myself, I'm barely able to get by, I'm tired, my feet hurt, my legs hurt, my hips hurt, and now I've got to carry a baby, and that baby's crying.
	And because you don't have the food to feed the baby, you get angry at yourself and then at the baby or vice versa because the baby is crying and you don't have enough food to feed it.
	It's all emotional. I'm talking about emotional stuff, right?
	Why do you dislike your children?
	Why did my mom scream in the middle of the night?
	I effing hated this kid.
	Why? Nothing to do with me.
	I was a pretty nice kid.
	I had lots of good friends and was very popular.
	So I was a pretty nice kid.
	I got obviously pretty enraged in my teenage years because the injustice became pretty clear to me that was occurring.
	Because she was out of resources, and also I was in the way of her getting a man, right?
	This is something that's important as well.
	If you don't love your partner, you will resent your children.
	If you're a woman and you don't love your husband, you don't love your boyfriend, then you will resent the offspring.
	The offspring reminds you of the person you don't love.
	Let's say that you don't love your husband and you stay married.
	Well, you have to stay married because as a single mom, you can't get any decent guys.
	If you're a single mom, your children, particularly your sons, remind you of the guy who, quote, betrayed you.
	He was a mean guy, he was a terrible guy and abandoned you or whatever, and you're mad at him, take it out on the kids.
	Also, you're mad at the kids because the kids are in the way of you getting a better guy.
	Right? Because you'll go date some guy, he'll find out you have two kids, and he might have sex with you, but he's not going to marry you, not going to wife you up, right?
	For the most part. It happens occasionally, but...
	And even if you do get someone to marry you when you've got a couple of kids, you can't have much respect for him because he's so desperate he's willing to raise another man's kids and be a stepdad and all that, right?
	So... People who just don't have resources.
	And the kids are not a positive to their life but a negative.
	In the same way that if somebody was saying, you have to hike for 5,000...
	Too much, right?
	You have to hike for 1,000 kilometers or 1,000 miles.
	And you can either have a toddler with you or not.
	Well, and you won't have enough food.
	But you'd say, well, I know it would be cruel, it would be unfair to have the toddler.
	It would be way too stressful and I'd have to carry the toddler, which would increase my calorie consumption.
	Plus I have to have extra calories for the kid and I don't even know where I'm going to get these calories for.
	So you end up really, really mad at your kids.
	They're a source of stress, not of joy, not of pleasure.
	Your kids are a source of stress.
	Which is why you've got to do the self-work before you have the kids.
	And this to me has a lot to do with, I'm sure there's hormonal stuff as well, just my amateur, non-medical opinion.
	But I think this has a lot to do with what they call postpartum depression as well.
	Is if you have been hollowed out as a person, if you have not been given the resources, you have a kid, you now have to live for someone else when no one has ever lived for you.
	This is one of the fundamental problems that happens with people who are parents, become parents.
	You now have to live for someone else when no one...
	Has ever lived for you.
	You don't know what it's like. Like, if your parents live for you, which means that you as a child are the primary focus of your parents' time, effort, and energies.
	And this goes on, by the way.
	I mean, I've been a stay-at-home dad for 14 plus years now.
	This goes on for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time.
	You know what they say?
	The years are short, but the days can be long.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, it goes on for a long time.
	Especially if you have, I mean, only one kid, right?
	People say, oh, if you had two kids, it'd be tougher.
	It's like, no, no, no, one kid can be tougher because one kid can't play with another kid, so they're always playing with you, right?
	Now, I found it great for the most part.
	I loved it. It's what I wanted, and I would have wanted more.
	But if you don't have anything to give your kids because you weren't given anything as a kid, then your kids are...
	Asking for things that it's very painful for you to admit that you just don't have.
	Your kids are asking for things that are totally legitimate.
	Give me time, give me love, give me attention, give me positivity, give me encouragement, give me interaction.
	Show me you love having me around.
	But you're full of fear, hostility, bitterness, anxiety.
	Horror, anger, confusion.
	And you can't give to your children what they legitimately deserve.
	And it's too late to do the self-work when the child is already there.
	Listen, it's worth doing it, for sure, because you can help down the road.
	But by the time the child is there, if you have significant internal conflicts and issues and problems and you're depressed or anxious, it's pretty tough to solve it on the fly.
	Like, you can fix a plane, but you can't fix a plane that's taken off very easily, right?
	You're out there on the wing, right?
	There's... Flapping hamster cheeks from the wind.
	So, they don't hate the kids.
	My mother didn't hate me.
	My father wasn't indifferent to me.
	My family didn't dislike me.
	It had nothing to do with me.
	Nothing to do with you.
	They're people who didn't do the work they needed to do to fill their tank before going on a road trip, to fill their backpack before going on a very, very long hike.
	And so they took you along on this hike.
	They're hungry. You're hungry.
	You need food. Right?
	I mean, I remember when I was a kid, when I was a kid in the basement of the apartment building that I lived in, the block of flats I lived in in London, I found this massive, somebody was, I mean, it must have been some hoarder, like sort of thinking back at it now, it must have been some hoarder that had thrown all this stuff out.
	It's a massive cube of Reader's Digest and Reader's Digest's condensed books.
	And I spent the whole afternoon just cutting those up to my room.
	And I read Reader's Digest enormously as a kid.
	Humor in uniform, laughter the best medicine, drama in real life I found very exciting and quite inspiring a lot of times, that kind of physical courage.
	And I read that stuff voraciously.
	It taught me actually quite a bit about life as a whole, and it got me sort of inspired.
	And in one of the books, there was a story, I can't remember the title of it, Where the mother has hungry children.
	And the children say, and she's broke, she's got nothing, cupboard is bare.
	And the mother says, the kids say, we're hungry, we're hungry.
	And the mother says, well, just eat a congry.
	K-U-N-G-R-Y. Eat a congry.
	And she would snap at them.
	Just eat a congry. Go eat a congry.
	And of course, what's a congry?
	It's what you eat when you're hungry, right?
	It's a made up word, right?
	She's snapping at them because she can't feed them.
	She's snapping at them because she can't feed them.
	Why can't she feed them? Because the man's not around.
	The father of the children is not around.
	So she's snapping at the kids because she can't feed them.
	And that's just food. Emotionally, it's really not about the food, right?
	I mean, it's the fact that she's snapping at them that's the real starvation, not the fact that there's no food.
	So they don't hate their kids.
	They don't regret being a parent.
	They are in a situation where they have incurred a debt.
	Voluntarily they have incurred a large debt and they have no money.
	They have no money. I remember when I used to be an extra in movies and music videos and so on to make money as a teenager.
	And I had a friend I met there which we hung out for some time.
	He was heavily in debt.
	Heavily in debt. He couldn't pay.
	So what would happen is when you'd call him, you'd have to call him, let the phone ring once, hang up, call him, let the phone ring twice, hang up, then call him back.
	Then he'd pick up because only to his friends did he give this 123 code of how to call him.
	And, you know, he was like, he was angry at the people who wanted their money.
	I understand that. I mean, it's frightening and, you know, it can be difficult and, you know, can have legal consequences and so on, right?
	So he was mad at the people he owed money to.
	He voluntarily had incurred this debt, and now he was mad at the people who wanted the money.
	So it's the same thing with parenting, right?
	Except you can't hide from your kids, right?
	Except in distraction or, I guess, avoidance or dissociation.
	So, you've incurred a debt, which is you owe your kids so much.
	You owe your kids so much.
	That is great. If you have the resources, it's great joy doing it.
	So I'm so glad I did the work before I got married.
	Well, I wouldn't have gotten married if I hadn't done the work and I wouldn't be a good parent if I hadn't done the
	work.
	You can't fix that in your parents.
	.
	You can't fix that in your parents, right?
	You can't fill your parents up.
	You can't. Any more than if you're a five-year-old and there's no food around, right?
	There's no game, there's no berries, there's no nuts, there's no truffles, there's no nothing, right?
	Nothing to eat for miles and miles around.
	Your parents are beside themselves because they can't get any food.
	Can you go hunting when you're five and get food?
	Nope. Can you go hunting when you're ten and get food if there's none for miles around?
	Nope. Fifteen?
	Nope. Well, I mean, when you get older, you can move to where the food is But you can't fill up the empty hearts of your parents.
	You didn't hollow them out.
	And you're in a position of needing.
	Trying to heal your parents is like trying to breastfeed yourself as a baby.
	It doesn't work.
	It's not your fault. It may not be entirely their fault either.
	I mean, the trauma that my mother went through in the Second World War is unimaginable.
	Unimaginable. And so it's not her fault she was born in Germany in the 1930s.
	It's not her fault. And I don't know if there's so much trauma that you can't be fixed.
	Can you be broken beyond repair?
	It certainly is a possibility.
	It does seem to be a possibility. I err on the side of free will almost always, but I don't know if the studies are available.
	The people who've gone through, say, war...
	Rape, starvation, seeing people blown up all around them, can they be healed?
	When they're children, like if they go through this as children in their formative years, can they be healed?
	Don't know. I have doubts.
	I have doubts. I mean, we say this around criminals, right?
	I mean, certain forms of criminality just, I mean, the recidivism rate is huge.
	I mean, even before the Defund the police stuff.
	The recidivism rates were, I think, well north of 80% and so on, right?
	People who prey on children can't fix them.
	If it's your father who regrets being one and dissociates and doesn't interact with you, I mean, obviously he's missing out on one of the greatest joys that exists in life, which is the creation and nurturing of a sovereign human mind.
	The most incredible, powerful, the people who think that dogs and cats, I don't know, it's just bizarre to me, some kind of weird substitute, right?
	Pets out of children as porn is to sex.
	So, and again, I'm a big fan of pets.
	We have our ducks. But pets are for children and for labor.
	I mean, if you have a working farm, if you need a seeing-eye dog and so on, yeah, pets are fantastic.
	You get your dogs to herd your sheep and the cats to catch the rodents and so on, right?
	Fantastic. And kids, it's great for kids to have pets.
	But yeah, way too many people substitute pets for actual human interaction, and I think that's really tragic.
	So, again, just one of these statements that I feel is self-evident, but just people...
	I don't know, it's funny, you know?
	And it's funny, the people who lose their shit when I say stuff that I feel is pretty self-evident, pretty obvious, love pets, think they're great.
	I had pets as a kid. My daughter has her pets.
	I think they're just wonderful. But if anybody who doesn't see that there's something wrong with a 45-year-old woman thinking that having a dog is the same as having a child, that's just deeply disturbed.
	Like I saw this video on the internet the other day.
	Maybe I'll do a little video on it.
	And this woman was like, Oh, I'm crying because I'm 40 and I don't have any children.
	And she was wiping her tears with four $20 bills.
	She was wiping her tears with an expensive handbag.
	And then she was wiping her tears with the ear of her dog, who struck me as more of a hostage in this situation.
	But yeah, anybody who thinks that $80 is better than children, that a purse is better than children, and that having a dog is better than a human child.
	You know, the numbers are not looking good these days, right?
	As a whole, it's brutal.
	Um... 50% of the women who are childless at 30 will never have children.
	And 90% of them will regret it bitterly.
	50% of the women single at 30 will never have children, statistically.
	Oh jeez, my god.
	So no, it's not the entertainment.
	It's the lack of work that people do in order to try and...
	It's a lack of work that people do to resolve their childhood issues before having children.
	And they end up being raised as they were raised, which is all just desperately beyond tragic.
	Let's see here. I'm a 90s kid, says someone.
	All I did after school was homework.
	Yeah, I'm sorry, man.
	I was a ninja judo homework dodger.
	I was a ninja... Dodger of homeschool.
	I was like Matrix with the bullets, like the Keanu Reeves of the Neo, the one.
	I just dodged. I did absolute bare minimum.
	Now, some stuff I love to do, like I love to read, and I remember I did an essay on the Pink Floyd song, The Trial, from The Wall.
	I did a whole essay on that, and the teacher thought it was so great that she asked to actually hear the song, which I then put on a tape recorder for her and all of that.
	So I did...
	I love it. I even took, when I was in grade 13, I did so well in English, as you could imagine, right?
	Language is sort of my specialty.
	I did so well in English, they just were going to let me graduate, and I'm like, no, let me take the exam.
	It's good practice. I'll take the exam.
	And I took the exam voluntarily, and I've always loved that.
	So when it was stuff that I found value in doing and liked and so on, but I, you know, homework is mostly busy work, and homework has almost nothing to do with how well you do in life and in particular fields as a whole, right?
	Because if you like something enough to make it your job, then you'll do it voluntarily.
	And if you don't like something, it'll never be part of your job, right?
	Like, you know, I've said these jokes before, but do you have a guidance counselor?
	Do you have a guidance counselor in school, right?
	Do you have a guidance counselor? And it's like, so you're going to give me career advice?
	And the guidance counselor had the crappiest office in the whole school.
	It was always like behind the cafeteria, around the corner, and you could usually hear the thrum-hulson pumping of the boiler, no windows, and the like cheesy posters on the wall.
	It's like, if you drop math, here are all the professions you can't do.
	And it's like, yeah, I don't want to do any of those professions.
	Oh, I can't be a... Tax accountants, oh boy.
	But I remember the guy sitting across from me, like, you know, if effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. This is what I always, if effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. Because everybody recognized that I was smart, but I put the work in.
	And it was never like, what can we do to motivate you more, right?
	It was always like, well, the problem is you're not motivated.
	It's like, you know, you guys are creating the entire environment.
	You're in charge of the entire environment, and I'm not motivated?
	But anyway, I just remember sitting across from the...
	I still remember what he looked like.
	Sitting across from the guidance counselor.
	Basically thinking, why would I take career advice from a guy who ended up in a windowless room next to a boiler?
	Why? Why? Why?
	No. It's no credibility.
	No credibility. All right.
	Let's see here. I do suspect we both know that a large part of people, if not most, own pets as substitute for children they don't have, though.
	Ah, yes. Ah, yes, well, but if they didn't have kids for whatever reason, maybe they even made mistakes and so on, why should you deny them the comfort of children?
	Of pets. Of course.
	I mean, I'm a voluntarist.
	Of course people can own whatever pets they can take care of and aren't cruel to.
	I mean, that's a private property issue.
	Anybody can own anything.
	When I say that women's makeup is designed to capture their faces at the moment of orgasm in order to manipulate men in their environment, which is true, flushed cheeks, red lips, it's an old face.
	Makeup is an orgasm face.
	Am I saying that women shouldn't wear makeup?
	No. Do whatever you want. Just know we're onto you.
	That's all. Do whatever you want.
	You can have pets.
	Just don't tell me that It's better than kids, that's all.
	Don't tell me that it's not a really sad substitute for actually having children.
	Do whatever you want. Wear makeup.
	You can actually make an O face in a business meeting for whatever.
	Make an O sounds in a business meeting.
	When Harry Met Sary style.
	Do whatever you want. But we just need to tell the truth about things, that's all.
	Tell the truth. Tell the truth.
	Just know what it is. Somebody says, oh man, I avoided homework all the time.
	Math and science were easy for me, so I could rip through those, but English homework was not often fun for me.
	Yes, I mean, I love to read and I love to write, so yeah, but when it came to math, I still remember once or twice that I would actually do the math homework during the day.
	And yeah, without a doubt, it was more pleasant in the math class, not sitting there going, please don't call on me, so I had to go up and say, you know, it was always the same nonsense.
	They'd say, go and show your work on the board.
	You'd go up there, you'd work through some stuff, and you'd say, oh, well, here's where I got stuck.
	I said, well, didn't you ask your parents for help?
	I'm like, oh, my mom was working.
	Whatever you just say, right? And then they just sent me through it and, you know, you just muddled through and, you know, I could get 60% in math, usually fine.
	And, yeah, I just didn't want to do it.
	I knew I wasn't going to be a math teacher.
	I knew I wasn't going to be a math guy.
	I'm good enough at math to get by, to do things, to graph things, to do percentages, and I'm fine with math.
	And if I need to figure out something to do with math, I'll figure it out.
	But math is a need-based thing.
	And I was also aware that if I don't like something, then learning it is going to be in one ear and out the other.
	And statistically, this is very true, right?
	I mean, how much of the stuff that you spent years and years and years learning that you didn't like as a kid do you remember?
	How much? Virtually not, right?
	Virtually not. You know, I mean, I do help my daughter out with her math sometimes, and I'm like, ah, yeah, I think I can figure this out, but I don't remember it at all.
	Of course I don't. Somebody says, I think pets can also be practiced for children.
	It takes a bit of planning and management to take care of a pet, and you learn to control your emotions.
	You cannot explain to your dog why she should not bark at the neighbor, but you have to deal with it when you are tired.
	Well, except that pets don't feed you back love.
	Children will feed you back love, because children can actually evaluate your character.
	I mean, not necessarily talking babies, but certainly, you know, why is it called the terrible twos?
	It's called the terrible twos because now the children are evaluating your character.
	They can sense hypocrisy.
	They can see when you're contradicting yourself and so on, right?
	So, yeah, pets can be practiced for children.
	Why not just have kids, you know?
	So, yeah, pets can't feed you back.
	I mean, dogs will attach to you, but it's not a moral evaluation.
	Dogs can't judge your character, right?
	Hitler was nice to his dogs, and I'm sure the dogs were strongly bonded to and ran into Hitler's arms and, you know, were thrilled to see him because, you know, they didn't know that he was doing all this other evil, so good for me, right?
	So... And pets...
	Here's the thing, too.
	If pets are giving you the simulacrum of parenting, then that is likely to delay parenting because you're getting some pseudo-satisfaction.
	I mean, if you weren't allowed to masturbate and the only place that you could get sexual access was in marriage, what would that do to your motivation to get married?
	If you have some sad sack substitute...
	Does that delay the real thing?
	Of course it does, right? All right.
	A chick I went to high school with, a female, a woman I went to high school with, pushes her dog around in a baby stroller.
	She's in her mid to late 20s at this point and continues to refer to dog as her child.
	Yeah, I mean, that's tragic.
	And it's pitiful.
	And it's pathetic. And it's exploitive, right?
	Because she probably is all about old-age pensions.
	She's not having the kids to support herself in the old age.
	It's really sad. What delayed parenting was a global lockdown and three years of missed income.
	I don't know that you necessarily want to put everything on external circumstances, right?
	I mean, do you think that your ancestors had it ever, any time, did you think your ancestors had it tougher than a global lockdown and three years of missed income?
	Do you think that they had to deal with plague, pestilence, famine, you know, all that kind of stuff, right?
	War and all of that, right?
	Predation. So, you know, I try not to externalize things.
	As much as possible, I try not to externalize things.
	Let's see here. I've often seen in my family and other families, pets are used to speak truths people wouldn't say themselves.
	For example, pet A doesn't like that couch.
	Instead of saying, I don't like that couch, oh boy, that's a really primitive state of mind.
	All right, let me just go back and make sure I get my content here from the fine locals.
	People, and thank you again for the tips.
	Do you have any critiques of Alice Miller?
	I noticed her son, Martin Miller, wrote her book criticizing her.
	Yeah, I read that many, many years ago.
	I don't remember it well enough as a whole.
	But it's, you know, the big plug and socket that I put together was parenting in the state, childhood in the state.
	She didn't do that, to my knowledge.
	Hi, Steph. Is the ego strength that allows you to be wrong and change your mind the same thing as humility?
	Yeah, humility is...
	So humility can become pathological.
	Like, never assert anything because you want to be humble.
	It's like, no, no, no. Humility is designed to make sure that when you're right, you're actually right.
	I mean, there's humility in science.
	Say, I don't know what gravity is.
	There's humility in science. And the purpose of humility in science is to finally understand what things are so you can be certain.
	So humility can, it's like empathy, right?
	Empathy can become pathological.
	Most of the virtues are a bell curve, right?
	They are the Aristotelian mean.
	You want stuff in the middle, stuff at the extremes can be a problem, right?
	In one live stream, you mentioned that if you spend the first five years with your child, they will stay with you for the rest of your life.
	What? No, I've never said anything like that.
	That I know I've never said.
	Because I have repeatedly said, my daughter can, you know, when she becomes an adult, which is just in a couple of years, my daughter can choose to skip to my loo, out of my life, and she's never obligated to be in any contact with me ever again.
	She doesn't owe me anything.
	She is not required to spend time with me.
	She's not required to answer my phone calls.
	She's not required to meet me for lunch if we're in the same neighborhood.
	She's obligated to nothing whatsoever in the same way that my wife can wake up tomorrow and divorce my spotty ass and you guys could abandon the show and never come back.
	You're under no obligation to stick around.
	It's up to me to provide enough value that it's worth sticking around for you.
	That's what it's my job to do.
	It's my job to make sure that I can continue to add value to my daughter's life, to my wife's life, to your life, to my friend's life.
	It is my job to make sure that I provide a value to these things.
	When I was an entrepreneur, it was my job to make sure that I had a good business case for the software that I wrote in order for people to buy it.
	Why would somebody drop a million dollars on my software?
	Because... It would save them $2 million over the first year.
	Or something like that, right?
	So, no, I've never absolutely said, if you spend the first five years with your child, they will stay with you for the rest of your life.
	Never said that, because there's never been a philosophy that I've ever held to.
	Nobody is under any obligation to spend one single split second with me.
	And guess what? Nobody's under any obligation to spend one absolute split second with you either.
	I'm just speaking the truth here, my friends.
	You've got to win people. Like, when you're a kid, when you're a baby, when you're a toddler, when you're a kid, of course people are obligated.
	They chose to have you.
	You're a prisoner, in a sense, biologically, through, no, I mean, it's not the right word, prisoner, but you know what I mean, right?
	So to speak, you're stuck in the house, right?
	You're stuck in the house. You're stuck in the house.
	So, yeah.
	Absolutely. People owe you when you're a kid, but they don't owe you when you're an adult.
	They don't owe you anything. You date some woman.
	She doesn't owe you any return of phone calls.
	She doesn't owe anything. And your happiness depends upon you understanding this.
	I'm sorry to be absolute.
	But your happiness depends on releasing people from obligation.
	Your happiness depends on releasing people from obligation because anybody who's in your life through obligation is going to resent the shit out of you and they're going to pull back and the relationship's going to be low quality.
	Anybody who's in your life specifically by choice is going to find value in that and you get to stay on your toes and continue to provide value.
	So the idea that people owe you anything when you become an adult?
	Absolutely false. Nobody owes you a date.
	Nobody owes you a job.
	Nobody owes you attention.
	Nobody owes you time, conversation, resources, sex, money, anything.
	Nobody owes you a damn thing as an adult.
	And of course, people who didn't get their needs met as childhood, rather than dealing with the pain of that and grieving that, they then go into adulthood saying, well, my parents didn't, unconsciously they're saying, well, my parents didn't meet my needs, so damn well as an adult people are going to meet my needs, right?
	Nope. Nope.
	Nobody owes you anything.
	I mean, if they sign a contract, okay, that's one thing, but you don't want your personal relationships to be in the contract realm, right?
	So, no, I guarantee you I've never said the child will stay with you for the rest of your life.
	See, what do you mean by this? Why is it so important for your child to be at home rather than in daycare?
	Thank you for your response. Now, that's a great question.
	The first one is a misunderstanding, which I understand.
	It's fine. But the second one, why is it important to your child to be at home rather than in daycare?
	The answer is in the way you phrase the question.
	Your child is not at home. Your child is with you.
	Your child is with you.
	So imagine that you love your girlfriend, you propose to her, you get married, it's the happiest day of your life, you look forward to your life together, and then she spends every night, when you get back from your honeymoon, she spends every night out at nightclubs chatting with men.
	Just picture that. Come home from your honeymoon, she immediately puts on her makeup-based O-face and goes out to the nightclub in skimpy outfits and chats with men.
	Maybe she doesn't sleep with them or anything, but just, you know, chats with men and engages with other men and so on.
	How would you feel? Well, you would feel betrayed and you would feel like she doesn't really care about you, right?
	You would feel that she doesn't really care about you.
	Because if she cared about you...
	Again, these are these blindingly obvious things that people lose their shit over.
	I'm not talking about you. Just blindingly obvious things.
	Hey, if somebody doesn't spend time with you, they don't care about you that much.
	They don't like you that much. They're not doing what needs to be done to spend time with you.
	If you've ever been in a relationship, hit me with a why.
	If you've ever been in a relationship with someone who's like, yeah, yeah, no, it'd be great to get together.
	And then every time you try to get together, they're busy.
	They're busy, right? I had a friend when I was younger.
	I'd say, hey, let's get together this weekend.
	Let's do X, Y, and Z. He's like, ah, it's early in the week.
	I'll let you know. So you knew.
	You knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was seeing if something, a better offer would come along.
	Which means that he just wanted something fun to do.
	It didn't really matter who it was with.
	He didn't care to spend time with me.
	He just wanted to do something that was maximum fun for himself.
	Needless to say, that relationship kind of went the way of the dodo.
	Right, so if your new bride just wants to spend time with everyone except you, you feel humiliated, you feel angry, you feel upset, you feel hurt, you feel betrayed.
	Okay, how does a baby and a toddler experience their mom dropping them off at a daycare?
	Come on. I mean, just be straight.
	The baby feels rejected.
	The baby feels abandoned.
	Of course. Because the baby understands that the mother has a higher priority than having a baby.
	Than being with the baby.
	And your wife being around other men is the same as other females in daycare raising your children.
	Just, yeah, you're around the right gender.
	You're around a gender that's appropriate to the situation.
	If you want to go get male attention, you go out in a low-cut top with makeup on and you shake your ass and twerk on the dance floor, you get lots of male attention.
	And, you know, hey, I'm just a female with a baby.
	I'm handing it over to another female who's a stranger.
	Well, then you don't want to spend as much time with your babies.
	Oh, well, no, it's for financial reasons.
	It's just like, no, it's not. No, it's not.
	Come on. This is still the second richest generation in the history of the entire planet.
	The second wealthiest generation in the history of the entire planet.
	Oh, they can't afford. No, come on.
	It's a total lie. I mean, just do the math.
	Do the math. What you pay for daycare.
	After tax money, figure out how much money you're making.
	I bet you it's single digits.
	You're making three bucks an hour, five bucks an hour, seven bucks an hour.
	And if you're following the money, right, this is why we have such rampant hypergamy, right?
	Because the kids who are dumped in daycare, the parents are saying, I wanted money more than I wanted love.
	I wanted money more than I wanted love.
	And then these women grow up and they get married now.
	Women get outraged if a man trades them in for a younger model, right?
	I guess in Leo DiCaprio's case, literally.
	So women get outraged. This is second wife's club, right?
	First wife's club. So women get outraged.
	How dare you now that I'm older?
	How dare you dump me and go out with a woman 20 years my junior?
	Because that's his preference.
	And it's like, but we're married, we have love, we have pair bonding, we have an attachment, blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, well, you dumped your kids in daycare because you wanted money more than love.
	So now he wants youthful beauty more than your sagging ass, right?
	Who are you to complain? I mean, it's ridiculous.
	Who are you to complain if your husband dumps you for a younger woman since you dumped your kids in daycare in order to chase money?
	Or if you're a...
	If you allowed or also dumped your kid in daycare, you're a man.
	Let's say that you come across financial hard times and your wife immediately divorces you and goes out with a guy who's her sugar daddy, gives her lots of money, right?
	And you say, well, we're supposed to have this bond.
	You're just choosing money over our bond?
	It's like... You did.
	You chose the money your wife is making over the bond you have with your child or she has with your child.
	This is why we've just become so shallow and tremulous and untrustworthy and untrusting for right reasons and materialistic.
	Again, I will do an entire rant upon this at one point in my life, but not right now because I need to get the right volume control set up.
	I have no idea why people sacrifice love for money.
	The love of your child for what?
	A couple of bucks you can make after taxes after you dump your kid in daycare?
	Oh, taking orders from my husband is slavery!
	Taking orders from my boss, though, that's liberation.
	I mean, it's all just such transparent nonsense.
	Transparent and insulting nonsense.
	So why is it important for your child to be with her mother rather than some stranger?
	Child's not at home. And the fact that you said it very clearly.
	Why is it so important for the child to be at home rather than in daycare?
	It's not a location.
	It's a person. You say, why is it more important for your child to be with her mother being breastfed rather than with strangers in daycare being bottle-fed or whatever, right?
	If you phrase it that way, the question answers itself, which is why you didn't phrase it that way.
	Alright, so here's a quote from Karl Marx to someone.
	Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways.
	The point is to change it.
	What do you think, Steph? Should the main aim of philosophers be to change the world rather than simply analyze it?
	Well, of course, that's like saying it's the purpose of medicine to study medicine or to cure disease.
	You have to change things in the world.
	And of course, if you are a philosopher who changes...
	I mean, the reason people avoid changing things in the world is because when you change things in the world, for the better, you interfere with the interests and preferences of evil people and they will attack you.
	It's a lot easier to talk about abstractions than it is to actually do good in the world.
	But of course, right?
	I mean, no bacteria is ever bothered by a medicine that remains only theoretical, but
	when you get actual antibiotics, right, that's a different matter.
	I prefer neon green on pink staph.
	Yeah, that was quite something. I don't know what happened there.
	Somebody was saying, James, you were saying that it was some infrared thing.
	I don't even know. Do I have infrared on this camera?
	No idea. In Romans, in the Bible, it says that sin is what leads to death.
	Only through Jesus have we been able to have eternal life despite being sinful.
	Is there any logic in this?
	Well, sure. Well, sure, yeah.
	So people who guide their actions by universal eternal principles live on after their death.
	So think of Copernicus.
	Let's just say, I mean, there's lots of argument about this.
	Let's say that Copernicus was the guy who figured out that, or was able to prove that the Earth goes around the Sun.
	That's his thing, right? Do we still accept that?
	Well, sure. Of course we do. It's true.
	We have a heliocentric or sun-centered solar system, right?
	The Sun is eight light minutes away from Earth.
	The Earth is a quarter of a light second away from the Moon.
	I was really into astronomy when I was younger, bought a telescope and everything.
	So, now Copernicus...
	By making this case and surviving the—well, Galileo, of course, surviving the attack that took 400 years for the Catholic Church to apologize for harassing the elderly Galileo.
	So they acted and united their thoughts with the universal principles so they live on after their death.
	If you're just a defensive nobody who abuses and justifies and never tries any universal principle, never lives by anything larger than your own immediate stupid appetites, then you die when you die.
	I don't care if you're Christian or not.
	If you're just another mammal, you die when you die.
	If you just, well, I'm going to pursue pleasure and I'm going to avoid pain and I'm going to manipulate people into resources and I'm going to pretend to be moral just to get resources and you're just living at the level of a capyabara.
	You're living at the level of a kangaroo.
	Eat, eat, eat, eat. Consume, consume, consume.
	Screw, screw, screw. Sleep, sleep, sleep.
	Ow, it hurts. Take medicine.
	Oh, I feel good. You're just living the life of the body.
	I mean, the body. Not the mind.
	The mind attaches to universals.
	You attach to universals, you live forever.
	You live the life of the body, you die with the body.
	You live the life of the mind or the soul, you live forever.
	What do you mean when you say there's no such thing as politics anymore?
	Yeah, because politics is debate and there's no debate anymore.
	What's debate? There's no...
	You following the Twitter files, right?
	There's no debate. There's only power.
	Power manipulation lies.
	False. It's projection. There's no...
	Politics is debate.
	And there's no debate.
	That hasn't been for quite some time.
	Let's see here. My girlfriend says it is okay to tell someone you require people you engage with do X. But wrong to tell them if they don't do X, you will not engage with them.
	Thoughts? To me, wording one way or the other makes no difference.
	Okay, so let's say it's, you don't yell at me, right?
	Don't yell at me. My girlfriend says, it's okay to tell someone, you require people to not yell at me, but if you say, if they do yell at me, you will not engage with them.
	Thoughts? Well, it's a male-female thing, right?
	Men are boundaries and women are empathy.
	And an excess of male boundaries is like autism and isolation and an excess of female empathy is pathological altruism and virtue signaling and sacrifice others to the narcissism of your own look and goodness.
	So, yeah.
	Now, whether you tell them or not, right?
	So she says, look, it's good to have standards.
	It's bad to make threats, right?
	So you say, look, if you want to engage with me, don't yell at me.
	And so she says that's having a standard.
	But if you say, okay, but if you do repeatedly yell at me, I'm not going to engage with you, right?
	Then she would view that as a threat, right?
	And threat-based life forms have a very tough time being rational.
	Very, very rational.
	Somebody sent me $6.90.
	Are you also going to send me $4.20 or is that too obvious?
	So don't go, in general, don't go to women for absolute standards in that way, right?
	And again, women bring wonderful things to the world and men and women are complementary and all of that.
	But you don't have to tell people.
	Like if I say to someone, don't yell at me.
	If you want to interact with me, don't yell at me.
	Don't call me names. Don't abuse me.
	To me, it's implicit that if you do those things, I'm not going to engage with you.
	So she may be right in that you don't need to make it explicit, right?
	But as long as she understands that it is a standard, right?
	There's no point having standards if you don't enforce them, right?
	Hi from Finland. I had to listen to Roman's speech a couple of times.
	It was so awesome. Yeah, Roman is an underrated character in my...
	I love that guy, even though he's appalling in so many ways.
	The love of the villain who makes a great case is something that I think we're all susceptible to, right?
	I think Alan Rickman in Robin Hood, right?
	What are your thoughts of the film Indecent Proposal, where a man offers a couple of million dollars in order to spend a night with the woman?
	It seems to me like some things in life are only as valuable as you're willing to sacrifice for.
	The moment a couple accepts an offer like that, they are admitting that there is no sacred element to their relationship, and its only foundation is material gain.
	Is this true? So this is a movie with Demi Moore and Robert Redford and...
	Who was the guy?
	Woody Harrelson? I can't remember.
	And it's a million dollars to spend a night with the man's wife.
	So people think that this...
	What I dislike about that movie and that whole premise is people think it's something they watch.
	People think it's something on a screen.
	Well, some shaggy-haired, leather-faced guy in a yacht never offered me a million dollars to sleep with my wife, so it's something abstract and it's out there, which is entirely wrong.
	Life is a conveyor belt of sell your soul.
	You understand that, right? Life is a conveyor belt of sell your soul.
	Give it up. Take shit and fuck your conscience.
	That's what life is.
	It's a conveyor belt of people coming along and offering you Instant rewards for the joy of a clean conscience, in exchange for the joy of a clean conscience.
	Happens all the time. All the time.
	People say, well, you know, this food is really tasty.
	You eat it, you get fat. People say, oh, you don't have to go out on a date.
	You could just stay home and stare at the internet and work on your forearm.
	Women, oh, just post stuff and get attention.
	You don't need to get married and have kids.
	Just get attention.
	Be beautiful. Be pretty.
	Men are told, yeah, it's really important to just keep working, man.
	You don't need to spend as much time with your kids because the really important thing is to make sure that they're well taken care of and you leave them a legacy.
	Here's some shitty stuff.
	Give me your soul. That's the metronome.
	That's the tinnitus of the entire planet.
	We'll give you fame.
	But you've got to do Marvel movies.
	You know, for women, like, we'll give you sex fantasies, but you've got to bond with
	a brutal and violent guy through Fifty Shades of Grey.
	Bye.
	Just have pets instead of children.
	Don't think, don't reason.
	Don't have any integrity.
	Take money. And we'll give you power.
	We'll give you power. Just give up integrity.
	Give up your soul. Give up your virtue.
	Give up your honor. Give up your honesty.
	Just fucking lie.
	And you can stay on social media.
	Just lie. It's all you gotta do.
	It's all you gotta do.
	Now I hope, and I know this in my heart of hearts, that I have done right by philosophy, that I've done right by this community, that I've done right by the trust that you very kindly and generously invested in me.
	I didn't lie. I didn't retract.
	You ever heard me retract one thing that I know to be true?
	Ever heard me disavow one thing that I know to be true?
	Have you ever heard me do that?
	No. I wish to partake of eternity.
	I wish to inspire past the decay of my mortal frame.
	I wish to inspire other people to tell as much truth as is possible without sheer self-destruction.
	So a decent proposal.
	50 times a day.
	You are offered an indecent proposal.
	Every movie offers you an indecent proposal.
	Every advertisement offers you an indecent proposal.
	Have thicker eyebrows and you'll be loved.
	Buy this mascara and you'll be loved.
	Get abs and you'll be loved.
	Get a bubble butt and you'll be loved.
	Have high cheekbones and you'll be loved.
	Have red lips and you'll be loved.
	No. Your flesh will be hungered for.
	Your soul will be overstepped.
	Or stepped on, in fact.
	Whiten your teeth and you'll be loved.
	Oh, you're going bald.
	That means you won't be loved.
	Get a hair transplant.
	Wear a hat. Get a wig.
	Do a come-over. Or you won't be loved.
	I mean, the world...
	I mean, this is what Christians say.
	Hard to disagree.
	The world is run by the devil.
	Give up your children to strangers.
	Take five dollars an hour.
	And stress. And they'll hate you in their teenage years.
	Give up your integrity.
	Go with the flow. Bribes and threats await anybody who stands with the truth, who stands in the truth.
	We'll bribe your enemies, we'll bribe you to abandon it, we'll threaten you.
	I mean, you know why I was deplatformed is because I couldn't be bought, right?
	That's why I was deplatformed. I couldn't be bought.
	You don't think people tried?
	So, yeah, what I dislike about the movie Indecent Proposal is it abstracts the daily conveyor belt of sell your soul
	for fucking trinkets.
	You know, there's a story about when the...
	The Europeans landed in Plymouth Rock.
	They bought the island of Manhattan for a couple of glass beads.
	Oh my god. It's insane.
	Look how much Manhattan is worth.
	They gave up Manhattan for a couple of glass beads.
	Crazy. Oh, I can get attention rather than having children.
	Wow, that sounds great. Oh, I can look at naked women rather than be in love with a real woman.
	Oh, that sounds great. Oh, I could hand my kids over to strangers in order to sit under fluorescent light bulbs for $3 an hour.
	That sounds great. You understand?
	Manhattan is your soul and the glass beads are every piece of shit that society dangles in front of you in order to get you to strike like some drunken viper.
	The poison that enters only your own bloodstream.
	I mean I'm sure that, I mean I, people say like I'm so sorry you got deplatformed.
	You gave up so much.
	It's like, nope. No, I didn't.
	No, I didn't. I mean, honestly, can you imagine?
	Like, the respect and love of the people who care for me and who I care for.
	Do you think I would give that up for a fucking YouTube channel?
	No. I mean, it's funny, you know, because I wish that I had been able to achieve more virtue by being even remotely tempted.
	Like if somebody contacted me and said, oh, well, you can keep all of your social media platforms, but you have to disavow X, Y, and Z. Take them.
	Take them. No thanks.
	I can't even claim to be that virtuous because it's not even tempting.
	It's not even tempting.
	It's like saying, well, I chose not to have an affair with one-lung, smoky, bacon-breath, 80-year-old Ayn Rand.
	Like, you know, or whoever you...
	Margaret Thatcher in her 70s.
	I chose not to have an affair.
	Are you particularly tempted?
	I mean, chat, sure.
	Philosophy, sure. Intellect, sure.
	Politics, sure. But a physical affair?
	Not really tempted, are you?
	So the temptations of the world are like some scabrous, leprous beast rising from some fetid, shit-stained swamp and saying,
	You can leave your wife for me!
	Ehhh!
	Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
	I mean, this would be bad comedy, right?
	This would be really terrible comedy.
	So yeah, indecent proposal, man.
	That's every day. Look at your heart.
	Look at your life. You get indecent proposals every single day.
	And most of those indecent proposals are distractions.
	Oh, focus on this.
	Focus on what Senator Schumer said today.
	Or focus on this policy.
	It's like, don't focus on your life.
	Don't focus on building your love, your treasure, your virtue, your love, your family, your integrity, your conscience.
	Don't focus on that. Focus on this endless shit-scroll of political bullshit.
	Which I've done. Don't get me wrong.
	I mean, I'm not like, oh my gosh, who, whatever.
	I did a whole thing. I had 10 years on that.
	Off and on, right? But not at the cost of Integrity, not at the cost of virtue, not at the cost of building a family and being a parent.
	The real indecent proposal is pretend you're doing shit while your future slips away.
	Pretend you're doing shit while your future slips away.
	Well, I'm correcting people on the internet.
	I'm shitposting.
	I just created a really dank meme.
	I completed Elton Ring on medium difficulty.
	Nope. Pretend you're doing stuff while your future slips away.
	That's the fundamental indecent proposal.
	Distraction is the great demon of the modern world, right?
	I was talking to a guy. The reason I'm thinking about this, of course, and this is why the call-in shows are so great.
	I'll maybe release this on the weekend.
	I talked to a guy. He's put 7,800 hours into his career.
	He so far has made $1,000.
	He says, it's not a career, that's a hobby.
	It's barely a hobby. Think you're achieving things while your future slips away.
	I'm sorry if this makes you anxious, but I'm not sorry if it makes you anxious.
	Like, I regret that it makes you anxious, but it's necessary.
	Pretend you're doing shit. Pretend you're achieving something.
	I went and waved a sign.
	Yeah, and you love and kids and marriage and I bench-pressed 300 pounds.
	It's good. Nothing wrong with bench-pressing.
	I like to exercise. Is that giving you husband, wife, kids, family, love, purpose?
	Nope. I bought a new handbag.
	Is that gonna continue your four billion year historical line?
	I won a squash tournament!
	Bye.
	Okay. Did you win it with people you love, and is it part of the life that you share with people you love?
	No? I'm going to flip houses!
	Into homes for children?
	Into profit at some point?
	Come on. The indecent proposal is distract yourself into extinction.
	You know, you know, you know.
	Thank you for a great question.
	Does Canada have homeschool laws that require taking math?
	I don't know about Canada, but no.
	No, not in Ontario. I have known I couldn't have kids from a young age.
	I have always had pets.
	And listen, whenever I'm talking about this stuff, of course, massive sympathies for people who have fertility issues.
	Massive sympathies doesn't include you.
	Obviously, I hope you can do good for the kids in your environment.
	You can still be a great influence on children in your environment.
	Great aunt, great uncle, whatever it is, right?
	But yeah, massive sympathies Thank you for correcting me, I apparently didn't listen
	carefully in the previous stream, but thank you for answering
	I appreciate it. Hey, I don't mind being misquoted at all.
	I mean, I get it. I mean, I have a torrent of words, so, you know, God forbid the people have to transcribe this in 500 years.
	Thanks for the job that you do, right?
	Hey, Steph, thank you for your answer on your last live stream regarding setting standards with abusive parents.
	My wife struggled with why she couldn't just cut them out until I figured that the setting standards is the best self-defense and anger is at their level.
	Am I on the right track? I'm not quite sure what you mean.
	Yeah, I don't...
	You know, if you're selling something online, you're selling some jar for $100, are you kicking people out of your life if they offer you $10?
	Or say, I'll charge you $1,000, but I'll take it off your hands.
	You're not attacking those people.
	You're not hating them.
	You're not separating angrily from them.
	You're just like, no, that's not the price.
	That's not the price. Have you ever been to an auction?
	Hit me with a Y. I've been to one auction in my life, just out of curiosity.
	I've been to one auction in my life.
	And it was fun.
	It was fun. And, you know, they'd say, the opening bid is $50, right?
	Now, if you went up and said $10, they'd say, no, no, no, the opening bid is $50.
	We've got to start at $50, right? No hate.
	Like, you bastard! No, it's just, like, the opening bid is $50, right?
	You don't have to do this with anger, hatred, hostility, rage, anything.
	The opening bid is $50. That's the opening bid.
	The opening bid to conversations with me is treat me reasonably and don't abuse me, don't raise your voice, don't write, don't intimidate, don't try and intimidate me, just, you know, Happy to be corrected.
	And if people don't do that, it's not like, oh, you bastard, I hate you.
	No, just the opening bid is 50 bucks.
	Well, I'll give you minus 50 bucks and a knuckle sandwich.
	It's like, no, the opening bid is 50 bucks.
	If you want to start at 50 bucks, fantastic.
	Let's talk. But the opening bid is 50 bucks.
	The opening bid is don't yell at me, don't insult me, don't call me names.
	Don't be an insult to a toddler, immature douchebag, right?
	That's right. That's the opening bid.
	That's the opening bid. All right.
	Should not have to tell them to not be abusive.
	Should never have to tell them twice.
	Well, sure, but if it's the family history, the appearance to find the relationship, then that's the way it is, right?
	That's the way it is. How similar to the sieve would a modern society have to get for you to consider moving there?
	I don't know. These days it's like just don't be falling into shit and maybe we'll talk, right?
	I think I can only do another few minutes because things go kind of haywire at 90 minutes for some reason.
	Camel in the tent parable.
	Only just a little bit. A little bit more ends up with you out in the storm with no shelter.
	Your reward is punishment. Even the quartering and Tim Fence sitter talking about women hitting the wall.
	Not been deplatformed yet.
	How sad the world punishes those who are first to tell the truth.
	Oh, I wasn't deplatformed for talking about women hitting the wall.
	I wasn't deplatformed for any of that.
	I mean, specifically on YouTube, my belief, of course, is that I was deplatformed because I had a white and a black cop on talking about George Floyd.
	And they wanted their summer of riots.
	They wanted all of this, destabilization and so on, and destruction.
	And so that was specifically what was about to be published when I was deplatformed.
	That's what I mean. There's no politics anymore that I understand.
	Steph, you will be remembered and talked about a thousand years from now for what you are doing and sharing and giving to the world.
	I appreciate that. I hope that they're not talking about me, but rather talking about philosophy.
	But yeah, of course, that's my goal.
	Of course, that's my goal. Are you willing to sacrifice the present?
	Are you willing to sacrifice a social media platform in the present in order to help the world for the next thousand years?
	It's like, yeah, pretty much.
	Pretty much. Absolutely.
	For sure. All right.
	Good post from a woman who gets it.
	Have kids, but to be busy working to raise, but too busy working to raise them.
	That's social media and TV in public school.
	Then shocked when the kids turn out awful and hate everything about what you say you care about.
	Yeah, I don't, like, to me, again, outside of medical issues, if you have kids and they don't have kids, what was the point?
	What was the point? You raise your kids with good values so that they can raise their kids with good values.
	You don't raise your kids with good values so they can just feed their dopamine addiction and then Die.
	I mean, that's like, yeah, it's very strange.
	So, and why would you want to have kids if you don't raise them?
	Why would you want to have kids if you don't raise them?
	I don't understand. I genuinely don't understand that at all.
	It's like, why would you want to have a dog if it was raised in an abusive...
	Like, you let some other stranger who doesn't care about your dog raise them.
	Why would you... Well, I really want to have a dog, so I'm going to give it the first two years in some really overcrowded kennel where they barely take care of the dogs.
	And then I'll take the dog.
	It's like, no, don't have a dog if you're just going to put it in some overcrowded, crap kennel and then you get this weird, twitchy, antisocial dog back.
	Why would you want to have kids if you don't raise them?
	That's like, I really want to get married so we can live on opposite sides of the world.
	It's like, I don't understand. Here is $100 million to never quit telling the truth.
	Is that a deal worth taking?
	No. No.
	The $100 million will change your mind.
	Because you know the way it works, right?
	You get all of this money.
	Right? You get all of this money.
	But you lose your soul. You lose your conscience.
	And the money is meaningless to you.
	The money is meaningless to you.
	Do you know how many rich people are miserable?
	I mean, we all know this.
	This is not unknown.
	This is completely and totally known.
	How many rich people are miserable?
	What do you think the solution is for people to not accept indecent proposals?
	Is this quote from Paul Rudroff correct?
	If individuals turn to philosophy, their lives are changed.
	They set wisdom and virtue as their goals in place of power, wealth, or reputation.
	This quote assumes that all philosophy is enlightening rather than nihilistic or destructive.
	Perhaps a better way to phrase it is to seek wisdom.
	Ah, seek wisdom.
	It's a fortune cookie.
	Reason equals virtue equals happiness.
	You organize your thoughts into rational universals.
	Then you have the capacity for consistent action in pursuit of virtue, and that's your greatest chance for happiness.
	Seek wisdom. I don't even know what that means.
	Alright, let's see here.
	Our homeschool associations are a step towards DROs and the CIV.
	Anything that is a voluntary association is a step away from coercive hierarchies.
	Will the future be available in print?
	I'd like to gift it to someone. Look, I appreciate that.
	I think that's a very nice thought.
	You know they have printers, right?
	You're available. Like, they have printers.
	I mean, I know it's a little easier to hand over a book, but if it's just a matter of read the text on a piece of paper, you can just print it.
	So I don't know. I mean, I'm pretty busy with a bunch of stuff at the moment, so I don't know when I'll get to that, but I appreciate the thought.
	All right, so let's see here.
	At the current inflation rate, you need two incomes to make ends meet.
	I'm very lucky to be able to make it work on only my salary.
	No. You don't need two incomes to make ends meet.
	Absolutely false. That's a cope.
	That's copium. That's crap.
	That's crap. You just, you lower your expenses until you can make it on one salary.
	You move out to the country.
	You don't have a car.
	I mean, I grew up without a car.
	I biked everywhere. It was actually better for me.
	So you just, you keep lowering.
	I mean, what do you think happened to my donations after deplatforming?
	Am I living under a bridge now?
	No. You just lower your spend to match what you're getting.
	It's also kind of annoying that I have to pay for other people's kids and therefore cannot yet afford my own.
	Sure, sure, sure.
	Alright.
	Hey, memes got Trump in and they're for four years apiece.
	Absolutely, that's very interesting, but...
	Does it bring you love? Does it bring you love?
	Does it bring you children?
	Does it bring you a family? Does it bring you connection?
	The offer is a one-night stand by the gorgeous former OnlyFans model.
	The cost is your future family and your soul.
	Well, OnlyFans is very much that, right?
	That's exactly right. Here's money.
	Here's money. Just show your tits, right?
	Philosophy is derived from the word philosophia, which is the love of wisdom.
	What does wisdom mean if it is a core part of philosophy?
	Okay, so define what is wisdom.
	What is wisdom? Define what wisdom is.
	Define what wisdom is.
	I prefer truth because truth is measurable.
	Wisdom is gas bagging.
	Wisdom is undefinable and everything which is undefinable is exploitable.
	Your response to the indecent proposal question was great.
	We all get indecent proposals on a regular basis.
	Jesus faced indecent proposals in the wilderness.
	Absolutely, yeah. I live in Scotland.
	The whole place is countryside.
	Well, no, I actually went to Bree, was it, once in Scotland for a summer?
	And I also took entrance exams for a private school in Edinburgh because we were either going to go to Scotland or we were going to go to Canada.
	Is wisdom not the set of things we can do to reduce our suffering?
	Okay, what does it mean to reduce suffering?
	We can play this game all day.
	What does it mean to reduce our suffering?
	Is it appropriate to reduce our suffering?
	When you go to therapy, you increase your suffering.
	When you go to physical therapy, you increase your suffering because you have to straighten your arm or whatever it is that's broken.
	So what does it mean to reduce?
	Ah, well, you've got to reduce suffering in the long run.
	It's like, well, what does that mean?
	If you are a smoker and you have some illness unrelated to smoking and you only have six months to live, is it worth quitting smoking?
	It's going to cause you to suffer to quit smoking.
	So the reduction of suffering is an animal standard.
	It's not a philosophical standard.
	The reduction of suffering, all animals seek to reduce their suffering.
	It has to be something specifically human.
	All animals seek to reduce their suffering and increase their pleasure.
	That's what dopamine and pain is for, is to train you like a puppy, like a dog.
	So, no, truth is quantifiable, universal, measurable, objective.
	Wisdom is a word invented so that people don't have to prove things.
	I don't like it, honestly.
	Conventional wisdom. Pfft.
	And wisdom hasn't solved the problem of philosophy.
	Truth, integrity, virtue, universality, UPB, that can solve the problems of philosophy.
	What about mental suffering?
	That is uniquely human. No, it's not.
	Mental suffering is not at all uniquely human.
	If you've seen a dog that's ever been traumatized, then it's very panicked and very nervous and very concerned about things.
	Did you enjoy reading the Holy Bible at the time?
	I did, very much. Would you be interested in meetups for the FDR community?
	Now that you've been deplatformed for a while, there's a much lower risk of bomb threats.
	I, you know, cost-benefit, cost-benefit, cost-benefit.
	The last thing, of course, that I'd want is for people to get harmed in pursuit of philosophy.
	So, that is a challenge, right?
	That's why I say, like, there's no politics, there's just power, right?
	Just power. All right.
	Let's see. Did we make it? Oh, we did make it pass.
	All right. I'll do another couple of minutes. Great comments.
	Great questions, guys. By the way, thank you, thank you, thank you very much.
	Somebody wrote, I enjoyed the show with Izzy.
	That show is an example of the relationships parents can enjoy with their children and can lead other parents to learn how to effectively parent.
	Please do more. And have you considered Izzy doing her own show?
	Interesting. Interesting. Steph, besides Sandra Bullock, were there any other women who you were simping on when you were single?
	Let's not pretend that simping is a modern phenomenon.
	It's always been around since the dawn of time.
	Come on, Steph. I know you would have been the first to buy Sandra Bullock's feet pics if OnlyFans was around in the 90s.
	Tell the truth, Steph, or at least don't lie.
	Finding a celebrity attractive is not simping.
	Simping is when you provide resources with no chance of a relationship, with no chance of payback.
	Simping is when you buy masturbatory fantasies with no chance of reproduction.
	That's simping, right?
	The hello Jessica slide into the DMs, right?
	Who were the other women that I liked when I was single?
	I mean, Belinda Carlyle was very pretty when I was younger.
	I meant that old joke about Farrah Fawcett from Steve Martin.
	You know, Farrah Fawcett has not called me once, and after all the times I spent holding up her poster with one hand.
	Cheryl Teague, she had some licking her own face half-nipple shot in posters in Don Mills Mall when I was a kid.
	That was pretty attractive and all that, so yeah.
	I don't know. All right.
	Let's see here. So, hi Steph, I want to read your novels but cannot find a full list of your fictional work.
	What would you recommend to read first to someone who has never read your fiction books?
	So, freedomainplaylists.com slash books.
	freedomainplaylists.com slash books.
	I will be integrating this into the site.
	I've got a bunch of things that I want to change on the site, but it's much more fun talking to you guys than dinking around with all of that stuff.
	So, I will get to it this month.
	And again, if you would like to support the costs of all of this, I have to outsource this.
	You can go to freedomain.com slash donate.
	I would really, really appreciate it.
	I can't do a Friday night stream tonight.
	Sorry, I have something else that came up.
	Drugs can temporarily reduce suffering.
	Giving into addiction reduces suffering in the short term.
	Going to work means suffering conditions I might not like, but being homeless and hungry is greater suffering.
	Yeah, so you can live on the life of an animal and say, what can I do to reduce my suffering?
	But you understand, you wouldn't be...
	I mean, if I had simply worked on reducing my suffering, I would have gone into politics.
	I would have gone into public speaking in non-controversial topics.
	I would have gone into stand-up comedy.
	I would have gone into... Because all of those things would have been highly renumerative, or I would have stayed in the business world, where I was making some pretty good coins.
	So coming into philosophy, it increased my suffering in general.
	Not all the time, but at times and overall.
	It was greater suffering than if I had...
	Or taking on, quote, controversial issues caused me more suffering than avoiding them.
	So the only reason you're here telling me that it's important to reduce suffering is because I chose not to reduce suffering.
	Is wisdom learning from other people's mistakes?
	Can philosophy fix a sexual fetish?
	Yeah, I mean, I believe that sexual...
	Like, we're an imprinting species, right?
	So if you have a sexual fetish, the first place I would look is look at your first exposure to sexually explicit material or sexual activities or sexual imagery.
	And that is probably...
	So we're programmed, right? So a lot of cultures have different sexual approaches to sexuality and reproduction.
	So we generally are imprinted.
	With our first sexual exposure, and that is what tends to drive fetishes as a whole.
	So look at sort of the early stuff that you were exposed to, and I would say look at what might have distorted your sexuality to the point where, you know, like in some African tribes, the women with the extremely long giraffe neck is considered...
	Very, very attractive and in other like huge lips are considered very attractive in other cultures like the butt is more important or in other cultures, you know, so whatever the cultural adaptation is that we have to deal with.
	So that would be my guess.
	I know I've answered this once before, but I think it was many years ago when I used to do the Skype hangouts.
	All right, let's just see if we've got any other questions.
	Very true, somebody says, about sexual imprinting.
	Yeah. Yeah, first place.
	And then, of course, you have to look at...
	Do you eat these ducks eventually?
	No. No, I have trouble even with the eggs, because when you see the ducks and you see the eggs, I find it a little tough even to eat the eggs.
	But... When you...
	I mean, children should not be exposed to sexual imprinting, right?
	They should not be exposed to sexual materials.
	That provokes our selection and it distorts sexuality and interferes with pair bonding because then you pair bond not with a person but with a body part or a particular fetish, right?
	And so the pain, of course, that people have to deal with as a whole is the pain of being in environments where they're exposed to sexual materials way too early.
	That's really, really terrible parenting.
	Absolutely terrible parenting.
	Alright, so yeah, I think self-knowledge can fix sexual fetishes and processing early trauma of exposure to sexual content at a very early age or an early age, which is, you know, unfortunately kind of the norm these days.
	All right. Well, listen, guys, thank you so much for a wonderful conversation.
	I really thank you for helping bring out the best in me.
	I obviously realize I have to clean my hat.
	I don't know what that is exactly.
	It looks like I've head-putted a vat of sunscreen.
	But, yeah, thanks, everyone, so much for your support.
	FreeDomain.com to help out the show.
	FreeDomain.locals.com.
	Join a fantastic community there.
	And if you're more into the Telegram site, let me post the link here.
	Well, I guess now people are on...
	Yeah, people are on Telegram watching this already, right?
	So I'm just going to post the list here.
	If you want to get my book, you want to get the 20-part History of Philosopher's series and all that kind of cool stuff, then you can get that by joining this, I tell you this, link, and it's well worth it.
	Obviously, to be honest, that's where I see my...
	When I'm going to answer questions, I go to donors first, just so you know.
	I mean, obviously, I'm really incredibly grateful for you guys giving me the scratch to stay on the air, and I really, really appreciated that.
	So freedomain.locals.com, if you want to check out the locals, you can join for free using promo code ALLCAPS, UPB2022. All right.
	Lots of love, guys. Thanks a million so much.

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