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May 14, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:27:36

WHY WOMEN GO FOR BAD BOYS...

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Time	Text
	Good morning, everybody. It is the 12th of May, 2023.
	Let's get to your...
	You know what? I'll toss aside my...
	I will toss aside my comments, the things that I want to talk about.
	I will put them aside and I will simply deal with what you want.
	Everybody introduces you to their parents at some time or another, right?
	So, yeah. Good morning. Good morning.
	Hope you're doing well. Let's get straight to your questions.
	Somebody writes, I'm sick of women choosing bad boys over me.
	Should I become one? Ah, yes.
	Well... I think that you should appreciate the bad boys.
	You should really, really appreciate the bad boys.
	And I'll tell you why.
	See, the bad boys are like the off-ramps for flaming dumpsters coming your way.
	I guess the analogies also work in the morning.
	So, there are dangerous people coming your way in life.
	In particular, if you're smart, sensitive, empathetic, hardworking, there are sharks coming towards you, right?
	And there are people who are barreling towards you to wreck your life, to destroy your life, to mess up your life, to tear you limb from limb, to drag you through the courts, to steal everything you own, to pillage your dog and crucify your cat.
	They're coming. It's a gravy train.
	It's a conveyor belt.
	It's a propulsion mechanism.
	It's a giant elastic.
	It's a trampoline pointed directly at your heart.
	And they all have medieval armor and swords.
	So there's a conveyor belt of people coming at you to wreck your life.
	Now, God, nature, philosophy, evolution, whatever you want to call it, the world, in its infinite glory and wisdom, has provided a series of off-ramps.
	And the series of off-ramps is what takes the people barreling at your life to rend it limb from limb It takes them off and renders them relatively harmless.
	It takes them away.
	Now, one of the One of the best off-ramps for crazy dumpster fire women is bad boys.
	Because she's aiming at you, right?
	Let's talk about sort of the angel-devil analogy, right?
	So the devils are pointing her at you to destroy your heart, to turn you bitter and evil and so on, right?
	To black pill you.
	In ways that even a proctologist couldn't find.
	So she's coming there with her jagged black pill torpedoes trying to make you a bottom and give you leakage.
	So she's coming at you and the devil sends her.
	Now what the angels do is the angels say, I'm going to give her temptations to veer her off from the path of destroying you.
	I'm going to give her some temptations.
	And those temptations are going to be...
	The bad boys. Now the bad boys are off there to one side, and the devil wants to point her at your glorious and virtuous heart, but the bad boys tempt her on either side.
	And the bad boys are the off-ramps that keep the flaming dumpster trucks from wrecking your beautiful home.
	So you can, of course, get mad.
	Thank you very much for that tip. I think I'm cooking on all 12 cylinders this morning, and I actually only have four.
	That's the really weird part. It's a cylinder overspill, which would be a great name for a punk band.
	But anyway, so the Mad Boys, it's the devil in your heart that wants you to be like a bad boy, so that you yourself can get the flaming...
	Dumpster trucks smashing into you.
	So you look at these women and you want these women.
	And then because they choose bad boys, you're frustrated and you wish that you were a bad boy so you could get the kind of women who choose bad boys.
	So this is the understand.
	It's just a foundational temptation.
	It's a foundational temptation.
	The devil is in the appearance, right?
	The devil and the appearance are the same thing.
	The devil and the appearance are the same thing.
	So there are hot, pretty women, the women who trip and trigger the biological markers that give you the lust, that give you the destruction.
	The appearance and the devil are the same things.
	And the devil, of course, has to appear wise, has to appear pretty, has to appear attractive.
	In the same way that there are brightly colored frogs and there are brightly colored people and there are brightly colored plants and so on.
	And the bright color indicates what?
	What does the bright color in nature generally indicate?
	I'm sure that you are very wise, biology-minded people here.
	Yes, the bright colors indicate danger.
	In fact, when my daughter and I were...
	So overseas many years ago, we had to tell her, of course, she loves frogs.
	If you see, I don't know if there are any bright frogs in this vicinity, but if you do see bright frogs, you will be drawn to touch them because they look like hop-legged M&M candies.
	Do not touch the bright frogs.
	Everything that is bright, everything that is attractive is dangerous.
	I mean, with the exception of, of course, flowers are bright and attractive to attract frogs.
	The bees, but only because human beings don't prey on the flowers, right?
	So, the devil and the appearance are the same thing.
	Woke is the appearance of truth and virtue.
	Sophists are the appearance of wisdom and value.
	And candy is the appearance of stuff that you want to consume.
	So, appearance is really, really a fascinating thing.
	Satan is skin deep, right?
	Satan has worked very hard to make dangerous things beautiful so that you consume them, in the same way that candy manufacturers work very hard to make their candy as mouth-wateringly beautiful.
	Delicious as humanly possible to tickle every single one of your taste buds so that you eat the candy and destroy your health as a whole, right?
	I mean, I remember, gosh, I still remember this.
	Oh, man. I'll stop remembering my middle name before I will stop remembering this commercial when I was a kid.
	Hold on, here comes something special.
	A candy bar with so much more.
	Rice Krisp peanuts by the score.
	All goes into it, more comes out of it.
	Mr. Big. And it was a Mr.
	Big, which I used to have one of those quite often.
	They're good. And it was a manufacturing process for Mr.
	Big where they were putting...
	I'm literally remembering this commercial from like, I don't know, 40 years ago or something.
	And my mouth is literally watering right now.
	This is how deep it goes into your brain.
	It was like you get to see all of these Mr.
	Bigs getting manufactured and they put all of the...
	It was like, what is a Mr.
	Big? It's like some... I didn't even know what's in it.
	It's not... The Twix is the cookie with the caramel and then the chocolate.
	The Mr. Big is just a bunch of really great stuff.
	It's like a Toblerone with a boner.
	Just get that kind of idea.
	And we've all had that dream, haven't we?
	So, yeah, it's so good.
	Things very attractive and it appeals to your pleasure centers at the lowest possible level.
	The devil operates at the lowest possible level.
	So the devil will make things as attractive as humanly possible and that invites destruction into your life.
	So you should thank the bad boys.
	They are taking bright bouffant bullets for you, my friends.
	The bad boys are the off-ramps for the flaming dumpsters that will destroy your life.
	What you want is not a woman who's drawn to the bad boys.
	What you want is a woman who laughs at the bad boys and says, but it's just too obvious.
	I mean, that would be embarrassing, right?
	All right, let's get to your questions.
	Since Disney is making woke remakes of the princess movies, replacing original characters with persons of color, do you think they'll be making a woke Tarzan movie?
	Would Brendan Fraser be upset by this?
	Yeah, they won't be doing that. Let's see here.
	Hey Steph, in regards to cutting ties with abusive parents, how do you deal with the fact that even though they were abusive, it still took an enormous amount of resources and sacrifice to keep you alive until adulthood?
	They had to do a lot of things that were valuable for you and therefore you should give value back.
	I think it's valid to say that turning your back on them when they get old is not fair.
	Thank you for your thoughts. That's a very interesting question.
	Now, the way that you frame it is very interesting as well.
	I don't view that I cut ties.
	Maybe I did, and so on.
	I don't view that I cut ties, and I'll tell you why.
	So what I did was I said, I have some standards in this relationship.
	I have to have some standards in this relationship.
	I won't be bullied.
	I won't be screamed at.
	I won't be yelled at. I won't be intimidated.
	I don't want to be manipulated.
	And I want to talk about, I mean, hit me with a why if you've ever had a relationship where the other person does all the talking.
	He says as he live streams, I'm aware, I'm aware.
	But I'm trying to talk about things that are important to you.
	So hit me with a why if you've had a relationship where you just, the other person does all the talking, right?
	Yeah, I mean, listen, there are times when that happens, right?
	There's a pendulum, there's a tide, there's the lava lamp from the 70s that goes in and out, right?
	So, I'm sorry, I'm just getting to your questions, yeah.
	Yeah, Bedazzled was a good movie, a movie that actually had a surprising amount of impact on me.
	It was a movie with Man Hands, Banana Hands, Jack Black, and Gwyneth Paltrow.
	I can't remember the name of it for the moment where the woman is beautiful on the inside but not as attractive on the outside.
	Gwyneth Paltrow plays a woman who's obese in real life but actually quite a good person, which is not always the case because obesity and personality issues are often hand in hand.
	But Shallow Hell. Thank you.
	Yeah, Shallow Hell. That was a good movie.
	That was a good movie as far as teaching you some depth.
	For sure. So, yeah, let's get back to your question.
	Even though they were abusive.
	Okay, so... If...
	I... owe someone...
	If I owe someone...
	my time, attention, and relationships...
	because they have...
	Paid for things. Let's look at it at the abstract level, right?
	Because you're putting a lot of personal stuff in here, which I think is fine.
	It's obviously a personal relationship, but this is about philosophy and principles, right?
	Our gig is philosophy and principles.
	So, if the argument is, I owe people who have spent money on me, then I'm a whore, right? Would you say to a woman that she owes a man sex because he paid for the date?
	That she has to have sex with him because he paid for the date?
	Or would you say to a woman, if a guy comes up and gives her $1,000, she's obligated to become his girlfriend because he spent money on her.
	Or she's accepted the money or whatever, right?
	Now, would you say, let's say that little Sally was kidnapped at the age of six months old and was raised by other people who violently abused her for many years.
	Would you say that Sally owes...
	Her kidnappers, time and attention and resources and love for the rest of their lives because they made great sacrifices in keeping Sally alive.
	I think that would be a tough case to make.
	I think that would be, frankly, a morally vile, disgusting and horrifying case to make, not to put too fine a point on it.
	But I don't feel that being a...
	Whore for people who've provided me resources when I didn't choose to be in that situation.
	They chose to keep me.
	They chose to bring me into that situation.
	They chose to maintain me in that situation.
	I don't feel that being a whore and a slave to people who paid money to keep me alive when I didn't want to be there, I would much prefer to be elsewhere.
	And there were other options.
	I have a direct family member who was rescued from this situation for some years and went to live with much more functional family members while I was left behind for reasons that I will never know the truth of.
	And this is my brother.
	My brother was rescued from this absolutely appalling family situation and he was taken to...
	Family members overseas.
	We were separated for some years.
	He was taking family members overseas, which I would have loved to have gone with.
	They were much more functional, much more fun.
	They had a house. They had a stable income.
	They had lots of kids to play with, and it was a much, much better situation.
	My brother was airlifted out of my family for some years while my mother was going insane, and that's what I kind of had to grapple with.
	Now, I can only assume that I was kept with my mother rather than airlifted overseas to safety because my mother refused to let me go.
	So my mother hung on to me while she was going mad for reasons that I will never know the truth of and they don't particularly matter.
	So I think that it's a tough case to make that if you are trapped in a situation against your will, But people are spending money to keep you alive that you owe them obligations.
	To take another example, if you are a political prisoner, you are unjustly imprisoned, or you could say Solzhenitsyn, say, when he was put into gulags for writing a letter questioning the value of certain approaches to the war effort.
	If you are Solzhenitsyn or Dostoevsky and you are thrown in prison unjustly as a result of political persecution and the...
	The prisons, the gulags, the concentration camps, well, they give you shelter, they give you food, they give you medical care and so on.
	Does that mean that you must then venerate and respect your prison guards and you must go and take care of them when they get old and read them stories and massage their feet when their feet are sore?
	I mean, is that your argument?
	That if somebody spends any amount of resources on you, for whatever reason, you owe them proportionately?
	I don't think that could really be the case.
	I don't really think that you can make the case that human beings should be Objects for sale to the highest bidder and that moral, emotional allegiance should follow money and time and energy and that you are a slave to anyone who flicks you a fucking dollar.
	Let's see what I say. So I just want to make sure I get all of the arguments here.
	It took an enormous amount of resources and sacrifice to keep you alive until adulthood.
	It didn't actually.
	It didn't take anything because my father certainly basically abandoned me and I rarely saw him throughout the course of my entire childhood because I was in England and Canada and he was in Africa.
	And, I mean, I've said this, but even when I was a student, a broke student, he visited me as a result of another family member getting married.
	He visited me and stiffed me with a very expensive restaurant bill.
	He forgot his wallet and then never paid me back.
	So, did it take resources and sacrifices?
	No. No. No.
	You see, imagine that you are a very cruel person.
	And there's some cruelty in your question, but that's fine, and we can deal with it.
	I mean, this was a long time ago for me, and we can deal with this in a fairly rational manner.
	But if you're a very cruel person, and you bring home a dog, you get a dog from the pound, and you physically torture, starve, and beat that dog, right?
	Why do you do that? Why do you keep the dog and physically starve and beat and torture the dog, right?
	Well, because you get your kicks and your thrills from exercising power over a helpless and dependent animal, right?
	That's a great pleasure, and that's a sadistic kind of pleasure, horrifying, twisted, ghastly pleasure that you get out of that kind of sadism, right?
	So, if...
	You keep a child in the environment and continue to abuse that child and don't give that child up to the authorities, to other family members, which again, I know for a fact that other family members who were infinitely more functional, other family members were perfectly willing to take me and my mother, and I know this because it happened, and my mother did not give me up.
	So why did my mother hold on to me?
	While being cruel and violent and abusive.
	Why did she hold on to me?
	Because it served her cruelty.
	Because she preferred to have me with her rather than do what was best for me.
	So she selfishly hung on to me.
	Maybe it was loneliness. Maybe it was a fear that I have always been a pretty rational person.
	And maybe it was a fear that she would go more mad more quickly if I wasn't around.
	Maybe she wanted to get to the child support.
	Maybe she was getting government money.
	For me, it could be any number of reasons.
	Maybe she just felt so out of control in her own life that being violent and controlling and abusive towards me helped her equilibrium in some manner.
	But as far as sacrifice goes, no.
	The sacrifice for my mother, I assume, would have been to get me to a place of safety knowing that she was going mad.
	Like, because she went through the spiral for...
	She went through this mental spiral for quite a while and then ended up being, I assume, involuntarily institutionalized.
	She was institutionalized either way.
	I don't know if it's voluntary or not. So she went through this process And hung on to me.
	Now, to me, the sacrifice would have been, well, I have to get my child to safety because I'm losing it.
	Like, I need to get help.
	I need to get my child to safety.
	I've got one of my children to safety.
	I need to get the other one to safety too.
	But she hung on to me.
	I can't really put that myself in the category of sacrifice towards me.
	I mean, if you're drowning and you take your child down with you, Would you really put that in the category of sacrifice or would you put that in the category of selfishness?
	So they said they had to do a lot of things that were valuable for you and therefore you should give value back.
	Right. So this is the argument.
	Well, again, they didn't have to do anything.
	They didn't have to do anything that was valuable for me.
	They could have gotten me to a place of safety.
	And again, you know, I understand going into the orphanage system or the foster care system has its own risks.
	But I know for a simple, absolute historical fact that I could have gotten to an infinitely safer and better place because my brother did.
	So they didn't have to do anything.
	They could have given me up and gotten me to a better place, but they didn't.
	And they say, I think it's valid to say that turning your back on them when they get old is not fair.
	So, yeah, cutting ties...
	I generally view in life that I'm a fairly tolerant person, a very nice person, and a very generous person, but I have to have some standards, right?
	I mean, particularly when you have children.
	It's one thing when you're single, you can lower your standards, and really the only person you harm is yourself and the people that you're lowering your standards to.
	So when you're single, that's one thing.
	When you get married, you put your partner above all else, right?
	You put your partner above all else, and therefore anything which harms you and or your relationship is not to be tolerated.
	That's the marriage vows. Forsaking all others, right?
	The marriage vows is forsaking all others, which means if anyone tries to sabotage your relationship with your wife or your husband, And they are...
	Well, that's the same as cheating, right?
	As sort of physical sexual cheating.
	So, I mean, I take the marriage vows very seriously, and forsaking all others is very important.
	So anyone who comes between me and my wife is utterly expendable in the world.
	I mean, just utterly expendable.
	Now, again, I can talk about it with them.
	I can try and sort it out. But if they keep doing it, if they keep trying to sabotage my relationship with my wife, consciously or unconsciously, it doesn't really matter.
	Well, that's not a...
	And then when you have a child, it's even more important.
	Like, you don't have the right to have low standards when you have a child.
	I mean, you just don't have that right.
	Because your child needs you, and if your parents traumatize you, and your child needs you to be emotionally available and to be someone they can respect and someone they can internalize the standards.
	So you don't really have the choice.
	Like, you can choose not to eat yourself and, you know, who do you harm but yourself.
	So you can choose, but you can't choose to starve your spouse and you certainly can't choose to starve your child.
	So when you have a child, your entire, I assume you're not a parent yet, but when you have a child or children, your entire alignment, like life becomes very simple and very clear.
	That which is good for the child is a keeper.
	That which harms the child is not sustainable.
	It's not to be accepted.
	And again, I'm not talking about occasional hiccups or people who say something in passing or then apologize.
	I'm talking about like really consistent negative behavior on the part of others.
	I don't have the right as a father to have people in my life who interfere with my ability to give relaxed, happy love to my daughter.
	I just, I don't have that right because she's not here by choice and so on and so on, right?
	So you think that I just, you're cutting ties with abusive parents.
	Even though they were abusive, you say, it still took an enormous amount of resources and sacrifice to keep you alive until adulthood.
	Mm-hmm. And the guy who's torturing his dog has to keep his dog alive.
	But the reason he keeps the dog alive is for purposes of sadistic satisfaction of cruel impulses.
	They had to do a lot of things that were valuable to you.
	No, they didn't. Therefore, you should give value back.
	Yeah, when I'm in a situation of...
	When I'm in an involuntary situation, and children are in an involuntary situation.
	We don't choose to be born. We don't choose to stay there.
	We have no legal or material or economic or factual opportunities to leave, to get out.
	So you're trapped. It's the ABC, the accidental biological cage.
	And that's not a bad thing.
	I mean, that's just a fact of life.
	Children are dependent upon their parents.
	So turning your back on them...
	Here's an interesting thing too.
	So do they owe me obligations for not being cruel to them?
	Right? Because if they were cruel to me, but I wasn't cruel in return, then do they owe me obligations because I sacrifice the satisfaction of being cruel in return?
	So, yeah, I think that having parents does not make you a lifelong slave.
	Right? Any more than a man buying you dinner means you are forced to have sex with him.
	Even though... And all of this is...
	Most of these analogies are predicated on the...
	On voluntary situations.
	But being a child is an involuntary situation.
	So if you would...
	Would you... I mean, this is a question that I would have, right?
	So let's return to Sally, right?
	So if...
	Sally said, I was kidnapped when I was three months old.
	I was tortured and starved and beaten.
	Until I was 15 when I escaped, right?
	From the age of three months old to 15, I was trapped, tortured, abused.
	And you were to say, well, but the people, do you know how hard it is to kidnap someone?
	I mean, it's a lot of planning, man.
	You know, you've got to have your getaway car, you've got to have your lookout, and then, you know, they fed you, they got you medical care when it was needed.
	I mean, so you owe them for the rest of your life.
	Would you make that case?
	Yeah. I mean, I really can't imagine.
	Like, it's mind-boggling to me that you would even think about making that case.
	And, I mean, this is just philosophical thinking, Socratic reasoning, right?
	So, what you're doing, and again, I understand this, and this is, you know, I know that this isn't even you talking.
	This is your parents talking, right?
	And this is your channeling, not just...
	Your parents, but abusive parents as a whole.
	So I don't view myself as talking to you.
	I'm talking to your abusive parents who are kind of using you as a hand puppet to get these ideas or arguments across.
	But the way that you deal with things in philosophy is...
	You don't do appeals to emotion.
	What you do is you abstract principles and see if they apply universally.
	In the same way, it's not physics to say, I really like this red bouncy ball.
	I like the... I don't know why this is on my desk.
	I can't remember. I really like this red bouncy ball.
	It bounces well.
	It's fun to throw. Is that physics?
	Nope. It's not an unimportant part of life.
	It's important to know which balls you like.
	Ladies, so... It's a part of life to say, I like this red bouncy ball.
	Those who are listening, I'm holding up a red bouncy ball that's on my desk for reasons I can't remember, but I'll probably use it somewhere.
	So it's not physics to say, I like this ball.
	It's fun! And I like the ball.
	It is fun. Sometimes when I'm working and thinking, I will bounce a ball on the ground because for some reason it just helps root me and ground my thoughts in reality.
	So it's not physics to say, I like this ball!
	I could fit this ball in my mouth.
	I maybe could fit it up my nose if I were a narwhal.
	So that's not physics.
	Physics is, what are the properties of the ball?
	What's the circumference of the ball?
	What's the volume of the ball? How does the ball act in certain aspects of gravity?
	And what's the momentum and velocity?
	And really you're talking about the momentum and velocity not of this ball but of matter as a whole.
	So you abstract and universalize the principles rather than talk about individual, emotional, manipulative stuff, right?
	So, yeah. Now, that's a sad question.
	I mean, I'm really sad that this is where you're at.
	I mean, it's really kind of heartbreaking that you're very early on in the journey.
	I know that sounds kind of annoying, but you're very early on in the journey, not just in terms of self-knowledge, but in terms of philosophy as a whole.
	But I really do appreciate the question.
	All right. Let's get here.
	Oh, this is back to pretty people looking dangerous.
	We called my friend's girlfriend Poisoned Dart Frog when she wore neon yoga pants.
	Yes, that's right. That's right.
	The devil was almost always given speaking roles in opera instead of singing.
	Yeah, Bedazzle was a fun film.
	All right, let's see here.
	How lovely to chat with you this morning.
	Ah, la la, la la la la la la.
	Took an enormous amount of resources and sacrifice to keep you alive until adulthood is not necessarily about dollar.
	Yeah, that's true. But a guy who buys you dinner is also spending hours with you.
	So it's about time and resources and focus and attention.
	And he's sacrificing all these other things to have dinner with you.
	So according to your reasoning, clearly you owe him a BJ, right?
	Let's see here. There are manipulative people out there who say that children choose their parents before they're born, as if a child in some third-world slumber choose to be born there.
	I've met one of those people once.
	I met one of those. She was actually a woman.
	It was kind of gross.
	She married a rich guy and she divorced him and she was living off and would for the rest of her life live on the money she got from him.
	And yeah, I remember...
	And so she put forward this idea that we choose our parents and I pointed out that it was completely insane and actually deeply immoral to say to me that I would choose abusive and abandoning people.
	And she'd say, look, man, it's just a way of thinking about it.
	It's just, it's a way of trying to open up the thoughts and the ideas about the situation.
	And then she seemed offended that I had...
	Why are you saying that before I was born I chose to be abused?
	Are you sick or insane or both, right?
	I wasn't that harsh, but...
	And then, you know, when confronted, you know, that's just gaslighting, right?
	So people say the most wildly horrible and offensive stuff and you call them out on it.
	They're like, whoa, hey, I'm just exploring here.
	I'm just asking some questions, right?
	I don't know why you're getting so upset.
	Clearly you have unresolved issues.
	You know, like, that's just basic troll 101 stuff, right?
	Yeah, my parents stole from me.
	They also allowed my pathological brother to steal from me.
	As a Christian, I believe but cannot prove that souls do get a say in which families they enter or are born into.
	I think many strong souls want to help torn up people, but once they get here, it gets messy and confusing.
	Yeah, I don't think that's true because I think that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception or enters the cells at the moment of conception, right?
	And the soul doesn't have any access to the senses for quite some time.
	Like at least, other than, like it doesn't have, I guess it has some hearing in the heartbeat of the mother.
	It doesn't have any sight because it's dark in there.
	It doesn't have any taste really because it's being fed by the belly.
	It doesn't really have any smell because it's immersed in liquid.
	So you don't really have any evidence of the senses until you're born, and then it takes a while to organize the evidence of those senses.
	So there's no real empiricism.
	And I think you're born with a yearning for virtue, but I don't think that you're born with automatic virtue.
	So I don't think that souls get a say in which families they enter or are born into.
	I've heard people say that abusers treat animals better than children, considering some exceptions.
	Is this true? Yeah, it actually is a very sad and common thing.
	It's a very sad and common thing.
	So the reason that abusers treat animals better than children is to further humiliate the children, of course, right?
	To further humiliate the children.
	So an abuser will be nice to an animal to say, hey, like I totally have the capacity to be nice.
	I totally have the capacity to be affectionate and caring and loving and look how well I'm playing with this hamster or bird or dog or whatever, right?
	My mom was a big one for animal rescue.
	We had birds, we had a cat, more than one cat.
	And yeah, she was very affectionate and very positive.
	So a lot of really broken people Can only express affection to dumb animals, right?
	I mean, dumb relative to people, right?
	And part of that is the animals don't challenge them, the animals don't point out contradictions, the animals don't question them, and so on, and so they feel relatively safe around the animals.
	Their false self is not threatened by the animals' skepticism and hostility and perception of hypocrisy.
	So, they can handle those relationships in the same way that, you know, there are these new chat AI or AI girlfriends and so on and there are women who can only handle cuddling dolls.
	They can't handle babies, right?
	I mean, they're just so broken and frazzled that they really can only bond with inanimate objects or semi-animate objects like AI or whatever, right?
	Men are so frightened of the world that they can only pursue...
	A lot of men are so frightened of the world.
	And I understand why. It's not a big blame thing.
	I'm just pointing it out.
	A lot of men are so frightened by the world that they can only pursue achievements in fantasy, right?
	In video games and so on.
	So... Yes.
	If you have a child, you absolutely crush that child's spirit by treating animals better than your children, and I've certainly experienced that.
	It's really, really tough. It's one of the most blindingly wide and deep sadistic manifestations that the planet has to offer in its hellscape of bad childhoods.
	Alright, let's see here.
	Somebody, he says, sorry, I wrote that wrong.
	I didn't mean the question as a criticism of you handling your situation.
	Oh man, come on.
	Don't do that, I didn't mean.
	Steph, it is unjust and unfair for you to not spend time with your abusive parents.
	It's profoundly ungrateful.
	But I didn't mean that as a criticism of you.
	Come on, man. Please don't take these escape hatches.
	Don't leave your actions in the lurch.
	You wrote a pretty cruel message.
	And again, I know it's...
	I don't take it personally. It's not personal to me.
	It's about you, not me, right?
	It takes a lot of growth in the world to make you question a conversation actually about the other person and not about you.
	So... Yeah, don't gaslight me, right?
	So what happens is you say, I'm sorry, I wrote that wrong.
	It's like, no.
	So I can understand somebody blurting something out, but you have a well-typed out, grammatically correct, well-reasoned entire paragraph.
	So don't tell me when you had the chance.
	Again, I can understand some reactive blurt.
	You know, somebody plays the beginning of I Feel Good by James Brown and your peppercorn goes flying through the air, right?
	Okay, I get that there's...
	But when you have the chance to really work on something and write something and it's grammatically correct and you probably wrote this elsewhere and copied and pasted in it, which is fine.
	But then say, no, no, no, I wrote that wrong.
	No, don't do that.
	Don't do that. You've got to own what you did.
	It's an itchy thing. Don't leave your actions in the lurch.
	And don't further insult other people.
	I didn't mean that question as a criticism of you handling your situation, but rather than me dealing with my personal situation.
	Right. So when you say you didn't mean that as a criticism of you handling your situation, but you say...
	How do you deal with the fact that even though your parents were abusive, it still took you a moment to keep you alive?
	They had a lot to do with things for you, and therefore you should give value back.
	Turning your back on them when they get old is not fair, right?
	So saying, well, Steph, I mean, I was asking you entirely about you and your situation and your parents.
	And then you say, oh, I didn't mean the question as a criticism of you handling your situation.
	Yeah, you did. I mean, come on.
	Don't gaslight me, bro.
	Come on. It's early in the day.
	Don't gaslight me, bro.
	I'm not trying to be mean.
	I'm really not. And I'm sorry.
	Honestly, this is like a...
	I hate to sound superior, but this is like watching a puppy learn how to walk.
	Except that you did mean the question as a criticism of me handling my situation.
	Because if you say, well, it's about me and my personal situation.
	Okay, then apologize to me for accusing me of something that was a question for you.
	Apologize to me. And you say, sorry, I wrote that wrong.
	Well, no. If you made an error, then you have nothing to apologize.
	We don't apologize for errors, right?
	We don't apologize for errors.
	I mean, other than as a way of being polite and so on, right?
	But we don't apologize for errors.
	So if you write something and let's say that you write something and then you paste in something and then you, I don't know, you post it or something or like if you make a genuine error in something, right? You make a typo or whatever, then, yeah, okay, then you're somewhat responsible for not reading over it or whatever, right?
	But whatever, it's not a big... We don't apologize for accidents, other than as a sort of empty, polite thing, right?
	So, sorry, I wrote that wrong.
	What does that mean, you wrote that wrong?
	I mean, you mentioned me six, seven, eight times, and it's about my situation and my history.
	So what do you mean you wrote that wrong?
	I don't know what that means.
	Other than you're recoiling from criticism, which is fine.
	I mean, I understand criticism is not fun.
	I actually enjoy it, but it's fine, right?
	So, sorry I wrote that wrong.
	I didn't mean the question as a criticism of you handling your situation.
	No, but you did. I mean, just have to read it.
	You absolutely did. How do you deal with the fact that they, your parents, were abusive, keep you alive?
	You turning your back on them when they get old is not fair, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So, no, you did absolutely mean the question of a criticism of me.
	Yep. Yes, you did.
	It's not fair. You're saying it's not fair.
	What I, Steph, did with my parents was not fair.
	It was ungrateful and all that.
	So you absolutely did mean that, and you've got to own that.
	Now, you can say, on hindsight, when you push back, I realize that I accused you of what I suspect myself of doing.
	That's the self-knowledge thing, right?
	I accused you of what I am tortured by in my own life.
	I was dishonest because I accused you of something where the primary issue is me.
	I made it about accusing you or being critical of you, calling you a moralist, fundamentally unjust, about an essential aspect of his life, unjust in seeing his elderly parents.
	Turning your back on people who made sacrifices to keep you alive and all of that.
	So you would say to me, I, again, this is just straight up deep honesty, right?
	You would say, Steph, I attacked you for something that I feel guilty about in my own life.
	Right. Now that's, you know, but saying, oh, I wrote that wrong.
	I didn't mean, it is a criticism of you.
	And I didn't mean the question as a criticism of you handling your situation, but rather me dealing with my personal situation.
	But all I can go with is what you wrote.
	So when you say, Steph, this is about you and your parents, then you say, well, I didn't mean this to be about you and your parents.
	It's like, no, that's what you wrote.
	I mean, I'm an empiricist.
	That's what you wrote. So he goes on to say, my parents stayed together and even supported me through university when I was already an adult.
	So again, I mean this with affection.
	I mean this with positivity.
	I mean this with enthusiasm for your growth and good for you for starting to deal with these issues.
	Like, good for you. Congratulations.
	So, you are still united with, if you say that this is about your parents and you're talking about abusive parents, you're saying, my parents are abusive.
	I've stuck with them, right?
	I've stuck with them. And the result of you sticking with them This is how kind of mean and manipulative you can be.
	I'm not saying you are as a whole, but in this particular situation, you are poking at, you know, it's a big wound in my life.
	I mean, my relationship with my parents, I don't really think about it anymore.
	It's been a long time.
	I haven't seen my mother in a quarter century, and my dad's probably been even longer, and he's dead now, so it's a long time ago.
	But you understand this was a very difficult passage in my life.
	So you're really poking at a wound of mine, And when I point this out, then you manipulate and gaslight.
	Oh, I didn't mean this. I just wrote it wrong, right?
	But this is the price that you pay for staying in the orbit of abusive people, is that you yourself have the capacity to be manipulative, kind of mean, a little abusive, and then...
	Then you gaslight someone who calls you out on it, right?
	This is a very sort of twisty, fragile, and manipulative state of mind.
	And again, I say this with respect, with sympathy, and I've been there, and I understand it, and I'm not trying to put you down or anything.
	I'm just saying that, listen, here's the basic thing.
	Here's the basic thing. Let's just cut to brass tacks.
	I don't need to handle you with kid gloves.
	You're listening to the show, right?
	You can't have any higher standards for your own behavior than you have for those around you.
	If you accept shitty behavior on the part of others, you will accept shitty behavior and you will manifest that shitty behavior on your own part.
	And I understand, I'm not calling you a shitty person.
	You're probably fine in general.
	I'm just talking about in this particular area, which is a fairly significant area, it's kind of mean and gross what you did, right?
	And I say that because you have the, obviously, capacity to not do that, right?
	So it's the lowest common denominator, right?
	It's the lowest common denominator.
	If you have...
	If you have 10 people who want to sell you the same car, it's exactly the same car, let's just say.
	You have 10 people who want to sell you a new Prius or whatever you're buying, right?
	You have 10 people who want to sell it to you.
	And it's the same car.
	It's a new car, same warranty, all of that, right?
	You will take... The lowest price.
	You will pay the lowest price for exactly the same thing.
	Can we all agree on that?
	Can we all agree on that?
	You will pay the lowest price for the identical thing, right?
	So, if you allow people in your life who are briby, manipulative, gaslighty, accuse you of things that they themselves are guilty of, and all of that twisted, murky, subterranean, foggy, tree-roots-through-their-brain nonsense, if you accept that in your life, you accept that in yourself.
	If you accept that in your life, You accept that in yourself, and therefore you will inflict it on others.
	If you say, hey man, I got no problem with counterfeit money, then if you accept counterfeit money, you will use that counterfeit money.
	I got no problem with counterfeit money.
	So if you accept it, you will spend it.
	If you receive it, you will provide it.
	You can't have higher standards than the lowest standard in your environment.
	And that's just the price.
	That's just the reality. It's just how we work.
	So the reason why you said this stuff to me is because you have destructive people in your life.
	And they're running the conversation.
	Especially parents, because they have so much control over us.
	Alright. I think some mothers have unresolved abuse or trauma in their background and cling to their little man boy children that they feel safe with, but need the male influence from.
	It's a totally abusive situation where they smother the boy being male out of total fear.
	I call them smothers. The smothers brothers.
	Yes, the little Lord Vontalroy, the substitute husband and...
	So here's the thing.
	I mean, this is one of the reasons why I fight against unchosen positive obligations.
	And if you knew anything about my philosophy, you know that I'm an eternal mortal enemy to unchosen positive obligations.
	That you are not responsible for that which you have not chosen.
	Because... Why do parents treat their children so badly?
	Why do parents treat their children so badly?
	And the answer to that is quite simple.
	Because they believe, and society reinforces this and they expect it to be enforced, parents treat their children so badly because they have a permanent monopoly.
	It's the same reason why you can't get good service from most government institutions.
	They have a permanent monopoly.
	So why do parents treat children so badly?
	Because those children can never, ever, ever leave.
	And that which is not voluntary can contain no quality.
	That which is not voluntary can contain no quality.
	Which is why, you know, the Soviet produced cars, the Lada, the Soviet produced cars were terrible.
	Whereas the pre-market cars were great.
	So that which is not voluntary can contain no quality.
	If you go out and you win someone to spend time with you by whatever means and charm and virtue you have, then you have a quality relationship.
	If you kidnap that person, there is no quality in the relationship.
	There is only dominance, violence, and exploitation and entrapment.
	Now, my mother, of course, labored under the belief that I would never get free, so it didn't matter how she treated me.
	The reason why I spread the voluntary family is so that people stop abusing their children.
	Or at least there's a limitation on that, which is that, okay, you can mistreat me for 18 years and then I'm out of here.
	So knowing that the adult-child and parent relationship is voluntary means that parents have some negative consequences to fear if they mistreat their children too much.
	It will cause them to improve how they treat their children in the same way that if you privatize some government agency, customer focus goes up.
	Now they have to please their customers.
	They can't just get their money for existing.
	They just can't get their resources for breathing.
	They have to win and woo them.
	So the fact that there was all of this, well, it's your mother and you can't ever not see her and you owe her everything and honor their mother and their father and all of that.
	But you understand, that's why she treated me so badly.
	All of that belief that I would never get out.
	I would never leave. I would never, right?
	So yeah, it's very, very important.
	A lot of what I do, the really central part of what I do is to improve how parents treat their children.
	Now, you can make the moral case for sure, but you could make the moral case for some government concentration camp agent to treat his prisoners better.
	Okay, but don't we want to deal with the whole source of the issue rather than try and nag people to be better in a bad situation?
	Somebody says, my parents had low standards and felt that some of my teachers and private tutors were stuck up and elitist, but I always felt those tutors had high standards.
	Seems to me like they were low class and didn't want successful people in my life to influence me.
	Yeah, I mean, the concept of quality has to be relentlessly avoided by the trash classes.
	You can't have quality people.
	You can't have quality food. You can't have quality accommodations.
	You can't have quality vacations.
	You can't have a quality time at Christmas.
	You just have to keep everything relentlessly trashy.
	Let's see here. Abusive parents who were unfit to have children seem like kidnappers if they adopt children and then abuse them throughout their childhood.
	They can always try and hold it against the child that they saved them, but that's not entirely true.
	Let's see here. I thank you for your tips.
	I think, I think that...
	I'm providing enough value for a tip or two.
	It's up to you. It's up to you.
	I think it's very important.
	Alright. Thank you.
	I appreciate that. There's something that is interesting.
	A historian wrote this. A historian wrote this.
	Paul Johnson. And it's a Tolstoy quote, I think, where he says, every happy family is alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
	And he said, the historian said, that's not true.
	That's not true. Surely that's not true.
	Every happy family has individual manifestations of personalities.
	People are free to be who they want.
	There's a lot of variety and diversity.
	But when you look at sort of the grim march of dysfunction and alcoholism and abuse, then unhappy families are just photocopies.
	And yeah, I think that's fairly true.
	Correct me if I'm wrong, somebody says, but I believe you mentioned in a recent livestream
	dog.
	about parents who demand compliments and quote love, but if it's not given by the child, then they get punished like a
	Why do you think this happens? So it's entitlement, right?
	People make up imaginary debts in order to abuse those who don't provide it.
	So if the parent thinks, you owe me obedience, you owe me respect, you owe me positive views, you owe me love as a child...
	Then that allows them to beat the child for not, quote, paying his debt, right?
	You owe me obedience.
	You owe me obedience.
	Therefore, you don't disobey me.
	You're not paying a just debt and I can be aggressive against you.
	If you go to a friend and you say, I want to borrow $100, then if he says yes or no, you can't beat him up, right?
	So to speak. But if a friend owes you $100, has kept promising to pay it, won't pay it, keeps dodging you, then when you find him, you can yell at him, right?
	Because he's, you know, he's stealing from you at this point, right?
	So you make up these imaginary debts, which the making up of them means that they won't pay, right?
	So if you expect...
	Your child to obey you and love you and respect you.
	Your child will neither obey nor love nor respect you.
	Because we don't...
	The entitlement, right? That's just not the way that...
	Thank you very much for that tip. I appreciate that.
	That's not the way that things work, right?
	And so, by making up these unchosen obligations, which a child owes obedience and love and so on...
	I mean...
	A family member...
	Was very positive in responding to an older man's suggestion.
	It was about leaving the toothpaste cap off the tube, right?
	You've got to put the toothpaste cap on the tube.
	And the family member, when this was mentioned by the older, pretty honorable family male, the boy ran up the stairs and fixed it, right?
	And then the mother later, the single mother, was always bringing this up.
	Like, oh my god, you flew up the stairs when this person asked, you won't do anything that I ask.
	It's like, yeah, because you're mean to us, the guy would say, and so on, right?
	So if you expect...
	That people owe you things, then they won't want to provide them.
	They'll resist that, right?
	And so you punish the child for not giving you what you believe that you are owed, right?
	All right, let's see here.
	What is the philosophy of the movie Pulp Fiction?
	Almost all of Quentin Tarantino's movies are love letters to massive evil.
	They are total love letters to evil as dominance and dominance as cool.
	He is licking the feet of Satan.
	He is just absolutely monstrously praising immorality as cool.
	And everyone involved in his movies is beyond ghastly on just about every conceivable level.
	About Pulp Fiction in particular, there's other movies with a bit more variety.
	My dad treated our exchange students really well by constantly degrading me.
	Yeah, and part of that degradation was...
	Oh, hey man, I know how to treat people well.
	You just don't bring it out on me because you're a bad kid.
	yeah it's just absolutely a part of all of that.
	Great questions, great comments.
	Thank you for your attention.
	Stefan, thanks for everything you have done and continue to do.
	Thank you. I appreciate that. All right.
	What are your thoughts on this statement?
	Obedience to law is liberty.
	Thank you. Yeah, a nature to be commanded must be obeyed.
	So, obedience to reason is liberty.
	So, for instance, earlier, the man who wrote the letter to me about obeying my parents and being unjust in not seeing them...
	I said, okay, let's extract that to make that a universal rule that anyone who provides you resources owns you like a slave or a prostitute.
	The law is let's take this principle, depersonalize it, and make it universal.
	I like it when this ball bounces.
	Here's the physics behind this ball bouncing.
	So, obedience to law is liberty.
	I took reasonable moral and emotional standards.
	I applied them universally in my relationships, and I am free of bad relationships.
	Oh, this is the person who wrote the message.
	He said, the usage of the word you was the mistake I made.
	I should have written it in the first person.
	It really meant it to be about me, not a criticism of you.
	I feel shame for cutting off my parents.
	That's why I asked. Again, I'm sorry.
	I just, you know, I'm going to tell you the truth.
	You accused me of a moral crime that is about you.
	That's not a mistake. That's not a mistake.
	It really meant... I really meant it to be about me, not a criticism of you.
	Okay, so you accused me...
	Like, you know, yesterday somebody was making a snarky comment about how UPB is just categorical...
	Kant's categorical imperative rewritten, you know?
	Accusing me, a moralist, of plagiarism and passing off another philosopher's work as my own.
	That's not... I mean...
	Accusing me of injustice and immorality...
	In not just my own life, but in that which I have advocated for others, which is to have universal moral standards, which is not an unusual thing for a moralist to do.
	So you were accusing me of not just having personal immorality, but of spreading immorality to countless people around the world over the course of the 17 or 18 years I've been doing this show.
	Right? That I have been promoting injustice, unfairness, and some pretty morally corrupt stuff.
	Like, that's not a mistake. I just, I mean, just understand, right?
	Just understand that. That you're asking me, or you're accusing me publicly of being unfair, unjust, ungrateful, and kind of immoral, right?
	And promoting that to others.
	So that's a big deal.
	If I had made a mistake like that, it would be a huge deal.
	So, it's not a mistake, right?
	Because you have a magic wand where if you do something bad or wrong, you get to say it's a mistake.
	But when you were accusing me of doing something bad or wrong, it wasn't a mistake.
	It was unfair, unjust, wrong, immoral, that kind of stuff, right?
	I'm extrapolating a little bit, but that's sort of what we're going, right?
	Of not returning value for value, of stealing from, of being unjust and unfair, right?
	So when you do something objectively wrong, which is to accuse me in public of an immorality and of promoting that immorality to millions of people around the world over decades, well, that's just a mistake.
	But you accused me of being immoral.
	So why is it that your accusation of me is about morality, but when I point out that what you did was in fact unjust and wrong?
	It's just a mistake. You understand this is not a universal standard.
	This is why I say you're very early on in the journey.
	I mean, just so you know what happened in my view, what happened to you psychologically,
	is that you feel ashamed for cutting off my parents.
	Thanks.
	And your parents then hijack you to publicly accuse me of immorality and injustice and of promoting that to many millions of people.
	They attacked me to cut off support for you.
	Now, I won't just attack you and ban you and so on.
	I'm not going to cut off that support. I'm going to engage...
	Hopefully with some empathetic morality, I'm going to engage in that and say, okay, well, letting your parents take over your personality in this way is going to continue to isolate you from good people.
	And I understand this.
	Look, I sympathize with this.
	We've all been there. I am not immune to this.
	And so on. Like every now and then I feel the faint footprints of my mother's light steps in my trembling heart, right?
	So it happens. And even if this is like years, decades after I haven't seen her, it's always going to have an effect any more than I can unlearn English, right?
	It's the language I was raised with.
	So I'm not going to attack you or reject you or ban you or rail against you or yell at you or anything like that.
	I'm going to stay engaged, but I'm not...
	Going to support your manipulation.
	And again, this is like, you feel really bad, and you feel overwhelmed by feeling bad, and you use the magic wand called mistake, so that if I press the issue, I am now attacking you for a, quote, mistake, which would be unjust if you make a mistake.
	You know, like if...
	I'm sure you've had this happen in a restaurant, right?
	You order some food, and maybe you cancel some order before it comes for whatever reason.
	And then the order still remains on the bill, right?
	So let's say you ordered an appetizer and for some reason you should cancel the order, right?
	You order the appetizer, you're with a date, and your date says, I can't eat that, I'm allergic, and you say, oh, can you cancel that appetizer?
	Now the bill comes and the appetizer is still on the bill.
	Do you call the cops and say they just tried to rip me off for 15 bucks?
	I'm pressing charges?
	No, it's a mistake. Almost certainly.
	Now, every time you go to that restaurant, it's the same thing.
	They keep adding things to your bill.
	Then you've got corruption and you've got theft going on, right?
	A kind of fraud. But I think I've never in my life had something on a bill and felt the urge to call the police or accuse them of rank theft and so on.
	It's just a mistake. And, you know, it happens the other way too.
	Like sometimes I'll order a coffee at the end of a meal, I'll get the bill, and the coffee won't be on there, and I'll say, hey, you forgot to put the coffee on.
	And sometimes I'll say, oh, that's fine.
	Sometimes they'll put the coffee on.
	But I don't think that they're comping me because I'm so good looking, right?
	It's a mistake. So we don't rail against mistakes because mistakes are part of life.
	So when you publicly accuse me of something deeply immoral and unjust, which I have propagated or put forward the arguments for to many other people, which is to have decent standards in all your relationships, and they say, oh no, it's a mistake, right?
	So then you're trying to trap me or corner me into a situation where if I'm upset about this public accusation of immorality, I'm now being unjust, which confirms your accusation of injustice because I'm getting mad at you for just a mistake.
	I won't give you...
	The mistake. I can't give you the mistake.
	It's not a mistake. This was conscious.
	Well, I don't know whether it was conscious or not, but you're very easily able to say, oh, wait, no, this was about me, not you, right?
	And one of the things that abusive people do, which is really tough for people, I've been through this myself and I'm sure most of us have.
	If you come from an abusive background, one of the things that's really, really tough
	is you have a very deep inability to own something you've done wrong and genuinely apologize.
	And the reason for that is that every time you apologize, you owned a mistake or you
	owned something that you did wrong.
	Something that you did wrong.
	If you apologize in an abusive family situation for something you've done wrong, they'll hold it over you forever.
	So when we do something wrong, which we all do, when we do something wrong and we're called out on it, we have this panic, right?
	We can't admit that we did something really wrong.
	We can't genuinely and deeply apologize.
	We can't any of that, right? We can't do it.
	We can't do it. Because it would just be used against us forever.
	And because we can't own what we've done and apologize, we don't have quality people in our lives.
	Quality people don't want to be around people who manipulate them.
	Alright, do you think the child has a duty to initiate conversations with his parents?
	Can the parents simply reach out to the child if he wants to hear from the child instead of await the child to call?
	I'm not sure in what context you are saying that.
	Do you mean if, as an adult, you have stopped communicating with your parents?
	I don't know about duty or not.
	I'm not sure what you mean by duty here.
	If you have an urge to call your parents and you feel that there's stuff that is not certain, that you don't have closure on, and closure is just another word for certainty, then you can call your parents, right?
	The parents can call the child, the child can call the parents, blah, blah, blah, right?
	I mean, sure. I mean, none of this is a violation of the non-aggression principle, so...
	Alright. Relating to this topic, parents have chosen their careers over their children.
	Is it wrong for me to recognize this and only keep them in my life for the financial benefits when they pass on?
	So you're saying that they chose material gain over integrity and the solution to that is for you to choose material gain over integrity?
	I don't really think that's a good equation myself.
	Does raising your daughter without your mother in her life work out?
	Does it work out? I mean, I made this commitment to myself before my child was born that no matter what sex or how many children I had, my children would never see me bow down to immorality.
	They would never see me bullied.
	And I've kept that vow.
	I've never retracted anything that I know to be true.
	I've taken every attack with some stoicism, right?
	So if my mother were to mistreat me as she would in front of my daughter and she saw me bow down to that, that would just be horrible.
	It would be horrible for her, it would be horrible for me, it would be bad for my mother, and it would be a way of allowing this intergenerational infection to pass down to my daughter.
	Especially if you have sons.
	Sons are always looking to emulate the most powerful person in the environment.
	And if the most powerful person, the person who dominates, the person who gets their way, is the abusive parents, then your children as a whole, but in particular, your boys will be drawn towards that.
	Maybe your mother didn't know she could survive without you.
	Leaving might have been the best help you could have given her.
	But how was I supposed to leave when I was 11?
	How on earth do you think I can go get an apartment when I'm 11?
	Your work is so valuable.
	I'm so grateful you keep pressing on despite attempts at censorship against you.
	Thank you, I appreciate that. I appreciate that.
	Somebody says here, let's get back to...
	I'm going to go back to the chat.
	I'm going to go back to the chat.
	I Somebody says, I'm working with a better therapist who is helping separate from my abusive family.
	I feel that, like a lawyer, the therapist should be an advocate for me and not my parents.
	But many therapists advocate for parents.
	My father recently went to therapy and his therapist requested group counseling, which my gut feeling said was a red flag.
	What do you think about group therapy with extremely abusive family?
	Catgirl Kulak is a very good person to follow on Twitter.
	Although, of course, she doesn't know me, doesn't endorse anything that I say, so don't blame her.
	But she has a whole thread about The Sopranos.
	And I watched a little bit of The Sopranos, and the acting was great, the writing was pretty good, but The Therapist was driving me completely insane.
	This value-neutral therapy is monstrous.
	I mean, Dr.
	Malfi, she knew that Tony Soprano was a thug and a gangster and that he probably killed people and so on.
	She just couldn't make any more judgments.
	No judgment. No judgment.
	No, that's just so girly.
	So... My father recently went to therapy and his therapist requested group counseling.
	Yeah, so I don't know how therapy works in any kind of professional sense or professional standards, but his therapist probably would have a lot to work on with your father before there'd be any kind of group counseling.
	So if he just recently went and his therapist also saying group counseling
	I would go with your gut saying no no the therapist is trying to offload
	your father's trauma onto those around him.
	How can a man have any negotiating power in a relationship if the woman can
	withhold sex as a weapon?
	Thank you.
	Well, you don't date women who withhold sex as a weapon.
	I remember this is, oh gosh, decades ago when I worked in Tundra Bay.
	I worked in Tundra Bay. I remember listening to the radio.
	And this is so bizarre, like these little things that just sort of sit in your brain like burrs.
	And the DJ was saying, next up we're going to play...
	Pat Benatar has sex as a weapon, and if sex is a weapon for Pat Benatar, she can declare war on me anytime.
	You know, it's one of these kinds of cheesy things.
	I remember that because, of course, the idea of sex as a weapon.
	So, you want a woman who loves you to the point where withholding sex would be a wanton act of cruel destruction against you and against her, so she wouldn't do it.
	Doesn't mean she can't have problems with you or have disagreements with you or whatever it is, but...
	Like a woman wouldn't date a man who says, she's a stay-at-home mom, and he says, I'm not going to put any money into our bank account unless you obey me in X, Y, or Z. Well, you wouldn't do that because you love the person.
	And if you have an issue with the person, you bring it up.
	You don't bring the cudgels of sex and money and abuse and all of that as a resource.
	you don't bring the armies to a negotiation table.
	Alright, switching topics.
	I know you don't discuss politics anymore, but did you see the recent Trump town hall on CNN? Thoughts?
	I thought it was great. Trump seems ready for a comeback.
	This is where he...
	Yeah, the woman was like...
	That's so she kept asking him questions, wouldn't let him answer, right?
	Because they want to speechify.
	And yeah, she was a pretty sour and negative woman, and he's like, you're a nasty person, right?
	And it's kind of true, right?
	So, I don't, I didn't, I mean, I don't have, honestly, what was it, 70 minutes or 50 minutes, I don't honestly have that kind of time to watch that stuff.
	I'd rather chat with you guys and do philosophical work.
	So, yeah, I think it's, you know, watching Trump with the media is fun.
	And what I did think was, one answer I did see a clip of that was great when he said, people said, so you, the woman was like, so you don't want the Ukrainians to win?
	He's like, I don't think in terms of winning and losing, I think in terms of stopping the war and saving lives.
	It's a pretty good answer. And he did talk about, and I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, somebody said, well, how would Trump solve the Ukraine invasion issue?
	And I went through stuff, and he seemed to be going through the same kind of stuff, so.
	Would you say people who enjoy violent movies such as Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill have some sort of character flaw?
	Maybe it's not a flaw that is obvious but a flaw that is revealing of their shadow self, as Jung put it.
	So, Steph, would you automatically see it as a red flag or would you make a distinction between a movie as just being popcorn entertainment?
	And just because someone enjoys seeing something that is lowbrow, it does not necessarily mean it is a poor reflection of their inner character.
	I mean, I've never seen Kill Bill.
	I watched the first couple of minutes and I was just mindlessly bored.
	I did watch Pulp Fiction many years ago and I found it.
	It's artistic horror.
	I mean, that's what Tarantino does as a whole, is artistic horror.
	I mean, there are no virtuous people, and everything is just horrible and ghastly and violent, and there's no redemption arc.
	People talk of Samuel L. Jackson's character's redemption arc in Pulp Fiction.
	No, there's no redemption arc, because he's been a slaughterer of people for his whole life, we assume, or at least his whole adult life.
	And what is the redemption?
	Oh, maybe I won't kill as many people anymore.
	Maybe I'll stop killing people. Yeah, that's not how things work, right?
	And of course, Pulp Fiction doesn't talk about parenting and childhood.
	His movies as a whole don't have parent-child relationships.
	It doesn't have children in his movies.
	And the photographs that I've seen with him and children's feet seem to be disturbing beyond words.
	But... He doesn't talk about the roots of violence.
	He just talks basically, he makes violence as cool as possible and that to me would be a huge red flag.
	Not for someone who's seen the movie, but somebody who's really into that sneering cool, that sneering blood-spattered cool sociopath stuff that Tarantino seems to promote.
	Thank you for your tip.
	Somebody says I love these live shows and community.
	Appreciate that too. My dad showed me Pulp Fiction when I was seven years old.
	My God, I'm so sorry.
	It's like when I was in boarding school, they played Charlton Heston film The Omega Man to us when we were kids, and I just remember being absolutely appalled.
	Just terrified. It was a terrifying movie for a six-year-old, right?
	I once took a class where one of the lessons...
	Let me just stop in a couple of minutes.
	I haven't eaten anything today, but we should get some food in.
	Let's see here. I once took a class where one of the lessons I learned was what they called I statements, where instead of using the second person perspective and referring to a hypothetical person, wouldn't you be confused if you saw that?
	They recommend using the personal pronoun, wouldn't I be confused if I saw that?
	Well, I think if you're talking about yourself, you should talk about yourself.
	I mean, it's almost tautological, but yeah, you shouldn't project onto other people what is your thing, right?
	What did you think about the movie Die Hard?
	Is it a Christmas movie?
	What do you think about Die Hard?
	I mean, it was a fun action film.
	Everybody raved about the British actor.
	But I didn't find him to be that great.
	You know, it's a fun action movie.
	Of course, the big moral is that, you know, the guy who was...
	You know, it's always the same thing, right?
	It's the super cool, violent, prone, misfortune-prone ex-cop who's been divorced, right?
	It's like it's always the... Private eye with a string of ex-wives and all of that stuff.
	So, yeah, it turns out that...
	So, yeah, I mean, this is a typical thing, right?
	Women choose men for their brutality and then leave them because they're not sensitive enough, right?
	And like men choose women for their hotness and then complain that they're vain.
	I mean, it's just... It's kind of funny, right?
	The end is in the beginning, right?
	What do you plan to have for brunch?
	That's a fine question.
	I'm actually trying to cut back on bread now.
	I've done sugar. I don't do sugar, really.
	The most I'll do is I'll have some fat-free, some sugar-free yogurt with some fruit.
	But what do I plan to have for lunch?
	I probably will have some scrambled eggs.
	Two eggs, a little bit of milk, a pinch of salt, and that does me well.
	And a decaf coffee.
	All right, let's see here.
	I'll do one last question.
	Me again with the parents. I really don't want to be annoying.
	I did cut off my parents, but I still have these voices in my head that are saying I did something wrong.
	I realize that it's probably my parents, but I need to sort it out.
	By asking the questions, I wanted you help me confront these voices.
	I did not want to accuse you of being wrong with your situation, the exact opposite.
	Don't you understand why?
	Oh man, you're not.
	I'm sorry. Again, this is so early and I sympathize.
	We can do a call and you can email me, callin at freedomain.com.
	And maybe I missed it.
	Maybe I missed it. I don't think I can export any of this stuff, right?
	But, you know, you publicly accused me of being immoral and spreading immorality to other people.
	And I said, you know, that's something worth apologizing for.
	And you're like, sorry, I made a mistake, which is not an apology.
	I call it a bean app. You can look that one up if you want.
	So, you're still, you know, you did something wrong and you won't own it and apologize, right?
	Which is, again, I know it's early, so I'm not saying do it now, right?
	Because now I'm just saying it, right?
	But, and maybe you did and I missed it.
	I've been trying to watch the chat, but...
	When someone says, you know, you kind of wronged me, bro, in public and accused me of some pretty immoral stuff, maybe an apology would be warranted and that will warm me up to you because, you know, an apology is when you're saying, I'm not going to do it again.
	Apologies aren't some sort of humiliation thing.
	You better apologize or I'll punish you.
	I'm not going to do that. But apologies are, okay, I understand what I did wrong.
	And an apology is a way of saying, I'm not going to do it again, right?
	So... So anyway, just pointing that out.
	When somebody says, here's what I need, you might want to provide it or acknowledge that you don't, right?
	So if you just come back with more needs for me, do me this favor, do me that favor without acknowledging that I asked for an apology.
	At least acknowledge, say, I know you asked for an apology.
	I don't feel ready to give it. That's fine.
	But could you do me a favor? Whatever it is, right?
	Anyway, so why are you drinking decaf?
	I like the taste of coffee, but I don't.
	I can't do more than two cups of coffee a day.
	It gets me all jangled. Me again with the parents.
	I really don't want to be annoying.
	Excuses are promises of repetition.
	What's the difference between an apology and an excuse?
	No, but an apology is when you stop excusing yourself.
	I did something wrong.
	I wronged you. And you don't make an excuse.
	Right? You just don't make an excuse.
	You take full ownership of what you did.
	Um... Okay, I did cut off my parents but still have these voices in my head that are saying I did something wrong.
	I realize it is probably my parents but need to sort it out.
	By asking the question, I wanted you to help me confront these voices.
	I did not want to accuse you of being wrong with your situation.
	Of course you did.
	That's exactly what you did.
	Oh my gosh. I don't understand.
	Like it's literally like you wait in my house in the dark.
	I come home. You punch me in the head.
	You jump out. You punch me in the head.
	You've been there for an hour and you say, well, I didn't mean to punch you in the head.
	It's like, no, you did. Like, come on, man.
	Of course you meant to accuse me of being wronged in my situation because you said, Steph, you're wrong in your situation.
	I mean, of course you meant to.
	Now you can say, I don't even know what you can say, but I can only view you as a person who typed.
	I'm not going to view you as somebody who has got a wildly split personality and the parent personality has typed that and the child personality has taken over.
	Like, I'm not going to split you up to that degree, right?
	I get there's a mecosystem. I'm not going to slice and dice you like sushi and make you an entire opposite eel roll.
	So, yeah, you absolutely accused me of being wrong in my situation and of promoting that wrongness to others.
	I mean, you did do that.
	I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be mean here, but I'm not going to lie to you.
	I don't see how lying to you about what you did would be any benefit at all.
	I'm not asking you to attack yourself.
	I'm not asking you to attack yourself at all.
	I'm just saying that you do need to acknowledge what you did.
	Because here's the thing, man.
	Spoiler. You have the capacity to be mean.
	And you are. Spoiler, I have the capacity to be mean, and I am sometimes.
	It happens. We all have the dark side, we all have the shadow side, and there's nothing wrong with having the capacity to be mean.
	You have to embrace that.
	Sometimes you need to be mean.
	As the old Patrick Swayze Roadhouse line goes, it's important to be nice until it's time to not be nice.
	So yes, you have the capacity to be mean and aggressive.
	And I do too.
	And sometimes, hopefully most times we do it appropriately.
	Sometimes we do it inappropriately and we have to apologize.
	So I was aggressive towards Christians in the past and I have apologized for that.
	I did not make excuses.
	Well, because, right?
	No, because as soon as you say because, you're saying I'm not in control of my actions, I'm a mere domino hit by prior dominoes, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So you absolutely did accuse me of being wrong in my situation.
	So when you say, well, I didn't want to do exactly what I did.
	Okay, then who did type that?
	Right? I mean, unless you've got more than one person at the keyboard.
	I did not want to do exact...
	I did not want to type exactly what I typed.
	Okay, are you possessed?
	Are your hands like the horror movie?
	They've detached and they're dancing all over the keyboard and you're just trying to stop them?
	No, you did. Come on, just own it.
	It's not the end of the world.
	In fact, it would be the beginning of a whole new world.
	It would be the beginning of a whole new world for you to say, I typed that, it was wrong, and stop gaslighting me.
	Just stop making excuses. So when you type me a full paragraph with very detailed and reasoned explanations and accusations, and then you say, well, I didn't want to type that.
	I can't have a conversation with somebody who doesn't own his actions.
	I mean, how could I? How can I have a conversation if you don't accept that you did what you did?
	I mean, that's impossible. I mean, again, I know this is your parents and this is what you're wrestling with.
	But if you deny the empirical evidence of what you did, you did publicly accuse me of being wrong.
	And then you say, well I didn't want to publicly accuse you of being wrong.
	I can't have a conversation, like nobody can have a conversation with you if you
	deny the empirical evidence of what you did.
	Let's see here, hey Steph.
	I'm rather new here. Can you briefly describe the apologize in a Christian situation or direct me to where I can understand the change of heart?
	Oh, I've got a whole series, I Was Wrong About.
	Just go to fdrpodcast.com, type in wrong or wrong about, and you'll get all the shows I did where I said I was wrong about.
	Steph just wanted to say, glad you're back to doing the Truth About series.
	Love it. I thank you for that. I appreciate that.
	Somebody says, thank you.
	You're welcome. I hope that you will enjoy them.
	I hope that you will find them of value.
	I mean, I made a mistake, and I also denied the empirical evidence, which I, of all people, have the least right to do, and I thought that I thought that atheists were interested in truth and reason, and atheism is really about escaping universal moral rules, using the cover of universal scientific rules in order to escape universal moral rules.
	And Christians accept the moral rules, so I'm far more Christian than atheist in my morality.
	All right. When's the next social media review?
	Great series. I was actually just thinking about that.
	I'm just accumulating so many.
	So I'll probably do one on the weekend.
	But yeah, they are a great series, right?
	And a lot of really fascinating stuff out there.
	Somebody posted today a criticism.
	I mean, obviously it was kind of mean and kind of harsh, but I think there was some truth in it.
	But he was like, Stephan accuses Wikipedia of being unjust and blah, blah, blah, then uses Wikipedia as a source in a presentation.
	Fair. Fair or valid.
	And then said, Stephan...
	Wah, wah, wah. I want Elon Musk to apologize to me personally.
	I've never said that Elon Musk needs to apologize to me personally.
	I think the Wikipedia argument is a good one.
	I find that for non-political stuff, Wikipedia can be pretty good.
	But it's a good point.
	I pass this along to the researcher and let's drop Wikipedia as a source.
	I think that's a good point. Have you seen the new sport where people take turns slapping each other as hard as they can in the face?
	I have seen a few clips of that.
	I don't know why people would want to court...
	Court, tooth, jaw, and brain damage.
	I have no idea why people would want to do that, but apparently it's a thing.
	Well, of course, I know why, which is that they were hit a lot as children, and they're just trying to manage their own feelings of being hit because that's the only control they had as kids.
	They couldn't control whether they were hit, but they can control their reactions to it, and I guess that's what they're trying to master.
	All right. Any last to ensure prompt services?
	Any last tips?
	And again, to the person who's wrestling with the parents thing, I'm absolutely happy to help.
	Again, I don't mean anything that I say with any negativity or hostility.
	I don't want you to self-attack. So you can send me an email.
	Call in at freedomain.com where we can jawbone it out.
	I spent some two and a half hours yesterday with a guy trying to save the marriage.
	He's got four kids. So yeah, the good work continues.
	Alright, I'm just going to wait to see if any...
	Once I close it down, the tip stops, so I'm going to just wait for a moment.
	Can I even afford my eggs for lunch?
	As always, great show staff.
	All the best. Thank you so much. I mean, I like doing shows at different times of day because you get a different kind of energy.
	This is sort of more focused and deep, and I didn't rip my shirt off even once.
	At least, maybe I did it ninja style.
	It's too fast for you to see. Too fast for you to see.
	Yeah, it's a different kind of energy and different kinds of questions.
	Different kinds of people as well, right?
	So that was great. I really appreciate that.
	Hi Steph, thanks for all you do.
	Question about diversity. What's wrong with diversity?
	My answer is that reality, being an identity, being an identity essentially because of differences, not equalities.
	Well, there's nothing wrong with diversity.
	It's just a word. I like diversity in my salad bar.
	I don't just want one bag of lettuce, right?
	So diversity is fine. But diversity, when it's politicized, has a whole different thing.
	And because it's a government program, it's diversity plus power.
	Female nature is beautiful. Female nature plus power is corrupt.
	Male nature is beautiful. Male nature plus power is corrupt, right?
	Alright, thanks everyone so much for an exquisite and delightful chat.
	And I appreciate everyone coming by.
	Supporting, if you're listening to this later, freedoman.com forward slash donate.
	I would really, really appreciate your help and support in the show so that we can ring out at least one documentary this summer, hopefully, on the Civil War.
	It would be very, very interesting to do that.
	And now that I have...
	Entirely massive brain-powered researcher and more people coming on board this year.
	We're sort of back on. But, you know, I mean, got to cover costs and all of that.
	All right. Thanks, everyone, so much.
	Have yourself a wonderful day.
	Lots of love from up here. I'll talk to you soon.

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