Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

July 2, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:10:24

But Stef the Stripper Loves Me! Livestream

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Yeah, I guess that's a good place to start.
	Hi, everybody. It's 11 o'clock in the morning on the 2nd of July, 2023, and we are going to have a little Sunday morning philosophy.
	And so, yeah, of course, things are quite exciting in France at the moment.
	And, you know, sometimes...
	You gain credibility by just being right way ahead of your time.
	Of course, I was talking about this, I don't know, eight years ago, and it's all fairly obvious.
	So they have chosen to take the path of learning by experience.
	And, you know, to me, however people get educated is a good thing.
	If people don't want to learn according to theory, they want to learn according to experience, I don't recommend it.
	I don't think it's a wise way of doing things.
	But if they choose to learn by experience, then that's the choice they make.
	I mean, if you want to tell someone to stop drinking, then they should stop drinking.
	And you should explain to them what it's doing to their liver, what it's doing to their brain, what it's doing to their relationships.
	So you should tell them to stop drinking.
	And sometimes they will choose to listen to you because of that.
	And sometimes they will choose to keep drinking.
	And then eventually they'll hit rock bottom or they'll have some terrible injury or something like that.
	And then they will hopefully learn through that way, right?
	But all the education rejected is reinforced by the universe.
	So everyone who rejects philosophy gets schooled by facts, right?
	Everyone who rejects theory gets schooled by evidence.
	And again, whatever brings people to wisdom, I'm in favor of.
	You don't understand bar culture at all?
	That's because you don't loathe yourself.
	Bar culture is for people who loathe themselves and bar culture is for people who nobody would choose in a state of sobriety.
	Like if you say, well, in order to be attractive to anyone, I have to go to a place where everyone's judgment is ridiculously impaired.
	Well, that's a very clear statement on self-worth, right?
	Alright. It's like, there's this woman, H. Pearl Davis, and she's on Twitter.
	And she's interesting. She's funny.
	She's the kind of person who doesn't seem very caring, but absolutely does care, because she gives women facts.
	And she posted something the other day.
	It was pretty wild. She said, women are more attractive, or a woman is more attractive at 25 than she is at 35.
	Or, you know, women...
	And she meant every individual woman, right?
	You're more attractive at 25 than 35, right?
	So... What do you think the response was?
	I think her tweet got over 10 million views.
	Good to know that people are keeping the old Taylor Swift thing going.
	But... Her tweet got viewed like 10 million times and over 4,000 women posted pictures of themselves in their 40s saying, well, I look great. And a lot of them posted pictures of this woman, H. Pearl Davis, who's like, I don't know, 26 or 27 or something like that.
	And basically saying, well, when I'm 40, I look better than you at 27.
	Like when you're 27, I'm 40, I look better.
	Which is not what she said.
	She didn't say all 25 year olds look better than all 35 year olds because there would be easy ways to find an exception to that.
	But she said that women look better At 25, then they do at 35.
	And of course, some women posted pictures of themselves at 25 when they were very, very fat, and then posted pictures of themselves at 40 when they'd lost weight and so on.
	And she just replied, well, you just wasted your 20s being fat.
	That doesn't disprove my theory, right?
	So yeah, it's wild.
	And I'm sure she has nothing to do with me, but she does sort of point out that geriatric pregnancy, that's a term that's really tough for women, and I understand that, and I sympathize with that, geriatric pregnancy.
	Do you guys know when a geriatric pregnancy is technically?
	Like if you go to the doctor, what age are you when you are considered to be a geriatric pregnancy?
	Well, the women know. No, it's not 40-plus.
	It's not north of 32 officially, and I think this is in the States.
	It's the age 35. 35-plus is a geriatric pregnancy, right?
	Because for most women, that would be, what, 17 years past the time.
	Like, if a woman got pregnant at 18, which was kind of common throughout history, by the time she was 35, her kid would be 17 or 16, I guess, if she got pregnant at 18.
	So, yeah. I mean, it's really tragic.
	So, Pearl Davis points out, 90% of your eggs are gone.
	And what she's saying, in terms of attractiveness, see, and this is the funny thing that modern culture does, and again, I'm trying not to be over-Christian in that sense, but it's demonic.
	It's demonic. Because the demon says, beauty is the exterior, right?
	The demon says, beauty is how you look.
	In other words, makeup makes you more beautiful.
	When no, makeup in general falsifies your existence and confesses to everyone that you don't think you're attractive enough on the inside to gain a quality man.
	So the devil says, beauty is exterior.
	And if you get Botox, you get more beautiful.
	And if you get lip fillers, you get more beautiful.
	And if you get a Brazilian butt lift, you get more beautiful.
	Or for guys, it's like, you know, if you get abs, then you get more attractive.
	And so on, right?
	And I have no problem with a little bit of makeup.
	I mean, I don't particularly care.
	I mean, in the same way that I... You know, I'm not aiming for abs, but I think it's important to be healthy and exercise.
	So, the devil says, beauty is only on the exterior.
	And so these women are saying, well, I look young.
	You know, I look great for 47, right?
	And okay, maybe they do.
	It's hard to tell, right?
	I mean, because there's makeup, there's filters.
	It looks like they've put enough Vaseline on the lens to fulfill a fun weekend in San Francisco, right?
	So... They say, who knows what they look like, right?
	Who knows what they look like? I mean, there's no real way to know.
	I mean, you can tell roughly their weight and so on.
	So the devil says beauty is on the outside.
	Now, there's an evolutionary thing which says beauty is a proxy for egg quality, right?
	Physical beauty is a proxy for egg quality, right?
	And trying to detach beauty, just physical beauty, right?
	Trying to detach physical beauty as a proxy for egg quality I mean, do you know why, I mean, there's a really, it's a creepy thing that happens, right, where men generally prefer younger women if they want to start a family, but it's easy, seems evolutionarily not impossible for things to go way too young, right, to sort of skim into the hebophilia and other forms of creepy quasi-sexuality.
	Like, a high voice is attractive in a woman.
	woman. Do you know why high voices are attractive in women?
	I wish we had a voice. I wish you could just voice dictate.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah, it's youth. So a woman's voice declines over her age, right?
	A woman's voice declines over her age.
	So a young woman has a higher voice than a middle-aged woman, has a higher voice than an older woman.
	It doesn't matter if you smoke or not. I mean, it makes a difference whether you smoke or not.
	Was it Kathleen Turner or something?
	It was one of these women who ended up with one of these.
	I think she had some real health issues and she ended up with a pretty rough thing.
	So a man likes a woman with a high voice.
	And then it's like it goes beyond reason then.
	It goes beyond natural limits to the point where you end up with these squeaky voiced anime voices that just sound like Mickey Mouse on helium or something like that.
	Yeah. So beauty as a proxy, this is just evolutionarily speaking, beauty as a proxy for egg quality.
	And when women, I think women's lips get thinner over age, so women want to get lip fillers, of course.
	One of the reasons that I hypothesized this many years ago, that men are quite good at getting women to laugh, and one of the reasons I think that men developed a sense of humor is, you know, when my face doesn't look too old, right?
	Not too bad, right? I'm going to be 57 in a couple of months.
	Not too bad, right? But, you know, when I laugh, you get these, like, crow's feet, right?
	They're called crow's feet. And so I think that a man who can make a woman laugh is peeling away the layers of sophistication.
	It's a way of trying to figure out egg quality outside of like...
	Kim Kardashian has that frozen, dead-eyed zombie face, right?
	She doesn't like to smile because it's going to mess up her skin.
	So if you can get a woman to laugh, then you can figure out her age much more accurately than if her face is still.
	So the things that women do are trying to change the external appearance...
	To mimic higher egg quality, right?
	And so this is what, you know, when women are in their 40s saying, I look great.
	Well, I mean, I'm not going to disagree with that.
	I mean, my wife's in her 50s, of course, and I think she looks completely fantastic.
	I mean, one of the reasons I work out is to try and keep up with how great she looks.
	But she doesn't have any eggs.
	It's a basic reality, right?
	It's a basic reality that she doesn't, right?
	I mean, she's post-fertility, right?
	Yeah, it's...
	And of course, we've seen this with actresses who get the Botox, right?
	What do they say in Hollywood?
	There's three ages for an actress.
	Like young romantic lead, district attorney, and driving Miss Daisy.
	That's the only three ages for women.
	Like ingenue, district attorney, driving Miss Daisy.
	It's kind of funny. But trying to fool men about egg quality is foundational to the entire makeup industry.
	Foundational to the entire making.
	And it's also one of the reasons why, you know, we learned all about absolutely horrible things in sex ed when I was in junior high school.
	I remember being so repulsed by the things that we were learning.
	I'm not a particularly nauseous, nausea prone guy.
	But I remember at some point, they were talking about how a girl had an STD so badly she used Lysol to spray her vagina, and then the lip sealed up.
	And I was just like, I had to leave.
	I got up and left.
	I was just like, this is absolutely repulsive.
	Why are they inflicting all of this horror show on me?
	I do remember talking to them and they say, well, if you get crabs, it's a form of STD, you may sit in the bath, but trust me, the crabs can stay underwater a lot longer than you can.
	And I just remember it being so appalling, like just awful, just wretched.
	But they never said anything about fertility.
	They never said anything about, you know, by the way, you know, 35, it may seem a long way away, but that's geriatric pregnancy and your eggs are gone, 90% of them are gone by the time you're 30 and 98% of them are gone by the time you're 40 and, you know, rising rates of autism and rising rates of mental retardation and rising rates of Down syndrome in your 30s and so on, right? And...
	You got to just keep this information.
	And primarily, you're keeping the information from men, right?
	So when I talked about, and I didn't really understand this at the time, because I'm just like, hey, this is an interesting fact.
	I think I will share it. This is my entire life.
	Hey, this is a really interesting and powerful fact.
	I think I'll share it. Hey, I'm curious about this.
	This is an interesting fact. I think I'll share it.
	It's a repetition compulsion that I had until I got out of politics.
	It is designed to keep this information from men, right?
	It's designed to keep this information from men.
	So there's a whole sort of industry of keeping fertility facts away from people.
	And it's really terrible even among doctors, like among healthcare professionals.
	They did a survey of female physicians and most of them didn't even have much of a clue about geriatric pregnancies and egg loss and so on.
	So they've gone through the entire biology and healthcare and medicine and one of the most foundational issues in the world is infertility, right?
	And so the most powerful...
	Really, you could argue that the most powerful factor affecting the world at the moment is drop infertility.
	That's the number one health issue in the world is drop infertility.
	And yet, nobody's ever taught about it, right?
	And one of the reasons why is that anything...
	That threatens the sexual market value of women is considered next door to extreme violence.
	Anything that affects the sexual market value of women is terrible.
	And that's because they're getting women to postpone having children, getting women to postpone getting married, getting women to postpone, postpone, postpone.
	And then what happens is women then try to lock down a man in their mid-30s or whatever, The women are kind of panicking in a way.
	And what they do is they say, well, you know, I can just go to the gym.
	I can make myself look younger.
	I can get Botox. I can put on makeup.
	I can do filters and all that kind of stuff.
	I can, you know, Blanche Dubois, she's like, is a character from Tennessee Williams, a streetcar named Desire, and she's dating this guy.
	And he's like, I never see you in the daytime.
	I only see you like in places where it's all dimly lit and foggy and phased and bleh, right?
	So, the women are adjusting the egg markers and trying to lock down a guy and any man who says, none of this touches egg quality.
	And if you want to have kids, dating a woman in her mid-30s, if you want to have a couple of kids, it's not going to work.
	It's almost certainly... It could, right?
	It could, but, you know...
	And so, anything then which...
	Anything which attacks or undermines, not attacks, they perceive it as an attack, I get that, but anything which undermines a woman's dating value is considered absolutely anathema in society.
	And one of the reasons for that is that it's not so much the middle-aged women, it's the younger women that they don't want to get that message, right?
	Because if younger women decide, like, let's just play out this thought experiment, right?
	Let's say that younger women decide, you know what, I don't really want to go to college.
	I would much rather, you know, get married, have kids in my early 20s, right?
	Let's just say that that message got across to people.
	So, you know, it's a conversation here.
	Hit me with what you think, what do you think would happen to society, right?
	If younger women decided that they wanted to get married sooner, and they wanted to have kids when they were younger, yeah, it would be an economic meltdown.
	Yeah, I mean, the entire faux economy would collapse, right?
	The entire faux economy would collapse.
	So, the economy of universities would melt down, and...
	The economic readjustment would be astonishing.
	Yeah, there would be a baby boom 2.0.
	Yeah, there'd be less taxes because women would be paying less taxes.
	And there would be a much greater demand for housing that would drive the price of housing up.
	There would be fewer justifications for mass immigration.
	So there would be just a huge change.
	And here's the thing. We think of how this would affect women, but how would it affect men, right?
	How would it affect men if the women were like, hmm, I'm not looking for a fun weekend.
	I'm not looking to go to Paris.
	Well, I guess nobody is these days, right?
	But I'm looking for somebody who's going to be a good father for my children.
	See, when you point out reproductive facts to women, you change what they're looking for in men.
	And all of the kind of trashy men who want to have one-night stands, who want to bounce from woman to woman, get really angry too.
	Like you're adjusting everything when you adjust sexual market value.
	The economy, and of course, voting too, right?
	Voting would be essential.
	Single women vote for the left, married women generally vote for the right.
	So if women got married earlier, then they would be more conservative, they would be smaller government, lower taxes, and so on.
	And so the political landscape would change.
	The real estate market would totally change.
	The economy as a whole would totally change.
	And so right now, I mean, given that Western economies as a whole, I mean, economies the world over, in particular, remember, Japan has not had an economic growth for like over 20 years.
	So the economies are all circling the drain, and nobody wants to make any decisions that are going to harm interest in the short term.
	Mental health issues would disappear in a decade.
	Well, it would certainly help a lot, right?
	It would certainly help a lot that way.
	And also, if you can get women to university and men into university, you can propagandize and program them.
	And that way, then, when they have kids, they will transfer that to the kids.
	If women don't go to university and have kids when they're young, then they will...
	They will have to budget, right?
	So when you have kids when you're young, you have to budget a lot, right?
	Because you don't have much money, and therefore you'll be very concerned about taxes, and you'll be very concerned about all of this kind of stuff.
	And so then they will transfer more conservative values, I would assume, down to their children.
	Anyway, it just would be a huge change.
	It would be a huge change.
	How would this fit in with birth control, which changes incentives?
	Well, birth control changes women quite considerably at a hormonal level.
	And so birth control, of course, has been practiced for centuries.
	I mean, it used to be in the, I think, 17th century, they used to use a sheep's bladder as a condom, believe it or not.
	Let's not figure out how they were pulled out of the sheep, but yes, they used to use a sheep's bladder as a condom, and the rhythm method has been...
	I remember this joke when I was a kid...
	The Italian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, I Can't Get No Contraception, has been cancelled as the Pope advised them to pull it out at the last minute.
	Which is a great joke.
	It's a great joke. It's many, many layers, right?
	I'm going to say it again, just in case you missed it the first time.
	The Italian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, I Can't Get No Contraception, has been cancelled as the Pope advised them to pull it out at the last minute.
	I still find that.
	I heard that joke when I was seven or whatever.
	It was very, very funny. Yeah, so birth control changes women quite a bit.
	It changes their voice timbre.
	It changes what they're attracted to.
	They tend to be attracted to more feminine men on birth control.
	And yeah, it's quite a big load.
	Women fawn over feminine guys at work, it's so gross.
	Yeah. Well, because women have been taught to be men, and because they've been taught to be men, they'll tend to go for this sort of BTS sort of feminine guy stuff, right?
	All right, let's get to your questions comments issues How do productivity adjust to birth control
	How to productively adjust to birth control?
	Well, I mean, I can't give anybody any kind of medical advice, but I would say that non-hormonal forms of birth control, I think, tend to be less effective.
	They tend to affect the personality as a whole less, right?
	Because when you are taking the birth control pill for a woman, of course, you're fooling your body into thinking it's perpetually pregnant.
	And that has quite a lot of...
	That has quite a lot of effects on just about everything.
	So, I don't know.
	I mean, I would say get married, have kids, yeah?
	You don't have to worry about birth control quite as much.
	Alright, so questions, comments, issues, I, you know, I can ramble tangent myself into oblivion, but I really want to serve you, the glorious listeners, and of course, pinch punch second day of the month, if you have any tips you would like to drop my way, I would certainly appreciate it.
	I got up at the crack of dawn to serve you people.
	Actually, I didn't at all. One of these long, you have one of these days where you're just like, I could sleep forever.
	I think partly, partly, and this could be sort of a Northern European bear history genealogy setup, but sometimes I go to bed, I go to sleep, I get up and get on with my day.
	Other times, it's not too common, but a couple of times, maybe once or twice a month, I go to bed and my body's like...
	You know what? We're just going to hibernate.
	Like, you can try and get up tomorrow.
	But basically, it's going to be like this.
	Black hole glue stuck to your pillow.
	And what you're going to do is you're going to say, five more minutes.
	Five more minutes. Five more minutes.
	And next thing you know, it's Thursday.
	So, yeah. Just occasionally it happens where it is...
	It just can't wake up.
	Can't wake up!
	Alright, let's see.
	Let me just see if I have this correct, just while we're waiting for questions.
	Alright, here's how the pill affects your mood.
	Ummm...
	Mood-related issues like anxiety and depression are super common among women on the pill.
	Almost half of women who go on the pill stop using it within the first year because of intolerable side effects.
	The one most frequently cited is unpleasant changes in mood.
	Sometimes it's intolerable anxiety.
	At other times it's intolerable depression.
	may be both simultaneously.
	So Danish citizens have a unique personal identification number,
	so they're able to do a lot of seeing how things kind of play out.
	So researchers in Denmark looked at the records of all the healthy non-depressed women between the ages of 15 and 34.
	They then followed the prescription and mental health records of these women, more than a million of them, for 14 years to see whether going on hormonal contraceptives influenced the likelihood of later being diagnosed with depression or being prescribed antidepressants.
	The researchers found that women on hormonal contraceptives were 50% more likely to be diagnosed with depression six months later, comparing with women who were not prescribed hormonal contraceptives during this time.
	They also found women on hormonal contraceptives were 40% more likely to prescribe an antidepressant than were women who weren't prescribed during this time.
	So that's pretty rough.
	The team looked at whether hormonal contraceptives might increase a woman's risk of suicide.
	Researchers tracked hormonal contraceptive usage and suicide attempts and deaths in all Danish women who turned 15 between 1996 and 2013.
	They followed women for an average of eight years, and the women on hormonal contraceptives were twice as likely to have attempted suicide during this time than women not on hormonal contraceptives.
	But the risk of successful suicide attempts was actually higher.
	It was triple that of women not on hormonal contraceptives, right?
	So that's a lot.
	That's a lot. So, the pill keeps estrogen levels low across the cycle and stimulates progesterone receptors.
	It's possible that the pill might have the effect of dampening reward processing in the brain.
	And if the world seems unrewarding, this often makes us feel depressed.
	So... Yeah, I just sort of want to...
	I mean, so, you know, where you see all of these shows where the women are beating up the men and the women have become men and so on.
	Well, that's quite a lot, right?
	Now, of course, of course, this is, you know, just we need to always unpack correlation versus causation, right?
	So, let's say that women are more anxious and depressed if they're on the pill.
	Well... This could be any number of reasons, right?
	So if you're not on the pill, I assume that you're probably married, probably in a stable relationship.
	You are probably religious, which has a lot of protective elements to mental health issues, right?
	Being religious is very protective against mental health issues as far as I understand.
	And women on the pill probably sleeping around more and therefore may have anxiety and depression as a result of that.
	So there could be a whole bunch of things.
	But yeah, it's pretty wild.
	Alright, somebody says, my friend is a nurse at a hospital.
	She says there are a lot of women in their 30s who get serious brain injuries caused by usage of hormonal contraception.
	Really? Well, that's very anecdotal.
	I've never heard of anything like that, but I share it for informational purposes only.
	Let's see here. The top environmental agencies in the U.S., Canada, and England, says somebody, have always found that exposure to unmetabolized birth control hormones has caused feminization of male fish, delayed reproduction of female fish, and damaged the kidneys and livers of fish of both sexes.
	Yeah, so this is the birth control hormones that end up in the water supply as a result of what pills being flushed down the toilet or just pee from women on the pill and so on.
	So yeah, it's a huge, huge experiment, right?
	It's a huge experiment, and it really wasn't tested very much before being unleashed on the general population.
	Free sex, no consequences.
	Well, that can be pretty rough, right?
	And it's no accident that after the pill was introduced, you had to have a welfare state, right?
	Oh yeah, this is what I wanted to point out, right?
	So, the pill gives women a cortisol response similar to post-traumatic stress disorder.
	And, you know, I like reading articles about women, but here's the thing, right?
	This is one of the things that's actually kind of crazy about articles to do with women, right?
	So, any article to do with women's issues, can it ever start with the facts?
	I saw this statistic the other day that the first third of any video has no useful information.
	But, yeah, you can ask whatever you want.
	I'm here to serve you. When an article is about women, can it ever start with the facts?
	Can it ever just start with the meat of the matter?
	No. The answer is no.
	The answer is no. It has to start with an anecdote.
	It has to start with, you know, the pill gives women a cortisol response similar to PTSD. And then it starts with, So it's got to start with, It's got to start with personal anecdotes and my experience and my friend and my aunt.
	And it's just, I mean, I'm not dissing it.
	I'm just pointing it out.
	And so when I see if there's an article with a pink font, I just scroll down to the middle and all of that.
	So, yeah, you don't necessarily, you haven't really met, you haven't met the face of your woman when she's on makeup and you may not have met the personality of your woman while she's on hormonal birth control.
	Thanks. Also, a very common effect of the birth control pill on women is the decreased sex drive, diminished sexual arousal.
	So, hormonal birth control contains synthetic estrogen and progestin, which when combined lowers your testosterone.
	Now, women of course have lower levels of testosterone than men, but it's one of the primary things that controls sexual drive and appetite.
	Weight gain on the pill, I think, is also quite common for a lot of women.
	The pill causes many women to have lower self-control, less perseverance, and an inability to process negative emotions productively.
	The pill damages women's ability to manage stress because more specifically it dulls our cortisol level, aka the stress hormone produced by your adrenal glands, which is needed to respond to everyday stress in a healthy way.
	Dr. Hill published an article on her website about the alarming similarity between the muted cortisol response of healthy young women on the pill and those of trauma victims with PTSD, a connection known by researchers since the mid-1990s.
	Right, so again, I'm no expert on this, but what happens is that If you're constantly stressed, then you can't figure out when there's a spike in stress caused by approximate danger.
	Like I just had a call-in show with a woman yesterday who just wanted to get married and wanted to settle down, and she dated a guy Who was listed on the government database because he owed money and wasn't paying it, right? So his solution to that was not to pay off the money, but he hacked into the system to erase his record, right?
	You know, a hack guy is human doing criminal things that sort of Seem to be the situation.
	And so she just couldn't process that this was negative, risky, and dangerous for her and probably not a great...
	And so, you know, the relationship lasted, I don't know, eight or nine months and then they broke up and, you know, it's all very...
	But women can't necessarily process the proximity of danger if the hormonal birth control pill are constantly giving them a sense of low-grade danger anyway.
	Right? So that's...
	You know, like if you have a constant sound, you stop hearing it.
	But if the sound stops, then starts again, right?
	So a constant sound, so if you have constant stress hormones, you stop being able to process a spike in stress hormones so you can't figure out what's dangerous for you, which is a lot of times why women do these unbelievably risky things that just don't make any sense, right?
	Steph, somebody says, I was listening to an older podcast of yours where you were
	saying that you would cut people out of your life if they supported the state.
	Oh, that's funny.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	That's funny. You know, it's funny that when you have a good argument that goes against people's emotional preferences, what they do is they put it through a translation device that makes the argument sound as negative and ridiculous as humanly possible.
	I mean, so what you're saying is, right, this is the Kathy, whatever her name was, the famous Jordan Peterson interview about lobsters, right?
	So when you have an argument that upsets people emotionally, they will completely reframe your argument to make it sound as negative and as ridiculous as possible, right?
	Because I guess you can vaguely see my argument in that sentence, but this is how I know when someone's triggered, right?
	When someone's triggered, right?
	So if you say, I'm not a fan of the welfare state, and people say, oh, so you just want the poor to starve, right?
	I don't like government education.
	Oh, you just want everyone to be ignorant and not even know how to read, right?
	So when someone gets triggered by an argument, they will immediately reframe it to be as negative and ridiculous as possible.
	They do this also, this is a phenomenon that's really repulsive to me, it's called psychologizing, where people won't process your argument, they will try to impugn negative motives to you, So if a woman is really aggressive and you don't find that attractive, then she's like, oh, well, you're just a frightened little boy with small penis energy that's threatened by a strong woman.
	That should just immediately go into the most repulsive imagination land of your motives and your personality.
	And so, again, I'm not offended or anything.
	I just wanted to sort of point this out as a process, right?
	So... Let me...
	So she says...
	Or he says...
	You were saying that you would cut people out of your life if they supported the state.
	So cut people out of your life.
	Cut is a negative word. Support is a positive word.
	Right? So this is a reframing.
	I'm going to cut people out of my life if they support the state.
	And the state, of course, is not an accurate description of what I was talking about.
	So if...
	Would you... Would you... Would you not see someone...
	If they threatened to assault you for disagreeing with them, right?
	So would you have as a friend somebody who said, if you disagree with me, I will assault you?
	Would you hang out with someone like that?
	Because that's the accurate, right?
	It's called the against me argument, right?
	So let's say that you say, I think the welfare state is destructive and it's immoral.
	And if someone were to say, I disagree with you, I like the welfare state, then my question is, am I free to withdraw my support for the welfare state?
	Like, you like the welfare state, I don't like the welfare state.
	I would much rather, as I do in general, perform private charity, because that's vetable, that's got a success metric, and it doesn't violate the non-aggression principle.
	So am I allowed to disagree with you?
	In your system, am I allowed to withdraw your support?
	For the welfare state, the government program, right?
	Now, if the person says, oh yeah, sure, you know, I like the welfare state, but you totally, in my mind, you would be totally free to support something else and not pay for the welfare state.
	Well, then they're talking of voluntarism and so on.
	Now, whether they can affect that or not is different.
	But if they said, no, no, no, you have to pay your taxes to support the welfare state, and I support that, then it's okay.
	Well, if I don't pay my taxes, then I get, you know, thrown off to jail and, you know, I can get assaulted in jail and get raped in jail and all of that.
	And are you comfortable with that?
	In other words, do you want violence used against me for disagreeing with you?
	Do you support the use of violence against me if I disagree with you?
	I would never, ever force anyone to support a charity I liked.
	Never. I would never force anyone to do anything.
	So I extend the olive branch of non-aggression to those around me.
	But if there's someone in my life who says, you should be kidnapped and thrown into jail for disagreeing with me, fuck you, right?
	Fuck you very much.
	Like, no. So you just cut people out of your life if they don't support the state.
	I mean, that's a very distorted and self-serving view of my argument, right?
	Now, again, it's an argument.
	I'm certainly happy to hear the positive moral case for having people in your life who want you kidnapped and locked up for disagreeing with them.
	I mean, I don't think...
	If a man assaulted his wife for disagreeing with him, he would be an abuser, he would go to jail.
	So assaulting people for disagreeing with you or supporting the assault, like having other people assault them, right?
	I mean, that's not right.
	So again, I have one moral law, right?
	If it's wrong for a husband to beat up his wife for disagreeing with him, right?
	Let's say that the husband just says, I want to spend...
	The wife says, I want to spend money on getting a new carpet.
	And the husband says, I want to spend money drinking.
	And then the wife goes out and buys the new carpet.
	Does the husband get to beat her up?
	No, of course not. So she disagreed with him.
	She even acted on that disagreement, but he doesn't get to beat her up.
	It's not a violation of the non-aggression principle to disagree with someone.
	So it's very simple to me.
	It's like one moral law. So if a husband is not justified in beating up his wife for disagreeing with him, how are friends of mine justified for wanting me assaulted and kidnapped and assaulted for disagreeing with them?
	It's very simple.
	To me, it's just like E equals MC squared, inverse square law, whatever you want to call it.
	I'm not making up all of these different rules for different situations.
	Why? Because I don't want to lie to myself.
	If I'm going to have morality, it's going to be universal.
	And if there's a principle which says it's immoral, To approve of violence against someone for disagreeing with you, if that's immoral, then it's immoral.
	Now I don't want people in my life who want me kidnapped and assaulted for disagreeing with them.
	I mean, to me that's just a basic sense of pride, right?
	I mean, why would you want someone in your life who wants you assaulted for disagreeing with them?
	That's insane to me.
	Again, I mean, I'm happy to hear the moral case as to why.
	Oh man, it's totally different.
	You should have this moral law in this situation and then the opposite moral law in this situation and then no moral laws in this situation.
	No, I'm sorry.
	I mean, maybe I'm just too lazy to have all of these contradictory moral laws, but it just seems to me like you're just enslaving yourself through rampant, massive, bottomless, hypocritical, vicious, vile contradictions.
	No, thank you. No, just one law.
	Just one moral law. If it's bad for the husband to beat up his wife for disagreeing with him, it's wrong for people to advocate violence against me for disagreeing with them.
	So, if the person had said, Steph, I was listening to an older podcast where you were saying that you don't want people in your life who want you assaulted for disagreeing with them, right?
	That would be an accurate argument.
	So, again, I'm not trying to be nitpicky.
	I appreciate the clarification, the chance for me to clarify and so on.
	But, When people don't quote me, they're lying to me.
	Almost always, right? When people don't quote me, they're lying to me.
	You said this.
	It's like, I never said that.
	Right, that's my argument.
	If it's worth listening to and responding to my argument, it's worth respecting the argument.
	Now, respecting the argument doesn't mean you agree with me.
	I can argue very strongly for communism and socialism.
	I could even make some bizarre case for fascism and so on, right?
	So, ideas which I vehemently disagree with, I can make the case for them.
	Because, as Aristotle said, it's a mark of a refined and intelligent human being to be able to entertain ideas you don't agree with.
	So, when people bring my arguments back to me, it's almost always an insult.
	Just so you know. I mean, if you want people to engage with you, and the first thing you do is distort their arguments, people of quality aren't going to want to engage with you.
	Now, you can accurately present my argument, you can accurately present my argument, Doesn't mean you agree with me.
	But presenting it in this kind of way...
	Cut people out of your life if they supported the state.
	That is such a distorted view.
	I mean, there's an element of truth in it, but it's such a distorted view and such a disrespect to the argument.
	Like, I work long and hard on these arguments.
	I don't just, like, you know...
	It's not like some sort of epileptic Tourette syndrome thing, right?
	I work long and hard on these arguments.
	I even write them out syllogistically in many cases.
	So I work long and hard on these arguments.
	And then when people bring these arguments back to me in a completely distorted and disrespectful way, and then they want me to engage with them, I don't even care to correct you.
	I mean, if this was somebody who emailed me, I would never answer the email.
	I mean, just so you know, and again, maybe you care whether I answer your emails or not, maybe you don't, but I'm just, because I'm a proxy, I like to think that I'm a proxy for, you know, decent quality people in your life.
	So if you have a disagreement with someone, that's fine.
	Of course, disagreement is great.
	There'd be no philosophy if we didn't have disagreement.
	So, if you have a disagreement with someone, then if you want that person to engage with
	you and you're not a troll, I'm not saying this person's a troll, but if you want someone
	to engage with you, don't misrepresent their arguments.
	Don't misrepresent their arguments, right?
	Thank you.
	There's a whole genre on shorts, like the short videos, where a man will say into the camera, well, that's it, my wife cheated on me.
	And the wife's behind him.
	She says, what? No, I didn't.
	And he says, well, what did you say then?
	And she says, I just said your friend looked good in his suit.
	Right? So you see, that's the reframing, right?
	And it's a joke, right?
	It's comedy, right? Which is the reframing.
	So what you're saying is, and it's like, no, no, no.
	If you can't listen to someone and understand their argument, and understanding their argument does not mean agreeing with their argument, but if you can't understand their argument, you will never be close to anyone in your life.
	If you reframe other people's thoughts to serve your own emotional needs, you will never be close to anyone.
	You will be close to your made-up version of someone in your head.
	You will have a lot of imaginary friends who just agree with you.
	But the big challenge, right, there's a canyon between minds, right?
	And this is most of what I do is try to help cross this canyon between minds.
	So the canyon between minds is what I say and what you hear and what I say.
	Or what you say and what I hear, right?
	I mean, you've heard my call in shows.
	How much time do I spend really trying to understand where someone's coming from, asking them questions about their background, their history, their thoughts, their experiences, their preferences, their dreams, their desires?
	In a two-hour show, I can sometimes spend the first hour or even more just asking questions because I really want to understand someone as best I can, you know, in an hour.
	You can get a long way in an hour.
	So there's a huge canyon between minds.
	And the canyon between minds gets filled up with ideology.
	It gets filled up with aggression.
	It gets filled up with loneliness, sadly, and the reactions to that loneliness.
	It gets filled up with conflict.
	It gets filled up with hatred.
	So the idea that I would just say, well, I cut people out of my life if they support the state.
	That's reframed to make it sound ideological, to make it sound paranoid, to make it sound exclusionary, and to make it sound like hair-trigger ostracism, and if you don't agree with me, I'm cutting you out of my life.
	It actually turns me into the aggressor, right?
	You understand? This reframes me as the aggressor when I'm simply saying, I don't want aggressors in my life.
	I have self-defense against aggressors, which is called not having them in my life.
	So it reframes me as the...
	I'm the one cutting people out of my life on all they're doing in supporting the state.
	I'm ideological. I'm aggressive.
	I just cut people out if they disagree with me.
	So that's a complete reframe of...
	It's turning me into the victimizer when I am in fact a victim because people want me thrown in jail for disagreeing with them, right?
	So, you can't get close to anyone if you reframe what they say.
	And I went through this process, I remember when I was in university, I took a lengthy course on the Protestant Reformation.
	And I was very much, of course, against Martin Luther at the time.
	I mean, he really hates rationality.
	Martin Luther really says you've got to pluck out the eyes of reason in your mind, right?
	So I had a lot of hostility towards Martin Luther.
	But the professor was very adamant that I, and there was only, I think, another ten people in the class, right?
	So he was very adamant that I learn and understand Martin Luther's arguments.
	He said, I guess you don't like the guy.
	But learn his arguments.
	And I ended up playing Martin Luther in a play by John Osborne so I really had to get into the guy.
	And so if you can't understand people's arguments from their perspective, you can't ever get close to people.
	Because all that happens is you then end up manipulating your defensiveness, right?
	So then instead of having a conversation about people's actual opinions, you just end up wrestling with interpretations, right?
	So rather than answering your question, which, you know, I can get to and all of that, right?
	So when you send me something like this, When I read about this complete reimagining of my argument, then I know that whatever I say is going to go through a filter.
	Like, if you wonder why people don't discuss deep things with you, why they don't talk about important things with you, why you can't really seem to connect with people, why you feel isolated, it's because when you reframe other people's beliefs, people don't want to talk to you.
	We understand why, right?
	Again, I don't mean this in any hostile way.
	This is a genuinely, glowingly gorgeous, sunlit, teachable moment.
	So this is not anything negative or hostile.
	I'm just saying that if you indulge yourself in wild interpretations of what people are saying, complete reformulations of what people are saying, quality people won't want to interact with you.
	Because... Like, imagine this, right?
	So imagine that you're in a dangerous foreign country and you have hired an interpreter.
	And every time you have an interpreter interpret something you say to the local population, they get really angry and throw things at you.
	They throw stones at you, they scream at you, whatever, right?
	And all you're asking for is, where is the way to the art museum?
	And the interpreters get really angry.
	Like the interpreter says something and then people get really angry at you.
	So then maybe you'd record it and run it through a translate and you'd say to the interpreter, ask this guy where the way to the museum is or the art gallery.
	And then when you get the actual, he's saying something filthy about the man's mother.
	So he's taking what you're saying, he's interpreting in a hugely negative way and then other people are getting very angry at you.
	Would you continue to use that interpreter?
	You would not. Because whatever you say is going to get reinterpreted and is going to be maximum upset to other people.
	So when people come to me with the most negative take on a detailed argument that I've made, why I generally don't care to interact with them is that whatever I say, they're just going to reinterpret anyway.
	Like, they have an interpreter that reframes whatever I say in a very negative way.
	So whatever I say is going to go through that interpreter.
	Like, would you, if you were on the receiving end and you knew that that interpreter was just going to reformulate every response, right, rather than every question, every answer in some negative way, you wouldn't bother talking to that, right?
	I mean, if there was a guy from some foreign country who came up to you with an interpreter and you knew that the interpreter was lying, you wouldn't respond, right?
	So, we can only meet in reality.
	We can only meet in facts.
	We can only meet in objectivity.
	We can only meet in reason and empiricism.
	And when people reinterpret what I say in the most negative manner possible, or in a significantly negative manner, I don't know what the most negative manner possible is, but in a very significantly negative way.
	When people reinterpret things, and this is not for me, right?
	I mean, my life is great, right?
	This is for you, in case you have issues with this, right?
	I don't care to interact with them because, We're not meeting in reality.
	I can't actually talk to that person.
	Like the person who posted this, I can't actually talk to you.
	Like I'm just saying this to you directly and I say this in a friendly, positive way because I want you to actually be able to connect with other people.
	I can't talk to you Because I can't get past the interpreter.
	I can't get past the filter.
	I can't get past you reinterpreting what it is that I say.
	And man, if you spend any time online, like, you know this, right?
	There was this sort of famous tweet from 2017 where you say, I like pancakes, and everyone's like, oh, so what you're saying is you hate waffles.
	You just hate waffles. And it's like, what?
	That's a whole separate discussion, right?
	Or, we just talked about this with this H. Pearl Davis, the woman on Twitter, who's, you know, doing the Lord's work in many ways.
	And she says, a woman is more attractive at 25 than 35.
	And then people post pictures of her looking, them looking better than H. Pearl Davis, maybe, and saying, well, you're younger than me and I look better than you.
	you and she didn't say. Anyway, so what they do is they simply reinterpret everything to
	their own advantage. You can't lose weight if you manually adjust the scale to just make
	yourself look like you weigh less and you believe it, right?
	So, you know, I don't know if it's a good idea to do that.
	But I think it's a good idea.
	If you say, well, I'll know I'm gaining weight if I can't fit into my clothes, and you keep buying bigger and bigger clothes, that rule doesn't work, right?
	Because if you just reinterpret what people say rather than dealing with what they're actually saying, like, you know, I mean, some years ago I did a whole couple of shows with my daughter where we went through Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto and talked about it.
	So I wasn't, you know, interpreting.
	I was dealing with his actual words, right?
	So, anyway, so again, and here's the thing too.
	If you want to engage in a dispute with someone, and if it's not adversarial, and there can be times when disputes are adversarial, for sure.
	If you're in a public debate with somebody who's like a really bad person, then adversarial is fine.
	But if you really want to engage in a productive discussion with someone, Putting their beliefs forward in the best light, I mean, accurate is best for me because I've worked very hard on these arguments, but putting forward someone's arguments in the best light opens the bridge of communication.
	It fills in the chasm between the minds.
	The chasm between the minds is huge because we can, right, it's like that old police song, take this space between us and fill it up some way.
	Fill it up. It can only be filled up with objectivity, reason, and a sympathetic retelling of other people's perspectives.
	It's really, really important.
	If you want to engage in a productive debate with someone, don't cast their views in as negative light as possible, because that's just starting off on the wrong foot.
	And most people won't even bother, because, like, if that's your habit.
	Anyway, so let's get back to this person's post.
	Steph, I was listening to an older podcast of yours where you were saying that you would cut people out of your life if they supported the state.
	Would this also apply to people who think that you're going to hell when you die?
	Or am I thinking about this the wrong way?
	Thank you so much for your philosophy and please let me know if this is an inaccurate representation of your beliefs.
	Well, see, no. See, here's the thing, right?
	It's not my job for you to present an accurate representation of my beliefs.
	So it's literally called the against me argument.
	It's called this in podcasts.
	It's called this in presentations.
	It's called this in speeches.
	It's called the against me argument.
	And there's no mention of the phrase against me.
	Do you support violence against me?
	So the whole time I refer to it, it's called the against me argument.
	It became quite famous in libertarian circles.
	And I did lots of speeches and presentations.
	And again, fdrpodcast.com, you can...
	Look it up, against me.
	And so it's called the against me argument, and yet there's nothing in here about violence against me.
	So if I have repeatedly called it the against me argument, it's referred to as the against me argument, and you don't use the phrase against me, that's not my fault.
	It's not my fault for not being clear, like I've been as clear as humanly possible.
	So, it's not my job to tell you whether you have accurately represented my beliefs, especially when they're very clear, right?
	Like if someone were to come to me and say, tell me how UPB justifies assault, if that's an accurate representation of your beliefs, I wouldn't respond.
	Because you're a careless person.
	You don't take care. If you have an argument you want to respond to, write it down.
	Make it a syllogism. Understand it.
	But don't make me do all the work.
	Oh, I've got to correct this, and this was a complete misinterpretation, and that's not my argument, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Why would I do that? Why?
	Why would I do that?
	Like, why would I... If I'm a swim coach, and somebody shows up for a swim meet, It's a very important swim meet.
	And they just ate six pounds of pasta.
	Why would I have them as a...
	Why would I coach them?
	So I want you to get quality responses from quality people.
	But then completely reinterpreting in a negative way what they very clearly said and then saying, well, I want you to, you're going to have to correct this because, you know, I haven't really thought it through and you have to coach me on what your arguments are and blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, why would I do that?
	I want to respond to people who have ability.
	Coaches don't look at the 300-pound guy and say, let's make him a marathon runner.
	They just don't. Right now, if you're already a good runner, then yeah, maybe, right?
	Like when I was a tennis player, I was a good tennis player as a kid.
	I'm still okay. I was a good tennis player as a kid, so I had people who wanted to coach me because I showed up, I worked hard, and so on, right?
	So if you want people to coach you, if you want people to respond to you, if you want people to educate you, then you have to show that you're worthy of the effort because life is short, we're all mortal, and I have time to put into some people and not others, right? I have time to put into very few people to the exclusion of everyone else.
	And this is, again, who becomes your wife, who becomes your husband, who becomes your friend, who becomes, you know, whatever, your children's friends.
	You've got to have a quality filter.
	And the higher quality you are, the higher your quality filter is.
	I mean, I remember this back in my entrepreneurial days.
	I remember talking to a venture capitalist, and the venture capitalist was saying to me, I don't care about any deal less than $20 million.
	And I said, oh, tell me why.
	He says, well, it's about the same amount of effort to vet a $20 million deal as it is to vet a $10 million deal.
	But the profits from the $20 million deal will likely be higher if it passes the vetting process.
	So if 20 people come to me with $1 million deals, I won't deal with them.
	I won't do anything. Maybe there are some people who will, but I won't.
	Because it takes the same amount of time to vet a $1 million deal as it does a $20 million deal.
	So the larger the deal, the dollar per time spent investing, right?
	So if you're wanting high quality people to give you feedback and the first thing you do is completely misinterpret or reframe what they're saying in a negative way, they won't do it.
	And again, this has nothing to do with me.
	I want you guys to have quality people in your life.
	To have quality people means you have to be a quality person.
	It's a great question that you have about hell.
	It's a very interesting question.
	It's a very interesting question.
	But when you start off by reframing my arguments inaccurately and negatively, why would I assume that whatever I say to you, you won't also reinterpret negatively or whatever, right?
	Like, you've already shown to me that you reinterpret things negatively and you don't listen and you can't analyze and you don't care to really understand the argument and you don't even refer to it as the against me argument, which is what it's completely and totally called just about every time I mention it, right?
	So... Alright, let's get to your questions.
	Thank you for your tip, my friend.
	Hey Steph, I've been advocating for my sister to not circumcise her child that is due next week.
	I've sent emails with tons of evidence of harm.
	I've tried talking in person. She and her husband seem to not even care.
	What do I do? I'd happy to do a call-in show, but it has been destroying me for months now.
	Yeah. I'm really sorry.
	I'm really sorry. I can't tell you what to do, but I understand this tragic situation.
	Yeah, many years ago I had a woman who was going to genetically mutilate her son.
	And I made the case as passionately with as much data and she's like, I'm going to do it.
	Okay, well, if you're going to genetically mutilate your child, I can't be your friend.
	I can't have a relationship with somebody who mutilates their child in that way.
	So, I mean, again, I can't tell you what to do, but it's awful, and I'm really, really sorry.
	I'm really sorry. It's a terrible situation.
	Alright, let's see here.
	Oh man, if you find an article about a technical problem, if it's written by a woman, it's all about how the language changed her life.
	Alright, let me get to your comments.
	I appreciate the questions, right?
	Steph, you just described a co-worker's response to whatever controversial stuff I say.
	Yes, triggered. Yeah. So what happens is people hear something and they feel a great anxiety, right?
	And the reason they feel a great anxiety is whatever you're saying, that they've been programmed as bad.
	What they're afraid of is not what you're saying.
	What they're afraid of is revealing the programming in their minds, right?
	That they're not free, that they're not virtuous, that they're enslaved to other people's enforced opinions, that they've accepted bullying as the truth and so on, right?
	So when you say something that upsets people, they're not afraid of what you're saying.
	They're afraid of...
	Realizing that they've been programmed.
	So they attack you, or let's put it another way.
	The people who program others also put in a program to attack anyone who might expose the programming.
	You understand, right? So if you program someone, you have as foundational to put in the programming to attack anyone who might reveal the programming.
	This is why this phrase conspiracy theorists was invented, even though conspiracy is an actual crime in law.
	So yeah, they're not triggered by what you're saying.
	They have a routine, a subroutine, a program, a terminate and stay resident program in a sense, which says, attack anyone who might expose the programming.
	Because if you're programmed and you realize you're programmed, the programming stops working.
	So programming only works if anyone who might reveal the programming gets attacked.
	So I don't take this stuff personally.
	I don't take this stuff personally.
	I mean, the guy before who was reframing the against me argument to make me sound like the aggressor, it's not even him.
	He's not attacking me. It's other people who might experience something negative from this argument in his life.
	People who support the state, they don't want to be confronted on that.
	So they rewire the argument to make me sound ridiculous so that they don't end up being put on the spot for supporting violence against people who disagree with them.
	Yeah, small p in energy is very, very sad, right?
	All right.
	Somebody said, thank you for pointing this out.
	I didn't even realize I was rephrasing it.
	No, and I agree with you. I'm so sorry for misrepresenting your argument.
	I will relisten to the podcast and better frame it next time.
	Yes, I think it was at Libertopia.
	I did the against me argument. But yeah, just do a search for against me.
	And I appreciate that. Listen, I don't blame you.
	It's an automatic process.
	It's an automatic process until you're aware of it.
	If an argument you hear is going to upset people around you, particularly if it's your parents or your teachers or people who had power over you in the past, it's their aggression that has you reframe the argument so that you can dismiss the idea, right?
	Let's see here. I don't quite understand that one either.
	Let's see here. Wait, that's not the same guy, is it?
	No. So again, I won't beat the dead horse here, but this is another example of a complete reframing of my argument.
	So I have spent 40 years trying to convince people about the value of the non-aggression principle and I've said if you're not under threat of direct violence, always sit down and try and work things out with people and have a conversation with them and make the case.
	Now, you don't, you know, the moment someone disagrees with you, like they say they still support violence against you, you don't immediately cut them out of your life, at least I don't.
	I will give them a certain amount of time.
	I remember getting this question at Libertopia like 11 years ago.
	I think it was 2012. Dick Gregory, I think, introduced me.
	He's very funny. His imitation of Muhammad Ali was hilarious.
	I'm so fast. I swing at you.
	I miss you. Die from the cold.
	Die from pneumonia. But, yeah, I mean, get the question.
	So when you bring people the violence that they support, you reveal to them the violence that they support, right?
	Okay. Come see the violence inherent in the system, right?
	That old joke from Monty Python, right?
	So you reveal to people the violence they support.
	And there's a shock. There's an adjustment process.
	There's counter-arguments. I get all of that.
	Sure. Absolutely. You give them some time to adjust.
	How long is that time? I don't know.
	It's individual.
	It depends, right? And I remember saying at the time, I would certainly give someone weeks.
	Would I give them six months?
	I doubt it. Again, it's personal.
	I'm just saying for me, right?
	Because I also know that when people get a new idea that goes against their programming, it either cracks through the programming or in general, they simply...
	Change whatever you're saying into something that loses credibility so the programming remains intact.
	So I don't spend forever.
	I don't spend forever trying to bring people to reason because life is short.
	Like a doctor, right? If you're a doctor and there's some terrible situation in the ER, you do triage, right?
	This person will survive if I don't treat them immediately.
	This person will die even if I treat them immediately.
	This person will die if I don't treat them immediately.
	That's the person I'm going to deal with first, right?
	You can't talk to everyone, so you talk to the people who have the most chance of changing for the better, of listening to reason.
	So this idea that You just cut people out of your life without ever talking to them?
	That's nothing I've ever said.
	So again, this is a reframing, right?
	So this person has people who don't want to be confronted about their support of violence, right?
	They don't want to be confronted of their support of violence.
	Of course not, right? Because it makes their life difficult.
	It puts them in a contentious relationship to their own culture, and then it's all their friends they might have to talk to.
	So they don't want you to bring this topic up, right?
	So what happens is it's their hostility to the topic that reframes the argument.
	It's not even you that's doing it.
	it. You're not even remotely in control of your own mind if you don't even know why you're
	reframing that which is immensely inconvenient to other people.
	What is it? It's a great line. It's a great song about the false self.
	There's a couple of great songs from Supertramp about the false self.
	One is called Asylum and the other one is called The Long Way Home.
	You never see what you want to see, forever playing to the gallery.
	Yeah, straw man argument versus a steel man argument.
	Stephan, what you're saying is nearly invaluable to me.
	I've always felt some things are wrong but could not articulate it, let alone identify what it is.
	But you are allowing me to see the world as it is and people for who they are.
	Thank you. I feel like I am in high orbit now while most everyone is playing with rocks on the side of the highway of life.
	Thank you. That's a very beautiful way of putting it.
	I appreciate that. Steph, last night I listened to your show called Bring Your Creativity Back.
	I've been wanting to write poetry for so long.
	I'm put enough due to fear of not being good enough and having no experience.
	Today I wrote my first three poems.
	This one is inspired by your show and I called it Just Not Today.
	Dreams over the horizon.
	Just not today. Why move today?
	One day I'll do it all. Nay, just one more day.
	Slay, just not today.
	Dreams of success, one day, just not today.
	I'll have it all someday, just not today.
	Yeah. Someday never comes.
	I'm here to tell you now, each and every mother's son, you better learn it fast, you better learn it young.
	Someday never comes.
	That's a great song. No one I know of on the web or anyone else breaks down and distills arguments like you, Steph.
	Thank you, brother. I appreciate that.
	Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
	All right, let's get...
	To your questions. It's great.
	It's a good poem. I think you should try and make it more metronomic, more sort of syllable-based and scanning, iambic maybe, and then you could put it through a song generator.
	All right. Yo, Steph, thanks for all the good philosophy you've delivered to the world.
	Question. If a mother of an only child calls others their sons or daughters regularly, is she openly saying she does not like her only child or that the only child is replaceable?
	Also, the mother would openly talk about how this other will be the one to buy them a house or car in front of her only child.
	What effects could this have on the only child?
	Oh, I'm so sorry because you asked this question in the last live stream, maybe even the one before that too, so I'm sorry I did not get to it, but thank you for the tip.
	Yeah, yeah. I think it is incredibly disrespectful to your own child to refer to other people as your children and to say that, oh, you're the one who's going to buy me a house or a car.
	So she's saying that her only child has to buy her love with money.
	Hit me with a why if you've ever gone through a situation where Somebody tries to increase their value by threatening the bond.
	Or increase your compliance by threatening the bond.
	Right. Yeah.
	Parents do it all the time, right?
	Not all parents, of course, but the parents who are dysfunctional, they do it all the time.
	You can be replaced!
	Says an old Bill Cosby joke, right?
	You can be replaced. Or, I brought you into this world, I can take you out.
	There's no bond. And if the parents threaten the bond, they put you in a state of perpetual insecurity, which means you're much more likely to comply.
	I mean, it's the whole COVID thing, like, make people afraid, afraid, afraid, and they'll comply, right?
	Fear breeds compliance. So, yeah, it's really sad.
	It's really tragic. And happens a lot.
	Happens all the time in a lot of families.
	Yeah, I remember when I first stood up to a boss who was bullying me, and he was like, said, I'll call up that dark fire staff document.
	And I get it was kind of funny and all of that, but yeah, I always made that a point, never to threaten employees.
	Never. In fact, if I needed to talk to an employee one-on-one, I would just go and say, can I borrow you for a moment?
	Rather than, come into my office right now.
	Get into my office. I can say, right, I understand.
	No, you don't want people to be frightened of you, right?
	Yeah. So, yeah, the threatening of the bond is very foundational.
	My mother did it, of course, all the time.
	If I was between her and the TV, she'd say, well, you might be a pain, but you're not a windowpane and all this kind of stuff.
	And she would openly express how she effing hated her kids and all of that.
	So, yeah, there's a real bond there that's threatened, which means that it's saying, I could kill or abandon you at any time.
	And you understand, like, 82% of child murders are women, right?
	82% of children who are murdered are the mothers.
	Child murder, child abandonment was ridiculously common throughout human history.
	And sometimes it was just out of, in a way, a kind of pathological necessity.
	Sorry, I just got a bit of a frog in my throat one second.
	So what would happen is the woman would have a kid, let's say.
	The husband would go off, or the lover or the pair bond, let's call her husband, right?
	The husband would go off, get killed in a hunting expedition,
	or get killed in a battle, or fall off a cliff, or have some sort of accident.
	And then a lot of times maybe, and this happens of course, you know, we know that a female, like a lioness,
	that if she loses the father of her lion cubs, that the new father will kill the lion cubs, right?
	Because he doesn't want to put his resources into another lion's genetics.
	So a lot of times a child murder, infanticide, the smothering of children and so on, would happen.
	Or it could just be not particularly taking care of the child, or in a sense, letting the child die.
	So we grew up with a lot of parental abandonment and inattentiveness which would lead to death, right?
	And so when parents threaten the bond, you get very significant compliance, usually, right?
	Unless there's some big ally.
	So when parents threaten the bond, you get compliance.
	And so where a mother is referring to other children as her children and saying, I prefer them, they're going to give me more benefits, she's trying to gain value by threatening the bond.
	She's trying to gain compliance by threatening the bond.
	Somebody said, first time an employer did this, I left the company immediately.
	Not sure why I couldn't stand it as an employee, but parents got away with it until my early 30s.
	My dad always said he would be better off having a sack of rotten potatoes than having me.
	I'm so sorry, man. That's just horrible.
	That's just horrible. It's funny because my first thought is potatoes technically have eyes.
	The little holes are called eyes.
	And... Boy, that analogy really has you see your dad very clearly, right?
	My mother, a senior adult, threatened to get me to comply with her desire for me to get the jab.
	She was not in my life now, and that is for the best.
	Her and her husband, very toxic.
	Yeah, I'm sorry about that. And it's funny, you know, because by saying we should have moral standards for our relationships, I was accused of breaking up families and so on, right?
	Of course, feminists who say that if women are dissatisfied, just leave their husbands, they were never accused of that, right?
	Because they're on the left. But...
	When it turns out, unless you get this experimental gene therapy or whatever they call it.
	Steph, could you do a Jerry Maguire movie review with Izzy?
	I ask because I think there's a lot of underlying philosophical depth between Jerry and the women in the movie.
	And of course, Steph, you are the number one go-to philosopher in particular in regards to analyzing women and relationships.
	Yeah, I remember. I thought the opening to Jerry Maguire was kind of funny, and it's nice to see Tom Cruise other than parachuting off motorcycles, but...
	It seemed like a very shallow movie, didn't it?
	You know, like, well, the way you make more money as a sportsman is you open your heart to your audience, and it's like, eh.
	And... Well, you've just got to be vulnerable with them and show how much you need her.
	So, wasn't all the fault on the part of the...
	Oh, wasn't she a single mom?
	The woman in that movie?
	She was a single mom, right?
	My neighbor has five rabbits or whatever it is, right?
	So, she was a single mom and this absolute...
	Tom Cruise is a very handsome guy.
	Like, this very gorgeous, very successful alpha male has got to grind himself down into nothing...
	To serve and please the single mom.
	I mean, come on.
	I mean, come on.
	This is Bridget Jones' diary levels of Cope.
	Come on. You complete me.
	It was the same actress, right?
	That's right. The woman who can't seem to open her eyes.
	It squints the whole time.
	I don't know what that is. Turning Japanese.
	I think she's turning Japanese.
	I really think so. If a child does not stick to the agreement to leave in 10 minutes, is it okay to say you're leaving without them?
	Absolutely not. That is a horrible, horrible thing to do.
	That is a horrible thing to do.
	Because it's a death threat, right?
	Children experience abandonment as a death threat.
	So, no. You cannot threaten to leave children behind.
	It's a death threat. Right?
	You wouldn't threaten to strangle a child, would you?
	So children experience abandonment as a death threat.
	Because remember, we grew up a lot of times in nomadic cultures, right?
	So you leave a child behind, they're going to get eaten by wolves.
	Like they're just abandoned. They can't survive.
	They can't fend for themselves.
	They're just gone. Like you're gone, right?
	You packed up your teepee and you're gone.
	So no, I think it's an absolutely appalling thing to do.
	I mean, I remember when my daughter was very young, we were at a mall and it was very crowded.
	I lost track of her for like 10 seconds and she was like, She couldn't see where I was.
	And she was like, honestly, like 10 feet away.
	There was just a few people between us.
	And she just completely freaked out.
	And rightly so. Absolutely.
	Absolutely. Oh, God.
	My parents would pretend to abandon us at the store by driving away and then laugh loudly when they came back.
	It's sadistic. Oh, yeah.
	No, I mean, I remember there was a...
	There was a...
	What was it?
	Calvin and Hobbes, right?
	Which, you know, was pretty ugly and mean towards the children, right?
	So Calvin and Hobbes was a comic, I think, in the 90s or whatever.
	And it was really harsh because Calvin was this ADHD kid who was...
	You know, funny and insightful and he had imaginary friends.
	And he was an only child and his parents were kind of distant and didn't understand him.
	And the whole fault of everything was always the kid.
	The parents were always sympathetically portrayed and it was always the kid who was at fault and the kid who was the problem.
	And at one point Calvin said, I'm leaving, I'm going.
	And his mom was like, oh, let me help you.
	Let me help pack for you. And right, so, you know, like you give the kid a sandwich in the backpack and off they go.
	And it's like the kid then has to go down to the end of the hallway and then they're broken and they're crushed and they have to come back and bleh, right?
	No, it's wretched.
	No, if your child is threatening to leave, that is a desperate ploy.
	And you absolutely have to listen to the child's complaints.
	I'm not saying anyone here would just pack up their bag and say, off you go!
	Oh, look, I'm powerful.
	Oh, look, somebody needs me because I'm bigger and have legal authority.
	It's just pathetic. Somebody says...
	What if you say you'll drag them eventually if they don't walk to the car on their own?
	No! No!
	No! You don't do that.
	You don't do that.
	You're not a security guard and somebody's broken into a concert or stolen from a store.
	Okay, it's just simple morals.
	Is your child not obeying you a violation of the non-aggression principle?
	It is not. Like if your child is punching another kid, yes, you pick up the child and you stop the punch.
	Absolutely. If you have to restrain them, you have to restrain them.
	Not that they would. I mean, peaceful-parented kids don't punch other kids, right?
	But you're initiating the use of force.
	On what? Your kid's not obeying you?
	You're not the state. Why do you...
	You don't use force on people who disobey you, do you?
	I mean, what if you go to a movie with your girlfriend or your wife and you find the movie boring and you want to leave and she doesn't want to leave?
	Do you drag her out of the movie theater by her hair?
	Are you insane? I'm sorry, I don't mean to be overly harsh, but what the hell?
	What are you talking about? If you want to go for lunch with a co-worker and your co-worker doesn't want to go for lunch, do you drag them by the foot down the hallway when they kick and scream?
	Like, what is going on?
	You drag them? You drag your kid?
	See, you're looking at your will as an absolute that your child has to obey, and if your child doesn't obey you, you can use violence against them.
	Why? Why should your child obey you?
	Why? Because you're bigger and stronger and you can frighten them and manhandle them?
	Great. So then when they get bigger, they'll use violence against you.
	Oh, trust me, I know this one, right?
	Yeah. No, I mean, why should your child obey you?
	I've told my daughter, you don't have to obey me.
	You don't have to do anything I say just because I say it.
	You absolutely don't. So then, of course, I have the challenge, right?
	And out of that challenge comes quality.
	So I have the challenge if I want my daughter to listen to me, but she never has to listen to me.
	Right? My daughter has to listen to me.
	But she never has to listen to me.
	You understand? I don't know why we got low tips today.
	Seems to me like this is very important stuff.
	Yeah, why should she listen to you?
	Or he? I just thought I wanted to see if it's a boy or a girl.
	No, I'm going to say it's a boy, right?
	Yeah, why should he come with you?
	Why should he listen to you? Like, I can't inflict philosophy on anyone.
	Like, I can't go to the government, get $5 million grants to set up philosophy courses and then compel people to attend.
	I can't do any of that. Nobody has to listen to me.
	Nobody has to donate to me.
	I don't steal your time by the thousands of hours by having ads here.
	I just straightfully and honorably and directly ask for your support, freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	You don't have to donate.
	You don't have to show up.
	You don't have to listen. So...
	What does that result in? What does that result in?
	What's the result of me not being able to compel anybody?
	Right? Y'all know.
	You know. You know.
	He knows. You know.
	Yeah, quality. Yeah, voluntarism and quality are the same thing.
	So you want your child to listen to you, right?
	You want your child to listen to you.
	He doesn't have to listen to you.
	You want your child to, quote, obey you.
	He doesn't have to obey you.
	So what do you do? Well, when you don't have force, you have choice.
	When you don't have force, you have quality.
	Right? So you have the challenge.
	How do I get my child to listen without shaking my fist in his face or threatening to abandon him?
	Without picking up physically and dragging him?
	Like a body off a battlefield.
	How do I get my child to listen to me without being an asshole?
	Without being violent?
	Well, given that we've thankfully evolved beyond bonking women on the head, dragging them off to the cave and forcibly impregnating them, what do you do?
	Well, you, with women or with men, you woo them.
	You try to make yourself attractive.
	Why, how do you get a woman to stay with you if you can't chain her to the radiator, like, culture club style?
	Boy George style, right? How do you get a woman to sleep with you?
	How do you get a woman to commit to you?
	How do you get a woman to marry you?
	Well, I, uh, oh gosh, what was it?
	There was some woman I talked to, I don't know if I've ever published this show, there was some woman I talked to who dated a guy who, she dated him for eight years, and then when she tried to break up with him, he threatened to dump her in a third world country already addicted to heroin.
	Sorry, I don't mean to lie, but it's an absolutely appalling story.
	I don't know if I ever published that one.
	It might have been a bit too intense.
	But, yeah.
	How do you get people to do what you want when you can't use force?
	You take force off the table.
	You know, the only reason we have all of this technology, all of this modern world, all of the things that are quality in our life is because people aren't being forced.
	Right? The people who make my camera, they didn't force me to buy it because if they did force me to buy it, it'd be a crappy government potato cam that didn't work.
	Because all the stuff that's forced is shit, and all the stuff that's voluntary is quality.
	The microphone, the t-shirt, the glasses, the amp, like everything that I'm using here is voluntary.
	And if you look in your life, everything that you have that is quality is voluntary, and everything that you have that is coerced is shit.
	So don't be on the shit side.
	Don't be on the violent side.
	Don't be on the coerced side. Don't be a mini-state to your kids.
	Now, you say, well, I've got to go, and he's got to come.
	Why do you have to go? Why do you have to go?
	Why do you have to go to the point where you're going to be violent towards your own child?
	What is so important that you're willing to break the bond with your child and threaten him with violence to get what you want?
	Well, I've got a plane to catch, so that's your fault.
	It's your fault to take your child to a park when you have a plane to catch.
	That's your fault. That's not his fault.
	And I got to tell you, I don't care if it was a first-class ticket to Taiwan that cost me $10,000 and I only had $10,001.
	I would not be violent against my child to get to a flight.
	Well, I parked and my car could get towed.
	Yeah, let your car get towed.
	Why do you care about your car? Let's take some ridiculous extreme example.
	We got movie tickets.
	Well, miss the previews. Miss the movie.
	Doesn't matter. Your car gets towed.
	It's better than being violent towards your child.
	I mean, I don't understand this.
	Don't be violent to your children.
	They're not there by choice.
	They're not inflicted on you.
	There's nothing that gives you the right to be violent to your children.
	You wouldn't be violent to your wife, would you?
	Honey, I'm really done shopping for purses.
	No, no, no, I've got three more stores I want to go to.
	Well, that's it, I'm leaving and I'm driving home.
	You wouldn't do that. You wouldn't drag her out of the mall?
	I'm sorry, I don't mean to say like, I need to shock you out of this mindset.
	It's appalling! I get it's common.
	That makes it all the more appalling.
	I'm not trying to say you're a terrible person.
	Look, I get that you've got these absolutes.
	This is how you were raised. This is what you see a lot of.
	I get that. I'm just trying to shock you out of it by just telling you how absolutely unacceptable it is to initiate the use of force against your children.
	You chose to have a child and you owe that child peace and reason and security.
	Somebody says, I have a vague memory of my mother threatening to leave me behind if I don't go.
	I also remember that she left me alone with people I didn't know at an apartment pool and I almost drowned.
	I was about five years old.
	What a horrible and negligent mother I had.
	Just shocking memories that pop up after decades.
	Oh yeah, my father almost caused my death.
	I've mentioned this before, but my father was looking after me.
	And he was playing tennis, apparently.
	He was having a very good tennis game.
	I was very young, maybe about 18 months old or something like that.
	And I was, no, no, I was younger than that.
	No, I was about a year old because I was still, I was unable to walk.
	I still remember being a year old.
	And my father was playing tennis and I was outside the chain link fence of the tennis court and I crawled my way into a garden shed and apparently I got a hold of some brightly colored bottle and drank from it because I guess I was really thirsty and it turned out to be weed killer and I was in the hospital and I almost died.
	But you know, I'm sure it was a great game of tennis, man.
	It's a great game of tennis.
	I was talking to a friend about this regarding the black community and how many of the leaders or celebrities, etc., are dysfunctional.
	This, coupled with broken homes, means there are few places of refuge.
	Would philosophical leaders like yourself in the black community help, or is it the tradition of church or religion that is necessary to solve many of the problems?
	You know, I mean, obviously, I mean, in talking with some of the lovely, wonderful, intelligent, brilliant people, Blacks I've had on the show over the years, yeah, there's a huge issue with fatherlessness in the black community.
	It's at 75% or whatever.
	And there's a huge issue of childhood assault, particularly sexual assault in the black community.
	And yes, I would imagine that it would come more from a church or religion.
	Whatever you do to the least among you, so do you also do to me, something like that.
	Renee Zellweger, yeah, I think she had some pretty bad plastic surgery.
	I don't know for sure, but it certainly looks that way.
	And shouldn't she have like a three-day marriage to some country singer or something like that?
	Just awful. Somebody says, I fully agree, sir.
	I asked because I witnessed my sister drag her daughter when she wasn't minding her, and I was upset.
	I just put it out there.
	Thank you for the detailed explanation on this.
	Right. Right.
	You know, the majority of aggression against children comes from women.
	The majority of aggression against children.
	I mean, imagine, I would never suggest doing this, but imagine if you had a disagreement with your sister and you just dragged her somewhere.
	She'd be outraged.
	Wait, this is how you're parenting.
	If my son is upset about leaving, we have a conversation about how to do it better next time.
	Kids do not want to be in conflict.
	He's very interested in making it better next time.
	Well, parenting is all about preparation, right?
	I mean, it's all about preparation.
	All about preparation.
	So, if you have...
	A schedule, right?
	And you say, we go to the park for an hour.
	Again, I don't take my kid to the...
	I never took my kid to the park when we had to leave, right?
	But let's say you do, for whatever reason, you make a deal, say, but we've got to go in an hour.
	Do you agree ahead of time, right?
	So let's say the kid is four or five or whatever, right?
	Maybe even three. It depends on how long you've been modeling this for.
	And you say...
	We get to go for an hour.
	Do you know what an hour is, right?
	And you sort of count it out of it, right?
	And I'm going to keep you informed.
	But do you... Like, we can only go to the park if you agree to leave after an hour, right?
	It's all about preparation.
	Like, we only go to the park if you agree to leave.
	Now, if the kid agrees to leave, great.
	If the kid won't leave, that's fine.
	That's fine, too. Because then he's choosing to learn through consequences, right?
	So then you stay...
	And then you leave and you say, well, I missed my appointment.
	We had agreed that we were going to leave after an hour.
	So you wouldn't leave after an hour.
	I missed my appointment. That just means I can't, like, next time I have an appointment, we can't do anything that's time-sensitive, right?
	And it also means that I don't actually have to keep my word to you, right?
	So if you break your word to me, like, if I say, you know, after we go to the dentist, we're going to go to the ice cream store, right?
	Because apparently F the dentist, right?
	So if I say, after we go to the dentist, we're going to go to the ice cream store, right?
	And then after the, you're thinking about this the whole day, and then after the dentist, I say, no, we're not going to the ice cream store.
	I just said that, right?
	You'd be upset, right? But if you don't keep your word, why should I keep my word?
	Which teaches them reciprocity, it teaches them maturity, it teaches them consequences, right?
	So, do we want a situation, do you want to live in a family where we don't have to keep our promises to each other?
	Where you can't trust me? Where if I say something good is going to happen, you don't know if it's going to happen.
	Do you want to live in that? And he's like, no, I don't want to live in that.
	So, it's just another form of education, right?
	I know of someone who forgot about their kid at a hotel and laughed about it.
	That kid now has drinking and driving problems as an adult.
	Also, the parent subscribes to the belief that children chose their parents.
	Yeah, well. I knew a kid whose parents were so negligent that he got into a car and was able to drive it down a hill, like down a grassy hill into the woods.
	And he was like six or seven years old.
	It was crazy. Somebody says, my dad did.
	My mom used verbal abuse until I had enough and reacted.
	You just wait till your father gets home, and he used his belt.
	Sorry about that. If he were around at the time, he would smack the back of my head.
	With 300 pounds or more, do what you're told because he said so.
	Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
	Thank you for the tip.
	I'm compelled by your quality for the tip.
	Thank you. I appreciate that. Let's see here.
	Yeah, I mean, you know, as far as woke stuff in companies, you can just choose to be there or not.
	Not I choose the entrepreneurial life that way.
	There's a story, somebody says there was a story about me as a baby, just having learned to walk,
	everyone at the same resort, and I made my way out of the room as nobody was actively watching me,
	and I was found walking towards a highway.
	The story was told as if I was aloof About all parents. Yeah, yeah for sure
	Let's see here my mom left me with people. I didn't know at the age of three in a foreign country
	Just gross negligence. Oh yeah.
	Somebody says, I got a mysterious broken collarbone as a one to two year old and I always wondered why my dad took off work to bring me to the doctor the next day.
	Yeah, no, it's tough, man.
	It's tough when your kids get really badly injured as a result of your negligence.
	Now, it wasn't so tough back in the day because, but now I think it's more of an issue because doctors are trained to be a little bit more alert to the signs of abuse and neglect.
	Alright. Somebody says, I believe...
	Thank you for the tip.
	I believe this is an accurate representation of your arguments.
	Based on your argument that you should distance yourself from those who advocate for the use of violence against peaceful individuals who believe that the state is a breach of the non-aggression principle, would you advocate for the distancing of a family member who believes that you are going to be tortured until the end of time after you die?
	Thanks again, Steph. Well, so, if you have a family member...
	who believes that you're going to hell that is a different matter than a belief in the state because it's like saying if you smoke you might get cancer You're talking about the inevitable consequences of your behavior.
	If you overeat, you will get fat.
	If you undereat, you will get too skinny, right?
	Talking about consequences. Somebody who's religious, of course, believes that God, if they believe that God is going to send you to hell for being evil...
	He's not saying this is something I support against you.
	He's saying this is a fact that exists.
	So according to the theology, whether he believed in it or not, it would occur the same, whereas it's people's belief in the virtue of the state that is the foundation of that kind of political violence.
	Alright, when I was little, I'm sorry, somebody says, I wish I had stayed married and parented better.
	When I listen to you, Stefan, I regret a lot.
	I have apologized to my sons a few years ago.
	I hope to goodness that I have not harmed them.
	I was not violent, but I was shouty and desperate at times.
	Well, the desperation and the shoutiness comes, it's two sides of the same coin, because you genuinely believe that your children owe you obedience and you get aggressive with them.
	Like if somebody owes you money and they just refuse to pay it, you can get aggressive with them, right?
	I mean, you could theoretically take them to court and get them forced to pay or whatever, a small claims court maybe.
	So if somebody owes you money and they're just not paying it, right?
	If you have a paycheck that, you know, you got a paycheck for $2,000 that your employer is just not paying, then they owe you and you get pretty aggressive and you have the right to be aggressive because you're owed something that you're not getting.
	You justly deserve it and you're not being paid.
	I mean, I remember many years ago, I worked at a seafood restaurant downtown as a waiter, and there was a group there doing karaoke, and they heard me singing along, and I sang a song for them, and they loved it, and we were getting along great, but I had to leave, and they were still there, and it was like a $2,000 bill, and the next day I came in, and the manager, who was like a fairly sleazy guy in my view, The manager was like, oh, so sad.
	I didn't leave you any tip at all.
	I'm like, Yeah, of course they did.
	Of course, they just seemed like very cool, classy people, and it was a lot of fun.
	It was a fun night. And, yeah, it was...
	I remember my roommate at the time singing Calendar Girl at that karaoke night.
	Anyway, yeah, so, I mean, I couldn't prove it at the time and all of that, so...
	But, yeah, I knew that they'd left me.
	He'd probably... Probably $300 or $400 cut me out of that.
	But... So yeah, if you believe that your children owe you obedience, then when they don't obey you, you feel the right to get aggressive with them.
	But they don't owe you a squat.
	They owe you nothing. You owe them everything because you chose to bring them into your life.
	They don't owe you anything. They owe you what you earn, what you deserve, what you've elucidated in them or you've elicited from them through the quality of your behavior, right?
	Somebody says, when I was little, my parents would threaten to abandon me in the woods any time I didn't do something they told me to do, like doing my homework.
	My God, that's horrifying.
	Was it you raised by Hansel and Gretel's parents?
	That's like Norwegian Deathwoods fairy tales.
	Alright, any last tips?
	We'll do another couple of cues, but I forgot to eat today, so I should probably eat something at some point.
	Steph, I got a woman's phone number last Saturday night.
	The next afternoon I tried calling, and then I texted her.
	You doing anything tomorrow? She replied after six hours, quote, Hey, sorry I missed your call.
	I got really busy today. I'll let you know if I have some free time.
	Steph, where do I currently stand with this woman?
	To provide background context, this woman is a stranger.
	A stripper who wanted to French kiss me because, quote, she only kisses guys she likes.
	I did French kiss her and I enjoyed it.
	Okay, that's not a real...
	That's not a real question, is it?
	Why was a stripper I was paying to be flirtatious, not responding to my texts?
	No, that's...
	She only kisses guys she likes, except she's a stripper, right?
	No, she works for tips, right?
	I'm sorry. Like, I don't mean to be harsh or cruel, but that can't really be a real question.
	Yeah, she's not interested in you.
	She likes your money. Maybe she wants to keep you around as some beta orbiter for when her eggs dry up, but no, she's not interested in you.
	It's like, hey, the waitress really laughed at my jokes.
	It's like, I must be the funniest guy around.
	She works for tips, right?
	All right. I think doctors have always been aware of the signs of abuse, but mostly covered it up or ignored it.
	Abusive parents would just get, oh, find a doctor who covers it up.
	I won't go to the doctor.
	Mine got talked to twice, and then they just didn't take us to the doctor anymore.
	Yeah. It was actually, I think it was in the post-war period, post-Second World War period, where doctors finally became aware that sometimes children with broken arms didn't just fall out of a tree, you know, but there was actually violence going on in the home.
	It's relatively new, right?
	Hey Steph whenever I talk about peaceful parenting with people who have children
	They always respectfully point out that I don't have children suggesting that I don't have authority in this
	matter Can you give me an argument for this situation?
	Well, you're talking about universal ethics.
	You're talking about morals, right?
	The morals of the non-aggression principle.
	So, would they not accept a car seat from someone who didn't have children?
	Would they expect that everybody who made a baby toy or produced formula had to have children in order to provide things of value to their children?
	Would they say that a physicist can't teach them anything if the physicist doesn't have children?
	Because you're talking about objective facts and virtues and values.
	So, whether you have a child or not, It's irrelevant.
	In fact, you could really make the case that parents should be the last people to talk about virtues because they were already compromised, right?
	There's a conflict of interest. So can parents who've used violence against their children, as most parents have, can parents who've used violence against their children ever be objective about peaceful parenting?
	They cannot because they're compromised.
	They can't be objective, right?
	So you could make the case that people without children are far more objective about how to raise children than people
	who've already made terrible mistakes as many parents have
	Oh this you owe your children everything They owe you nothing. That's just the exact opposite of what my father taught you.
	He kept saying children have a debt of gratitude towards their parents that will never be repaid in full.
	Oh, my God. Oh, that's terrible.
	That's terrible. You owe me.
	I gave you life.
	No, nature gave you life.
	You just squirted and slept.
	I fed you.
	I gave you health care and I put a roof over your head and you owe me everything.
	Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember anybody making that case with Nelson Mandela, 27 years jailed in Africa, right?
	Well... Or...
	People in concentration camps or gulags, right?
	They gave you food and shelter and health care.
	You owe them everything. You owe them obedience.
	It's wild. I actually did...
	Let me see if I can find this.
	I wrote a poem about this when I was in my mid-teens, believe it or not.
	This is how old these ideas are for me.
	Oh, yeah, I like this.
	I like this poem. Oh, this is actually...
	This is like the just until thing, right?
	This is about a woman with no identity and about a woman who never makes her own choices and then expects her reward in heaven but just dies.
	It's called Just Until.
	Born a free soul, she reared to her father, bowed to her husband, flowed over her son.
	Rising early and young, she had warmed the coffee over the only fire she knew, and woke her masters with gentle apologies, averted eyes, and downcast breasts.
	A piece of perfect, self-made plumbing, the waters of her life disappeared without a murmur, sure that in the sewers would be her reward.
	One cold morning in a distant home, when the angel of procrastination came—that's death—she fled toward her reward, and just before there was nothing left to find.
	She found no banquet for the starved, no crown for the abdicated, and far too late she railed against the chilling regret of quietly discharged atoms.
	Oh, I like this one about youthful female vanity.
	This is a woman who's forgotten that she's going to lose her looks and just dates and doesn't settle down.
	The poem is called Face the Curse.
	Her face, a treasure of boating, hoves into view, beeching on powder from a sea of scent.
	Her gown, the arc of a waterfall, rises to her neck, hung with pearls the divers bought.
	Her liquid lips mask the golden teeth of swimmers drowned in adulation.
	Sea queen, she walks on foaming praise, barefoot endearing and tickled by noses.
	She laughs at the breath of kisses on toes.
	No children!
	Eternal life assured by the blood of the painters below her windows.
	Her youth is forever for those who daub, who paint.
	Unique till the moon rises, she walks in wide twilight alone, armed with the ghosts of passion and space, while on the canvases of the thinning crowd hang the watercolors of impending rain.
	I like that because the idea that she's worshipped by everyone who's below her and that everybody has an image of her, like the painters have an image of her.
	And she's only to be regarded at a distance, to be admired from a distance.
	She can't get close to anyone because she wants admiration, not love.
	Unique till the moon rises where we look at the moon and say, oh, that's a pretty moon.
	We can't get there, right? Armed with the ghosts of passion and space, right?
	Distance, right? While on the canvases of the thinning crowd, all the men who worship her, who paint her image, hang the watercolors of impending rain, right?
	So her image is going to lengthen because the rain on watercolors lengthens it down, right?
	That's interesting Okay, I'll do, I don't know.
	Let me just check if these are of interest to you.
	Okay, I'll do one more. Hit me with a why if you had a hard childhood.
	Do you have a hard... Do you have a hard childhood?
	Hit me with a Y if you had a hard childhood, because then this one is for you.
	So this poem came out of a...
	I was hiking, going through a bitter...
	I was in my...
	I was probably maybe 16 or 17 years old, and I was hiking deep in the woods, and...
	I came back, and through a chain-link fence, I saw a family.
	I was in the cold, shivering rain.
	In the chain-link fence, I saw a family laughing at the dinner table, warm glow, happy lives, and I felt like a real outcast.
	I felt like a ghost clanking the chains of a bitter history, looking at people having fun and enjoying themselves, and I felt very distant from all of that.
	So I wrote... This is a poem about how tough it is to have a bad childhood when you're looking at everyone else.
	It's called Winter Tilling.
	I was given only autumn to plant in.
	Other fields were bright with life when I knew nothing of seeds.
	Other fields were dark with waiting when I first learned of the turning earth.
	Families split pies in laughing lighted nests while I hoed cold ground, spilling and scrabbling in the early dark.
	I envied their delicacies, their wheat of wild colors.
	I saw a pictured spring of corn minstrels.
	I wept over my forced loam of hard seeds, the bare nutrient need of gored winter soil.
	In the winter, as they stamped and sang, I trod brittle ground under spearing stars.
	Frozen tears my wind chime water.
	Fearful, I tore earth, broke nails, broke faith, kneeled and breathed on sleeping seeds, wrapping them as an iris in clear ice as I pushed them back to the blind watch for warmth.
	Sometimes I slept on the broken bed of cold soil, lost in the slow spin of memory.
	Fear of future starving woke in me a hunger for the past.
	And I walked houses long dismembered, ate from empty plates in the yearning recall of imagined food.
	It was a hard winter, waiting for plants, awaited by people.
	I learned something of the night that winter, of patience, the slow spin of starlight, and the failure of flesh to thaw earth.
	The cold came to me in those days.
	I became winter by stalking spring.
	I threw my threads skyward but could not kite the sun.
	I panted on the ground but could not wake the soil.
	And spring seemed strangely late despite my stalkings.
	Until...
	Until I became my failure.
	Listened to winter.
	...
	One dawn, I forgot about spring, and the cracking seduction of ice spoke to me.
	Its breath clasped my ear in a frozen fist.
	Spring, it creaked, is a surrender to winter.
	So the basic analogy there is if you're just hoarding yourself to get through to the spring, you're not mourning, right?
	Which is why I say I go back and imagine a happier past and all of that.
	The frozen nature of winter is when you have sorrow but you won't grieve it.
	And you think, I won't grieve and I'll get through to spring and then spring is late because I won't grieve.
	Spring is when you surrender to winter, when you actually accept your grief, you accept your sorrow, then you get out of winter.
	But as long as you are hoarding Your avoidance of sorrow, the cold will never end.
	Anyway, I could do this all day, but let's get back to your questions.
	I'm sorry for everyone who had a hard childhood, I really am.
	There's benefits from it, but who wants that, right?
	Alright, let's see here.
	I admire the person Steph chose to be despite his childhood.
	Thank you, I appreciate that. Steph, have you ever been to the strip club?
	I've learned most of my social skills with women at the strip club.
	I am fairly socially isolated and decided to go to the strip club a few years ago just to learn to talk to women.
	I was talking to a woman at the strip club when she said, well, I'm single.
	That's when I realized that this woman probably wanted me to ask her out on a date.
	No, that's when it hit me.
	This place is in so many ways the best place to meet women.
	Oh, come on, man. I mean, seriously.
	So... Do you know that there was a woman...
	She's a Twitch gamer, right?
	And... She lost half her subscribers when she accidentally mentioned that she had a boyfriend.
	Because there's this funny thing, right?
	And we're all subject to this, right?
	We're all subject to this.
	I thought Sandra Bullock was very attractive when I was younger.
	And then she, I don't know, had some divorce from some guy or broke up with some guy, I can't remember, right?
	And then she was single.
	And of course, part of me was like, hmm...
	Sandra Bullock is on the market, right?
	And then she started dating someone else, and a little part of me was like, huh?
	And it's like, I'm not going to meet Sandra Bullock, and even if I did, why on earth would I want to date her?
	She openly brags about using mutilated baby genitals to look younger.
	She uses a face cream made from the foreskins of circumcised Korean little boys.
	She's a monster, a monster of a human being.
	I mean, that's genuinely satanic to use child mutilation flesh to look younger.
	That's like as bad as satanic as things can be, right?
	So yes, of course the stripper is going to say she's single, right?
	Because that way you'll come back, and that way you'll buy drinks, and that way you'll pay for lap dances, and right?
	So yeah, it's just the way things are.
	Your poems are beautiful. Thank you.
	I appreciate that. It was some deep stuff I was working through.
	This was right at the beginning of my philosophical journey, so I was working through a lot of deep stuff without the abstract principles, so it was a lot more meaty in many ways than the stuff I talk about later.
	More poems. All right.
	More poems! Let's see if there's another good one here that I can get my little hands on.
	What do you think of the claim that beauty will save the world?
	I don't believe it at all.
	Beauty doesn't save the world.
	Virtue saves the world. Virtue doth save the world.
	Ah yes, this is kind of cool, right?
	So this is a poem about...
	So when we are kids, we think of the cycle of life, right?
	And, you know, there's night, and then there's day, and then there's winter, and then there's spring, summer, fall, and there's this cycle, right?
	And when we're kids, we think of this cycle, and nature has cycles, but human beings die.
	So we're part of a cycle, but our individual life ends.
	And I was really fascinated by this idea.
	That nature tells us that there's an eternity to us.
	And we are part of eternity, right?
	I mean, our matter has always existed and so on.
	But our lives are like we will die, but the cycle continues.
	And I liked this idea, right?
	About this guy who's angry at nature because nature lied to him about...
	Nature is immortal, but we're not.
	Life is immortal, but we're not.
	Matter is immortal, but we're not.
	And this is called Eloped in White.
	She came summer, I suppose.
	She came from far fields of new wheat, dancing in her green armour.
	Her hair a whore's nest of pollen and warm breeze.
	Her dress a tress of bay leaves.
	Bitch lover of hope, she wooed.
	And my shutters, she fled her fingers between long vines and all.
	Come hither! She curdled my stomach with drab scent, her nose wide like an orchard.
	Thick-footed with apples, she sighed.
	Days lazing in her slow, bubbling breath, in oils of waving wide water.
	Vapid she came, a draping Jezebel, and the earth blew waking petals through her smile.
	Stupid, happy, and no smarter suitor of a vacant woman, dressed in bouquets, foiled and petal-bellied and wallowed in the folds of her gown, Stalked her with lilies and daisy chains, played to her the begging birds, and stood its snakes to the height of her eyes.
	The earth, it chased her fleeting dress, And when wind displaced her wintry heart,
	Earth wept lonely leaves at the altar of fire, And died.
	I can just go on and on reading these.
	Yeah, the earth worships nature.
	The trees are going to die.
	The trees are going to die.
	I'm just going to have one more look to see if I can find.
	Yes, I can only view it.
	it's that older document.
	Ohm, bim, bim, bim, bim, bim, bim, bim.
	Oh yes, is this it? No.
	No, that's one on marks.
	.
	Ah, yes, here we go. This is the poem that I wanted, and the poem is called Obligation.
	Obligation. To what should I owe my parents?
	This sort of poem can be very short or very long.
	In short, construct is not contract.
	I love that succinctness, by the way.
	What do I owe my parents?
	What do I owe my parents? Construct is not contract.
	The fact that they made you is not an obligation.
	Construct is not contract.
	That's in short. In long, We have seen shelter, food and water, rules, punishment, confinement and reward among Arctic snows.
	Let me try that again because I lost the word Arctic there.
	So, to what should I owe my parents?
	This sort of poem can be very short or very long.
	In short, construct is not contract.
	In long, we have seen shelter, food and water, rules, punishment, confinement and reward among Arctic snows and barbed wire.
	Yet we ask no gratitude from the victims of obligation, no more than we ask that they honor their enforcers or return from what they must escape.
	All patriots marry to whom it may concern and divorce the flesh beyond the image.
	Convicts who respect their judges will replace them.
	Thus the obligation lies upon the defense.
	All right, so what am I saying here?
	Yeah, there's shelter, food, and water rules, punishment, confinement, and reward among Arctic snows and barbed wire, right?
	So the gulags, the gulags, Siberian concentration camps, right?
	So, shelter, food, water, rules, punishment, confinement, and reward.
	Yep. That's the same as a prison in the middle of nowhere.
	Yet we ask no gratitude from the victims of obligation, right?
	The victims of obligation.
	You're a victim if you believe that you have an obligation.
	Or, in a sense, your parents also played the victim because they say, well, we had to, right?
	No more than we ask that they honor their enforcers, right?
	So if you are imprisoned and punished, you don't have to honor the enforcers.
	Because the enforcers put you there and your parents put you in the family.
	They created you and put you in the family.
	Or return from what they must escape.
	We don't say that you have to go back to the gulag.
	All patriots marry to whom it may concern, right?
	So to whom it may concern is when you get a letter and they don't know who's living there.
	This is sort of back in the day before all these email lists.
	To whom it may concern is a letter not addressed to anyone in particular, right?
	So all patriots marry to whom it may concern.
	It's not individual choice.
	It's not based on virtues. It's just an accident of birth.
	It's just like you happen to be born in a country, Estonia, right?
	You happen to be born in Estonia.
	I love Estonia! It's like, no, to whom it may concern.
	It's just it's not identified to any particular thing.
	All patriots marry to whom it may concern and divorce the flesh beyond the image.
	And what that means is Your parents, you judge them by their flesh, not the image of parents.
	They don't get to inhabit a category called parents that you owe everything to.
	You judge them, right? So all patriots marry to whom it may concern, not individual, not differentiated.
	It's a general principle. And divorce the flesh beyond the image.
	You don't judge them by what they actually do, the flesh.
	What they do as people rather than the category of parents.
	Converts who respect their judges will replace them.
	So if you feel like you owe these parents all this obligation, then you will impose that same obligation on your children.
	Thus the obligation lies upon the defense.
	The obligation is your parents to defend their actions.
	It is not for you to obey them.
	So anyway, that's the poem.
	and it's a very good... the poem's called Obligation, so I was remembering of that.
	Someone needs to compile all these poems into an audiobook.
	I...
	I did these poems many years ago.
	15 years ago, I did these poems early on in the show.
	Any last tips before I... Any last tips?
	Of course, if you're listening to the slaterfreedomain.com slash donate.
	You're not learning anything about women by going where women are paid to be nice to you.
	I imagine that my relationship with a stripper would be temporary, but if I marry her or have children,
	then yes, she would have to quit her job for me to be even arguments with her.
	Yeah, well, I just did a podcast on this.
	Stefan is pouring out his heart with his palms, and meanwhile the chat is discussing dating strippers.
	Yeah, well, it's tough to compete with nakedness, right?
	And let's see here.
	In 2023, a lot of women are secret hoes, says someone.
	Whether a stripper or not, there is not necessarily any reason to believe that any given stripper is more of a hoe than a non-stripper.
	In fact, strippers get so much attention dancing nude in front of men that their body count is on average probably lower than the average woman of the 21st century.
	Copium, it's a hell of a drug.
	All right. All right.
	Your poems are better, Steph.
	Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. I think there was a...
	It would be tough to think about doing those now.
	This is when I had a lot more hope for the future than I do now.
	All right. Any last tips, comments, issues?
	Just before we close up.
	Boy, time flies when you're doing philosophy, eh?
	Two hours and ten minutes. Wow.
	Fast. Fasty, fasty.
	Didn't we all think that we started in philosophy thinking and reason would win?
	How do you develop an instinct for beauty despite the despair of your childhood?
	Well, you can only love something by hating its opposite, and you can only hate something by loving its opposite, right?
	Love and hate are...
	I hate to sound all kind of zen, you know, it's a circle, it's a Mobius strip, but no, love and hate are two sides of the same coin.
	And so... People want to love without hating.
	And some of this has to do with Christianity, right?
	They want to love without hating. If you can't hate, you can't love.
	Now, the reason that you hate is to remove everything that's an impediment to your virtue out of your life.
	That's what your hatred is for.
	Like if you have an infection, your immune system is there to remove the infection from your life and remember it for next time.
	And hate or anger is your immune system that is designed to remove negative things from your life that harm you and undermine you and destroy you.
	And that way you can...
	Hatred and anger are designed to fire and forget.
	They're designed to go off and then stop, right?
	And so the hatred is there to get the destructive things out of your life, and then your hatred is done.
	People think that if you hate, you're going to hate forever.
	No, no, no. I mean, I don't hate my mom anymore.
	I haven't seen a woman for a quarter century.
	Probably still alive. Probably still is.
	I don't know. I don't hate my dad because they're not in my life.
	Now, if I was around, they'd constantly be provoking and annoying and discomforting and attacking, and it would be upsetting and traumatic and stressful.
	So then I would be, but the hatred is to, you know, get you out of your life, right?
	Chronic hatred would be like, I don't know, autoimmune disorder where your immune system just keeps attacking everything no matter what.
	That would be a sign of a mental problem, a psychological problem.
	So the hatred is there to just get the negative people out of your life and then your hatred simmers down and then you, because the bad people are out of your life, the good people can come into your life, right?
	I mean, you probably wouldn't try and date a woman who was currently in a relationship with a very destructive and abusive man, right?
	That would be a very dangerous thing to do.
	So good people don't want to be around you if you're surrounded by bad people.
	So you try and reform the bad people.
	If you can't reform them, you get them out of your life, and then there's room for good.
	good. And then you don't have hatred, you have love. So, you develop an instinct for
	beauty by hating ugliness and then you remove ugliness from your life through your hatred
	and then you don't have to hate anymore and beauty is in your life.
	Thank you.
	.
	The obligation towards my parents is definitely imprinted on me and my mother pulls that trigger when she needs it.
	Yes, and I find that stuff vile.
	Absolutely vile. Absolutely vile.
	To impose an obligation on your children.
	And it's particularly funny too.
	It's particularly wild.
	Because we have a world now in which there are very few women who believe they have any obligation to anything or anyone whatsoever.
	They don't have an obligation to stay with their husbands.
	They don't have an obligation to provide a safe environment for their children.
	They don't have an obligation to their culture to maybe have some kids so that the culture can continue.
	They don't have any obligation to anyone or anything.
	You know, my mom tried pulling that obligation thing with me, and I'm like, well, you dumped me for two weeks with 20 bucks so that you can go and try and marry some guy from Houston.
	What are you talking about? Obligation.
	You didn't feel obligated to stay married to dad.
	You didn't feel obligated to work your marriage out.
	You've told me that if you're not enjoying a relationship, you can leave it.
	You told me that. Completely and totally.
	It's pretty wild how single moms are the ones who seem to dump the most obligation on their kids.
	And it's like, well, you didn't even feel obligated to stay with the man who was the father of your children.
	Oh, you didn't like Dad, so you left?
	Well, I don't like you, so I'm out of here.
	Well, that's different! No, it's not.
	You got to choose Dad.
	I didn't get to choose you.
	It's just so wild to me that people who break up entire marriages because they're unhappy then say to kids, well, you have to see me.
	What are you talking about? I think I will live by the standards that you have imposed, right?
	You certainly can't judge me for acting as you've acted.
	It's just kind of funny, right?
	Well, I wasn't happy with your father, so I left him.
	And even though I make you miserable, you must see me!
	Oh, it's just so funny.
	I mean, I get it's tragic and it's difficult and painful and all of that, but it is fundamentally funny after a certain amount of time.
	What is it? Tragedy? Comedy is just tragedy plus time.
	And it is kind of funny for me.
	And it's just sad how, you know, I fell for that for some years.
	Oh yeah, no, that's right. You didn't stay in any relationships you didn't like.
	So, I don't have to stay in any relationships I don't like.
	Alright. Thank you everyone so much for your time today.
	If you're listening to this later, freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	I would really, really appreciate it.
	You can do a search at freedomain.locals.com for my poems if you would like to have them.
	And you can, of course, go to fdrpodcasts.com to search these things up.
	I hope that you will join the community at freedomain.locals.com.
	You get a free month. And if you sign up for a year, you get two months free.
	You can use the promo code ALLCAPSUBB2022. Love you guys.
	Thank you so much for a wonderful day.

▲