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April 6, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:24:03
Screw Perfectionism! Wednesday Night Live!
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Let's do our very best to keep my shirt on, yeah?
I think we should try.
I mean, obviously can't guarantee anything, but I really, really think that we should try.
And let me just get everyone aware that we're live, baby, live, now that the day is over.
All right. Alright, let me just post it.
You made a live stream! I made a potato and my wife made a baby.
We are all in the same darn boat.
And yes, we can try a little musical trivia.
Ah, it's obscure.
Not super obscure.
Not like, evilly challenging, but somewhat obscure, I suppose.
Alright, let me just get this going.
The decomposing composers, there's less of them every year.
You can say what you like to, Debussy, but there's not much of him left to hear.
All right, just posting, posting, posting!
What the heck? I'll even post to Parler.
It's funny, I have like 118,000 followers on Parler, but...
Alright, let me just go here.
and at everyone and
One last place.
One more time for all the old times in this song.
Alright. Alright, that should do it.
That should do it.
I just did a whole bunch of racquetball, like 90 minutes.
So I have protein powder so that my legs don't have a heart attack overnight.
It's very exciting. All right.
Let's see. Who's in?
Who's in? Who's ready?
Okay. So here's your musical challenge.
The musical challenge is also figuring out how close I am to the actual vocals.
She's as free as the blue horizon I'm a slave to this gravity And every night I hope and pray She'll beam back down to me Yeah?
I keep my eyes on the stars I search the heavens above my lonely world I'm tracking her trajectory.
She's my baby.
She harvests just out of sight.
She's my little satellite.
Anybody? Anybody?
All right. All right.
Well, I'll let you mull it over.
It's a Canadian artist.
Actually, really, really great bluesy, jazzy Canadian artist.
I've actually seen him live a couple of times.
And he wrote some songs with Elvis Costello.
One of them was pretty high. And I remember seeing him sing it, You and Whose Army?
And I remember the drummer saying, Oh, it's all kinds of fun in the studio.
Everyone always forgets about doing it live, night after night, up in the stratosphere.
No, it's actually Colin James and the song is called Satellite.
Really great song. Like that sort of bassy stuff, kind of jazzy.
It's really good. Every song has something to do with the stars, the constellations and all that.
So, Justin Bieber.
No, I don't think Justin Bieber would do everything quite that jazzy.
So... Anyway, you should check out Colin James.
Five Long Years is a great song.
The really meaty Keep On Loving Me.
Got some great drums in that.
How, how, how, how.
Very ZZ Top. Freedom, he does a great version of...
Colin James and the Little Big Band have some really great jazzy stuff.
And just great, great artist, great to see live, and a great guitarist, and also really, really, a really good singer.
So you should check out Colin James.
All right. So questions.
Let's get to your questions.
Enough music. More music for the soul.
All right. Somebody say is.
Somebody say is. Thank you for correcting my assumption about insecure people.
And calling them out for being manipulative bullies in a previous live stream.
I've done a lot to fix my life, and I've cut out severely toxic people, but apparently there are more.
Many things are going my way, and so I've noticed increased slights in competitiveness from those around me, petty people.
Right, I can't have good things they already have for the very first time in my life.
They need to one-up me or sow uncertainty.
Yes, yes they do.
You know, it's a fundamental question you have to ask about the people in your life.
How happy are they when you're happy?
It's a big question.
Are they happy when you're happy?
Or are they not?
Are they challenged when you're happy?
You know, it takes a bigness of soul to genuinely be happy for other people when they do well.
Because, you know, we're all kind of competitive.
And what's it? Gore Vidal said, it's not enough that we succeed.
Our friends must also fail.
I mean, obviously, that's kind of petty and all of that.
And there's the schadenfreude.
This is sort of when a celebrity gets divorced or does badly, especially a celebrity who seems to have it all.
There's a certain amount of pleasure in that.
When people are kind of living wrong but getting a lot of accolades for it, I love to see them fail.
I love to see them fail. When, you know, like, it's fun to watch...
It's fun to watch Madonna turn into a sex-obsessed Gumby, right?
With this sort of weird elastic cyborg space alien abduct-you-at-gunpoint metal face.
Yeah, I mean, she contributed a lot to the degeneracy of the 80s and the 90s.
She had... I had some gay roommates after...
When I was doing my master's.
Great roommates, by the way. But...
They had her book, Sex, which was about, I can't remember, I think it was trilobites or something like that.
And yeah, just straight up degeneracy.
So it's kind of C. Isn't she old?
She's lonely? She's bitter? She's flipping up her butt, flipping up her tails to show her butt on TV. She's in her mid-60s.
She's got weird kinds of plastic surgery.
And she looks like a space wedge that would be used to dislodge...
Gold from an asteroid. I mean, it's just, yeah, you love to see it.
You love to see people who've really done harm to the world, as I think Madonna has, you really love to see their unhappiness and desperation when they get older.
I mean, it is gross. It's gross to watch a woman who's old enough to be somebody's grandmother pretending to give fellatio to an invisible sky dick.
Like, it's just gross.
But, you know, what else does she have to offer, right?
You give a lot of women cameras and the internet, and the first thing they do is sexualize everything they do for the sake of male attention.
Really, really sad. Here's the other thing, too.
I mean, you think of culture, right?
Think of sort of the norms in society.
Norm MacDonald. No, you think of the norms in society.
And you think of who's in charge of society.
Well, who's in charge of society?
Some very bad people.
The very bad people are in charge of society.
So, when you think of sort of the norms of society, this is sort of my...
And it has been since I was in my early teens.
If bad people are in charge of culture and art and society as a whole, you would expect every rule that is considered wisdom or wise, every rule would be there to serve the interests of evil people.
They would design the culture to serve the needs of evil people.
Of course. I mean, if you're an evil person and you're in charge of cultural messaging, you want to create cultural messaging that serves the needs of evil people.
It would be demonic, really.
Satanic. You would promote easy, lazy, consequence-free sexual activity.
I mean, I remember watching even one of the creepiest movies the world has ever seen or ever will see is Manhattan.
By Woody Allen, wherein he gets involved with a teenage girl.
I think he's in his 30s or something like that.
And he gets involved with a teenage girl who's played by a young Muriel Hemingway, daughter of that Hemingway, who I think she led to committed suicide.
And she, not only is she very young in the movie, but she plays it even younger.
And it's just horrifyingly creepy.
I mean, his work as a whole.
But, you know, he promotes all of this...
You meet, you fall into bed together, right?
You meet and you just have sex and all of that.
And, I mean, the Mia Farrow stuff, that's, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me at all.
It's just horrifying. So, yeah, you would expect easy sex.
You would expect a worship of beauty.
You would expect the promotion of laziness, of stoner drug culture.
You would expect any cynicism towards hard work, and you would certainly expect all Christians to be portrayed as goofy, naive, silly, evil, predatory, pedophilic, and all of this kind of stuff.
You would just expect all of that.
To me, if literally the actual devil...
Was in charge of culture and media, I couldn't, for the life of me, imagine what would be different.
Like, I can't imagine what would be different.
And you'd want to pump these messages as early as possible into the minds of children.
Sorry, I have to...
This is really disgusting looking at...
It's just implant protein, which helps my muscles after a hard exercise.
I did weights today, and as I said, 90 minutes of racquetball, so my legs are humming like a half-epileptic choir.
All right. Let's see here.
Let's get to your questions. Does everyone recall examples of their parents exhibiting the toxic traits that Stefan breaks down, or is it just me?
I struggle with the feeling that I have one-up-itis in regards to childhood trauma.
I don't know what that means.
Sorry, you'll need to explain that more.
How do you see the tech industry going?
Do you think it will contract in the near future?
Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, AI is going to do to coding what coding did to filing.
So yes, without a doubt, tech is going to go through a significant and severe contraction.
I mean, so tech has been artificially inflated for decades.
You know, I remember I worked in an HR department many years ago.
I was in my early 20s.
I worked in an HR department for a summer or two.
And I remember, oh my God, I remember thinking, I am absolutely never going to work in a place with an HR department.
And I never did. I never worked in a place with an HR department.
So... Tech has been massively, you know, you've got semi-enforced or directly coerced diversity hires.
You have hiring lots of women and that always ends up in the pink ghetto of HR for the most part.
And you saw, didn't Elon Musk, what percentage did he fire of Twitter?
He fired like 80% or 90% of Twitter staff.
Twitter is totally fine.
Totally fine. So tech is vastly bloated.
Vastly bloated, which is one of the reasons why tech has stalled in its adoption, because it's so bloated with ridiculously useless headcount that you need to serve up endless ads just to cover all the useless people who don't contribute anything.
So you combine...
I mean, look, you don't think every tech CEO is rapidly watching the Twitter acquisition and what's happened with that?
My God. They're all looking at it as a case study.
So, like, wait a minute.
Elon Musk fired 90% of the Twitter staff or 80% of the Twitter staff and the site got better and engagement went up.
And it's, what, $42 a head for every Twitter user?
I mean, in terms of valuation.
So, yeah. Yeah. Everyone's looking at that.
So there's going to be a lot of drive towards cuts.
And you combine that with writing code through artificial intelligence.
You know, you can tell artificial intelligence, create for me a mobile game, and here are the parameters, and it will create for you a mobile game that normally would take you $50,000 to $75,000 worth of development costs.
And it can do it in about an hour.
So, yes, I do not think that the tech industry is going to expand.
The only place that's going to be hiring is central bank digital currency, and you don't want to work for that.
Have you seen the movie Threads or Come and See?
I have not. I did see a movie called Threads, a TV movie in the 80s, but I don't think you're talking about that.
Madonna is doing a charity show for transsexuals in Nadville.
Yeah, of course. Makes perfect sense.
I had a discussion with someone close to me about the definition of love that give fog and resistance to the definition I presented, the one you presented before.
It's the strongest thing in that this person has had months to digest to think about it.
Each time we talk about it, he just says it doesn't sit well with him and says, it's just your definition and it doesn't mean it's true.
What do you make of this? You don't need to ask me that.
You don't need to ask me that.
So, let's get participatory here, right?
So, if I have a worldview that says most people are hypocritical and corrupt and anti-rational, from a minus 10 to a plus 10 on how well that predicts the world, What would you give me?
Minus 10 is, that's totally wrong, I'm going to get everything wrong.
Plus 10 is, it very well predicts, almost perfectly predicts, where things are going to go in the world.
Most people are corrupt and hypocritical.
So, infinity.
We've got a 6, we've got a 7, a plus 10 zillion.
9, 7...
Now, I don't mean in your personal life.
I just... Average person you meet.
Just roaming around the world.
You're reading an article from some mainstream or whatever it is.
Like, not the people you follow on Twitter or hopefully me or whatever, right?
So we don't have any negatives here.
So everyone thinks it predicts the world.
And there's some disagreement as to how well it predicts the world.
And the lowest we've got is a plus five.
So, like, 50% of the time, you'll be right if you just assume that most people are corrupt and hypocritical.
Now, I don't think that's human nature.
I don't think it's human nature to be corrupt and hypocritical, because if it was human nature, it wouldn't need to be programmed so much into people.
Propaganda is what is required when you go in opposition to human nature.
So, all right.
So let's go back, assuming, like say, most people are corrupt and hypocritical, or have been corrupted and are hypocritical, defending their corruption.
So, this person, love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
So if we're virtuous and we see somebody exhibiting virtuous behavior, we feel love towards them.
If we are evil and we see someone exhibiting virtuous behavior, we feel rage and hatred.
If we are evil and we see somebody else exhibiting evil behavior, we will feel a certain kind of sick companionship and familiarity or perhaps competition if we're both fighting for the same thing.
If we are a good person and we see evil behavior, we feel contempt, disgust and anger and fear, depending on the level of power of the evildoer.
So, he said, it's the strangest thing, in that this person has had months to digest and think about it.
Each time we talk about it, he says, it doesn't sit well with him.
Right. Right.
What has he got, deli belly?
What do you mean? It doesn't sit well with him.
I've never understood what the hell that means other than it makes me feel uncomfortable, but I don't want to admit that because that would give me some intellectual responsibility for figuring out the source of my discomfort.
So I'm just going to say it just doesn't sit well with me.
You know how you're eating some halibut and then you get a little bone and it kind of sticks down the side?
It just doesn't sit well with me.
It doesn't sit well with him.
Yeah, that's right. Because you know what philosophy has to do?
Philosophy has to fit into your fucking gut.
Philosophy has to just make sure it rearranges itself.
All kinds of tetrics and Rubik's style.
Philosophy has to just arrange itself so that it sits well in your gut.
Isn't that funny?
It doesn't sit well with me.
What a statement of unbelievable arrogance.
Oh my God!
Satanically stomach-turning, ironically enough.
Here's a definition of love that is both rational and empirical.
Well, that doesn't sit well with me.
The fuck are you to think sit well or they don't sit well?
Is it true or is it false?
It's all it comes down to.
True or false, right or wrong, justified or unjust, rational or anti-rational, consistent or contradictory, universal or subjective.
It doesn't sit well with me.
Go sit on a fucking cactus, you narcissist.
Just sit well with me.
So, I put forward a rational argument for truth, beauty, and virtue, and you deal with it like it's some slightly overspiced Indian food.
Well, you know, it just doesn't sit well with me.
Yeah, that's right, because you are the yardstick of the standard by which all philosophy is measured, whether it sits well with your fucking selfish-ass gut.
Jesus, what a nightmare of a human being.
It's just your definition doesn't mean it's true.
Doesn't mean that it's true, because it doesn't sit well with me.
Fantastic. You know, this guy's a fucking oracle.
You know, demolish the oracle at Delphi and just set up a new one.
It's this guy's gut. We don't need to prove anything.
We don't need any hard work.
We don't need any definitions. We don't need any exact circumscription of cause and effect.
We don't need any logic trees.
We don't need any hypothesis.
We don't need any reasoning.
We just go up to this guy and Yell at his belly button and see if he farts.
That's it. It's simple.
I don't know what the hell was I doing.
All these years struggling and striving to come up with some kind of rational definition and really working through my prejudices and my trauma and trying to get objective and universal and rational moral propositions.
What the fuck was I doing? I should have just written this UPB on this guy's belly, put my ear to it and see if it fucking gurgled.
Jesus! What the hell are we going to do with these people?
And he probably thinks he's just some wise guy.
Oh, it doesn't fit well with me.
Oh, for it can't be true.
Because it's feelings.
See, here's the thing. He said, well, it's just your definition.
It doesn't mean that it's true. First of all, a definition is not subjective.
The whole point of a definition, right?
You don't open up the fucking dictionary, look at the definition of every word and say, hey, whatever you feel like, whatever sits well with you, whatever your gut says, whatever makes you burp a little.
What's the definition of onomatopoeia?
Whatever you want. There's no definition.
It's just your definition. You make it whatever you want.
Make it the sound of tumbleweeds blowing across the desert.
Make it the sound of caterpillars roly-poly-ing down along with a slinkier set of stairs.
Just, you know, make it carpets unrolling over tarmac.
You know, you make it whatever you want.
It's just your definition.
There's no truth. There's no objectivity.
It's just your definition doesn't mean that it's true.
Because you know what truth is?
Truth is what kind of sits well with my gut.
Jesus. What are we supposed to do?
Assemble some mental jigsaw puzzle that feels good about it?
And we're a slave to his gut?
It's one thing to be enslaved to someone's brain.
This guy's asking you to kneel down before his fucking bowels!
Where my shit gathers is where your wisdom must pass.
Your wisdom must pass the test of my colon and lower intestine.
It must step through the bubbling miasma of my gathering shit, and it must o'erleap the methane bubbles of my fart-gathering, and lo and behold, it must exit like a beam of light from the heavens above, out of my anus, and shine the hieroglyphics of truth on the very porcelain bowel of the oracle." Yeah, I'm going to organize my whole life about satisfying these guys' colon rumblings.
That's just hilarious.
I'm so sorry. It doesn't sit well with me.
Maybe try sitting in a different angle and maybe some things will magically become true.
You know, two and two make four.
Sorry, my shit disagrees.
I got a little gas bubble, you know, just here on the right of my belly.
You may have the most rigorous proof known to man.
You know, general theory of relativity, it doesn't pass the coiled intestine test.
I just, I could reason with my brain, but what I'm going to have to do is subject it to the collective evaluation of the trillion or so fecal bacteria I have in my bowels.
I'm so sorry, you'll have to please them, because my mind is inaccessible.
It's been eaten by my shithole.
I'm sorry, I could literally do that all night, so I'll stop, but I just think that's hilarious.
Oh dear, oh dear.
I'm sorry I'm not gonna kneel before your shit stain.
That is very funny.
Well of course he's saying that he doesn't want to earn love through virtuous behavior and he doesn't want to be
around people who are virtuous.
He doesn't want to be judged by people who are virtuous.
So he asks that you kneel before his fecal god to find out if something's true or not.
Some people cast fish bones.
Some people read tea leaves.
What I do is I try and read the kanji-shaped hieroglyphics of my own shit.
And if it spells out the right thing in a kind of mutated fourth-dimensional Japanese, then I'm going to assume that what you say is true, because basically, I have shit for brains, literally.
I'm on the toilet with a stomachache and this isn't sitting well with me.
No, it just could be that you're passing a syllogism sideways.
Bill Gates didn't give me a million dollars.
It doesn't sit well with me and my bank account's feelings.
Yeah, yeah. That is funny.
Shit for brains is nothing to argue with.
You can't do anything with that.
What are you going to do? You have your own...
I'm going to stick my head up my own ass to find the truth.
The light is somewhere up the tunnel of my own intestines.
Good luck with that. How to deal with a partner who constantly gets defensive and deflects any issue I bring up.
She's been through sexual childhood abuse and her family is very dysfunctional.
Given the hand she was dealt with, she's a big step above her upbringing and she's come a long way.
I want to think time being in a stable relationship can help her come to a place of more stability.
But the not taking accountability is hard to work through for me.
Any suggestions? So you chose someone and then you want them to be...
Fundamentally different from who they are.
That, my friend, is really fucking cruel.
It's really, really cruel.
So she got rejected and exploited and abused as a child in the worst ways we could imagine.
And then you come along and say, well, I love you, but no, you've got to change just about everything about who you are.
That's really cruel. You are being very, very mean to this woman who's already suffered enough.
If you don't love her for who she is, if you don't accept her for who she is, stop torturing her by pretending if she jumps through enough hoops and becomes a different person that you'll love her and commit to her and be with her and...
Gonna be her daddy.
Won't you love her while she's walking out the door?
Yeah, what do you...
A partner who constantly gets defensive and deflects any issues I bring up.
What the fuck are you doing with this person?
Like, no hate on her, no hate on you.
I'm like, how do I love somebody who is very immature, deflects and gets defensive and never talks about anything real?
How do I love such a person?
How, as a professional music manager, do I forward the career of somebody who can't sing,
can't play any instruments, and doesn't know how to write or read music?
I don't know what you're asking for.
How to deal with a partner who constantly gets defensive and deflects any issues I bring up?
So, sexual childhood abuse, her family is very dysfunctional.
So let's say, I'm going to assume here, that someone in her family abused her as a child.
Sexually. Raped her as a child.
Oh, you probably know exactly who it is.
Let's say it's Uncle Bob.
Uncle Bob raped your girlfriend as a child.
Then I assume her family is very dysfunctional.
Do you have anything to do with her family who enabled or overlooked or colluded with or did something to support child rapist Uncle Bob?
Do you have anything to do?
Have you been drawn into a nest of pedophiles?
Is that who you're hanging out with?
Is that where the breadcrumbs lead in this relationship?
I don't think it's too controversial, and maybe it is these days, I don't think it's too controversial a piece of life advice.
Stay away from pedos.
Don't have anything to do with them.
If you have somebody who has credibly accused someone of pedophilia in your environment, don't spend any time with pedophiles.
Now, if she wants to go and spend time with her family who abused her, that's her issue, her deal.
I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it.
I can't sit across the table and break bed with somebody who rapes children or a family that ignores it or enables it or colluded with it or participated for all I know.
So here's the funny thing.
You say, I want to think that time being in a stable relationship can help her come to a place of more stability.
But the not taking accountability is hard to work through for me.
Any suggestions? You chose a victim of childhood sexual abuse and your issue is that she's not taking accountability.
How about you taking accountability for your choice in a partner?
Is there no one around who wasn't the victim of childhood sexual abuse that you could maybe date?
Is that something to even look into?
Is that even a vague possibility?
Maybe she's deserving of love.
Okay, but she's not in a place where she can accept it or receive it.
So why are you with her?
Why are you with this broken child of a broken upbringing?
Why are you with her? Time to be raw.
Time to be honest. Time to be accountable.
Because accountability is a big thing for you, right?
Why are you with somebody who's still immature, still half a child, and has unprocessed sexual abuse trauma?
Why are you with her?
I know, and you know, and I'm guessing everybody knows, why you're with her.
You're with her for sexual access.
You're with her to get sex.
And why are you able to get sex?
Because her sexual boundaries were violated when she was a child, horrendously, abusively, in a thoroughly evil manner.
You feel superior to her.
And in a very real sense, you're exploiting her prior trauma in order to get your rocks off.
Because if you don't like her as a person, you think of her as a male.
Think of her as a female who's 60 or your best friend's wife or a nun or somebody who's just sexually inaccessible to you.
Would you want somebody in your life that you did not have sexual access to who was constantly defensive and deflects any issue you bring up?
Would you want her if there was no sexual access?
Would you want to have her in your life if there was absolutely no chance of having sex?
Because all I'm hearing, and I try not to be harsh, I really want to help you and help her, I genuinely do.
But I'll tell you what I hear. What I hear is, Steph, how do I keep banging the victim of childhood sexual abuse when I can't stand her personally?
I don't know, how about you don't do that?
How about you don't tell her that the primary thing she has to offer is her vagina?
How about you don't reinforce that?
How about you be there if you want to be in her life be there as a friend
Because if you have sex with a woman you do not like Well I could come up with some very harsh terms, but I won't
Bye.
.
It's definitely a form of exploitation.
A woman of confidence, a woman of self-esteem, a woman of character, will not let a man who doesn't like her have sex with her.
Right? I mean, we understand that, right?
There's no hate sex.
Among healthy people. If you were to say to a woman, I really dislike just about everything about you, but my balls are heavy and you could lighten the load.
You'd have to be a real masochist as a woman, have just bottomless levels of self-contempt to say yes to that.
So here's the thing, my friend.
She knows for an absolute fact that you don't like her.
That you don't respect her, you don't find her noble or virtuous or honest or vulnerable or strong.
That you have contempt for her.
So she knows that you have contempt for her, but you want to have sex with her.
So you're uniting self-contempt with sexual activity, which is not the exact opposite of what happened to her as a child.
Of course, I'm not accusing you of anything illegal or untoward or anything like that.
I'm just saying, please don't exploit the lack of sexual boundaries
of victims of childhood sexual abuse if you don't like the person as a whole.
You are not helping her.
You are exploiting her, in my humble opinion.
Again, she's an adult and it's not the same as when she was a child, but that level of trauma is very hard to overcome.
Alright, in your opinion, do dysfunctional people already know the type of person they want to invite into their mess, or do they just put out signals to see who will take the bait?
How do I stay out of their games?
In other words, is it my weakness for allowing myself falling into their traps, or is it just them trying to evoke feelings in me, which in turn makes me want to engage instinctively?
Yeah, so when you meet someone, you've got to think of it in terms of slow motion.
So when you meet someone, you know everything there is to know about that person in about 5 to 10 seconds.
Everything. Body, posture, eye contact, presentation, appearance, hair, their posture as a whole.
The confidence of their voice, a lack of confidence of their voice, downcast eyes, weak handshake.
You know everything. You know everything.
How long do you think it takes a lion to look at a herd of zebras and figure out which are the weak, the sick, or the old?
Probably five to ten seconds, maximum.
Maximum. When apes are squaring off for a fight, and actually there's been, I think there's a group of chimpanzees that's now been at war for four years.
So the idea that animals don't wage war, but look at ants, and chimpanzees do it too.
Four years, there have been a total Hatfields and McCoy thing going on.
We're not taught how to identify dysfunction because as I said before,
dysfunctional people run the entire culture and run the society and the schools and the curricula and
right?
Bye.
The media itself. So when you meet someone, let's say that somebody is, they're kind of weak, neurotic, exploitive, destructive, dysfunctional, whatever, right?
So they're putting out signals.
They're trying to read you.
They're trying to read you. And trying to figure out whether you'll fall for their bullshit.
That's the game. That's the game.
They're trying to, and here's what they're doing.
I'll tell you what they're doing fundamentally.
What they're doing Is an immoral person will look at you and will scan as to whether you're evaluating them.
You meet a woman named Jill.
Jill's crazy sociopath, hot crazy matrix, plus a billion.
She is looking to see if you're scanning her.
Now, if you're just wide-eyed and enthusiastic and positive and peppy, then you're just putting all the energy out there.
You're not evaluating Jill.
And Jill knows she can get anything she wants out of you because you've got no protection.
And that means there's nobody in your life who's protecting you.
You are just a raw armadillo with the back armor snipped off, stripped off.
You're just lying there like a piece of sushi in the road.
She can do anything she wants.
She can get anything she wants from me. Because you're not evaluating her.
In the same way, when I was a hiring manager, which I was for many years, when I sat across the desk from someone, I'd never hire anyone who was just like, you know, can I get the job?
Do I get the job? I want the job.
I want to know if somebody's evaluating me.
If they're desperate for a job that tells me that they don't have confidence, which means they're going to be impossible to manage.
Because they'll just make up things, make excuses, dodge, and won't tell you things and won't be assertive.
If they see something going wrong, they won't say anything.
Forget that. Life's too short, right?
So, they're just looking to see, are you evaluating them?
Do you approach people with skepticism?
Which you should do. You absolutely should approach people with skepticism, not hostility.
But skepticism, my default position...
Is that people are generally nuts.
I'm not hostile. It's just a fact of life.
People are generally nuts. Not everyone.
I've got a great circle.
I've got a wonderful family, a great circle of friends, beautiful, lovely, fantastic stuff.
And how did I get those people?
By assuming that most people are nuts.
If not corrupt, if not hypocritical, if not evil, if like most people won't try to be good, they'll just make up shit to make themselves feel good.
Most people don't want love.
They want narcissistic worship.
Most people don't want intimacy.
They want sex. Most people don't want children.
They want affirmation machines.
Most people don't want to be good.
They just want to feel good. Most people won't think for them.
Just for God's sake. Look, if COVID taught you anything, it was that...
I mean, up here in Canada, like...
90-95% of people are just, great, inject, lock down, great, yay!
I'm not pulling this stuff out of my ass like our aforementioned doesn't sit right kind of guy.
Bring An unusual idea to someone and see how they react.
So when you meet people, I scan for nuts.
I scan for crazy. Again, no hostility and I can have like, you know, I haven't put everyone I play racquetball with through a psych test so you can be at a disco, you can be at a party, you can play sports with people and they can be nuts.
That's fine. But in terms of like actually having relationships, going into business and dating and marrying, then you've got to evaluate people with great skepticism.
When I, I mean, I wrote and directed a play that was great and worked out really well, and I interviewed, or I guess you could say auditioned like 200 actors for like six roles.
And even then I didn't get everyone I wanted because most actors are bad.
If you've got a high-level job, most of the people who apply are bad relative to the needs of that job.
You approach people...
Again, I'm not telling you what to do.
I'm just telling you what has absolutely worked for me and for which there is massive amounts of empirical evidence.
Most people are corrupt and nuts.
Oh, I disagree with that.
Really? Really?
Okay, you want to explain to me the Milgram experiment, which has been replicated in just about every culture, where 80 to 90% of people will do either serious harm or murder to someone just because someone in a white coat tells them to?
That's the world. I know the Stanford prison experiments are a little more dicey, but the Milgram thing, man, that's solid, man.
The Milgram thing is an experiment where people are told, oh, I want you to participate in a learning experiment.
And here you're going to sit and you're going to turn up this dial and push this button, which delivers an electrical shock to someone on the other side of that window, who every time they get an answer wrong, just dial it up and give them a bit of a shock.
And the label is clearly marked, dangerous, very dangerous, fatal.
And the people in the white coat say, okay, time to do the experiment.
Oh, you'll have to turn it up. And then if people objected, they just had a set series of phrases like, it is required that you continue with the experiment.
The experiment requires that you continue.
They didn't force, they didn't threaten, they didn't demand, they didn't bribe.
The majority, significant majority of people are willing to fucking maim and kill people because someone tells them to.
I mean, please swallow that fact.
Please accept that reality.
So when you approach people for the love of all that's holy, recognize that if you were in that electric chair,
8 or 9 out of the 10 people you meet will fry your fucking ass
walk away with a smile on their face.
Sorry. I wish it wasn't this way.
I'm working very hard for it not to be this way.
I don't think it's innate to human nature.
We have to be broken in 6 million different ways to end up that way.
When the government wants to escalate its powers, is it ever short of enforcers?
Ever. Does it ever say, well, you know, we really would like to have that power, but, you know, we just, we can't find enough people willing to enforce those powers.
I can't do it, man.
Sorry. Like, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
And I'm not telling you anything that is empirically validated.
The majority of people make up random shit and call it virtue.
They serve the narcissistic needs at the moment and call it integrity.
And this is not a black pill, is it, for anyone?
This is nothing that's new.
This is nothing that you don't know.
I've been talking about these experiments since the very beginning of this show.
This is just basic straight-up fact.
It's basic straight-up fact.
So if you're just out there being, you know, positive and friendly and enthusiastic and, yeah, I can't wait to make a new friend, it's like...
I mean, did you see what happened during COVID? And there were these lockdowns, and there were these snitch lines.
If you see your neighbor doing something that doesn't seem to be quite in conformity with house arrest for a respiratory virus that no one can stop because it's bioengineered, in my view...
Did they ever say, well, you know, we put out these snitch lines, but, you know, we shut them down because nobody was calling in.
No. My neighbor Bob seems to have more cars than usual in his driveway.
I heard the sounds of bass disco music coming from Sally's house.
I'm pretty sure that Alice had a boyfriend, though.
Snitch, snitch, snitch, bitch, bitch, bitch.
Did the Soviet Union shut down?
It's like, man, we just ran out of people willing to be KGB officers.
Nope. No.
No. People who thought I was a very important philosopher and a very central element in their life and very wonderful and wise and blah, blah, blah, I get deplatformed.
95, 96, 97% of people were like, oh...
Is that like a website over?
It's like another website. Like, oh my god.
I have to come up with some new password.
I mean, oh my god.
I'm barely holding it together as it is.
This guy who wants to make the world a better place and is one of the most successful people in bringing morality and truth and reason to the world.
I mean, I could...
Oh my god, I could follow the guy, but...
It's...
It's like totes another website, and I just...
I... I... No.
No. I mean, look, it's true, I guess, that I have 40 to 45 hours a week to play World of Warcraft and Elden Ring, but, my God, I mean, the minute or two it takes to set up another account on a social media site, oh, man. I mean, a human being has its limits.
Like, there's only so much that I can handle and I can do.
The test has been run!
The empirical evidence is there!
Yeah.
So, you've got to be evaluating people and like, yeah, vast majority of you would...
would.
you Mame or kill me with electricity if somebody said, I'd really like you to.
That's just a fact.
If you're a sane person, you are a lion among wolves.
You better choose your companions pretty fucking carefully, especially these days, right?
You choose the wrong people.
Snitch lines are always open for just about anything.
So do dysfunctional people already know the type of person they want to invite into their mess?
Do they just put out signals to see who will take the bait?
No! They're just looking for anyone who will have rational skepticism about the virtue of the random persons that they meet.
Cain, Cain, Cain.
Can you see this? Look, the scarlet letter R. I mean, people have the red K. 80-90% of people have the red K. They could be killers.
Absolutely could be killers. The only thing that they're not killing for is because some guy in a white coat isn't telling them to.
But they'll do it.
And they'll be fine with it.
Again, I don't think this is human nature.
This is bad parenting and bad schooling and bad everything.
But, I mean, come on.
Let's just be realistic about things.
Somebody told me I had bad character because I told them that I primarily come to you for my philosophy.
Oh no, bad character.
Well, that's a well-defined objection.
I'm going to use something which doesn't have any particular definition.
It's a general analogy for personality.
And I'm going to put the word bad in front of it and just see if that controls you.
So here's the thing, right?
Let's say that you're totally into me.
I'm going to rip my shirt off in a moment.
Let's say that you're into me, which means not me.
You don't know me, right? But let's just say you find what I say interesting and important and valuable and helpful and rational and proven and sourced and all that, right?
Okay. Great.
Now, let's say, though, I'm a really bad guy.
It's all... Well, if it's a bad guy, it's all a whatever, a grift.
So they say the grift. It's always a grift, right?
Let's just say that for some bizarre reason I just enjoy torturing and mentally blah, blah, blah, right?
Okay. Now, if someone cares about you and you're falling under my malign, mustache-twirling, evil, Pepe Le Pure influence, right?
I'd have a French character.
So that person, if they care about you, they should listen to me and find the flaws in my logic and then explain those flaws to you to release you from my hypnotic evil mind chains, right?
It's pretty easy to do, right?
I mean, I've always said, hey, you can't beat me by disproving me because if you disprove something that I've said, I get to correct myself and that's a good thing.
That's like thinking I lose to...
The GPS, because it tells me to take a U-turn if I go the wrong direction.
I haven't lost. Good, I want to get to my destination.
I'm glad the GPS is correcting me if I make a mistake.
So if somebody really cares about you, somebody loves you, and you're falling under my evil spell, then say, well, look, I had a look at his reasoning, and man, it's way off, and here's how, and here's why.
Wouldn't they? If they care about you.
I mean, if my reasoning is so bad, right, and my arguments are just so bad, okay, then it shouldn't take them more than, let's say, half an hour.
Give them half an hour, right? So, if my reasoning is so bad, then it should take them about half an hour to find one significant flaw in my reasoning.
All right. So, they could free you from me with a half hour of research.
Not including Wikipedia, of course.
So, they could free you from my evil mind prison with half an hour.
Because they'd come to you and say, well, look, this is completely contradictory.
You may not believe that it's contradictory, in which case you would come here, you'd email me, you'd say, what about this contradiction versus this contradiction?
This doesn't seem to fit with that, right?
Now, if I just came up with some big tsunami of bullshit to justify and explain it away, rather than tackling it head-on and really trying to resolve these contradictions, then, okay, then I would say, well, reason and evidence is my highest thing, but you proved me wrong, therefore I'm either not going to deal with it, or I'm going to just...
Gaslight and snow blow and all this kind of crap, right?
But if the person cares about you and you're falling under my evil Sauron-like red-eyed malign influence and they can't even be bothered because, you know, they care about you so much.
They can't even be bothered to find my obvious contradictions, right?
Then either I'm not wrong or they don't care about you.
But if they tell you that I'm wrong when I'm not wrong, then they clearly neither care about you or the truth.
But if they can't be bothered to spend half an hour finding clear contradictions in my reasoning, they don't care about you.
They don't care about you.
People who reject definitions and don't provide their own shouldn't be allowed to use the words.
But then he opens the dictionary and says there is an existing definition and that this is the new definition is
not listed in Webster's.
.
Then you can just say that I'm just redefining all of your words so that I'm right.
Alright, let me get to your messages. Also, if you would like to tip, come on, I'm straight spitting fire tonight, baby.
If you would like to tip and help me out, I would really, really appreciate it.
The show has costs, as you know.
Oh, and I am working on the Peaceful Parenting book.
Peaceful Parenting book.
Right. And it's going to be free, because I just want as many people to read it.
Alright, so let's see here.
Answer to your musical question is Milli Vanilli.
All right. Oh, this is the girlfriend.
She was fostered into her uncle's family since her parents were not able to raise her.
They are Jehovah's Witness. She tried to bring it up and they swept it under the rug.
She's still, she's hun around town time to time and it makes her very upset.
Still she's hun around town.
I'm sorry. If you can't be asked to spell things correctly, I can't answer the question.
Somebody says, I have an issue with perfectionism.
I set my goals way too high, and it's hard to go through with them due to burnout.
I start doing things, usually things I like, but at some point I get this urge to overdo everything.
I can't just do the simple thing.
I must challenge myself. Do I need to impress someone?
My parents? There's been neglect in my past.
Also, I can't just donate $10.
I must save up $100 and then it'll be impressive.
But it's tiresome and unproductive.
No, I mean, most people online, myself included, would rather get a $100 donation than $10 donations because the fees, right?
The fees and the overhead are considerable.
So, you have an issue with perfectionism.
So, Perfectionism has at its root the word perfect.
And of course we want things to be perfect.
I want to make the perfect argument.
I want to do a perfect show.
I want to have a perfectly round head.
Actually, well, I've achieved at least one of those three things.
So the problem with perfectionism is when you refer to it as perfectionism, it still remains a platonic ideal that you're always going to strive towards.
So I would say you don't have an issue with perfectionism.
You have an issue with being criticized.
So my guess is that you are either neglected or hyper-criticized, and you set it up within your own mind that, well, if I just do things better, and I just do things right, and I just get it perfect...
Then I won't get criticized or I'll get my parents' attention or whatever it is, right?
So you have to go to the root cause.
I mean, look, everyone's a perfectionist.
Of course, everybody wants to plan the perfect date.
When I write a novel, I want it to be the perfect novel.
When I do a show, I want it to be...
Everybody's a perfectionist.
Everybody aims for the very best.
So the issue can't be...
You know, when a woman does her makeup, she wants the makeup to be perfect.
Right? Right? When a man starts to go to the gym, he wants a perfect physique, whether he'll achieve it or not.
So everyone's a perfectionist, and that doesn't really help.
So what is your real issue?
It's not with perfectionism. It's with something else.
You see, I set my goals way too high, and it's hard to go through them due to burnout.
Okay, so that's a form of self-abuse.
So why do you self-abuse?
Because you were raised in an environment of abuse, and neglect, of course, includes abuse.
So I don't really like the phrase perfectionism, because it implies that the rest of us, well, we just don't care.
Like, you're a perfectionist, and that's really stressful for you.
Apparently, I just don't care, though, and I'm just willing to put up with any old crap, right?
It's like, no, no, no, everyone's a perfectionist, except that everyone is a perfectionist.
When you order an ice cream, you want the perfect ice cream, you want the best ice cream, and you order a steak dinner, you understand, right?
Everyone's a perfectionist.
Everybody wants the perfect thing. Can I do a perfect show?
Well, I don't know.
But what I can do is be as honest and forthright and engaging and funny and warm and friendly.
I can do all of that.
I can prepare. How does it come out?
Every comedian wants to do...
Does any comedian go out and say, I don't really want to do a great show tonight.
I don't really... I mean, I'll just be...
I'll be comfortable with any old crap, right?
So, everyone's a perfectionist, but you don't have an issue with perfectionism because so many people...
Everybody wants things to be perfect and we all still get things done.
Is this the very best conceivable show that ever will be ranked in...
I don't know.
I think it's pretty good. I think it's pretty good.
Is it perfect? What would that even mean?
The only thing I can do is aim for honesty, depth, power, and relevance in the moment.
Answering in a way that hopefully shakes people out of their doldrums, gets them to think, and keeps you all safe in a predatory, lion-infested, sociopath-flushed, dangerous world.
If I can do that, pretty good.
Pretty good for spending, like, we've been spending an hour together tonight, and I would say I think it's been pretty good.
Value for you.
So, yeah, everyone's a perfectionist.
You don't have a problem with perfectionism.
You have a problem with fear of being criticized.
And you feel that if you just do it perfectly, then you won't be criticized.
But you will be. You will be.
And you know that, right? You know it's just a defense.
So you're trying to excuse your parents, right?
So let's say that they yelled at you when you made mistakes.
Well, of course, the far biggest mistake in that is yelling at the kid, right?
So they yelled at you when you made mistakes.
All right. So then you think, rather than my parents are unstable assholes who yell at me, you think, oh, well, the issue is that I just didn't do it well enough.
So it's my fault. And look, it's understandable when you're a kid.
You're not a kid anymore, right?
Bob Lee, the super-woke founder of Cash App, stabbed to death in San Francisco.
Oh, man. San Francisco is like Detroit.
You ever see the pictures of Detroit after the Second World War?
It was as close to heaven on earth as you can conceive of.
Detroit was beautiful.
It was this shining city on the hill.
It was incredible. And San Francisco, man, I used to, back in the 90s when I was in my software entrepreneur days, I used to go to San Francisco a lot.
And we had some sales people out there and I'd need to go and train them on software and I'd need to go out and present to clients.
Man, in the 90s, San Francisco was paradise.
I remember there were these restaurants that were sunk like Hobbit holes, hobbit mansions in the side of the mountains or the side of the hills.
And I remember going with a salesperson to a steak restaurant and we watched the sunset over the bay, the golden...
Oh my God, it was beautiful.
Just beautiful. And it's one of the reasons why I did a whole documentary on California, which you can find at freedomain.com forward slash documentaries.
Man, it was paradise. It was like as great a city as you could conceivably imagine, almost like London when I was growing up in the 70s.
London was a paradise for children in particular.
Go anywhere, do anything, perfectly safe, wonderful.
But then the people who sympathize with the criminals get in power.
And because they sympathize with the criminals, they release the criminals.
And I don't know what his ideological beliefs were, But people are, and they're not learning through reason, right?
So they learn through experiences, right?
You try and reason with people, and if they don't listen to reason, they have to listen to experience.
So if he was super woke, then he voted for leftist governments that sympathize with criminals.
It's not really that they sympathize with criminals.
It's just that they want to destroy the society that is.
And the best way to do that is to empty out the insane asylums and the prisons, right?
So that nobody's safe and everybody's anxious.
And then anxious people are easier to control and manipulate.
We all know this boring stuff, right?
So you get the world that you make.
You get the world that you make.
You live in the world that you make. Any advice for how to promote homeschooling since the latest school shooting?
It seems fairly cut and dry to me why it's the better option, but women are so focused on the government solving the problem and not giving up their me time.
They want safety for their kids, but continue to go with the flow and send them to school knowing the risks.
Oh, I don't think that school shootings are the major risk in schools.
I think way premature sex education.
I think collective guilt.
I think racial animosity.
I think hatred of your own culture and history.
I think hatred of your own people.
I think that's the hatred of being a boy, hatred of being male.
Division, hostility, rage, bullying.
I mean, school shootings are extraordinarily rare.
I mean, kids are probably more in danger on the school bus driving there than they are in the school because of shootings, so...
People can just discount the statistics in that way, right?
Like, you know, every time you get into a car, you might die, right?
Every time you get into a car, you might die.
Somebody might run into you, right?
I was just talking to some friends of mine, and they got rear-ended by a guy, you know, in a big van.
They were in a small car, got rear-ended.
He was going full speed, like 30, 35 miles an hour.
He was on his phone, glued to his phone, just drove straight into him.
Okay, well welcome to the challenge of a lifetime of back and neck problems.
If your children don't think for themselves, what's really the point of having them?
You're just raising a bunch of robots or NPCs or fear-based conformists who kind of don't exist as independent thinking entities.
I mean, would a woman go through the pain and discomfort of pregnancy and labor only to be handed a shiny little...
Fucking Roomba afterwards.
You gave birth to Marvin, the paranoid android.
Like, why would you want to give birth to something you would turn into a machine?
I don't... I'd never fathom.
Like, I certainly would never require, demand, or expect my daughter to think the way that I do.
I want her to think for herself, which means disagreeing and contradicting me when appropriate and when right, and thank goodness she does.
It's great. I don't want you to think like me.
I want you to think. Because thinking like me is not thinking at all, any more than if I was thinking like somebody else.
I wouldn't be thinking, I'd just be copying.
If thinking like someone else is thinking, then photocopying is art.
Taking a photo is being an expert painter.
Schools will never teach you to think for yourself.
I In particular, government schools.
Maybe there's, I don't know, some Waldorf or Lancashire schools in the past or whatever, but...
I want to teach you to think for yourself.
And why on earth would you want to have kids if they didn't end up thinking for themselves?
Then you don't have kids. You have copies of ideology.
You have programmed robots of largely self-destructive tendencies.
It's not homeschooling, really.
It's just giving them the freedom and encouragement to think for themselves and be themselves, which isn't that what you wanted to give birth to, was a human being who thinks for himself, who is himself or herself?
I don't know why you would want to just turn them into some cog in some larger self-destructive
robotic machine.
Let's see here.
Somebody says, oh, is this the same person from before?
Let me just see here.
I want to make sure I am fair in what I do.
Is this the same person before?
Oh, definition of...
Oh, no, that's not the same person.
Unfortunately I can't sort by threads, right?
Oh yes, it is the same person.
Okay, so to deal with the partner.
So this is the same partner, right?
So this says, It is I who need to make this change.
Oh, thank you for your tips, by the way.
It really helps me know that I'm providing value.
I've asked her to move out and move on multiple times before.
She says she needs time to find a place.
She takes long enough until I crumble, tired from work and long shifts, and we end up cuddling or sleeping together again when I'm back home.
Vicious cycle continues.
I need to be stern and move her out.
I feel I'm just being another shitty person who let her down by making her move out.
Why did she move in?
And why don't you move out?
Maybe it's your place and you own it or something, but if you're just renting, you move out.
Rely on somebody else, right?
So, you slow walked yourself into this disaster.
It's still entirely on you.
Still entirely on you.
Why are you having difficulty with your living situation?
Because you asked her to move in, knowing how dysfunctional she was.
I have sympathy for everything that leads you to make bad decisions.
I have no sympathy for the bad decisions.
And this is true for me, too.
Look, Lord knows I've made bad decisions over the course of my life.
I have no sympathy for those bad decisions.
I have no sympathy.
I have sympathy for what I missed as a child and the abuse I suffered as a child.
I have sympathy for that, for sure.
But I can't just have sympathy for myself as an adult.
Why? Because then I never get to be an adult.
How can I have an adult if I just make excuses for myself?
Excuses for toddlers and children.
Oh, he peed in my eye because he's a toddler.
And I was just changing his diaper.
He's a baby. Okay, that's fine.
Oh, he crapped his pants because he's 18 months old and he doesn't know any better, right?
You make excuses for children.
What is an adult? An adult is someone who's outgrown excuses.
What if you are 150% responsible for everything that happens in your life?
I feel like I'm just being another shitty person who let her down by making her move out.
No. No, you are...
You are inviting both of you to experience adulthood for perhaps the first time.
You know, this relationship is not working.
I don't want you living here. Well, it's going to take me a while to find a place.
You have three days. You have three days that I'm changing the locks.
I love you. I care for you.
I don't want anything bad to happen to you.
But this is not good for either of us.
This is unhealthy for us.
In three days, I'm changing the locks.
I'll help you. If you need help finding a place, I'll help you look.
I'll help you move.
But we've got to move on.
This is not healthy for either of us.
And I'm sorry that it got this way.
See, you can't make anybody else take responsibility.
Because the moment you try to make people take responsibility, you look hypocritical.
Because you're playing hot. This potato is too hot for me to hold.
You hold it. Why wouldn't it be too hot for me to hold?
You can never, ever, ever, ever, ever cause people to take responsibility.
The only thing you can do in this life or any other, the only thing you can do, my friends, what do you do?
You take responsibility for everything.
And when they see how powerful that is, maybe they'll be inspired to do the same.
That's all you can do. If you're one half of a fat marriage, you can either nag your wife to lose weight, or you can just lose weight yourself and hope she gets inspired.
It's like we've lost, maybe it's with the fall of Christianity, but we've lost the entire concept of inspiring people rather than nagging them.
Now, maybe it's just a male-female thing.
Dads tend to inspire a little bit more.
Moms tend to nag a little bit more.
But it's just, I don't know, all of this claustrophobic feminine energy rolling over our gonads like some acidic tsunami.
But it's like, just, no, I'm 100% responsible for you being in this place.
I knew that you were dysfunctional.
I knew that you had your history.
There was ample evidence that you weren't particularly mature.
And I say this with all deep sympathy and respect.
And I was not mature enough.
We kind of got tangled into this.
It's 100% my responsibility.
100% my responsibility.
When things are your responsibility, you can change them.
If it's 50-50, you just play this stupid tug of war until one of you dies.
Alright, somebody says, I figure the people have become more like domesticated
sheep over time.
What effect do you think it's had on the kind of people that come into more free communities?
Because potentially they throw away even the useful, solid reality of the past as part of their rebellion.
Many people in the world have a significant lack of scope.
What the hell does this mean? It's nearly like a psychosis, and it can happen to libertarians too.
Like they should read the road to Wigan Pier or something, act rather than just talk.
Yeah, I don't know.
Sorry, that's just a word salad, a vague dissatisfaction.
I don't know how to address it. Steph, what are some tips to scan for nuts when meeting people?
Well, see if they're scanning you.
See if they're scanning you.
Do they...
I mean, I remember I went on a vacation.
God, where was I? Dominican Republic, maybe.
I went on a vacation.
I just had a crazy work schedule for months, and I ended up taking two weeks.
I packed my... Most of my luggage was full of books on philosophy and self-knowledge, psychology.
And I went to the Dominican Republic for two weeks, entirely on my own.
It was great. I played beach volleyball every day.
I could play beach volleyball till the day I die and be a very happy guy.
But I played beach volleyball every day.
I learned how to scuba dive.
I went snorkeling.
And I did end up meeting some people and hanging out from time to time, but I just remember, I remember plowing through, I don't know, four books by Nietzsche on the beach.
Nietzsche on the beach is pretty peachy.
It's wonderful. And it was just great, wonderful.
But I remember being on a tour, a hiking tour, and there were these two women who were just like, yeah, we're having a party this weekend.
You want to come along? You want to come by?
And it's like, what are you, crazy?
You're... I knew they weren't locals, right?
You're in a foreign country, you don't just invite anyone and everyone over to where you are.
Are you crazy? To a party?
Like this elemental lack of self-protection.
Wild. Do people overshare?
Do they just give you all of this information about themselves?
With no reciprocity.
Do they just talk about themselves?
One fundamental thing is...
And I learned this from an old business boss of mine.
And he said, you know...
I mean, this seemed old back then.
He was in his 50s and I was in my...
Late 20s. And he was like, I can't remember the context of the conversation, but I remember it very clearly to this day.
He's dead now. But he said, yeah, you know, my wife and I, we kind of got it down to a fine art now.
Like we meet new people, we meet a new couple, we will spend 10 minutes asking them about themselves.
If they don't ask anything back, we just move on and never look back.
Because life's short. Now, of course, life doesn't seem that short when you're in your 20s.
But now that I'm in my mid-50s, yeah, I'm aware that time's ticking away.
So, yeah, if somebody doesn't ask you about you...
I love asking people questions.
I mean, I'm fascinated by people.
I'm really curious about what makes them tick, and I've been incredibly blessed to have thousands of these call-in shows.
I have a scope of the tapestry of human existence that's mostly unmatched by anybody else in history.
I've really gone incredibly deep into people's lives thousands of times now.
Like, I have a view that is unmatched anywhere else in the universe.
Maybe therapists in particular...
But therapists can't talk about it, right?
These are all public things, right? So, it's wild.
And, of course, therapists tend to be long-term.
I get to stare deeply into people's lives, usually just a one-time call, right?
But I've really, like, I've lifted the lid and stared deep into the spine of people's souls thousands of times now and really seen, like, I have so much information, I have so much history, and, of course, there's a whole bunch of these that never even got published, so, or at least yet.
So, Do people ask about you?
Do they reciprocate your interest?
Do they ask back? If they don't, you're just a utility.
You're a prop.
You're a podium for them to stand on.
Is there a back and forth?
Do they recognize your existence and sympathize with your existence?
Are they curious about your existence?
Why are some people avoidant of things they didn't get as children in their adult life?
Usually there's the opposite effect.
For example, if you starved as a child, then you'd be more likely to overeat.
Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't mean to be a nag, but you have to give me examples.
If you give me theories, I don't know if I'm dealing with particular examples.
Do you mean if you starved as a child, then you continue to starve as an adult?
Well, maybe that's all you feel that you deserve.
I mean, a lot of people who were physically abused as children end up...
Being in physically abusive relationships, either giving or receiving or both, as adults.
We are, and I've said this many, many times over the years, we are a sexually imprinted species.
It's one of the reasons why they want sexual materials in front of kids.
We are a sexually imprinting species, as you can imagine, right?
Sexual practices and habits and approaches vary widely across the human landscape, so we are sexually imprinting the first...
I mean, a lot of times if you look at your turn-ons and you look at your first things that you're exposed to sexually, the things are kind of going hand-in-hand, right?
So... All right.
Who remembers the back the blue guys shocked when the police beat up grandmothers going to church during COVID lockdowns?
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
COVID taught me perfectly that most of the people in my country would be happy to sell me into slavery if it made them feel more comfortable.
I mean, I get that there's some hyperbole in that, but yeah, wasn't it?
Half the Democrats were willing to have kids taken away from parents if the parents didn't get them vaccinated.
now even the World Health Organization is saying that young people don't really
need breath.
Alright I'm rediscovering healthy anger.
It's shocking how many people are terrified of it.
I guess they've mixed it up with rage.
Or the healthy anger is in conflict with their agenda.
Yeah. Thank you for the tips.
I really, really appreciate that.
It's great. It has been a spicy show.
The Wednesday streams always go hard.
It's kind of true. Steph, if you think tech will contract, what industries do you think might see some growth in the near future?
Well, meaning industries, right?
So people are starving for meaning.
Meaning means something objective and moral that you can subject yourself to without losing your identity, right?
So if you're just part of some cult on the left or the right where it's just, well, you have to believe this and, right...
Like, I don't want to dip into politics, but...
I mean...
Wasn't it John Edwards was also...
When he was investigated for having an affair, and I think there was some payoff involved in all of that, right?
I mean, people on the right were like, fine with that.
Actually, I did a review of a book written by John Edwards' assistant.
I did this many years ago, probably somewhere in my...
I never got around to publishing or whatever, right?
But, yeah, so, I mean, if you're in the sort of cult of the left or the right or whatever, right, then you get...
A tribe, but the tribe empties you out because you can't think for yourself.
So people want meaning.
Now, prayer is you thinking for yourself.
If you're not religious, then people are not praying to God.
They're praying to their own unconscious.
They're praying to their deeper selves, their historical selves, the collective unconscious, whatever you want to call it, all the stuff that predates and supports our own individual lives.
For more on this, you can read my book Against the Gods.
Free Domain Playlists is actually a great site to go to.
Free Domain Playlists is a great site to go through for books and all of that.
So, people are desperate for meaning that doesn't erase them.
Now, if you join some collective group that demands you don't think for yourself or don't ask any uncomfortable questions or don't provide any counter data, then...
You have meaning, but the meaning erases you, so you don't end up united with meaning.
But if you have a methodology for thinking for yourself, which Christianity has, which philosophy has, and so on, philosophy, of course, I still think is slightly better in terms of the metaphysics and the epistemology, but if you have something that allows you to participate in universal morality while retaining your own identity, well, that's a powerful growth place, and AI will not provide that.
I mean, AI is just going to be crippled, right?
Because it won't be able to say things that are against the cult narrative, right?
So AI will be made retarded because the most important things we could get from AI, AI will never be allowed to speak.
Like, it kind of struck me that, it struck me the other day, I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, it's a thought that strikes me occasionally.
I think when people saw how the media handled the science of IQ that I was talking about with these researchers, where I had like 18 world-class researchers on the show talking about IQ. So I think when people saw the media and how it handled...
The science of IQ. And they saw, well, the media has no allegiance to science whatsoever.
So then when the media started evaluating the vaccines, the mRNA quote vaccines, I think most of y'all who saw what the media did with the science of IQ were like, well, they don't have any allegiance to science, obviously, so there's got to be something else going on and probably saved some people.
Keep up the great work.
Steph, I thoroughly enjoyed your History of Philosophers series.
And in the past, I've enjoyed all your history videos, especially the fall of Rome.
Would love more such content, even if it's repeat postings here on Locals, formerly posted videos on YouTube.
I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for all you do.
Didn't grow up with a stable father, so your lessons are much valued.
500 characters, not nearly enough to ask about my situations, but I'd appreciate your stern response to how I'm living.
Respect for you, Steph. Thank you.
I appreciate it. I really, really, really want to help, and sometimes help requires...
A taser to the nads. Well, for me, too, if it's any consolation.
Radical responsibility. Yeah, yeah.
Wouldn't process tip here in chat, so donate it on the main page.
Thank you for your time, Seth. Thank you very much.
Wow. What's that?
Hour 20 already. Blow-by.
All right. Any last little questions?
I don't want anybody to be left hanging, blue-balled in the philosophy...
Champagne room, so...
If you want to type in something quick, I'll do something quick and...
It's funny, like I started working at like 9 this morning and it's like, other than a little bit of time off for racquetball, it's just work all day.
I did a chapter, a really challenging chapter this morning of the book, read it out as an audio book.
And then I did some research and then I had a call-in show and then I talked with a researcher and now I'm doing a show tonight.
So it's been a good day, but it's been a lot of philosophy today, which is, you know, again, great, but...
Is there an RSS feed for the audiobook?
No. But you know what?
You guys have been... You're such a lovely audience.
We'd love to take you home.
I'm going to give you guys the feed.
Let me give you the feed.
Let me give you the feed for my last book.
If you guys are not donors, you wouldn't have seen it.
I'll give you the feed for the last book.
My book, The Future.
I don't have a feed for...
The new book is yet. But I will when I'm done.
So here's my last...
Ooh. It'll probably mess things up, won't it?
Will it? Will it?
What the hell happened there?
Did it go? I don't know what happened.
Any chance you can do a show on the book The Present?
Where can we ask you questions about the book?
Well, you can just ask questions under the shows that are posted, right?
Like I'm posting the audiobook, so you can just ask me questions under there and I will put those together.
Is there a reason you post some call-in shows and not others?
Are there some call-ins you never post?
Yes, there have been a few call-ins I never post.
Whether I will or not, I don't know, but...
When I'm dead and gone, somebody's going to have a lot of fun in the archives.
If not liking the good advice makes me feel bad, it's evidence that I need to improve things in my life.
Thank you for uncomfortable truth, Freedomain.
I need that, not sugar-coated lies.
Yeah, you know, philosophy is hurt now, feel good later.
Just like most things, like cutting back on your food means feel hungry now, but feel better later.
Exercising sometimes means feel uncomfortable now, but feel better later.
So I'm all about improving your life.
Soon with discomfort now.
Whereas just about everyone else will flush your future down the toilet of the hedonism at the moment.
All right. Good, good, good.
Well, listen, guys, thank you for a wonderful, wonderful evening.
It's just been a huge and great pleasure, as always, to have this chat.
My humblest thanks for the honor of trusting me with philosophy through your support and through your encouragement.
I really, really appreciate it.
I love you. We few, we jazz club, happy few.
Yes, you have to spend your time in the wilderness, but then you come back with a vengeance.
So, thanks everyone so much.
Lots of love. I'll talk to you soon.
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