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April 11, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:13:11
To Hell With Your Limitations!
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Good afternoon. Hello and welcome to raspy voice audiobook reader from hell.
No, actually, I'm feeling a little hoarse not to put the moves on a Shetland Polly, but hope you're having a great afternoon.
And, well, hi.
Nice to chat with you.
Just a note, tomorrow night's show is going to be late, later in the evening.
I'll probably do it at 9.30, but it won't be at 7.
Sorry about that. But I have needs too, people.
I have needs too!
So, all right.
Happy to take questions.
Hello, hello. Let me just make sure we're all cooking.
We're cooking with gas. Going on, going down.
Going to the city. Going to the Sunset Grill.
Going to Funky Town.
And, you know, okay.
Let's start off with a musical quiz.
Musical quiz. This song is like a brain virus.
It's a little bit obscure song, but it kind of kicks into my brain from time to time.
I can't sing quite like the original singer, or most decent singers at all, but let me know if you can get this one at all.
Okay. If you want me to stay I'll be around today To be available for you to see And you'll have to go But then you'll know For me to stay here I got to be me You'll never be in doubt That's what it's all about You can take me for granted and smile Anyone?
Anyone? It's a bit of an obscure one I don't think it was ever done live And the artist was a sort of flash of the pan.
I think it was a 70s thing.
But yeah, if you think you can do it, if you think you know, then type in the answers.
And let's see here.
Let's get to your questions right away.
What are some things that cannot be addressed or explained without resorting to the divine?
Well, you're asking the wrong guy.
Of course, the theologian would have the answers.
But philosophy is the discipline of answering all answerable questions.
A question which can't be answered is not the province of philosophy and not really the province of human knowledge.
The purpose of human knowledge is to align conceptions within the mind with evidence in the universe, at least from a scientific standpoint.
And with regards to self-knowledge, it is to align one's perception of the self with the empirical evidence of one's own actions.
The purpose of self-knowledge is to have a view of yourself that aligns with your actions.
So if you say, I'm an honest guy, but you lie a lot, then you have incorrect knowledge.
You have knowledge that doesn't fit. And now, of course, the reason we use self-knowledge to align our perception of our self with our empirical evidence, the empirical evidence of our actions, is so that we can change from a place of certainty.
You don't know what to change if you don't know where you are.
You can't ever get out of the woods if you can never figure out your location within the woods, pretty much.
So, if a question is unanswerable, Then it is not the province of philosophy, and really not the province of human knowledge at all, right?
So, what was the...
Actual volume of precipitation down to the last fluid millimeter on April the 2nd, 1792 BC. This will never be known, right?
So you wouldn't make that the province.
Now, of course, since God is omniscient, there is no question that doesn't have an answer.
Just God would have it, right? If God was omniscient and all-knowing, all-powerful...
Then God would know the mean precipitation on the date that I just said, 17 whatever it was, BC. So, there is the knowledge of everything.
How many atoms are there in the universe?
Well... God knows, right?
But human beings can't possibly know, right?
Anything that you would do to measure that would change the number of, or at least certainly the pattern of atoms, right?
That's sort of the uncertainty principle, right?
You can know as an electron's position or direction, but not both at the same time.
So philosophy is there to draw a really clear line saying...
If you're a geographer, if you're into geography, if you're a cartographer, then you should map the world.
You can't map imaginary worlds, at least in an objective fashion.
I mean, is Mordor really west of the Shire?
Well, Tolkien said so, but it's not objective.
There's no objective answer to that.
We can only say relative to what Tolkien said.
So philosophy is there to really delineate, really draw a firm line Around what we can and can't know.
Whereas in theology, of course, all knowledge is available.
And if it was absolutely essential for you to know the precipitation of 1700 and change BC, all around the world, and you could pray to God for that answer and God would provide you that answer.
If it was important enough and you had been good enough and God chose to for whatever reason.
So there is no knowledge that is beyond the scope of consciousness if you are a believer in an omniscient God.
So, what are some things that cannot be addressed or explained without resorting to the divine?
Well, nothing. So, somebody says, unanswerable questions is metaphysics, is it not?
No. No, metaphysics, let's get metaphysical, physical.
Okay, metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality.
And an unanswerable question is mental masturbation.
An unanswerable question is usually a sophist trick, not putting you in this category, of course.
An unanswerable question is usually a trick.
Put forward by sophists to make other people mentally paralyzed.
So a sophist will ask you unanswerable questions and then consider himself really wise.
Well, you know, philosophy really is tough.
Anybody who asks you an unanswerable question is manipulating you and usually exploiting and bullying you.
So, stay clear of those, right?
It's the old, have you stopped beating your wife yet questions, right?
There's no way to answer that and retain any kind of nobility.
All right. Let's see here.
Yeah, I don't have much to say about the trans issue.
I know it's a big thing these days.
Just look at who's funding it.
I mean, without the funding, what would happen to this, right?
Without the sort of government funding, right?
If you look back at most of the evils in the world, you can find money printing and central banking and government largesse at the root, so...
There was, and you can sort of look up the history of multiple personality disorder.
All right. Hi Steph, how do I know if my girlfriend is the right one?
We are dating for three years and I don't want to waste her fertility years.
I want to put a ring on her or let go and move on.
You've been dating for three years.
You don't want to waste her fertility years.
Well, I mean, if you break up with her, you have.
You've not wasted all her fertility years unless you dated her from like 36 to 39 or something like that.
But if you've basically just been playing house or playing friends with benefits or playing boyfriend-girlfriend for three years and you haven't felt the urge to marry her, then I guess my question would be why hasn't she made that a condition?
Why hasn't she made that a condition?
I mean, the people I know who are married, myself included, the women said, I'm not looking for a fling, I'm not looking for an affair, I'm not looking to be someone's girlfriend, I'm looking to settle down, get married.
If you don't want that, that's fine, but just tell me now.
It's a woman who has self-respect, right?
Who doesn't... Just date endlessly without any plan, without any...
Like, has she said...
You can ask me this, right?
Has she said anything?
Has she made this a requirement?
Did she ever make this a requirement? Or does she exist also in this state of weird, amber-covered timelessness?
So, I mean, how do I know if my girlfriend is the right one?
Well, first of all, she won't just let you...
If she wants to get married, she won't just let you date her for years without talking about it.
It's like I always liked the employees who were more demanding.
I always liked the employees who wanted raises.
I always liked the employees who wanted travel opportunities or to learn better skills or whatever, right?
I always wanted those employees.
Those are really the best employees to have.
And you don't just let an employee languish, right?
I mean, fiancé is a promotion from girlfriend.
Girlfriend is a promotion from dating.
Fiancé is a promotion from girlfriend.
Marriage is a promotion. Wife is a promotion from girlfriend.
And mother is the ultimate promotion.
I guess maybe grandmother a little bit, but mother is the necessary one, right?
So, if I had an employee who just kind of came into work every day, never asked for a raise, never expressed any discontent, never wanted to learn anything new, it wasn't that great.
It wasn't really a very quality employee.
Now, of course, I wouldn't let an employee work for me for years without offering any kind of raise at all.
Like, of course not, right?
Because that's exploiting their insecurity.
So, why haven't you offered to promote her?
Because if you don't marry a girlfriend, You're saying you're fine for sex but not for marriage.
You're saying you have it scrolling in LED lights across your forehead.
A woman that you do not propose to, you are clearly saying I'll bang you.
But I'm not going to marry you.
I don't want to marry you. I'll use you for sex and companionship or whatever.
I'll use you to have a warm biped in the bed next to me or on top of me or whatever.
But... I'm not going to marry you.
Now, any woman who will put up with that was not taught how to respect herself.
And your strip mining, parental neglect and abuse...
In order to get your rocks off without having to commit.
Knowing that you have a much longer runway.
You have a much longer runway, right?
It's like that joke I did in my high school.
I did a joke in the high school assembly.
Three guys on top of the CN Tower.
One guy turns to the other and says, you know, it's pretty wild up here.
There's this incredible updraft that comes up from the city because of the heat and the smog and all of that.
Check this out. And he jumps off the CN Tower and he floats and flies around, floats and flies around, comes back up and lands and says, whew, that is quite a rush, man.
This updraft is incredible.
So the other guy's like, I'm going to try that.
And he jumps off and he falls to his death.
The third guy says to the first guy who jumped and said, you know, sometimes, Superman, you can be a complete jerk.
So you're Superman. You've got time.
She doesn't have time. Do you really love her?
The same person is saying, she didn't make a point to talk seriously about it.
I felt the urge to marry her, but I feel a doubt.
She did make a point to talk seriously about it.
She did make a point to talk seriously about it.
I'm not sure what that means.
So just hit me with a why.
She wants to get married? And how long into the relationship?
Did she say that she wants to get married?
Things seem to be slow on the old chat.
Can you see this?
Oh, maybe he's doing something else.
Oh, he's typing now. Maybe there's a delay, delay, echo, echo.
And he is typing with his elbow.
I'm willing to wait.
I'm not going to vamp and fill the air.
Thank you for watching.
Two years in, she started to talk seriously about it.
So she wants you to marry her.
She wants to get married. And she didn't talk about it at all in the two years since you started dating.
She didn't talk at all about marriage.
Oh, seriously, maybe she talked about it before.
Okay, so this is her plan, and the plan arises from very low self-esteem.
And this is just a sad thing, and I don't mean this in any critical or negative way.
I'm just sort of pointing out the pattern, right?
This pattern arises from very low self-esteem.
And it's the inertia move, right?
The inertia move goes something like this.
Well, I really do want to get married and settle down and have a husband and kids maybe, but I don't want to make that a condition up front because if I make that a condition up front, I'm just going to scare the man away and he's going to go run screaming to the hills and all this, that and the other, right? So...
What I'm going to do is I'm going to do the inertia.
So if I start dating without any requirements, if I start dating without any long-term plans, then he'll date me because I'm fine and I'm good in bed.
So then you date for a while and then she's just hoping...
Maybe then she moves in and then she's like, well, we're living together.
It's really not that big a step to get married.
And she's just hoping to like the war of inches, the war of water wears away stone.
She doesn't make this a...
A plan up front.
She's just hoping to slowly attach to the point where you're like, well, I guess we're kind of married.
We might as well get married. And she never makes it a thing.
She doesn't have that as a standard up front.
So that's just an insecure thing, right?
That's just an insecure thing.
And I say this again with great sympathy.
It's really sad.
Really quite tragic.
But... I don't know what the equivalent would be for a man.
Yeah, so the equivalent for a man would be something like this.
Well, I really want a job in media, so I'm not going to get trained in media and I'm not going to go and apply for jobs in media.
I'm just going to hang around and help and then if they need volunteers, I'll be a volunteer and then I'll work there for a couple of years for free.
I won't really improve my skills much and I won't really train or learn how to be a really valued employee in the media.
But I'll just kind of hang around and stick around and offer to help out and volunteer and then hopefully I'll get the job as the head of a media company.
It's just this weird thing.
It's this weird thing.
Men do it too. The male equivalent in terms of dating is, no, no, no, hey, I know you've got a boyfriend.
I just think we're good friends.
I enjoy your company.
And, you know, when, of course, you want to have sex with her or you want her to be your girlfriend, but you just claim that you just want to be friends.
You know, let's just be friends.
Let's just be friends. A guy I knew had a woman who worked in the company he worked at and she was in a pretty serious relationship and he really wanted to get her to be his girlfriend.
And she played tennis.
Her boyfriend didn't play tennis.
So he went and learned how to play tennis.
And he's like, hey, I'll play tennis with you.
I like tennis. And they'd just hang out and play tennis.
And then they'd hang out and play tennis and go for brunch.
And then they'd hang out and play tennis.
And then, you know, just, you know, he'd wear these tight shirts.
And he had a pretty good physique.
And, you know, just, you know, just worming your way in, right?
And so you're not saying up front, you know, I'd be a better boyfriend than your boyfriend.
You should be with me, not him. I'm going to make a play.
No, no, no. It's like, no, no, no.
I just want friendship.
Just be friends. I know you've got a boyfriend.
You might even make up an imaginary girlfriend, you know, like the cliche of the American guy who's kind of nerdy, who has the Canadian girlfriend that never seems to show up or anything like that.
But, yeah, men do it too, where you don't state your intentions up front.
You just kind of hang around and hope something's going to fall into place.
And it's pretty bad.
Now, when I say in terms of the job thing...
In terms of a job thing, she should be making you marrying her.
Like, it's not your decision.
It's a mutual decision based upon value provided, right?
So, if you want a job in the media, it's fine if you volunteer and all of that, but while you're volunteering, you should be studying like crazy to figure out How you could add enormous amounts of value to whoever's your quote manager as a volunteer.
Doing night courses and learn all these things and so on, right?
And so...
Your girlfriend should be learning the skills of being a wife so that marrying her is like a no-brainer, right?
I will make your life better. I'll run the household.
I'll raise the kids. I'll pay the bills.
I'll do your taxes. Like, whatever she's going to do.
It could be any number of things, but whatever is going to be the maximum value add to your life, that's what she should be generating and providing.
But there's an entitlement of just, well, like, I'm hanging around.
I'm not making a very good case that you should marry me, but you should just marry me because I've been around for so long.
No. No.
Here's the thing in life.
Are you ready for a little bit of wisdom that will blow your mind?
Are you ready for a little bit of wisdom that will blow your mind?
mind this is really one of the most important success tips you'll ever hear
and I have had a great deal of success in my life. Always act as if you are in
serious competition with everyone else.
Always act as if you were in serious competition with everyone else.
My daughter can't choose a different father, but I parent as if she could.
The parents she knows, any of the fathers she knows, she could eeny, meeny, miny, moe, swap me out, no problem.
Swap me out like changing a tire.
Fantastic. I'm a husband.
I'm trying to get my wife to go out with me and commit to me every day.
I try to not rest on inertia while doing this show.
Try to come up with something new, something interesting, something engaging, something powerful.
Something that can help your life.
Every time I switch on this mic, switch on this camera, that's my goal.
Not same old, same old, right?
Something new. Surprising.
Scintillating. Half naked if need be.
You're always in competition.
It's a fact. I'm married over 20 years.
I still act as if I'm in competition.
I have to woo my wife and delight my daughter and hopefully woo and delight you as an audience.
Every time I turn on the camera, I'm in competition.
You're always in competition.
Look, you could be the number one model in the world.
The Linda Evangelista doesn't get out of bed for less than $10,000.
Number one model in the world.
You know who you're in competition with?
Time, baby! Time is going to sag and erode you.
On the portrait, I had this poem a long time ago, many years ago, about a woman and her beauty.
Over the watercolors of her portrait hang the clouds of impending rain.
Over the watercolors of her portrait hang the clouds of impending rain, right?
Because you know when rain lands on watercolor it just sags, right?
Time is going to erase that beauty.
I saw... Brooke Shields, one of the most beautiful women when I was young and cruelly and half-patophilically exploited, in my opinion, when she was very young.
And she just looks like an average middle-aged lady now.
It's fine. Nothing wrong with it.
Look at what happened to Kelly McGillis.
It's the reason she didn't come back for Top Gun 666.
We age out, baby.
You could be anywhere, watching anything, doing anything, and I want you to pay attention to what I'm saying.
I'm in competition with everything else in the known universe.
I want to produce shows so compelling you could be in a car crash.
Hope you're not. You could be in a car crash in the middle of one of my shows.
And you're like, hold up, I'm not going to call anyone because I need to finish this before I call anyone.
The jaws of life might interfere with those mellifluous, tour-of-the-colonies tones.
That odd accent.
I want you to come out of here walking on air with a plan for your life that embraces and crushes all the obstacles in the known universe to stand between you and your bliss.
150%, boom, done.
You're always in competition.
And the people who fail are the people who forget that.
Always in competition.
I think, I mean, I'll straight up with you guys, I think I produce the best content out there.
I absolutely 150% believe that I produce the best content out there.
I'm just in competition with my former content, right?
Trying to find a better way to communicate, a better way to get it across for you.
A better way to bring philosophy and plug it into the Borg brain of this genius Saturn ring orbiting the planet of wisdom.
I'll tell jokes, I'll sing songs, I'll take my shirt off, I'll...
I'd dance if you'd let me.
I don't really do full-body stuff that much, but I went to a lot of discos when I was younger.
I can bust a few moves.
So I'm always in competition.
Thank you.
That's wonderful.
I mean, oh, that's stressful. No, it's not stressful.
It's not stressful as long as you recognize that the purpose of competition is not to have you win, but to have you excel.
The studies have been done.
People run their fastest when there's another runner who's just a little faster than they are.
People do their best when they're in competition.
The purpose of competition is not winning.
The purpose of competition is excellence.
That satisfaction that comes from knowing that you reached deep down inside of you, you pulled up the earth roots of your wisest essence.
And put it into some endeavor that leaves a footprint on the sands of time, or hopefully the sands of time that turn into the concrete of time, that you left a mark that can't be erased.
The deeper you go, the wider you spread.
The deeper I go into myself, the more I connect with you.
And trying to weigh analogy, form, content, reasoning, argument, inspiration.
I have about 1,200 balls in the air.
I won't do a handstand and show you.
I have about 1,200 balls in the air.
Every time I'm doing one of these things, it's not scripted.
This just came out of nowhere.
Boom! Got to ride it.
Got to figure out a way to ride that lightning so that it strikes all of us in the spine and lights us up so we're visible from space.
Always be in competition.
So your girlfriend is in competition with your indifference, with your lack of resolution, with other women, with her aging out, with her desperation.
She's in competition. So if you act like you're in competition, you can do good things.
I want to be in the middle of a speech that the angels could not pay or bribe you to switch away from.
I want the word thudding into your life like meteors igniting a forest.
She's in competition with your indifference and other women and your extended time frame being a man.
Are you living in life like you're neck and neck with the best runner and you really, really want the prize?
Are you living that way?
Are you? Are you?
Or are you just kinda catnapping your way through sludgy indifference?
You know, everybody wants to be special.
Thank you.
And we're all the protagonists in our own stories.
But how many people are willing to really earn that specialness by taking risks?
I mean, being cowardly is all over the world, all over the planet.
Agreeing, nodding, swimming with the current like a bunch of brain-dead salmon.
That's common. That's everywhere.
That's everyone just about. Are you willing to really earn the love, respect, and attention of the people around you?
Or are you just like, well, you know, we were kind of born into the same family.
I guess I always have people that I can hang around Thanksgiving with because their family are, you know, how men do it.
They get three friends as kids and then around the age of 15 they say, well, that's it!
I'm done socializing, getting new friends.
I say, hang on to these people till the day we all die.
Drifting along like a cork In a stream of urine coming off a Lollapalooza tour.
I was born here.
I'm comfortable here.
These are the people I grew up with.
We always have to stick together.
We don't have to earn anything.
We don't have to be virtuous.
We don't have to inspire. We don't.
don't be just around around around around around and then you take this
great gift And you flush it into the sewers of relentless indifference and laziness and torpitude and sludgification.
I get slow motion sick now.
Sorry, squire, the rat gone stuck.
Sorry, Squire, the rat got stuck.
Gonna die either way.
Whether you sink your fangs deep into the gristle and marrow of life,
or whether you just skim the surface and get stuck in these grand hog days of blind repetition.
Either way, you got the appointment, right?
You got the appointment at some time in the future, hopefully not during this show, at least hopefully not for me.
Although, boy, wouldn't that get some views.
But, yeah. I was there when the big chatty forehead turned inside out.
But, yeah. What are you drifting around for, man?
Well, you know, she's okay.
She puts out. You need a warm body beside me.
I don't want to watch TV alone, man.
That feels weird. Like if you're the only person in a movie show and a comedy, it's not that funny.
That's why they have big studio audiences for sitcoms.
That's why you watch Martin Kaufman flush Western civilization down into the degenerate sewage hole called Friends.
You have to have people there to laugh along with you, otherwise you might get suspicious
that you've been corrupted!
Always. Why not be great?
Why not be excellent? Why not give it your all?
Why not? How dare you go through life without ever finding out how powerful you can be?
How dare you?
Spring from birth to grave without figuring out the apogee and the top of your arc of potential.
How dare you be gifted?
All the riches of the universe, which is what it is to have a human brain.
How dare you be gifted all the riches of the universe and not find out exactly what you're capable of?
Because I tell you this, my friends.
I was a little kid.
I was a shy kid.
I was an abused kid.
I was a nothing burger in a blonde mop.
Badly dressed. Badly quaffed.
Had nothing, had no one going for me.
You say, ah, yes, but Steph, you had all of this ability and potential, and I didn't know that.
Think I knew that? No.
I didn't know that. Because the kind of potential that I've actualized over the course of my life is not something that you know ahead of time in any way, shape, or form.
I'm literally throwing myself off a cliff, hoping that rocks will float up to carry my feet.
Like, if you're a great singer, you just open your mouth and people are like, wow, that's great.
That's not how philosophy works.
That's not how self-knowledge works.
That's not how virtue works.
The way all that stuff works is people hate you and hate you and hate you and hate you
and hate you and hate you and hate you and then give you five bucks.
What I am doing Thank you.
Was absolutely and completely invisible to me for most of my life.
Couldn't sing. Can't sing.
Booked a stadium anyway.
Sold a billion dollars worth of tickets.
I'm like, I'm sure I'll figure it out by the time I get to a microphone.
I cast my aspirations so far outside of my tangible potential that it was about six millimeters short of utter insanity.
Psychosis. To have ambitions this big?
This grand? To say to people in my twenties with almost no evidence I want it to be some combination of Dickens, Shakespeare, Socrates. DSS. SDS. SSD. No evidence.
No evidence.
It's will.
You keep throwing your potential ahead of you until?
Until when? Until you die.
But that's when you stop, or rather nature puts down that pork collis in front of you and cheese graters up everything you can do.
It's what you do. You put Your mad ambition ahead of you.
And I guarantee you, everyone who's listening to this, you are the elite.
This show is complex, deep, challenging, confusing.
And if it's any consolation, it's that way for me too on a regular basis.
So don't feel bad. If that's your experience, I'm right there with you, man.
I'm not floating above the trenches like a Zeppelin.
Sometimes I feel like the rat in the mud, trying not to get stepped on.
What if you can be astonishing?
What if you can be amazing?
What if what separates you from, quote, the greats is nothing more than historical petty inhibition inflicted upon you by people whose lives were themselves small and petty?
What if you have...
Unacknowledged potential of the gods in your heart, mind and soul.
What if you can be great and glorious and powerful and deep and honest and inspiring?
But you don't do it.
What if? You understand?
We have contempt, and rightly so.
We have contempt for people who inherit a huge amount of money, live like a hobo, and hoard and die and leave it to their cat.
That's ridiculous. If you've got money, do something with it.
Do some good with it. Let it liberate you from the shackles and give true F.U. money so you can tell the truth.
Do something. Don't just sit on it as if you don't have it.
Well, you understand, we're all billionaires in the realm of potential.
We're all billionaires in the realm of potential.
I did a show with a guy yesterday who was half dead voicing his way through the entire show.
Yeah, yeah, man. Oh, I know.
Yeah. And then I finally got him animated and he just bellowed from his 34 to his 24-year-old self, get out!
Right? Tapped into that potential.
Tapped into that energy. It was all right there.
And it is for you. It is for you.
Ah, but Steph, you weave these analogies.
Hello? Ever heard of a thing called practice?
I didn't when I was younger.
I sucked at debating.
I still remember. I was debating in high school.
And I was debating against abortion because back then you could actually debate things rather than just everyone getting triggered and running to the hall monitor to get people ostracized.
I still remember. I sucked.
I was terrible. Terrible.
Terrible. I still remember very clearly...
I had come across the argument...
It had actually been given to me by a Christian friend...
The argument of...
If...
I know I was... I was pro the legalization of abortion...
And the anti-argument largely came from a Christian perspective...
This was just by... I didn't choose this...
It was just assigned to me... And I read the argument...
I remember this as clear as day...
I read the argument that...
If you have a twin...
The fertilized egg doesn't separate until, I don't know, like a week.
This is, you know, 40 plus years ago.
But it doesn't separate for like a week or something like that, right?
And so the argument would go something like this.
Well, if the soul is embedded in the act of conception, but you end up with twins, is it one soul that splits or does the soul not split?
Go into the body until the twins separate, in which case you have conception without a soul.
And if you have conception without a soul, then you're not killing one of God's creatures if you have an abortion early on.
That's not the most complicated or sophisticated argument, but I very clearly remember.
I was like, well, but if there are twins and they separate, only one gets a soul, right?
And of course, nobody had any clue what I was talking about.
No knowledge or capacity on how to present any of this.
No knowledge of how to frame things for the audience.
It's no knowledge of how to hit things with passion.
I mean when Freddie Mercury first joined, he was a roadie, right?
When he first joined Queen, I think it was Smile at that point.
The drummer has said many times, Roger Taylor has said many times that Freddie Mercury sounded like a dying cow.
He said, I really didn't, I wasn't impressed with his singing at all.
It sounded bad. But man, he had stage presence.
Now, again, Freddie Mercury has a particular physique and you can't just, you know, I can't just say, well, I want to sing like Freddie Mercury or something like that.
You've got to be the Ant and Lambert one in a billion kind of thing.
But how?
Honest to goodness, you know?
I don't know.
you Last thing I'll say is this. Think of all the people...
Who had no chance whatsoever.
Think of all the people who had no chance whatsoever to achieve their potential.
Think of all the people born, and I wrote a whole novel about this, you can get it at justpoornovel.com for free.
Think of all the people, no chance, no chance to fulfill their potential.
They were born in the backwaters of the Ganges.
They were born in the middle of Sudan.
They were born in Tanzania, in the middle of the jungle.
They were born, they didn't learn how to read.
They didn't learn how to write.
They didn't have any free market.
They lived in a tyranny. They were traumatized by the rituals that I talked about in my tour of Australia, the rituals the Aborigines had, where they would throw spears and try and gouge the legs of the boys or drive spikes through their testicles.
Too traumatized, middle of nowhere, no opportunities.
Now, the entire world can be your audience.
You can fire yourself up With a $50 used cell phone and rule the planet.
If you're willing.
And what is your potential?
All the people, and this is one of the reasons why I drive myself pretty hard to do what I do, is that this is an unbelievable moment in history where we can speak to the world relatively unthrottled.
It's never happened before in the history of humanity and it may not last and likely won't.
But this is the opening.
This is the gap through which you shine the beams of your intellect through to light up the future.
Otherwise, there is no future that's lit at all.
At all. What are you going to say?
What are you going to say to the people who lived and died five miles from where they were born with no opportunity to speak or write?
I mean, I remember I read a book about the village of Montaillou and I actually wrote an essay on it that was considered so good at that point that the professor read it to the entire class saying it's one of the perfect essays I've ever received in my career.
It gave me a sense of what was possible for me.
I worked really hard. And in the village of Bontayu, there was a guy who said, ah, the world was not made by God, the world was made by screwing and splitting and, you know, stuff like that, right?
And, you know, he got pretty harshly treated for that, just saying this, right?
Think of all the young people and, and, and, you know, political correctness escalated
in response to the openness of the Internet.
.
That when people can talk, you have to work extra hard to get them to abuse each other and shut each other up.
It comes in. Political correctness is basically female nature metastasized by the state.
Woke is just estrogen plus law.
What would you say to people?
All this opportunity that you have.
No, no, no, I've got to live small.
And it doesn't mean that you explore your potential in the way that I have, but explore your potential in some goddamn way, some fashion.
What if you are infinitely greater than you can conceive of yourself to be?
What if? What if?
Why not? Why not?
Why not you? Your unconscious is 8,000 times faster and more powerful than your conscious mind, and if you haven't tapped into that, you think I'm just...
This is text, it's just...
Pre-written, pre-written, no, I'm just working off my instincts here.
Working off my gut. Ah, yes, but you're a special talent.
No, no, no, it's trained, trained.
Didn't have it when I was younger.
Trained! Wow, that's a really good guitarist.
You know, Jimmy Page is a really good guitarist.
Yes, he is. Spectacularly horrifying human being.
But a good guitarist?
Why was he a good guitarist? Well, of course, he started practicing when he was 11 or 12 years old and was a session musician for years and years and years before stumbling across Robert Plant and shrieking their way to stadium satanic glory.
Wow, they're so good.
Yeah, practice.
Practice, practice, practice, practice.
It is... An insult to all of the inanimate objects and the enslaved souls of history to not chase your own potential always.
You don't catch it.
You don't catch up with it.
You chase it. You have to be a hunter of your higher self.
Because if you live small, it spreads like farts, like cigar smoke.
If you live small, it spreads and chokes the life out of everyone in the vicinity.
You live large, you live with some power, some depth, some ferocity, some magnificence.
There's a reason why all the buildings are shitty these days.
It's to weigh your soul down, to weigh your spirits down.
I mean, people think that, like, hell is something after death.
Maybe it is. I don't believe it, but maybe it is.
But to me, if you live at 1% of your potential for the rest of your life, if you are a giant but sneak around like a mouse, you don't need to wait to die to be in hell, do you?
Do you? Yeah, the old joke about the tourist asking a New York City taxi driver, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?
He says, practice, practice, practice.
Yeah.
If there is a hell, I can tell you what it looks like.
Thank you.
If there is a hell, what it looks like, and I believe this happens when we age, you know, when you get older, when you get older, you're going to have a lot of time on your hands.
You're going to have a lot of time on your hands and you will be largely past your potential for power.
Yeah, yeah, Grandma Moses, blah, blah, blah, but you'll be largely past your potential for power.
I mean, if you're an old woman, you're past your potential to have children if you didn't have children.
If you're 70 or 65 as a man, you're past your potential to have a great career.
Sorry, you just are. And you can find exceptions.
I don't care. Those exceptions prove the rule.
You do it now, not later, but now.
Later is never. You understand?
Later is never. You know the old joke in a marriage.
Husband says, I'll do it later, and the wife's like, so never?
Yeah, pretty much. But hell is when it's too old to make a difference.
What does the devil do? The devil just distracts you and says, oh, live small or be distracted or there's a new game that came out or whatever, whatever, right?
The devil just says, oh, live small, live small.
And then when you get old, the devil pulls back the curtain and says, gotcha.
Oh, did I getcha?
Oof. Did I get you?
Look at all the great things you could have done.
Defending your lifestyle. Look at all the great things you could have done.
Look at the girl you didn't ask out.
Here's a picture of your life.
If you'd made that choice, oh man, you wouldn't be sitting here alone in a darkened room?
Chewing on a stale stogie and ruminating about all the terrible non-decisions you didn't make?
Oh, here's your life if you had just taken that risk.
Here's your life if you'd asked that girl.
Here's that life if you had taken that trip.
Here's the life if you'd written that book.
Here's the life if you'd written that song.
Here's the life if you'd gotten up and screamed some stupid karaoke once in a while.
Here's a life without self-consciousness, without self-restraint, without self-attack, without the self-shredding of endless lacerations of cringe.
Oh, it's so cringe. I hate that word, by the way.
Just a fucking word. It's so cringe.
You're trying to get people to physically respond in a negative way to their own potential.
Oh, it's so cringe. Yeah, when you're trying shit, you look like an idiot.
You're trying stuff, you look like an idiot.
Yep, got it. Look like an idiot.
Trying stuff, looks like an idiot. Everybody does.
Everybody does. So hell is before you die, when it's too late to fix your fucked up life, and the devil pulls open the curtains.
And you know, see, you know your potential, which is functionally infinite.
Your potential is functionally infinite because the only way you can even remotely reach your potential is by believing that it's infinite.
I will listen to this speech later saying, should have done better.
I think it's a very good speech. Could have done better.
Should have done better. And that way I will improve.
I will get better. We want.
How good a speaker can I be?
How effective a communicator can I be?
I don't know. And I'll never know.
Because the moment I think, well, I've clearly reached the peak and I can't get any better from here.
I fall. I fall.
All singers try to hit the higher notes.
What is it Billy Joel says, like, as an aging singer, you just wave goodbye to those notes?
That's why Robert Plant won't ever tour again with Led Zeppelin.
He's like, I can't sing those songs anymore.
Communication breakdown.
It's not going to happen, right? You can't squeal like a stuck pig in hyper-Octavian registers.
So, how good a speaker can I be?
How good a philosopher can I be?
I don't know. Don't know.
I'll never know. I'll go to my grave not knowing.
And that not knowing is the best I can be.
Not putting a cap or a ceiling on my potential. It's the best I can be.
Oh, I should have made more jokes.
Oh, that pause was too long.
Oh, I shouldn't have used this analogy.
Oh, that one went south. I don't even know what the perfect speech might look like.
But it's always in my mind.
When do I check the comments?
When do I check in with myself?
When do I change the topics? When do I end the speech?
Don't know! Don't know!
I have no clue. But you've got to enjoy the surfing, right?
How big a wave can you ride? Don't know.
See, your potential will be revealed to you before you die in the normal course of an average human life.
And you will have...
Probably, given this crowd, pretty healthy, pretty fit, pretty responsible with food, you will have at least a quarter century to ruminate over your failed potential.
At least. Probably closer to 30 years.
You know, 65 to 85, right?
Oh, 20 years. Sorry. Probably closer to 20 years.
95 if you're lucky, right?
So, you'll have 20 years or so, right?
Give or take. You'll have 20 years with which you can see now.
I'm like, oh gosh, should I edit this afterwards?
Don't care. Made a mistake.
Move on. You need to see me making mistakes and moving on.
Stumble over my mistakes. Move on.
Bump of the road. Keep driving, baby.
We've got a destination to get to.
Where is that destination? Down the road.
How far? Infinity.
That's when you drive the fastest.
You've got to catch infinity, you'll hit the gas.
So you're going to have 20 years to look back on your life.
And if you fuck up now, If you don't try, if you don't strive, if you don't try to find some way to connect with and maximize your potential, which is infinite for all functional purposes of consciousness, your potential is infinite.
You must think of it that way.
I can generate an infinitely good speech.
That is my yardstick.
Will I ever achieve it? Don't know, don't care.
Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
You jump the highest when you never say, I can only jump this high.
The curtain will be drawn back on your life.
And I know that there's some younger people here, so I'm giving you this view, right?
I was reading about a philosopher.
Oh, he died at 66.
I'm like, wow, that's...
Wait a minute. Shit, that's less than 10 years.
Could be less than 10 years for me for now.
10 years. Oh, my God.
10 years ago, my daughter was four.
Oh, my God. 10 years. Right?
So I'm looking at the last dregs.
Not the dregs dregs, but I'm, you know, I'm going to be 57 this year.
I'm looking at the dregs. Cups way more empty than full.
And I'm telling you, I'm telling you, everything you were capable of will be revealed
in a chasm, a canyon called regret.
you The devil says, live small.
Who are you to? Don't rock the boat.
Don't upset people. People are going to get mad if you're big.
Stay small. Stay in the trailer park.
Stay with the trashy people. Stay in the underworld.
Stick your head up. Gets cut off.
Tall poppy syndrome. Hammer that sticks up gets nailed down.
Stay small, man. Stay low.
You're a little elephant mice in the feet of dinosaurs.
Squish! You'll just be jammed between the toes of the T-Rex.
A little jam and fur down there.
A furball of gone-ness.
No, no, but see, yes, you want to live small in the here and now.
I get that. I understand that.
I totally get that.
You want to live small in the here and now?
I'm with you. 100%.
Totally understand it. Massively sympathize with you.
Yes, you want to live small in the here and now because the benefit is now to live small.
Absolutely. I mean, you don't think I ever looked at my career and said, whoopsie!
Major error. Shouldn't have done that.
Shouldn't have stuck my head up.
Shouldn't have said anything. Shouldn't have touched this topic.
All right? I get that.
I sympathize with that, of course.
Not quitting smoking, if you're a smoker, not quitting a smoker is always easier in the moment.
It's easier to have the next cigarette, easier to have the next drink.
For a woman, easier to go and get more male attention by transforming yourself into two-dimensional pixels and shaking your ass into nothing.
shake your ass till it sags then live with regret.
but your potential will be revealed to you in that bottomless ache called regret.
Try. And you can't fail.
Because if you don't try, you'll fail for sure.
If you try, you can't fail.
Let's say you try to become a singer and it turns out you're not that good, or let's say you try to Become a comedian and nobody really laughs.
Or let's say you try to write music and it's not particularly good.
I've tried all these things. Tried stand-up comedy, tried writing songs, tried singing.
Eh, it's alright.
Have I failed at any of those things?
Nope. Close the doors to focus you on what you have the greatest potential to achieve.
But if you don't settle for less than your total potential, Then you'll just keep shifting gears and you'll keep shifting circumstances and environments until you find the thing that skyjacks you.
It hooks you up. You know, like there's World War II pictures of the guy sitting in the field with the big hook and they pick him up without landing the plane, just yank him up, right?
Or the way that you get on the aircraft carriers, they propel the ships with these giant hooks and I don't know whatever they are, elastics or something.
Whatever propels you the most. You keep trying stuff until you find what propels you the most and dig in and maximize that.
I failed at countless fields, really.
Some might argue I failed in philosophy, but it hasn't been for lack of attempting to maximize potential, I'll tell you that.
You have ambition or regret.
And this is particularly true for men, although for women it's in a different sphere.
Women create life, men give it meaning in morals.
Both yin-yang necessary for the achievement of you need people to be alive and you need people to be well-raised, for virtue to exist, the great glory and central altar of the species.
You are facing bitter regret.
I remember when I was working in Thunder Bay, or as it's known in Canada,
I was working in Thunder Bay.
I'd go jogging out every night and down to the rail yards.
I'd look across at the Sleeping Giant as the sun set.
It's an island out there.
It looks like a Sleeping Giant. And I remember one time coming back from a jog, and I lived upstairs in an apartment when I wasn't in the bush, and this woman downstairs just came out and grabbed me and pulled me into her apartment and put on a record stuffer.
Husband who... I think he tried to be a singer or something like that.
Pretty nice voice and all that.
And he... She was so full of regret.
She was so full of regret about...
He didn't try.
I didn't encourage him. I said you should get a steady job.
And just this regret. Just pouring and pouring.
Regret, regret, regret. It's a chilling thing.
I mean... Did you achieve your potential?
Did you do all that you could?
And I don't mean in an exhausting way.
Holding a giant balloon underwater is exhausting.
Holding back your potential is exhausting.
I have nothing but energy over the course of the day for the most part.
You know, I got up this morning.
I chatted with my family.
I recorded a chapter of my book.
Had lunch with my family.
Recorded another chapter of my book.
I'm doing this live stream. Do I appear to be short of energy?
You know what I've eaten today?
I have had one piece of quiche.
And it's like four o'clock in the afternoon.
It's holding down your potential that drains you.
Exercising your potential. It sounds like exercising your potential but you're going to get tired.
No, no, no. It's holding down your potential that's exhausting.
It's called depression because you're depressing something.
You're pushing it down. You have nothing but energy when you tap into what you're capable of.
Your body feeds you energy based upon requirements.
You don't pant lying on the couch.
at least I hope not.
Somebody said my fav singer a shy girl from rural Finland.
Finland, Finland, Finland, the country where I quite want to be.
Maybe the most amazing global star.
Started at age four in a church.
Now tours the world. Ten albums.
Family. Who saw this 40 years ago?
Still practices, tries to get better.
I still practice.
I still, I refuse to repeat myself as much as possible.
As much as possible. Some repetition.
Somebody says, I admire your energy, Steph.
I want it indeed. You're not quite listening, my friend.
I say this with love, tenderness, respect, and by the way, thank you for your tips.
If you find what I'm saying to be of value, I think it speaks a certain integrity to exchange value for value.
So if you'd like to tip, I would massively appreciate it.
You said, I admire your energy, Steph.
I want it indeed. This is not my point.
My point is not, you should admire my energy and want it.
My point is, you know my point.
Do I have to say it? What's my point?
My point is, you already have this energy.
You're just bleeding yourself dry, holding it back or holding it down.
You already have this energy. An object at rest tends to stay at rest.
An object in motion tends to stay in motion.
It's basic inertia thermodynamics, right?
So you already have this energy.
What I have, I don't have some bizarre funeral source pyre within me that smokes the bellows of my lungs into 19th century steam engine rocketing up Mount Everest energy.
I don't have some nuclear furnace in my bowels, although it may feel that way after Indian.
I don't have any magic.
I just don't choose to restrain myself.
You think of a man trying to hold back a giant dog that's charging.
He's unbalanced.
It's exhausting. Just let it go.
Let it rip, baby.
Never wrote science fiction before?
Gave it a shot. I think I came up with a great book.
I had never written a serious contemporary novel until I wrote The Present.
Which, according to what people say, is a really great book.
Triggering a lot of people and I understand that.
I don't know what artists are doing for the most part.
I'm not talking about things that really hit people in the feels.
You would be shocked at the energy you have when you stop restraining yourself.
What if I can do it all?
What if I have untapped potential?
What if I have no idea what I'm capable of?
Because you have this conscious mind.
It's like conscious mind is a little guru sitting on top of the mountain, really a volcano.
How much energy does the volcano have relative to the guru sitting on the top?
The volcanic energy, the understructure of our potential, the furnace of our possibility, that's the unconscious, that's the instincts, that's all of the stuff that built up over four billion years, of which the tectonic plates of our personality, of which our conscious mind is a little grass hut on the top.
Well, the glass hut can't erupt, the guru can't erupt, but the volcano certainly can.
And you unite with that which is deepest and most historical, Mammalian, reptilian within you.
Well, that's where your energy is.
And then you shape that with your conscious mind.
You shape all of that energy and turn it towards virtue, truth, inspiration.
Exciting people about their own possibilities.
This is my reptile talking to your reptile.
This is my monkey talking to your monkey.
This is me throwing you bananas till you jump up into the trees and scale the sunlight.
Thank you.
Alright. Any other further questions, comments, donations, support?
I'm literally sweating here.
Look at this. I'm literally sweating here with the energy of my exhortations.
If you don't want to do it now, you want to do it later, freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
And it's, yeah, it's funny. I mean, so yes, I made some money in the past.
I absolutely did. You have to ask yourself, would you trade the money that I've made in the past for my Wikipedia page?
For the crap that I've been through?
And we provide value for value, don't we?
We don't just say, well, that guy's got some money, so I don't need to pay him.
Would you shoplift from stores because somebody who owns a store has made some money?
I don't think so, do you?
I don't think you do. We have principles here.
We're not socialists that way.
Well, I'll wait for a second for the comments to come in, or any other additional questions, but yeah, really think about this.
What happens if you picture yourself with limitless potential?
What happens? What could you lose?
Oh, you find out, oh, here is the limit of my potential.
Okay, fine. Then keep shifting until you find something in which your potential is without limit.
I mean, we're not all given limitless potential in everything, but there's going to be something.
There's going to be something where you get to slingshot, affect the universe, and stride 10 leagues at a single step.
People are typing. I'm not sure that the AI, some people are putting AI action figures, Steph.
They just can't get my nose right.
You know, it's funny because people are typing but I'm not seeing anything.
What if I log in from a different place?
I don't think I have anything else here with which to log in.
Alright, just a sec.
Somebody says, I asked a question earlier.
I, hey Steph, I have the book but I haven't started UPB.
But I was wondering if laughing at someone's expense, let it be a joke or a video of someone doing something dumb
or failing, being coordination of UPB.
No, no, no, not at all.
I mean, there are fail videos, funny videos and so on of people making mistakes.
No, it's a form of education, right?
You see people who do silly things and it's a form of training yourself about the consequences of foolish things or careless things without doing foolish or careless things.
So, no, laughing at somebody else's expense is totally fine.
It's not a moral thing.
I guess if it's really mean and it's someone personal...
First of all, if you laugh at a video of someone on the internet, the person on the internet doesn't know you're laughing at them because they've moved on to something else in their life or they don't know in particular what you're doing.
If you are laughing at somebody's mistakes and you know them and it's personal and you keep doing it, then that could be a sign of...
Some jealousy or some envy or some desire to put them down or it could be the sign of some minor pathology in my view, but no, I mean looking at people doing silly things on the internet and so on, I don't see how that does any particular harm to them and of course they chose to put the video up for the most part.
A speech like that? Two bucks.
All right. Hey, Steph, I left a question on the other post from earlier today.
Admittedly, it is a bit more involved, so I understand if time doesn't permit getting to it.
Have enjoyed and found value in the show regardless.
Oh, the other post. Earlier today.
Yeah, I don't know that I have.
I mean, I've been working since this morning, so I may not have a lot of juice in the tank for another big question, but I will get to it for sure.
Amazing show. Well, thank you very much.
Let's see here. Somebody says, there seem to be some dogmatic rituals, incantations, recitations, and themes among the, quote, woke that can be found in texts ranging from ancient Gnostics to 18th century postmodernists to much more recent Marxists that would lead one to believe that there was a conspired sharing of the ancient secrets.
But it's a bit hard to believe many of the acolyte foot soldiers have the ability or attention span sufficient to perform even a shallow dive into the texts.
Can you explain or proffer a theory for the transmittal of complex, albeit mostly nonsensical doctrines, without actual literary or verbal passage?
What is it that is capturing the youth?
Well, I mean, morality creates heroes and then turns them into livestock, right?
So morality and strength of character and so on creates heroes.
And then the same morality is used to ensnare and entrap not usually the heroes, but their descendants into becoming livestock.
So you think of the amount of time and effort and energy that it takes to create a great company that makes a lot of money and all of that.
Well, then that company is just taxed into oblivion for the most part, unless it happens to side with the semi-fascistic capitalism that's going on these days.
So morality creates wealth and strength and independence, and all of that wealth and strength and independence is then harnessed through Not integrity, but sympathy.
Through sympathy. Oh, woe is me.
Oh, it was unfortunate.
Oh, this guy got me pregnant and then he ran away.
You don't want my baby to starve.
I'm sad and I can't compete.
Because we have the state and we don't have UPB widely spread and we don't have moral clarity, The morals that create value are then twisted into the exploitation of that value.
So great and good and strong people create and then a weakened people We'll attempt to guilt the strong people into sharing resources, often under implicit or explicit threat of force, like the no justice, no peace thing, like we'll riot until you give us money.
So really, it's a shakedown.
Nothing more, nothing less.
So, when you have these instincts, and it's highly profitable, it's highly profitable to have these instincts to Usually hook into women's toddler sympathies to...
As soon as you can get a lot of women in a democracy to view a particular group as victims, then women will generally vote away resources from the productive to hand it out to the victims.
So it becomes highly profitable to hook into guilt and sympathy.
And then what happens is strength, objectivity, and virtue gets punished, whereas...
A cheesy, syrupy, victim-based, teary-eyed, half-aggressive manipulation becomes the greatest strength, and society gets corrupted thereby.
And that which was formerly ignoble becomes noble, and that which was formerly noble becomes exploited.
And the rewards of manipulation go up to virtually infinity, and the rewards of integrity, well, you become punished.
All right. Somebody said $2 and $5 earlier and sub time left in the money.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
All right. Well, thanks everyone so much for a great conversation this afternoon.
Always a massive pleasure. Please remember that the Wednesday show will be 9.30 this week, and right after this I'm going to publish Chapter 19.
It's a pretty exciting one of my novel, The Present, which you can get at freedomand.locals.com, and I will this weekend hopefully get it into a feed format so you can consume it more.
Easily. Lots of love, everyone.
Thank you for making all of this possible for us, for each other, and for the future in particular.
And, of course, freedemand.locals.com.
You can use the promo code UPB2022 to get all of this stuff.
For free, my History of Philosopher series, which is a 20-part History of Philosopher series, which I will get back to after I finish the audiobook for the present.
And you can get my last book, which is called The Future, which is my Atlas Shrugged.
You can get that at freedomain.locals.com for subscribing.
And if you subscribe for a year, you get two months free.
So, thanks everyone so much.
Have yourself a wonderful, wonderful afternoon and evening.
Lots of love from up here. I'll talk to you soon.
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