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Aug. 5, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:35:11
Friday Night Live! 4 Aug 2023
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This is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
We are here at 9 o'clock on Friday night.
Yes, it's a late night gab fest, and I am all about the you today.
I am all about the you.
If you would like to support the show, I would be absolutely thrilled to get your support.
I am slaving tirelessly.
Well, mostly tirelessly.
I'm slaving semi-tirelessly on the new book on Peaceful Parenting.
I have about 170 pages done, and it is a passion project that is kind of eating me from the inside out, in a good way.
I've never been this passionate about a book since really the start of my writing, and it is a wild, wild thing to be going through.
Showing up the six head. Yeah, four head.
All right, so we are all live.
Let me just check here. And let me ask you this.
Let me ask you this. Hit me with a Y if you have siblings.
Hit me with a Y if you have siblings.
That would be a yes from me.
Do you have siblings? Yes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Alright, then hit me with a G if your sibling relationships are good, and hit me with a B. G for good, B for bad.
Let's make it nice and easy.
Good or bad as a whole?
I know it's complicated, but good or bad as a whole with your sibling relationships?
Yeah. That's tough, right?
Yeah. It's tough. So, yeah, I think a little bit more than half of you.
Just see here. Yeah, maybe two-thirds bad.
Bad mostly. Yeah.
Do you do you have a theory as to why why your sibling relationships are not good if they're not good? Oh?
Thank you appreciate that You can donate at freedomain.com slash donate as well.
Very, very bad parenting.
Because it comes from the parents.
Right. Specific to us.
Oh gosh, I'm sorry to hear about that.
Sorry to hear about that.
You said you don't talk to your sister because she molested you as a kid and is a bad mom.
Wow, that's harsh, man.
I'm really sorry. Really sorry about that.
Somebody says, criminal assault, property damage, attempted murder, defamation, slander, yeah, bad.
Strong personalities?
Somebody says, envy because I had an obvious talent.
Right. So, and the reason I'm asking is that Somebody says, I think the biggest challenge is my brother's marriage is like my parents and I don't want that.
Good evening, D-Grizzle.
Glad you could tune in live tonight.
You are going to, if you want, this stream is for you, this show is for you.
If you want... I've wrestled with a couple of sibling issues myself.
And if you want, I mean, I think this is going to be the big book.
This is going to be the big book.
For those of you who don't know, I've tried writing the Peaceful Parenting book a number of times before.
This time I'm going to see it through.
This time I'm going to see it through.
I quailed at the impact it was going to have on the world.
Honestly, I faltered. I'm fairly courageous, I think, in many ways, but I faltered on this one.
The impact that the book is going to have on the world is going to be tectonic.
This is the core.
This is the core.
Now... If you have siblings, I just finished the chapter on siblings.
And I could give you a taste, if you like.
I don't want to make this a book about me.
I don't want to make this about the book.
This is because I wanted to know how many people had siblings or had challenges with siblings.
But it's going to make you cry, I think.
That certainly made me emotional.
To write it. So, yeah, hit me with a Y. I'm not looking for compliments here, but...
Yeah.
Okay, this is not a final draft, of course, right?
So, be aware of that.
But you asked for it.
Just remember, you asked for it.
You asked for it, didn't you, big boy?
All right. Let's do it.
First draft, of course, so I can't guarantee it's going to stay in this format.
I just finished the section on how you parent peacefully with a wide variety of examples.
I did the section on peaceful parenting and peer pressure, how to apologize.
What have we got here?
and we just get down to the right spot here and
we can get to the sibling stuff.
Yeah, I did Discipline Without Violence.
Yes, all of that stuff.
Siblings! Yes.
Here we go. Let me just get to view the draft.
No, I don't want it to view that way.
Draft, there we go. Alright.
This is...
Siblings.
And it goes like this.
Siblings. Siblings are each other's greatest allies or greatest enemies.
There's very little in between.
Evolutionarily speaking, siblings compete for parental time, attention and resources.
In situations of scarcity, they must view each other as rivals, enemies even, since there is not enough to go around for everyone.
On the other hand, siblings who ally with each other are virtually unbeatable in the adult arena.
A hunting or war party composed of loyal brothers can scarcely lose.
Affectionate sisters raising children in close proximity create great safety and security for their offspring.
Unfortunately, since the powers that rule us always want us to be loyal to them rather than to each other, siblings are usually turned against each other from day one.
Brothers, The way that modern society turns brothers against each other is to rigidly age-segregate children in schools, which promotes peer bonding rather than family bonding.
The older brother thus gains his status from hanging out with his peers rather than his younger brother.
This leads to the dismal spectacle of the tag-along.
The younger brother desperately wants to spend time with his older brother and gain the status of having older friends, while the older brother's peer group asserts their dominance by constantly calling the younger brother a tag-along.
In this way, the older brother is compelled to reject his own flesh and blood.
The sibling With whom he shares 50% genetics in return for the social approval of his unrelated peers.
Tragically, the older brother ends up losing both the bond of his younger brother and the approval of his peers.
His younger brother resents having been rejected for the sake of transitory classmates, while the classmates who shredded the bond grow up and move on to other lives.
The older brother ends up feeling lonely and tries to reconnect with his younger brother, but because of the prior power dynamics, the older brother refuses to submit to the, quote, humiliation of an honest apology.
The resentment of the younger brother triggers a status blowback.
Since the younger brother has learned that having higher status means rejecting a brother, when his older brother reveals a need for him, thus giving him higher status, he rejects his older brother, just as his older brother rejected him when he had higher status.
Bound together in discontent is the tagline for most modern relationships, brothers included.
Sisters.
Sisterhood works in a similar manner.
Parents who claim authority based on being older create massive power imbalances among siblings.
The older sibling, identifying with the parents, asserts authority based on age, just like they do.
This creates an artificial sense of superiority among the older siblings and an equally artificial sense of inferiority among the younger siblings.
The older siblings become addicted to feeling superior, which creates unstable egos dependent on the imaginary inferiority of those around them.
The younger siblings eventually realize that If they want to have any power at all in life, they have to detach from the older siblings who constantly need to cast them in an inferior role.
You either reject your older siblings or you end up with very little in life other than propping up their vainglorious and imaginary superiority.
When the younger sibling detaches out of a need for survival, the older sibling often explodes in hostility, either directly or indirectly.
Placing your entire value on the accidental, that you are superior for something you never earned, is the root of most violence and tyranny the world over.
The older sibling is addicted to his accidental, quote, superiority.
The subjugation of the younger brother is the drug.
The deference of the younger brother is how the drug is delivered.
And we all know what happens to addicts when their drug is withdrawn against their will.
Unstable escalation, tyranny, and eventually, we hope, healing as the withdrawal slowly dissipates and new and more authentic sources of happiness are generated in the personality.
These dynamics are only exacerbated if the older sibling happens to be taller or more physically attractive or more intelligent.
The accidental, quote, superiority of the birth order is then supplemented by other preferred physical or mental characteristics and the chance to break out of the addiction becomes virtually zero.
Among sisters, the well-known verbal viciousness of female conflict often manifests in the older sister implanting cruel insults into the mind of the younger sister, which ends up with her feeling inferior and unlovable.
The high of verbal abuse often implants a kind of dangerous charisma into the personality of the older sister, which can make her more attractive to men.
She has a swaggering kind of confidence that is vampirically leeched from the younger sister, which makes her seem very appealing.
The constant rejection and humiliation of her younger sister hollows out her personality, No, it should be, let me just fix that, the older, the her is ambiguous there.
The constant rejection and humiliation of her younger sister hollows out the older sister's personality, leaving her prone to ideology.
Ideology is the attempt to substitute the drug of pretend virtue after the withdrawal of the drug of pretend superiority through accidental characteristics.
The older sister thus often gains a lot of romantic attention but can never settle down with any one man because of the hollowness at the center of her personality.
She failed to develop genuine value because she was provided artificial value in the form of birth order.
She gets a lot of dates but never experiences love and so is never able to settle down.
Those who exploit others are often charming but can never be loved.
The frustration of constantly drawing male attention while never winning male commitment causes escalating aggression in the older sister.
She cannot blame herself for her hollowness.
She cannot take responsibility for her exploitation and so she turns her anger and frustration outward to society, blaming the patriarchy or the system or capitalism or other such nonsense.
Empathy, the ability to put herself in another's shoes, has been sacrificed on the altar of vanity, as it so often is.
All that is required for older siblings to save themselves is to imagine what it would be like to be a younger sibling.
The humility of recognizing that much of your, quote, value is accidental, is essential to the development of empathy, and thus of the capacity to love and be loved.
You cannot pair bond without trust, and you cannot trust without consistently positive behavior.
And you cannot achieve consistently positive behavior if you are addicted to subjugating others.
Because you both need and despise your victims and so will eternally swing between emotional extremes.
A man who inherits his fortune is not an entrepreneur, did not earn it himself.
A woman who was born beautiful or with a great figure did not create her own value.
A sibling who happens to be born earlier is not more valuable through the accidents of time.
Intelligence is largely genetic.
It's an accidental gift of nature and thus should never be used to feed the vanity of the ego Of course, we generally prefer to gain rewards without effort.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It's the root of our industrial efficiency.
It's why we don't have to get up off the couch and change the channel on the television.
However, it is essential for us to recognize that we can never take as valuable that which we did not earn.
Let's say you're a guy with a great head of hair.
It's very tempting to look in the mirror, toss your locks, and feel superior to balding or mangy-headed men.
It's just an accident, no?
If you're a tall man, it's easy to feel superior to shorter men.
That's just an accident, too.
We all understand that, but we get so often addicted anyway.
Some men get big muscles when they lift weights.
Most men don't. Some women are naturally lean and have a tough time gaining weight even if they want to.
Some people who garden have what is called a green thumb.
They just have a natural instinct for growing things and now produce other gardeners 10 or 20 to 1.
Some people are naturally gifted at singing.
Others sound terrible even if they take lessons.
Some people have perfect pitch.
Others can't tell the difference between two similar notes.
Some people can get by on only a few hours of sleep a night.
Other people are tired if they get less than nine hours.
This is all genetic variance and a delightful variety in the species.
But the recipients of unearned gifts must strive to avoid feeling superior for being in accidental possession of great value.
The devil, so to speak, tempts older brothers and sisters with the offer of existential value for an accidental characteristic, being older.
The only value we can possess is the virtue that we earn.
It is a whole lot easier to imagine you have value for something you never earned
than it is to manifest and spread virtue in a dangerously immoral world.
You Evildoers silently applaud you for pretending to have value for that which you did not earn.
That is the surest path for joining their ranks.
To Actually manifest and spread virtue in the world, though?
Well, that is the most extreme sport known to man and God.
If you're not facing resistance, you're not building muscle.
If you're not being opposed, you're not doing good.
Sibling potential.
Siblings who overcome vanity and become allies are the most powerful force for good in the world.
Siblings are the only people in your life who can go through the entire journey with you.
When your parents die, only your siblings remember your life as a child.
Your siblings remain the only witnesses to the forces that shaped you.
Your siblings have enormous, detailed, exquisite and deep knowledge about you.
How they use it often determines your future.
True bonding, true love, is when you trust someone enough to reveal your deepest thoughts and fears, knowing that you are placing great power over you in their hands.
As an adult, you can choose whether or not to reveal yourself to people.
As a child, to your siblings, you are exposed, no matter what.
Imagine, as an adult, if you found out that your most secret thoughts and actions were actually recorded and published.
Siblings see everything, like it or not.
As an adult you have expectations of privacy.
As a sibling you have little to no privacy.
Siblings hold enormous power over each other.
This power is not earned, it is innate to witnessing childhood.
Do parents train siblings to use their power over each other for good or ill?
Well, it all depends on how the parents use their own power over their children.
For good or ill.
The opinions of anonymous strangers about you probably don't hold much weight in your world.
The opinions of your spouse and best friends, hopefully, do.
If you have complicated finances, a highly skilled accountant can either help you stay legal or rob you blind.
People who know everything about you hold great power over you.
Siblings don't earn this power and rarely seem to use it wisely.
If parents model the principle that larger and older equals dominant and aggressive, then older siblings will inflict that model on younger siblings.
In other words, siblings always end up speaking the same language, the language that is taught to them by their parents.
Aggressive parenting destroys sibling bonds.
For abusive parents, having more than one child is basically worse than useless.
All the abuse does is turn the siblings against each other, shattering the family unit over time.
Abusive parents don't just create distant siblings, they often produce mortal enemies.
I've seen this play out countless times over the course of my life.
And I've seen a few exceptions to this trend as well.
And I have given this speech to a large number of battling siblings.
Look, you have to treat each other well for so many reasons.
First of all, your parents are going to get old and die, and then the only witnesses to your childhood will be each other.
Your sibling is the only person who can go through the whole journey of life from you from start to end with every stop along the way.
They saw you learn how to walk, watch you grow, go through puberty, learn how to date, get educated, get a job, get married, have children, deal with aging.
You all have so much knowledge about each other, you can do incredible things to help each other, things that no one else can do.
You're like expert mechanics.
You can fix anything and break everything, too.
Siblings are bound together so closely that it's like living with someone whose lips are right up against your ear.
But everyone screams instead of whispering.
Of course, You want to get away from someone who knows so much about you but doesn't want the best for you because they can do so much damage because of everything they know.
It's like a doctor who knows everything about the human body.
They can either heal you like crazy or torture you half to death.
You will Never meet anyone else in the future who knows you as well as your sibling does.
I don't care if you're married for 50 years and tell your spouse everything.
He or she just wasn't there for your entire childhood and hasn't seen you grow all the way up.
As siblings, you're all so close.
That's not an option.
That's just a historical fact.
And you can use that closeness, that knowledge of each other to raise each other to the very skies.
Or cast each other to the very bottom, into hell, really.
If you turn on each other, if you use your deep, unearned knowledge to harm and undermine each other, you will never stop paying the price for that choice.
You will never be able to trust anyone else, not fully, because you can't trust yourself because you handled your power over another human soul so badly.
You will, in fact, be reproducing all the things your parents did that you hate so much.
If you harm each other, you will be falling into the ultimate trap.
Those who suffered alongside you when you were children, they should be your natural allies.
If you allow yourself to be turned against them, you are unnecessarily following an entirely evil plan.
Divide and conquer, divide and conquer.
That's all the bad people need to achieve to continue to conquer us all, whether in the family, in society, our country, or the world as a whole.
You, you, you, the older sibling, you're not better because you happen to be born first.
That's a really pathetic thing to base your value on.
You didn't earn it, right?
And all these best friends that you threw your sibling aside for, where are they now?
Pray tell. Are they here?
Will they follow you?
Sorry, one sec.
Bye.
Are they here?
Will they follow you from start to end?
Will they help you watch your kids, nurse you when you're sick, talk you out of bad decisions?
Will these best buddies that you kicked your siblings to the curb for help you out when your parents get sick and need years of care and attention?
Will you be able to call them up and ask them to help with the cost of aging parents?
Hell no! Probably don't even know where they ended up.
And if you did call them, wouldn't they just kind of laugh at you?
This is who you gave up your blood kin for.
Strangers with their own lives who live for their needs.
Isn't that pathetic? How can you ever trust your judgment when you made such a stupid decision for many years against nature, against history, against your family, against your own blood?
And now, ah, now you want to go to your younger siblings.
As if you have any kind of authority and tell them how to live and ask them for favors and still, still try to be in charge.
Go talk to your precious friends, they want to say.
You know, your besties that you spent years kicking me to the curb for.
You know that you're going to end up alone if you don't apologize and make this right up.
And you, yes, you, the younger siblings addicted to playing the victim, do you honestly believe that if you had been the older sibling, that you wouldn't have done pretty much the same thing?
You're angry with your older siblings because they did not empathize with you.
They did not put themselves in your shoes and realize how sad and alone you were.
But have you ever tried putting yourself in your older siblings' shoes?
Taking the full brunt of parental misdeeds programmed by society to prefer peers over kin and with a whole gaggle of younger siblings to wield power over.
If you've not held that kind of power, it's very easy to judge those who misuse it.
You're tempted to be angry at your older sibling.
That is an essential part of the plan of abusive parents.
You all fight amongst each other while we skate free of all judgment.
You claim that the negativity of your older siblings has had a great effect on you.
How much more effect did your parents have on them?
You attack each other and thereby excuse your parents.
That is exactly what they want.
They're still running the show.
That is the saddest thing.
You squabble with each other and blame each other and curse each other and your parents laugh because they are let off the hook for now and all time.
You're all victims, all forced to play your part in a play orchestrated by your parents.
You all made mistakes.
Forgive each other as children and put the blame where it squarely belongs, on the adults.
Your parents are part of your past.
They no longer parent you, but your siblings are not only your present, but your future as well.
Sacrificing the functional future for the sake of the dysfunctional past is a terrible idea.
One that you will all pay for the rest of your lives if you do not change.
So yeah, that's as far as I've gotten.
I think that chapter is fairly close to being done.
Let me know... oh, did I get your messages?
Oh wow, that was powerful. Thank you for the read.
You are welcome. I'm kind of turning myself inside out, writing this.
All right, so let me just get to your comments and questions.
That was beautiful and terrible.
True stuff. If the rest of the book is of that quality, which I know it will be, I'm buying at least ten.
Absolutely phenomenal. Thank you.
I appreciate that. It's good to know that the forces of language are moving through me and sometimes dragging me like a leg-broken water skier behind them.
That was amazing. Thank you, Steph.
Stefan, I don't think I've ever heard you mention your mother and father-in-law.
Were they good parents?
It's not for me to say.
Thanks for sharing. Can't wait to read it when it's done.
Well, I'm hoping that it's going to give people a zoom out and a clarity in where their relationships are.
Like so much stuff in life just decays because we don't zoom out and see it for what it is.
We just kind of drift through every day like a pinball bouncing around the bumpers
Very good stuff many many similarities to my experience with my older brother
Thank you. Appreciate it.
And I think the first round is the book and then I'll make a documentary about all of this.
All right, let me get to your question.
Oh, sorry. I just want to make sure I get all your comments.
I hate interrupting when a whole bunch of people are typing because then I feel like I'm losing what it is that you're saying.
Somebody says, Wow. Now, except I am the older twin brother.
My brother is the one who aggresses against me.
No bond of love between us or between us and our parents.
I'm sorry to hear that. I really am.
I talk to my brother every day.
I haven't spoken with my high school friends in years.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, isn't that sad?
A friend of mine, he's got one brother, and his brother had as his best man at his wedding some guy that he had been roommates with for a couple of months.
The relationship never continued, and it still burns, right?
Matt says, I'm blown away.
I feel like we could end the show now.
Such great writing. Thank you.
I feel like this language is carved in the marrow of my spinal cord, and I'm kind of turning myself inside out.
And of course, I'm trying not to make it about me.
I figure if I dig deep enough, we get to our common humanity.
Do you know what I mean? Like, if you dig deep enough, you get to something we all share.
Whereas if I try and just base it upon my thoughts and my ideas, then it stays within me.
and if you agree with me, great, but if you don't, but I feel like if I just go deep enough,
then we connect.
All right.
Well, I'm glad you found it interesting.
I appreciate that. Somebody says, Thank you, Steph.
That hit me hard starting a tag-along.
My brother is eight years younger.
You nailed it. I was so happy when he was born, but my parents divided us.
Yeah, and the culture tells you that too, right?
I mean, you guys know why there's...
Like, hit me with a why if you know why is there leftism.
Why is there leftism at all in society?
Well, hello back. You know why?
Okay, give me a short explanation as to why there is leftism.
No, it's not Broken Homes, in particular.
Although that's certainly related.
It's not to turn away from religion.
Not envy. Child abuse leads to our selected behavior.
That's something, yeah. To replace family with government.
Brothers divided against each other, each wanting the unearned.
Mother wanting to evenly distribute resources.
Lack of parental bond. Parents get their emotional development stunted because deep state wants to destroy the family.
So... By right, I'm talking about smaller government, more free speech, lower taxes, and so on, right?
Left is restrictions on free speech, censorship, and it is a larger government, higher taxes, and so on.
So, men vote for smaller government.
Married women vote for smaller government.
The only reason there are leftist parties really in the West is single women.
Single women are like plus 35 percentage points for the left.
Now when you look at society and a lot of the propaganda that is going on you
understand it is designed to turn women against men so they stay single so they
We vote for Big Government.
This is why the leftists always attack the family.
The family is the free market form of the government.
And the government is the fascist form of the family.
So when they say to women, you should be fine with being fat.
When they say to women, you should cut your hair short.
When they say to women, well, you shouldn't be subjected to the male gaze and there's a patriarchy and men run everything and they rule everything and they boss over everyone.
They're just trying to keep women single.
Right? They're just trying to keep women single and they're just trying to keep women single so that they get bigger and bigger government.
Right? Feminism is designed to keep...
Women single. Now, it's not specifically the 19th Amendment.
The 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, but again, married women vote for smaller government.
It's not the 19th Amendment in particular.
It's the propaganda about convincing women that being unattractive is empowering, keeps men from committing to them.
Women go through life a little bit nervous and afraid because of physical vulnerabilities and fear of pregnancy and so on.
And so if you can convince women to stay single...
They'll vote for bigger government. Yeah, motherhood is not a job.
you don't want to be a broodmare and all that so
I mean it's really really awful right I mean, power junkies, right?
right? Power addicts. Hit me with a why if you've ever had an addict in your family.
Now you know that addicts will absolutely never be happy.
well now let me let me not tell you your experience hit me with a why
Hit me with a why, why, just to differentiate from people answering the last question.
Hit me with a why, why, if you believe a rampant addict will destroy a family to satisfy the addiction.
Will a rampant addict destroy a family in order to satisfy his or her addiction?
Right. So, the way to understand politics, in my view, is...
Yeah, Nurse Jackie. Yeah, that's right.
Eddie Falco played that, right?
It's a fairly dire show.
So if you look at somebody who's like a drug addict, the drug addict will absolutely destroy the family in order to get the fix, to get the drug, right?
So just look at political power as just an addiction.
And the political junkie, the power junkie, will absolutely destroy the family to satisfy his or her addiction.
I mean, it's truly brutal, right?
It's truly brutal.
Rampant addictive philosophy.
No, it got close.
But no, an addiction is something which you pursue to the detriment of life success and stability.
So, yeah, just power junkies, and if they have to shred families to get votes, they will do that, right?
Yeah, power is a stronger addiction than cocaine.
Yeah, I think that's been tested, right?
I think that's been tested. Because if you teach women to fear and mistrust and hate men, it means they can't be loved, they can't be secure, they can't be happy, they can't wake up to children jumping up and down on their bed, they can't see the joys of their children growing up, they can't have comfort, succor and society in their old age, they don't have a pair bond that survives the death of their sexual beauty.
It's really, really awful.
It's really awful. I mean, they're literally destroying people's capacity to love and be loved just so they can get votes.
It's a vile arena.
Vile arena. Somebody says, my dad is the only non-addict.
My mom, stepdad, brother, stepbrother, stepsister, stepdad, even myself, all addicts.
Only my brother and I dug our way out.
Wow, that's an incredible thing to do, my friend.
That's an incredible thing to do.
Well done, well done, well done.
How amazing. How wonderful.
How terrifying. How powerful.
good for you and a half and a half oh I wanted to mention as well just by the by a little bit
of housekeeping here The glorious James has fixed up the books page, my books page.
So if you go to freedomain.com slash books, go to freedomain.com slash books, You can see it.
It's a lot easier to get my books.
We got rid of all of this funky rotation stuff, and all of my fiction and nonfiction is nicely listed, except for Art of the Argument.
It's all free, and you can get all of that stuff.
get all that stuff so alright now I'm going to
I'll let you guys get some...
Yeah, it looks good and it's much nicer on the Mobile.
Mobile. Mobile Alabama.
It's much nicer there too.
Alright, so let me just...
A new window.
Lucinda. Alright.
Because I definitely had a bunch of questions that I didn't get round to.
From listeners.
And while you guys are coming in with your questions.
And again, really, really appreciate your support.
Freedomain.com slash donate.
Freedomain.com slash donate.
Or you can donate right here on the app.
Unfortunately, I have...
It doesn't let you sort by...
It doesn't let you sort by date here, so let me just get to these.
Ah yes, here we go. Here we go.
Freedom, what would be your definition of a temper tantrum?
My son is a two-year-old and sometimes cries when he's not getting what he wants, but calms down very easily when we explain to him why he can't have or do something.
Sometimes we offer him a deal or remind him about the importance of keeping promises.
Is this still normal behavior?
At what point should I start worrying?
Thank you very much for helping us be better parents.
Well, I mean, to me...
You are doing just right.
So, a temper tantrum is not because the child is not getting what he wants.
Just so you know. A temper tantrum does not occur because the child is not getting what he wants.
The temper tantrum occurs because the child does not feel that what he wants is being listened to or respected.
Do you follow that one?
A temper tantrum occurs when the child does not feel listened to.
So if the child is listened to, his need and want and preference is internalized and understood and reflected back to him or her, then he knows he's not being ignored.
He knows he's not being dismissed.
He knows people aren't being mean to him.
You know, like if your kid wants something that your kid can't have, like I understand the steak knife is shiny.
I like them too, but you know, I absolutely understand that you want them to play with the steak knife.
But unfortunately, it's like, let me show you on this apple.
It's super, super sharp.
It's just dangerous, right? But I absolutely understand that you want it.
Kid will not be upset.
if he's listened to.
What happens though is people get angry and scornful and contemptuous
and they withdraw and they roll their eyes and stop asking, you know,
and then the kid doesn't feel listened to and that's when the escalation happens.
You still throw temper tantrums when you're not listened to?
Yeah. All right.
Let's see here. Steph, how do I... Oh, sorry.
How do I talk to and interest women?
I feel like they are willing to talk to me, but I can see them losing interest almost immediately.
Do you have any advice?
I mean, I hate this.
Be yourself no matter what they say.
I'm just going to tell you this, though.
Be absolutely, completely, and totally and authentically yourself.
That's so rare that it's very interesting to people.
So... If you do the real-time relationship thing, which is you tell people what you think and feel in the moment, honestly, without blaming them, but simply explaining things, right?
But you're trying to interest women, which means that you feel you have to be someone other than who you are, like you have to put on a show, you have to be funny, you have to be engaging, you have to be entertaining, you have to be, I don't know, whatever it is that you feel, like you have to put on a show.
But when you put on a show, people sense that you don't like who you are.
Let me ask you this.
Let me ask you this. And again, I look for your honesty.
I look for your honesty, right?
Oh yeah, I'll get to the dentist question in a sec.
Do you think that I, in these shows, am I putting on a show?
Am I someone other than who I am?
I mean, other than, you know, a little bit of extra animation or ripping my shirt off from time to time.
Do you feel like, and again, I'm perfectly happy to hear your answers and I don't prejudge it, I'm genuinely curious.
Do you feel that I'm putting on a show or being someone other than who I am?
No, you're real AF, in my opinion.
No, not putting on a show.
It feels natural. I don't think you could keep it up this long.
Yeah, that's quite true, right? No, no, I believe you're genuinely yourself.
Not at all. You're real.
You're a physical expression of UPB, universal peanut butter, of course, as my daughter has donned it.
You're more honest than every other podcaster.
You know a lot of truth, genuinely.
Yeah, I don't think I could fake it, right?
Um... Yeah, if you want to read or listen to Real-Time Relationships, just go to freedmain.com slash books.
Hashtag derrealness.
Derrealness. Good, good. Okay.
Like, I'm not looking for praise here.
I genuinely do try to be...
Like, I don't want it to be like, you know how some people, they have their radio voice and they talk in their radio voice.
And if you imagine having a conversation, you call them up on the phone and they do their radio voice.
And I want to talk...
Obviously, it's not like we're on the phone, but I want to talk like we're just having a conversation.
Just... Right?
And because every ounce of effort you put into putting on a show is less of a capacity if you directly connect with people.
Did you follow? Imagine you're trying to move furniture with your friend.
You both pick up this giant heavy couch and then you decide to do some tap dancing and twerking at the same time.
Every effort you're putting into tap dancing and twerking, maybe even at the same time, is you not putting effort into lifting the couch.
And of course, if your goal is to lift the couch and you start tap dancing and twerking, your friend's probably going to get kind of annoyed, particularly if you're in some stairs, right?
So, if you are saying, well, I have to interest people, I have to be interesting to people, how do I talk to and interest women?
Look, the question is, and it's a pretty big question, do you find yourself interesting?
Do you find yourself interesting?
Hit me with a yes. Do you find yourself interesting?
You have interesting thoughts, ideas, arguments.
You can bring new things to people.
You can be spontaneous. Maybe funny, although funny is a little bit of a talent as well, but...
So, if you find yourself interesting...
Like, I'm not trying to be interesting to you guys...
I'm not trying to be interesting.
I'm not trying to be deep or witty or engaging or philosophical.
I'm sort of trying to be myself.
Now if you don't find yourself interesting, asking someone else to find you interesting is kind of a rip-off, right?
So, you've got to find yourself interesting.
And if you find that you're boring, then, you know, read more, think more.
I mean, you're all in the top 1% of intelligence as far as I'm concerned.
So, if you find yourself, like, kind of boring, then, you know, maybe you need to go dig deeper, read more, or do some self-work, or get some therapy, or whatever it is.
Analyze your dreams and all that kind of stuff, right?
So don't try to be interesting.
Don't try to win people over or engage people.
Be yourself and be honest.
Yeah, be yourself. It's Oscar Wilde, right?
Be yourself. Everybody else is taken.
Right. Working on it, my spontaneity was punished as a child.
Right. So don't treat people like the people who punished you because that's unfair, as I talked about in the show last, right?
Yeah, it's like, you know, you've got paper currency that's leaving ink stains, you know, quick, take it!
Like, if you don't believe your money's worth anything, asking other people to believe it's worth something is counterfeit, right?
You're kind of ripping it off, right?
So, if you genuinely know that you have value in yourself, Then you show that to people.
But please understand, you have to be quality to see quality.
Do you understand? You have to be quality to see quality.
A lot of what kills quality in this world is that it's invisible to the average person.
A lot of what kills quality in the world is that it's invisible to the average person.
So if you're a high-quality person...
I mean, you can visit the norm.
You know, it's like diving for pearls.
You can go down there, but you can't live there.
If you're a very smart person, you need to be around very smart people.
If you're a high-quality person, you need to be around high-quality people.
Because otherwise, your strengths become your weakness, your quality becomes your invisibility.
Because if you're around low-quality people, they can't see your high-quality.
They may get vaguely resentful towards it, like maybe they see it out of the corner of their eye, like some predator of excellence that's going to take down their vanity.
But you have to be around quality people.
So when I was dating, I'd like to be myself and talk with people and all of that, talk with women.
And, you know, if they saw my quality, great, you know, then that's a sign of a potential for quality, right?
Right. Chris says, I'm struggling with my quality lately because I'm lacking high quality people around me.
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Hit me with a why if you've ever seen the old Gordon Ramsay show, Kitchen Nightmares.
Hit me with a Y if you've ever seen the old...
I've heard of him.
I knew he was a tanglehead cuss machine.
But I did watch a couple of these with my daughter...
And I really wanted to...
Yeah, he is hilarious, right? And people are like, oh, he's so rude.
It's like, no, what's rude is losing five years of your life and your house because you haven't fixed up your restaurants.
And you can see just like rabid intelligence in his eyes.
Like impatience, intelligence, he sees things, the excellence, and he's got a really great conflagration of skills, right?
I love that meme.
He puts two pieces of bread around a woman's head and she says, what are you?
I'm an idiot sandwich. He also hosts Hell's Kitchen.
Yeah, I haven't seen that, right?
I think that's a little harsh, but yeah, so he's harsh with people, but he's, this is, I'm sort of trying to explain to my daughter how men deal with each other, because, you know, she deals a lot with females, so it's how men deal with each other.
And she's noticed that Gordon Ramsay is like incredibly harsh with people
and then they thank him, he hugs them and he's saved their butt.
Right?
So I was trying to explain to my daughter that one of the reasons why
restaurants fail is...
Hit me with a why...
Hit me with a Y if you've ever been driven nuts by the incompetence of people you work with.
Like, come on, we know this, right?
Hit me with a Y if you've ever just gone mad.
Like, slowly round the bend with the incompetence of people that you work with, right?
People who just give you that thousand-yard stare.
People, like, have you ever had this where, you know, you say to someone, I need you to do X, Y, and Z, and they say, okay, fine.
In that kind of semi-autistic way that clearly communicates to you, they don't have first or final clue about what you're talking about.
So you can do X, Y, and Z. I really need you to handle X, Y, and Z. Okay, I'm on it.
And you just know. It's like maybe it's slightly wider eyes.
Maybe it's the frozen deer in the headlights facial paralysis or something like that.
But you know for a simple practical fact, it ain't getting done.
It ain't getting done.
Or someone who keeps saying they're doing something and they're on it, but you just don't believe them.
So you kind of stalk past their desk and see what's on their computer screen.
Or are you sure? Like, yeah, absolutely.
Because I remember, my gosh, when I was a manager, it drove me absolutely completely insane when people didn't understand what I wanted and didn't come and ask for clarification.
Oh, my God. Oh my God.
It's horrendous.
And I would not quite yell at people, but I'd be pretty damn emphatic.
And I would say, if I ask you to do something, I need to know that you can do it if you say yes.
If you don't know how to do it, that's fine.
Come and talk to me. Come and ask me.
But do it or say you're not going to do it.
One of those options. Do it or say you can't do it.
One of those options. But there's no option called pretend to do it.
Cross your fingers and hope. Do useless tasks outside the scope of what I ask.
That is not a thing. It's not a thing.
But people just, yeah, okay.
And you just know. You know.
And you say, are you sure? Listen, I'm happy to sit down.
I can step through it. No, no, no, I got it.
Ahhhh.
Yeah, a thousand giant stairs, horrible.
Yeah, it never gets done. I screen all my co-workers by asking them the breakfast question.
I don't know what that means. Oh, like if you hadn't eaten, would you still be hungry at breakfast?
Have you ever heard this phrase?
If you want something done, give it to the busy guy.
You ever heard this? Hit me with a Y if you've ever heard.
If you want it done, give it to the busy guy.
Because have you ever had this...
In every organization, there's like at least one guy.
It's usually a slightly portly guy with polyester shirt and a bad mustache.
He never seems to be busy.
He never seems to be busy.
And every now and then, some new guy will come along and say, Oh, Joe!
Joe, you're not that busy.
Can you do X? And Joe's like, Yep, got it.
Yep. Yep. You bet!
I'm on it! And you just know.
Everyone's like, oh man, don't give it to Joe.
Nobody knows why he's there.
He's just there. It's brutal.
And so I was sort of trying to explain to my daughter, and I'm trying to explain, like she got it in about 10 seconds, but it's like, okay, so if you're a waiter and the restaurant is not busy, are you a good waiter?
Nope. Nope. Nope.
Nope. Because if you're a good waiter, you don't stick around at a slow restaurant.
I mean, why would you, right?
If you are a good cook, do you stay at a bad restaurant?
Nope. You don't.
Because people good at their job can't stand working with incompetent people.
Somebody says, I know the phrase, if you want the job done, let alone done right, do it yourself.
But you can't. Somebody who's competent is absolutely worth their weight in gold.
Or somebody who's confident, absolutely worth their weight in gold, because you can trust them.
I mean, do you have people in your life, you don't have to chase them, you don't have to follow up, you ask them to do something, they agree to do it, it just gets done.
You don't have to worry about it, you don't have to circle back, you don't have to double check, you don't have to follow progress, they just get it done.
Do you have people like that? Hopefully you are someone like that, because if you are someone like that, you're worth your weight in gold.
You don't have people like that? Then you need to get to better people.
You need to get to better people.
I hired one guy like that worth 10 of the others.
Yeah, absolutely. The IQ of those people is blistering.
They read your needs before you ask.
Yeah, yeah. I rotted in such a work environment, but blame myself for not seeking better.
Yes. So, one of the reasons why it's so hard to turn these restaurants around is everybody there sucks.
They've all kind of filtered and sifted down like when I was a gold pan or gold is heavier than most other materials.
So you would shake it and that's how you'd get the gold to the bottom.
So this is the opposite of gold, right?
So if you're in a situation where people are kind of incompetent, what you do is you shake.
The economy is constantly in motion, right?
The cream rises to the top and the crap sinks to the bottom.
The dead weight sinks to the bottom.
And so when a restaurant or a business concern is failing, just about everybody there sucks, and it's almost like you just have to fire everyone to start again.
Yeah, restaurants have a lot of pot smokers.
Yeah, that's right. And that restaurants of course also have a lot of people who
are just passing through like they want to be actors or some writers or something like that, right?
Somebody says, a Christian says, I work in one of the big four consultancies as a manager
and I need to follow up with most people across every level to get shit done.
It's just not hospitality.
Now, you all know the blink phenomenon, right?
Hit me with a Y if you know the blink phenomenon.
This is a Malcolm Gladwell thing that's been described.
I don't want to go into it in too much detail if you all know it, but it's really, really important.
I mean, if you know this in life, you can save yourself myriads, myriads amounts of time.
So, very briefly, is that a blink is our capacity to process massive amounts of information almost instantaneously, and I'll sort of give you an example.
So, they played two professors, like Charlie Brown teacher with the trombone, right?
So, they played two professors. All of the words were obscured.
They played five seconds, and they asked people to judge how good the professor was.
And people judged in five seconds very accurately how good the professor was measured by student evaluations.
They also got a bunch of doctors together and recorded the doctors talking.
And again... All you could hear was vague tone.
You couldn't hear any specific words.
And they asked...
Who was the better doctor? Who was the worst doctor?
And people got it in terms of like malpractice and license suspensions and commendations.
They got pre-COVID, of course, when good doctoring didn't get you toasted, right?
Predatory people can pick out good targets after watching them walk for a few seconds.
Yes. So the mind, like the unconscious has been clocked.
I'm serious. This is why I can't be this analytical neo-frontal cortex post-monkey beta expansion pack bullshit philosopher guy because the unconscious is just so powerful.
It's so powerful.
It's so powerful.
The unconscious mind has been clocked at 6,000 to 8,000 times faster than the conscious mind.
A 6,000 to 8,000 times faster than the conscious mind.
So this is why I tell you, you know, trust your instincts, go deep, you've got a second gut, brain.
This is why I exercise to make sure that the mind and body are not separated.
Yeah, prayer, meditation, dreams, dream analysis and so on.
I mean, I'll tell you, I did a whole chapter in the book on unparenting and I had a dream about a woman I once knew who was an unparent.
But it was a really, I won't get into all of the analogies, but it took me a while to follow those threads.
And it was me processing that judgment and that person.
And it's incredible. The stat includes the gut brain?
Yeah, absolutely. You have a second brain in your gut.
And one of the purposes of ideology is to separate you from your instincts, right?
So, for example, they say, well, you're ex-phobic.
You're ex-phobic.
Like your fear or disgust at something is a phobia.
And they're trying to separate it from your gut instincts, from your blink brain, right?
So the unconscious picks up millions and millions of pieces of data per second.
So it's worth reading.
Malcolm Gladwell's a little bit of a card shark as far as some of the stuff goes.
Like the 10,000 hours thing.
You can do a bunch of stuff for 10,000 hours, but you can shorten 10,000 hours to expertise by getting really high quality feedback on what it is that you're doing.
So yeah, the blink phenomenon is really important.
Have you ever had this?
So let's say you have a problem.
You need to call the bank, right?
Right, you need to call the bank.
Tell me how long it takes in seconds after someone answers the phone at the
bank or wherever for you to know if they can actually help you.
Somebody finally picks up the phone.
you How long does it take for you to figure out whether they'll actually be able to help you, whether they will be competent, whether they will get the right information, whether they will escalate it if need be?
Yeah, it's a second or two, isn't it?
Hello? You know.
Done, right? Immediately. Immediately.
Immediately. You know.
Yeah? Hello? Yep.
Do you know that vacant, empty, nothing burger behind the brain, right?
Um...
Let me just double check.
I want to make sure I get this.
Are we still going here?
Oh, yeah, we are. Okay, sorry.
Just looked like it wasn't working for a second there.
Let me just get something here.
Did you hear about the guy?
Who got his guitar broken by the airline.
You ever seen that?
Let me see if I've got it here.
Oh, come on.
You can refresh my bookmark.
You really, really want to.
Yes, so David Carroll was a singer-songwriter and a member of the band Sons of Maxwell.
In 2008, he flew with United Airlines from Halifax to Omaha with a layover in Chicago.
He checked in his Taylor guitar, which he valued at $3,500 as part of his luggage.
Upon arriving in Omaha, he discovered that his guitar was broken, apparently due to mishandling by the baggage handlers.
He contacted United Airlines to file a claim, but faced indifference and bureaucracy.
They informed him that he had missed the 24-hour window to report the damage and was not eligible for compensation.
In his attempts to escalate his complaint to various managers and executives, he received no satisfactory response or resolution.
Frustrated, he decided to take matters into his own hands and wrote a song called United Breaks Guitars, recording it with his band and posting it on YouTube.
The song quickly went viral and had a significant impact on United Airlines' reputation and customer satisfaction.
Within four weeks of the video's release...
It's beautiful.
Within four weeks of the video's release, United Airlines' stock price fell 10%, costing stockholders...
How much?
Come on. Give me a guess here.
How much did the shareholders lose in value?
Because... People just wouldn't deal with this guy's issue.
How much did the shareholders lose in value?
Because nobody wanted to help this guy with his broken guitar.
It's $180 million.
$180 million.
Now, this is back when $180 million was real money, right?
Not how much a box of Ritz crackers have gone up.
So, $3,500 versus $180 million.
I mean, you should be eager to help people.
I mean, I'm eager to help people.
You should be eager to help people because that's how you're providing value.
But you ever have this thing where, like, you ask someone for help and they're like, okay, what?
Like, there's this vague resentment.
This vague resentment that there's a problem.
Isn't that wild? Isn't that wild?
Like the job is literally customer service and you, you know, you ever have this thing, you order food in a restaurant.
Now, I got to tell you, man, Is it just me or do restaurants suck these days?
Like the food sucks, it's kind of slow, it's all fairly bland, it's all either buttery or oily or deep fried.
I always have to ask for the salad dressing on the side, otherwise you get this weird shitty salad soup, which is they just dump a bunch of dressing in and then throw some vegetables in.
Yeah, it's like, okay, tell me how long has it been since you put a piece of restaurant food in your mouth and you went, oh my God, that's good.
How long has it been? Honestly, I can't remember the time.
You said 10 years, 2015?
COVID killed the business.
You can't, I can find good ones but I search for them.
It's tough to find a restaurant meal which isn't just bland fuel.
Just like, well, I guess I need some calories, so I'll stuff my face.
I particularly like it.
My daughter's a big fan of Subway, and I'll get a Subway wrap with some fresh veggies and stuff.
That's pretty good. Actually, I generally prefer that to a restaurant meal.
Like, good, healthy, fast food is better to me than just about any restaurant meal.
Every now and then a steakhouse is really nice.
But I just...
My daughter, after we watched a bunch of seafood restaurants in Kitchen Nightmares, she wanted some...
She wanted some seafood because, you know, we see the seafood and all that.
So she wanted and all of that.
And she was interested in crab cakes.
So we went to a named restaurant chain that does seafood.
And they don't have any crab cakes.
It took 40 minutes for our food to come.
It wasn't presented that well.
Everything was just kind of deep fried and they have this creamy sauce all over the place.
It's just goop. It's just goop.
Oh, Popeyes. Don't even get me started on that place.
Yeesh. I've tried Popeyes once in my life.
I was like, man, I think I'd rather starve.
I'd rather be crashing in the Andes among the snow than have that again.
That was not good for me.
But, yeah, it's strange.
Somebody says, at a restaurant recently, the food was great, but we received poor service from the drooling, feckless teenage waiters.
Is it true? I mean, let's just completely give up on philosophy, but is it true?
I don't work with that many younger people anymore.
Is it true that young people are kind of lazy?
Or is that just some whittling on the porch, suspenders complaining about the next generation stuff?
Somebody says, a lot of that sauce is all prepackaged from the same manufacturers.
That's why it all tastes the same and it's generally bad.
Yeah, it's not good.
It's not good. It's just bland.
It's just fuel. It's boring fuel to put in your belly.
The hardest working person I know is 20.
Oh yeah, it could be. They're either incredible and way ahead or useless, right?
Young people aren't as motivated sometimes.
It's hospital food. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it, right?
I do wonder how much the doom and gloom that children have been exposed to about the end of the world and climate change and whatever overpopulation, I wonder how much that doom and gloom has hit people hard in terms of motivation and the future.
Yeah, it's a kind of nihilism, kind of a laziness, kind of a enjoy the moment.
And, you know, I think COVID was really tough for young people.
In fact, I know some young people for whom COVID was extraordinarily tough.
Extraordinarily tough. What's the future?
And I think, you know, the blink thing too, I mean, everybody knows that what we have can't last, right?
I mean, everybody knows that, right?
I mean, don't you look around a little bit?
Maybe it's just me. It could be just me.
But don't you look around a little bit in society and it's like dead man walking.
Like dead economy pretending to work.
Economy of debt and credit and borrowing and money printing.
And I think people get this blink about society.
Right? Again, I could be wrong about this, because I'm one of these people, I guess, like yourself.
We know too much. We know too much.
We have stared too deeply into the abyss.
The abyss has stared back and been locked in this black hole orbit death gaze of slow decay, right?
Yeah, it's like Japan, right?
It's a zombie economy. What's the future?
Where's the future? I mean, you get all this propaganda about all this environmental nonsense, but I think people just get a sense of it, right?
Yeah, in 2010 I said 5 to 15 years, right?
Pretty accurate. Civilization in decline, everyone's just trying to get theirs before the music stops, yeah.
And there is, I mean, there is a lowest common denominator, right?
Like, when I was a manager, if we ever had any Deadwood, I had to clear it out right away.
Because it spreads, right? If you've got somebody who's there who's not working that hard, what does everyone else say, right?
Somebody's there, they're getting paid, they take kind of long lunches, they have smoke
breaks, they spend a lot of time on the phone, you know, they choose their playlist before
doing any work and like, what do you do if there are people around who just don't really
work that hard?
Well, everybody just stops working, right?
You do the least. You do the least.
Yeah, but their soul drains, their productivity drains as well.
...
Yeah, their soul drains and their productivity drains as well.
And this laziness slash panic thing that happens in work where people are lazy and then they panic.
One of the good business lessons I had when I was starting out was I needed something done really quickly and I'd forgotten about it and I went to some guy and he just tapped a sign.
He just tapped a sign that was behind him.
I hadn't seen it. And it said, burn this in your brain if you can.
It said, a failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
At the corporation I'm at, it's nearly impossible to fire someone for lack of production.
It's draining, for sure. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, you pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.
Yeah, it's the socialist stuff, right?
It's the socialist stuff. Too late when the majority of employees would quit if held to standards.
Yeah, I mean, I'm afraid to fly, man.
I'm afraid to fly. Never felt that before.
I mean, I started flying at the age of six.
I flew to visit my dad in Africa.
My brother and I flew without even any adults.
We were just six and he was a little older than me.
And I've always loved flying.
I think it's fantastic. Flying is like one of the most...
I mean, you are hurtling through sky.
The sky is 600 miles an hour, 30,000 feet on a giant metal tube with explosions propelling you.
Like, it's incredible, right?
It's amazing. But now?
I mean, now that we have...
I don't know, I'm sure there's a word for this.
What's the opposite of a meritocracy?
What's the opposite of a meritocracy?
Oh, you've had lots of cavity fillings fall out, never used to happen?
Yeah, what's the opposite of a meritocracy?
See, you have to... The reason why people resent those who make more is they can't see the quality.
Idiocracy, confederacy of densest, disgenocracy...
Maybe we can coin a term, Diocracy.
D-I-E? D-E-I? Diocracy.
Diocracy. D-E-I. So, cacostocracy, nice.
So, yeah, I just, I'm very much aware of the incredible amount of brilliance and dedication and energy and effort that the Pareto Principle people need to put in to keep everything working.
And that's just not, not, doesn't work anymore.
I'm very aware of the risk that complex systems bring to people when you don't have a meritocracy.
Of all the places, you absolutely need a ruthless meritocracy when it comes to throwing people through the sky at 30,000 feet in metal tubes.
You absolutely need a meritocracy there.
I'm just... I'm wary of these things.
I'm wary of these things.
And I just have to constantly extend my expectations downwards, right?
Things that I used to expect would take a week, now take two weeks.
People who used to call you back, you have to call them two or three times to try and give them money.
Like, hey, I want to give you money.
I want to pay you for something.
And it's like... Yeah, it's wild.
And of course, the Fed's tried to pay for performance.
I did well, but Slack has got it cancelled.
Oh yeah, for sure. People who are taking the unearned, they don't want any standards put in place.
The free market is...
I mean, of course, you can say to people, well, you'll benefit in the long run because you'll have better stuff and your plane won't fall out of the sky, but...
Yeah, aren't we? Probably not more than a couple of years for these very complex systems.
There's a lot of momentum in these complex systems.
And, of course, there's a lot of people, the boomers, right?
People say, oh, man, the boomers aren't quitting.
They're not making waves. But if you see the tidal wave of not just incompetence but anti-competence that's coming after you in the workforce, don't you feel kind of desperate to not quit?
Like if you're some airplane mechanic and you can see all the people who are going to replace you are just idiots, do you feel like you can quit?
Wild. And, you know, how do things fail?
Right? How do things fail?
Very slowly then, very quickly.
Very slowly then, very quickly.
Everything... Like...
Literally, literally, literally billions of human lives are kept alive by meritocracy.
Like billions of human beings are kept alive by meritocracy and nothing else.
Nothing else. And all the people, it strikes me as kind of a death wish.
All the people railing against meritocracy when the only thing that keeps them alive is meritocracy.
Don't you think about this?
Do you think about this? Maybe I'm just funny this way, but I think about this sometimes, like go to the fridge and get some ice.
You get the ice, right? It's insane.
You can push a button and get some ice.
You can turn a tap and get some water.
Because, of course, you know, I lived in a tent off and on for like a year and a half, right?
In the middle of nowhere. And you recognize you don't have ice makers in a tent.
You don't have running water.
You don't have, right?
You crap in a hole. You dig in the hole.
You dig another hole. I mean, I've lived real raw for a long time in my late teens.
Lived real raw. And it gave me a beautiful respect and love of all the complex systems that keep people alive.
But it's like, well, we don't have to hire on meritocracy for...
for the water treatment plants.
It's like, really?
Are you sure about that?
Because... I don't think you should be quite so certain that you want to replace meritocracy in essential life-giving machinery with something else.
That doesn't seem...
I mean, you think of, you know, you go fill up your car with gas, right?
And you think of, like, the amount of work and effort.
Because, I mean, I've gone gold panning, right?
I mean, I still... I was gold panning for like a year and a half, right?
So I think when I go to the mall sometimes, you see all these lovely gold rings.
It's like, man, I know how much work that is.
I know how much work that is.
It's wild. And, of course, this is Roman's argument in my novel...
The future, which you can get at freedomain.com slash books.
It's free. You should definitely check it out.
It's a great book. But this is Roman's argument.
argument he says you get you get all this money you get all this wealth and
you can just start indulging in all this crap that destroys the very meritocracy
that gave you the wealth. I mean it's a wild thing.
I mean, I guess...
Maybe you could live with a non-meritocracy in waiters, or, I don't know, even parking lot attendants, you don't want to crash into cars, right?
But it's wild to me, like, what do people think is going to happen when incompetent people run the complex systems that keep billions of people alive?
I mean, do they think that Or did they think at all?
Maybe it's just a low IQ thing.
Like, did they think that there's just this conveyor belt of magical elves that gets water out of the ground, gets it cleaned and filtrated and the additives and gets it pumped through incredibly complex system using great power and machinery so that you turn a tap and you get relatively clean water?
And to use a cliche like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, right?
But maybe they think it's just like physics, you know, like the rain falls and just as the rain falls without human
intervention and competence, thus does water get to your taps without human intervention
and consciousness.
It's like, wild.
It's wild. Alright, let me make sure I get to your questions.
Yeah, Bobby says, quiet quitting.
Yeah, it's a quiet quitting, right? It's a quiet quitting.
Yeah, food comes from the grocery store.
I mean, you see these idiots and I, you know, I don't even know what to say.
The people who are like, well, we need to ban farming for the environment.
Oh my gosh.
Ban farming. Hit me with a Y if you've ever tried to grow your own food.
I know I have. Hit me with a Y if you've ever tried to grow your own food.
That's tough, right? It's a tough job.
It's a tough... I've never hated insects quite so much.
Rabbits! Those little furry bastards!
Yeah. Oh, dear, ate the fruit.
Yeah, yeah. But it's incredible.
Like, I got a little vegetable patch, right?
And I had to put fencing up around it, right?
But it's incredible how much food you can produce.
Like, out of a small patch of good earth.
Like, it's incredible.
How much you can produce.
I mean, you know, we have friends over and everybody eats salad in the late summer because it's all bloomed and we can't eat it all.
My wife's a vegetarian, right?
So it's just incredible.
And it's so good tasting.
Oh my gosh.
I don't know what irradiated x-ray tuberculosis crap they run it through to get it through the grocery store.
But man, the stuff you grow with your own hands.
Man, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
It's incredible. How dare you, Steph?
Says Greta. Did you see her making fun of her own speech?
She was at some lunch and she just turned to some guy and said, how dare you?
Just mocking her own speech.
Oh, well. What kind of greens do you grow?
Oh, tomatoes, big one, cucumbers, zucchini, potatoes, a bunch of other stuff.
It's really, really great. In a nuclear power plant that shall remain nameless, they keep hiring people to delete emails and fill out forms designed to ask external contractors to do the work they're too stupid or too lazy to do.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a funny thing when a community became something not where you were accepted by the members of that community, but where you could get a piece of paper from a government that says you're now part of the community, right? It's a wild thing.
What's a square foot of your patch?
It's not huge. Like 15 by 15 feet.
Maybe 20 by 20.
It's not huge.
But it's fenced and I take pretty good care of it and weed it and all that kind of stuff.
Hey Steph, did you ever end up going to church?
Curious to hear where you stand on Christianity today.
I have not recently, but it's on the list.
It's on the list. Honestly, my religion at the moment is my book on
peaceful parenting.
Alright, any questions, comments, issues, problems?
Go to www.dreams-dreams.com to find out more.
Any tips for entrepreneurs in this economy?
Oh man, entrepreneurs, you guys got it made.
You guys got it made, Joe.
Just be relentlessly good, relentlessly enthusiastic and relentlessly help the living crap out of people.
Make their lives better.
Help them out. They will be drawn to you because competent people these days are an oasis in the desert and if you can't make it as an entrepreneur, if you're competent and enthusiastic, I don't understand.
What's going on? Because you can do it.
Just be proactive, help people, make sure they're satisfied, and build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.
I mean, I remember when I started this show, like, I don't know, 17, 18 years ago, and it's like, I wonder if I could make 50 bucks a day.
That would be incredible. I've not read Isaac Asimov's series foundation.
I have not read Isaac Asimov's series foundation because Isaac Asimov was one of the most horrifying human beings around.
He was absolutely horrendous.
Did you not know about any of this stuff?
Like, I won't do it. Yeah, no, I can't.
I can't do it. Marion Zimmer Bradley, I think, was a similar kind of thing.
Yeah, so, for those of you who don't know, there's actually a tie-in, too, to Trump, believe it or not.
Not in the way some lefties would think, but...
Yeah, David Asimov, son of the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, was arraigned in Sonoma County, charged his felony exploitation of child and related child, well, you know, charges, right?
More than 4,000 computer disks and videotapes from his home.
He said, there were thousands of discs, thousands of videos, said Sonoma County Deputy District Attorney Gary Medvigy, who was handling the case.
Anything imaginable regarding sex between human beings and human beings or human beings and animals was there.
Whatever your imagination can conjure up, he had it.
And... It was a processing center for this material.
Videotapes, computer discs, video cameras, several VCRs and editing equipment.
So we assume that it would seem that it would be more than just for personal consumption, in my opinion, but...
So that's who he raised.
So fuck him. Yeah.
Yeah, it's...
Done any study on the life of twins?
No, not much.
Yeah, so, like, honestly, I can't touch Asimov's language.
I don't care what he writes, because, I mean, he was a complete workaholic and all of that, but this is who he produced.
I don't care what writing he produced, if this is the person he produced.
No, thank you.
If I could only watch or listen to one show ever for the rest of my life, it would be Stefan at Freedom Anne.
Thank you, my friend, that's...
Hits me in the feels. I really appreciate that.
That's very kind. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Alright.
Let's just do another few minutes just for supporters, if that's alright.
I'm just going to switch it over.
We'll do a couple of minutes just for supporters.
And, of course, if you want to join, let me give you the link if you want to join.
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