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Aug. 10, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:24:34

5237 KILLER SHOW: BE YOUR OWN DAMN RULER!

Wednesday Night Live, 9 Aug 2023I feel attached to my musical instruments from my teens, I keep saying to myself I'll pick them up again eventually. The idea of selling them feels like a betrayal.Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!Get access to StefBOT-AI, private livestreams, premium call in shows, my new book and the History of Philosophers series!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022

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	Post-COVID, you goose-stepped along with the stormtroopers of massive medical compliance, and everyone was like, nope, never happened really.
	Oh, you know, we just didn't know what we didn't know.
	Oh my gosh.
	Oh, it's crazy.
	All right.
	Well, let's get to your questions.
	Welcome to your Wednesday Night Live.
	Thank you for your patience as I set up a French-Canadian show.
	I smoke in church.
	Right.
	I do it to doggy style while watching Le Stanley Cup, eh?
	All right, can we listen to the voodoo unpacking call-in?
	Sounds interesting.
	Well, it went in an interesting direction.
	I talked about, have you ever been curious about the topic of what seems to be somewhat common in modern society?
	Female irresponsibility or a lack of accountability on the part of females.
	Have you ever noticed this?
	And I was talking about how one of the things... So, if you've been around little kids, toddlers, the way they play is very interesting.
	Because they have wild imaginations and they believe that they have amazing powers, particularly boys.
	You know, like, I'm Superman, I can travel through time, I can fly, all of this.
	They do all of this wild stuff.
	And yet, of course, because they're toddlers, they have to be immune from the consequences of their decisions, right?
	You have to prevent them from actually jumping off a wall to pretend to fly and all of that kind of stuff, right?
	So I was talking about, not all, of course, but a lot of modern women seem to go through this thing where they perceive themselves to be omnipotent and yet also toddlers at the same time.
	It's really quite a fascinating phenomenon that goes on in the world.
	So what I mean by that is
	They say, well, I should be allowed to date and sleep with whoever I want to.
	I'm omnipotent.
	I can choose anything, make all the decisions I want.
	However, should I get pregnant with a guy who doesn't support me, you all, you all over there and there and there, I'm going to use the power of the state to force you to pay for my baby.
	Do you ever notice this?
	Well, you can't boss me.
	You're not the boss of me.
	I should be able to eat whatever I want.
	I don't have to exercise if I don't want to.
	I don't exist for the male gaze.
	Oh, do I have diabetes?
	Sorry, you, you, you, and yes, well, pretty much everyone, I'm going to force you to pay for my health care through the power of the state.
	So we have this wild situation in society.
	It happens every now and then in human history.
	This wild situation in society.
	And the analogy I used in the call-in, I'll try and put it out over the next day or two.
	The analogy I used in the call-in was, if I'm unjustly imprisoned, and I get a bowl of oatmeal a day, am I responsible for what I eat?
	Nope!
	I don't have a choice, right?
	However, if I go to pretty much an infinite buffet,
	The movable feast they call parasite.
	If I go to an infinite buffet and I can eat anything that I want, am I responsible for what I put in my mouth?
	Of course I'm not responsible for what I'm fed in prison, but I am responsible for what I put in my mouth in an infinite buffet.
	And so we have this funny situation in the world as a whole, at the moment, where women, the fairer sex, the gorgeous ladies, what they do is they demand more and more choice with less and less accountability.
	In other words,
	At the same time as I demand an infinite buffet of choice, I also demand that I never be held accountable for what I put in my mouth.
	Isn't that wild?
	I'm all powerful.
	I am woman.
	Hear me roar.
	With great power comes what?
	Logically, for men.
	With great power comes what?
	Great responsibility.
	Yet we have this thing where women want more and more power and simultaneously less and less responsibility.
	It's just wild.
	Now, of course, this is all the states and all of that, right?
	But it's just, it's just wild.
	It's just wild.
	All right.
	Let me just get to your... So anyway, it was a good call-in.
	It was a good call-in.
	Had a bit of a twist in the middle that I did not see coming.
	I did not see that coming.
	All right.
	I wonder if Steph will use the dental slash painkiller analogy the same day I got my teeth pulled.
	Teeth pulled?
	What happened?
	Hey Steph, was curious if you intend to teach your daughter the game of Go.
	I don't think I've ever played Go.
	We play some Uno.
	And something about exploding kittens.
	But I don't remember playing Go.
	This is going to be a good one, I can feel it.
	Thank you Dylan, I hope so.
	Also, the first time subscribing today.
	Thank you very much.
	I really, really appreciate that.
	Just watched your show on mental illness.
	What a trip.
	Yeah, it's wild, eh?
	What was that, 15 years ago?
	Feels like, well, more than yesterday.
	In what ways do women and men's brains differ such that they each have distinct writing styles?
	Often I can tell by reading a text itself whether a man or a woman wrote it.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay, so why do women communicate?
	What is the central purpose of women, what do women, what are women trying to achieve when they communicate?
	With each other, with, well, with men.
	What are women trying to achieve?
	Let's hear what you have to say.
	It is our show.
	Status?
	It's not specific.
	Men try to do that too.
	To network with other women.
	Resources?
	No.
	What do women, what are women trying to achieve when they communicate?
	Attention?
	Oh, that's when they communicate with men in particular.
	Commiseration.
	Emotional connection.
	Empathy.
	So they're seeking out allies.
	Right?
	Look, this is the trick.
	Whenever you think of men and women and why we do what we do, you have to think of evolution.
	Thinking about it in the present is not particularly helpful or useful.
	You must, must, must, my friends, think about women as they evolve.
	So what did women need during the course of our evolution?
	Women needed support from other women.
	Women needed support from other women because you had to watch each other's kids, you had to help raise each other's kids, and so you had to create alliances with other women.
	Plus, if you had alliances with women, those women would be less likely to sleep with your husband, and thus remove your provider potentially from your life, so women were seeking alliances as a whole.
	Which is why women tend to be into gossip and things like that, because gossip is a way of saying, I will share privileged information with you, you and me together, the sisterhood, blah, blah, blah.
	So women are seeking alliances as a whole.
	Now, why do men communicate?
	What are men communicating for?
	Why do we, as men, communicate?
	I think you're right, Risto.
	Yeah, we communicate to get things done, to get things organized, to arrange for the war party, to arrange for the hunting party, to make sure resources get gathered.
	We are about exchanging information.
	We are... Well, the important stuff.
	No, it's not.
	It's not like men are the important stuff and women's are not the important stuff, because without the women's stuff there aren't any men, right?
	So, yeah, you're teasing, okay.
	So, yep, that's what.
	So, women communicate for the sake of forging alliances and relationships and protection from stuff, and men communicate to get shit done.
	I think that's right.
	Hit me with an N if you don't agree with that.
	I'm perfectly happy to get your guys' thoughts about it.
	We can reformulate it if need be.
	And these are very broad, ba-dum-bum, very sort of broad, broad things.
	Right?
	Sort of makes sense?
	Right?
	So, what do men do when they first meet?
	Right?
	What do men do when they first meet?
	In general.
	And this is true even now, but what do men do when they first meet?
	When you, yeah, you size them up.
	You size each other up.
	Yeah, that's right.
	Are you a threat?
	Are you a benefit?
	And what we do is, what men do is, we establish our own status and we inquire about the other person's status.
	Right?
	Oh, here's what I do for a living.
	I obviously tell people that I'm an unemployed dishwasher because it's safer.
	But you say, here's what I do for a living.
	And what do you do?
	Now, what are the non-verbal ways in which men establish status with each other?
	What are the non-verbal ways?
	How do you figure out a man's status without talking to him?
	Handshake?
	Eye contact?
	Yep.
	Muscles?
	Eye contact?
	Suits?
	Thumbsucking?
	Standing up straight?
	Posture?
	Handshake?
	Oh, gosh, you guys!
	Hit me with a why if you're single!
	Hit me with a why if you're single.
	Yeah, I thought so.
	Yeah, you got it.
	Does he have a hot wife?
	Come on, baby.
	How do men figure out the status of other men?
	We look at the wife.
	Am I wrong?
	Isn't there a whole comedy thing?
	Oh, is Eva Mendes and some guy and Will Ferrell... Oh, Will Ferrell and...
	Marky Mark, whatever his name is.
	Mark Wahlberg.
	And Eva Mendez.
	Thank you for the tip.
	Oh yes, thank you for reminding me.
	Yes, if you want to, if you would like to tip, I would really, really appreciate it.
	I did, I can't even tell you how much work today.
	I got up, I did two and a half hours writing, and wrote like 5,000 words on the Peaceful Parenting book, and then I had a quick
	Coffee, I didn't even have any lunch, and then I did a two and a half hour call-in show, and then I had a quick dinner, and then I played 15 minutes of Diablo 4, and then came straight here!
	So, yes, this is a lot of work, and some of it, of course, is not going to be visible until the book is done, but if you could help me out, freedomain.com slash donate, if you're listening to this later, you can help me out here, you can help me out on the app,
	As well.
	So, I would really, really appreciate that.
	So, spitting facts right from the start.
	Yes.
	Yes, that's true.
	So, why do men try to establish status with each other?
	Why do men try to establish status with each other?
	You know, they call it the dick measuring contest or the chest thumping or whatever.
	Why do men try to establish status with each other?
	So you don't get in trouble with someone who can mess you up?
	Maybe, yeah.
	Who leads when we need to get shit done?
	Yeah, but you don't always need to get shit done, right?
	So we don't quibble when the work needs to be done?
	Hierarchy makes people fight less in the wrong, yeah, in the long run.
	Yeah, that's right.
	That's right.
	Oh, Michelle's gonna answer.
	I can't wait!
	I see the typing.
	To figure out who gets true first dibs on gals?
	Well, but remember, I mean, the courting phase is a very short phase in the life of men.
	Who to kowtow to, who to get to kowtow to you.
	Yes, but for what, right?
	For brotherhood.
	So they know other men aren't going to vie for their women.
	Fantastic stuff.
	Did we get Michelle's answer?
	Oh, because she's a woman, she's typing for a long time.
	I'm just kidding.
	You know, Mish, love you to death.
	Are you still typing?
	You're gonna get the wall of text right that makes boyfriends pee themselves just a little bit like women doing powerlifting.
	To figure out who's the most competent, to figure out who's honest.
	No!
	The reason...
	That men establish status with each other is to figure out if it's worthwhile exchanging resources, exchanging skills, exchanging value, exchanging whatever, right?
	That's why we establish status, right?
	Is this person worth exchanging resources with?
	Do they know we're the best?
	Do they have reasonably high status?
	Will my kids want to play with their kids?
	Will our wives be friends?
	Will I have gifts that I can offer this person and the gifts that the other person can offer me?
	Right?
	To give and receive gifts, you need to be on the same level, right?
	To give and receive gifts, you need to be on the same level.
	If you're superior, you give gifts, but there's no receiving gifts, right?
	I mean, if you're mentoring some...
	Teenager, right?
	You're some 40-year-old businessman, you're mentoring some teenager, you're giving him gifts, he's not giving you gifts, right?
	So that's a superior-inferior, in a sense, relationship, or dominant-submissive relationship.
	If you are, of course, inferior, so to speak, if you're lower on the status pole, then you can give gratitude and a satisfaction for being mentoring and all that, but you can't give gifts to the guy who's in charge.
	So gift-giving is a horizontal thing.
	Superior to inferior, you can give.
	It's not mutual, right?
	So you need to figure out, can you mutually provide gifts?
	In other words, are you on the same levels, right?
	Hence the reason my low-class friends are gone.
	Yeah, you can't.
	Yeah, only men in the same social strata can be mutually beneficial.
	Also, if you establish, and this is partly what people were saying earlier, if as a man you establish a horizontal partnership with somebody at the same level of status, then you're fighting the same enemies above and below, right?
	You're fighting the same enemies.
	You're natural allies.
	So let's say there's a 1 to 10, right?
	There's hierarchies 1 to 10.
	If you team up with another guy on 7, level 7, then you work to keep the 6s and below below, and you work to try and get up to the 8s, 9s, and 10s.
	So you are natural allies and you can exchange the gifts of companionship.
	And of course, the other thing too, is that if you start at seven and your friend gets to an eight, your friend can help you get to an eight and vice versa.
	So you can both climb up together like the ladder, two step at a time, right?
	So.
	People make friends with people of the same socioeconomic level.
	It's awkward being friends with someone in a whole different social sphere.
	Oh yeah, it is.
	And really, and the older you get,
	You know, when I was younger, I really didn't like the term loser.
	I didn't really like the term failure.
	I did all that kind of stuff.
	Right.
	But I remember reading.
	It's like the statement.
	Anybody who's seen on a bus over the age of 30 is a failure in life.
	In failure.
	And, uh, do you guys know people who are just losers?
	Like they just.
	Why do you think male friendships seem to be more stable than female ones?
	Because male friendships, male friendships have an empirical test.
	Male friendships have an empirical test.
	Have we succeeded?
	Like, so male friendship, uh, is around a goal oriented activity and the pleasure is not staring into each other's eyes, so to speak, but you, and you can't betray your friend for the sake of a goal oriented activity.
	Like if you go hunting with a friend, you both have to cooperate in order to win.
	So.
	Whereas female friendships tend to be based on alliances that aren't goal-oriented and therefore tend to be more unstable because they're not measured by success in some objective realm.
	Ah, let's see here.
	I fear I'm a loser.
	I resemble that remark, yeah.
	You know of them?
	Yeah.
	If you... I mean, you know this, right?
	Really successful people tend to be friends with other really successful people.
	And failures, right?
	Misery loves company.
	Failures tend to hang out with other failures.
	Somebody says, everybody I used to know was a loser.
	Video games, alcohol, divorces, poor health.
	Oh yeah, various addictions and all that.
	And just unable to get their life started and just kind of circling the drain and bumping around the bottom of the hierarchy and all that.
	And it could also happen with siblings, right?
	So remember, there's an average of 8 to 12 IQ points differences between siblings.
	So, you know, one sibling can be a real failure, the other sibling can be a real success, and it's really tough.
	I've heard the idea that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
	It's not a bad, I guess, vague rule of thumb.
	So, yeah, so the losers are people who have not gathered enough resources to be beneficial to others.
	A loser is somebody who has not gathered enough resources to be beneficial to others.
	If you can't give gifts, you have no status.
	So there's two forms of status in the male hierarchy.
	What are the two forms of status?
	I mean, one is obvious, which we've already talked about.
	What's the one form of status?
	I mean, and the most common historically among men?
	We see it in the animal kingdom all the time.
	No, not height.
	It's violence.
	Right, so aggression, threats, right?
	That's the one form of status.
	And that's the aggressive form of status.
	The benevolent form of status is providing value.
	So, I mean, I mentioned before I've been watching a couple of these shows, old shows, with Gordon Ramsay called Kitchen Nightmares.
	Now, Gordon Ramsay is quite aggressive and goes in and tries to fix restaurants that are going out of business.
	People are going to lose their houses, their cars, their savings, their credit.
	I mean, they're just about to, just people are just right about to go over the cliff.
	Now, he comes in and he turns these restaurants around from losing $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 a month to making a profit.
	So he provides massive value.
	Which is why people are begging for him to come and they're willing to subject themselves to all kinds of humiliations, get yelled at, screamed at, sworn at.
	Because he will save their butts, right?
	Why do people... I mean, sometimes people call in to me and the calls can be kind of rough, right?
	But I think that they do it because they know I'm there to help them and, you know, tell them blunt truths that they probably can't get anywhere else.
	So...
	Yeah he's a, the man is a total genius, like I just wanted, I mean he's a complete genius and you can just see that crackling ferocious intelligence and impatience with the average.
	So he provides value, and because he provides a lot of value, he makes a lot of money.
	You don't make money, you provide value.
	That's the measure, right?
	And part of the value you provide is being assertive, which is why I try to be assertive about... Come on, people!
	Donate a little here.
	Don't be free riders.
	Man's gotta eat.
	So yeah, so I'm sort of assertive in showing how to get what you need or what you deserve or what you want.
	In this case, donations.
	You can tip me, of course.
	I'm really trying to show that, right?
	So for
	Well she says the yelling and insults over the TV show on British TV he's much nicer and more polite.
	Yes but he did grow up with a ferociously verbally abusive father so I'm sure that character is in there somewhere.
	So freedomain.com slash donate if you're listening to this letter.
	So, the violence dominance tends to be more primitive, and the benevolence or gift-giving dominance, the exchange of gifts.
	Now, the reason why men look for men of similar status is also so that... So, another reason why you look for a man of a similar status is if you have a similar status, you're going to have a similar level of attractiveness of wives.
	If you and your friends all have wives of about the same attractiveness, then you won't be lusting after each other's wives.
	Whereas a low status male with an ugly fat wife and a high status male with a gorgeous sexy wife, it's going to destabilize things, right?
	Because the low status male is going to be lusting after the wife of the high status male and it's just going to be a mess, right?
	Uh, somebody says, I've read Gordon Ramsay's autobiography and his childhood was horrendous.
	His father chased after him when he was 15, trying to murder him.
	So he had to run away for his life and was self-sufficient after that point, working 18 hours a day, six days a week.
	Right.
	So now I wasn't chased out of home, but I've been paying my own bills since I was 15.
	Um, which is why it kind of bothers me when, Oh, I shouldn't say this.
	Should I?
	Should I say this?
	I'm just, uh... Should I?
	I should?
	You know, I don't mean to be negative towards the delightful callers.
	But when, there are a couple of things, I don't know how much to unpack the secret life of the philosophy host, but there are a couple of things that drive me kind of crazy.
	One is because I've been paying, I mean, I got my first job when I was 10, I've been paying my own bills since I was 15.
	So when people are like, well, I'm 25 and I live at home and my parents pay all my bills, I'm like, oh,
	I literally have to unclench my jaw and break my heart as the song goes.
	I literally have to unclench my jaw because it's like, what?
	10 years after you had the potential to be self-sufficient, you're still sucking the financial teat of mom.
	Like it's just, whoa.
	I never have to hold back?
	Well, that's not true.
	I'll tell you, that's absolutely not true.
	So the reason why I don't want to be, the reason I don't want to be negative to the call-ins is that like, I was, okay, how many, how many pages do you think I've been writing for what, 10 days?
	How many pages do you think I've gotten done of the Peaceful Parenting book?
	How many pages?
	And these are like, not even book pages, like eight and a half, right?
	Eight and a half inch pages, single spaced.
	What have I got?
	Jared, you don't need to be in the document the whole time.
	Uh, so I have done 212 pages, 86,000 words.
	And, uh, yeah, that's a lot.
	No, nobody does 340 pages in 10 days.
	34 pages a day would be insane.
	Tell me you've never written a book without telling me you've never written a book.
	Um, hopefully you're done.
	Oh God.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Not even close.
	Not even close.
	Not in terms of, not in terms of length, but in terms of like, I've got to get all the empirical details that Jared's pulling together.
	And again, you know, part of the donations is to help out with that as well.
	So, um,
	So one of the reasons why I'm so grateful to the call-in people is like, I'm like, well, why do I have all of this incredible stuff to say about childhood and parenting?
	And it's like, because I've listened to thousands of people talk about their childhoods, how they were parenting, and I've seen and felt the visceral effects of bad parenting from thousands of people.
	And I thank you guys so much for giving me the raw material through which I can fashion this hopefully very powerful and life-changing book.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Let me get to you.
	It's hard not to believe that God is writing through you.
	It does kind of feel that way, to be honest with you.
	It really, I feel like I'm not writing.
	I'm just transcribing.
	Just transcribing.
	Thank you for your tips, Matt.
	I appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	Also, the great Con with a K.
	I remember, gosh, I remember Peter Joseph of the Zeitgeist, I think called me a con man way back in the day and I remember trying to explain that to my daughter when she was very young.
	It's incredible how many restaurant owners would rather go broke and lose everything than to admit they're wrong and listen to someone correcting them.
	Yes, the lack of course correction is foundational to failing as an entrepreneur.
	If you can't correct course, if you can't change course, you cannot succeed as an entrepreneur.
	You have to be relentlessly empirical, keep trying things, A, B tests, see what works and just keep relentlessly focusing on what works.
	All right.
	Let me just get to your comments and questions.
	I'll call.
	I'll buy a nice microphone first.
	Well, I appreciate that, for sure.
	Lived in a squat house at 16.
	You just make it work.
	I don't get it either.
	Yeah.
	It is strange, right?
	Hey, Steph!
	Should I sell my video- Sorry.
	Should I sell my childhood video games slash possessions?
	I feel like they're weighing me down, but my parents think I'll regret it if I get rid of them all.
	Any thoughts?
	Hmm.
	Should I sell my childhood video games slash possessions?
	Okay.
	Let me just ask this from the audience here, you lovely people.
	Let me just figure this out.
	How light do you travel through life?
	How light do you travel through life?
	Are you like, I remember one of my college roommates showed up.
	He had a bowl and a spoon.
	He had a wooden bowl, a spoon and a change of underpants.
	That's how light he traveled.
	That was a little too light.
	So like one bare bones monk you can move in a day and 10 like you've got crazy hoarding stuff, right?
	How light do you travel through life?
	Don't give me, give me, give me numbers.
	I need to see numbers, please.
	You don't have to agree, but please listen.
	Okay.
	So you guys are a little bit on the light traveling side, right?
	Okay.
	So I'm fairly keen on Traveling Light.
	I had a friend once, he was a university professor and when he got married to his wife he said, look, we have to get library cards.
	This is back in the day before e-books.
	We have to get library cards because he was also married to another professor of literature, two professors of literature, good friends of mine, and
	He said when he got married to his wife, we simply have to get library cards because otherwise we're gonna be buried in books.
	Like, we're gonna just buy books, we're gonna have books, maintain books, bookshelves, if we ever have to move, God help us.
	Like, we simply have to have this agreement that we're not gonna get buried under books.
	So...
	I try to, I try to stay fairly light.
	I sort of have a rule, like I buy a fair number of books.
	Not so many physical books anymore, but I used to buy books, oh this will be good for the show.
	If I haven't done a show within 18 months, I'll toss it.
	I try to, I try to stay fairly, fairly light.
	Where I can, I recycle my electronics and things like that.
	So I do try to stay fairly light.
	Now,
	When it comes to your childhood stuff, should I sell my childhood video games and possessions?
	Well, why would you keep them?
	There would be two reasons to keep them.
	One is for sentimentality, the other is for your children.
	One is emotional, one is practical.
	Now, I remember, gosh, I remember seeing a show by, oh gosh, who was it?
	Not Joss Whedon, the other one.
	Anyway, Freaks and Geeks, and in it there was a kid looking at a rack of video games in a store, I guess it's in the early 80s or whatever, and I felt just a real wash and wave of nostalgia.
	Looking at that scene, because I remember, you know, I mean, I remember going to a computer store at Young and Eglinton that stayed open late and they showed us all the cool new stuff.
	I was in a computer club.
	I went Saturdays to program computers whenever I had any time.
	At the moment I got a little bit of inheritance from a grandmother, a step-grandmother who died in Germany.
	I bought a computer so I could learn how to program.
	I mean, it's a Bill Gates thing.
	He said, whatever you obsessively do from the age of 13 to 18 is probably something you can excel at in life.
	So
	I do get these occasional waves of nostalgia, but I don't look back that much at all.
	And this is not anything other than my particular perspective, so it's not better or worse.
	But I would say that if you have a lot of nostalgia for your childhood, there's unprocessed stuff there.
	That is an example.
	So if you look at your childhood toys and games, and you say, oh, I yearn, I have such an emotional connection and so on, it's like,
	I think that that's probably something you should go back and figure out the why.
	Figure out- Judd Apatow, thank you.
	Figure out the why.
	Why do you have such an emotional connection for things you played with decades ago?
	Is there something incomplete in your childhood?
	In other words, and a lot of times, why do people have nostalgia?
	People have nostalgia because they prefer the past to the present.
	Ooh, that's a bad idea, man.
	It's a very bad idea to prefer the past to the present.
	You know, one of the reasons that I gave up on politics, or withdrew from politics, was because I did not have hope for philosophy fixing politics anymore.
	And I did not want to be in a situation of hopelessness.
	And so I withdraw from situations of hopelessness, like despair and hopelessness.
	These are all signs that you need to take your ball and go home, right?
	Like you need to stop.
	You need to stop fighting and run away.
	It's time to retreat, right?
	Hopelessness, despair.
	These are all very important emotions, right?
	I feel like those video games were one of the only things I enjoyed as a kid.
	Right, so if you process your lack of enjoyment, if you process your lack of enjoyment,
	Like I, the other day I had this weird compulsion.
	I was telling my daughter about how when I was a kid, there was a, of course I lived across from the Don Mills Mall and there was a little vector game called Starhawk.
	I think it was called Starhawk.
	And basically it was a, there was a Death Star trench spinning and these spaceships came and you had to shoot them and blow them up and so on.
	And it was a timed game.
	It wasn't a score game.
	It's just how much score can you get?
	Now, I was saying to my daughter, I said, you know, when I was a kid, I don't know if you had this, I'm sure you did, I didn't just go and play a video game.
	Right?
	Ultima 5.
	Yeah, the Ultima series was great.
	I didn't just have a video game.
	What I would do is, maybe I'd have a quarter, I'd sneak a quarter from my mom's purse or whatever, and I would
	I would pretend that the call came in.
	Commander Molyneux, we need you to repel the alien invasion.
	And I set this whole thing up.
	I wasn't just going to go play a video.
	I wasn't just dropping a quarter or dropping a caribou and playing a game.
	I had to have a whole setup.
	You've got to get across to the command center right away.
	And I'd literally run across to the mall, and I'd put the quarter in, and the helmet would come down in my mind.
	And I wouldn't just play a video game.
	I was part of a whole story, right?
	And for some reason, and so after I told this I was like, what was the name of that game?
	I finally looked that up and I found it and I spent I think 10 minutes getting a multiple arcade machine emulator, MAME, and I got Starhawk running on my computer and I remembered it like so vividly.
	I remembered it so vividly, even though there were some things I forgot, like the little spaceship that arrives in the top corner, right?
	And so I just remembered how
	I played a game, Galaga, I played Galaga the other day and my daughter and I were at an arcade and I'm like, oh I remember this, you know, it's programmed, the music, everything is programmed.
	So if you have great nostalgia, then you're probably in a situation where you feel that the past was happier than the present.
	And one of the ways that the past seems happier than the present is in the past, you had hope.
	Right?
	Didn't you have hope for like society and politics and we can reason people into better things and we can provide evidence and rationality and good arguments and we can solve things.
	Solve things with words!
	Use your words, not your fists, right?
	I don't feel that anymore, for whatever reason.
	But the reality is that I have a better personal life than I ever imagined.
	It's not particularly related.
	Like, honestly, I don't mean to brag or anything, I'm just telling you the truth.
	I mean, I couldn't have a better family life if I tried.
	Like, I couldn't change anything, I couldn't invent anything.
	There's nothing I want to tweak, nothing I want to change.
	I couldn't have a better family life if I tried.
	And I thank my wife and my daughter every day.
	I just thank you guys for being so wonderful and making my life so fantastic.
	It's just wonderful.
	Great, fantastic.
	So in terms of hope, I didn't expect to have this great a family life.
	So I have more, like the more control I have,
	The more my happiness and hope increases, the less control I have, the more futility and despair I feel.
	I don't have any control over politics, of course, right?
	Particularly after deplatforming.
	So I have to sort of accept that.
	So... Well, I don't have to, but it's wise to.
	Rationally, I have to accept it.
	So if you've got something cooking in your childhood that you look back with great fondness and nostalgia, it means that you left something behind you gotta go back and get.
	If you find yourself looking back, you're really attached to your childhood stuff, childhood video games, childhood games, childhood memories.
	It's a sign from your unconscious that you left something behind that you need to go and get.
	Does that make sense?
	That you've left some positivity, some optimism, some, maybe some sorrow.
	You've left something behind.
	My brother is very nostalgic and he can't move on.
	Right.
	Nostalgia is a chain that tethers you to an unprocessed history.
	Nostalgia is your unconscious saying, turn back, turn back.
	You left something behind.
	Much love.
	Stefan, you helped me more than you and anyone else could ever imagine.
	Thank you, my friend.
	I do feel like it was better back then.
	What was it?
	Life?
	You?
	Society?
	Of course, I was taught in the 70s and early 80s.
	So I was taught by the generation that grew up in the 40s and 50s.
	So I was taught by real old school people.
	And the newer people are taught by crazed ideologues.
	Oh, your happiness as a child versus right now.
	Okay, so if you feel like you look back, you say, I was much happier as a child than I am now, it means that you're betraying your child, your inner child, you're betraying your childhood by leaving all the happiness in your past.
	You're misbelieving that smart or good people were in charge?
	Well, I think there used to be smarter and better people in charge, right?
	Smart people set up institutions and then corrupt midwits end up taking them over for their own ridiculous purposes.
	I mean, there was a study done recently about particularly left-wing totalitarianism or left-wing authoritarianism.
	Do you know what the three major ingredients, the three personality traits or experiences that most predict whether somebody is going to become authoritarian?
	Do you know what the... No, it's not the dark triad, that's a different thing.
	Do you know?
	No, it's not neuroticism.
	What is it that makes people in particular left-wing authoritarians?
	Childhood trauma.
	That's all too general.
	All too general.
	The three...
	Yeah.
	That's good.
	Yeah.
	Low, low verbal intelligence.
	Yeah.
	So low verbal skills, right?
	Low verbal skills is number one.
	This is not in any particular order.
	So you have to have low verbal skills, low verbal abilities.
	That's number one.
	Number two, you have to have, you have to be female or have a feminine personality structure.
	And number three, you have to be exposed to woke education.
	Yeah.
	Take it a woke class.
	Feminine or female personality structure, low verbal intelligence.
	So, uh, there's a lot of people who hit the trifecta there, sadly, in the world.
	And because of your low verbal intelligence, you can't be talked out of anything because you weren't talked into anything.
	Alright, so with regards to should you sell your childhood video games and possessions, if you have the question, that's because you're attached to them.
	If you're attached to them, it means that there's something in there that you need to recover.
	So if I were you, I would go back and try and recover.
	Whatever emotional energy is stuck there so that you can liberate yourself.
	You have to find a way to be happy in the present.
	You have to find some way to be positive about the future.
	It's verbal intelligence associated with logic.
	So, low verbal intelligence means you're just not good at manipulating language.
	Now, when you're not good at manipulating language, it means that you're easily programmed by language, and also because you don't see the manipulation, and also it means that you tend to be, you become emotionally addicted to a particular outcome, but you can't debate it.
	You can't debate for it.
	It has to happen, but you can't debate for it.
	So because you can't debate what you want, because you've got low verbal intelligence, you turn to the state, you turn to deplatforming, you turn to aggression, you turn to all of this sort of stuff.
	So yeah, low verbal intelligence combined with woke programming means that you absolutely have to have a certain outcome, but you can't debate well for it, so you become authoritarian as well.
	Even all the Dungeons and Dragons books sitting in the basement
	Somebody says, I feel attached to my musical instruments from my teens.
	I keep saying to myself, I'll pick them up again eventually.
	The idea of selling them feels like a betrayal.
	Right.
	That's another question.
	Do you have stuff around that you plan to get to that you haven't got to?
	Like this example, right?
	Is there some book on programming that you keep meaning to go through?
	Is there a piano tutorial that you mean to start up?
	Is there notes to a book that you want to write?
	Is there something kicking around?
	That you just are basically lying to yourself about.
	Yes, says Julie.
	Yes, says Nathan.
	Yes.
	I plan on converting my old VHS to digital.
	Well, you can just drop that off and get that done real cheap, right?
	Should I keep my old books and DVDs or leave them?
	Memorize the stories long ago, only physical things I have of any extra income I have left.
	Everything in your life is like that.
	Well... Oh, Julie says, I saved my comics from my childhood and will pass them to my daughter.
	I love them because I learned to draw from them.
	Yeah, see, that's great.
	That's for your kid, though, right?
	So that's totally fine for me.
	And now, if it comes to video games for a kid, though, you can buy these little things that plug into your TV.
	They have like 6,000 video games on them, so you don't need to keep your old video games for that, right?
	So... What's it worth to you?
	For me to solve this in you.
	What is it, uh, what is it worth to you?
	What's it, what's it worth to you?
	You got all this stuff.
	Oh, I got these musical instruments.
	I don't want to, I don't want to, uh, I don't want to throw them out.
	Cause I'm going to pick up those instruments.
	I'm going to finish that book.
	I'm going to learn how to write or piano.
	Is it, is it worth a lot?
	I don't see it.
	I don't see!
	Worth me leaving the stream because it's not what I need lol sorry just honest hey that's fine you can leave um yeah you can buy thumb drives for 10 bucks has 20 Atari 2600 games each with a controller yeah for sure so what's it worth for you to be able to do it or don't to stop having stuff floating around in your head like orbiting you that you kind of half committed to
	See, I'm looking at the live tips.
	What's it worth to you?
	Because listen, this could save you a thousand hours of your life.
	This could save you all of that discontent of, oh, I should get to it.
	Oh, I'm not going to get to it.
	Oh, I should get to it.
	Oh, I'm not going to get to it.
	The answer will surprise you and I guarantee you it'll work.
	If I wasn't low on cash, I would donate at least $100.
	No problem.
	If you're low on cash, please don't donate.
	Don't donate.
	You totally get it for free if you're low on cash.
	I sympathize.
	I understand.
	Been there myself, so I don't worry about it.
	You can just enjoy and consume and, you know, maybe you can fill up when you get some money, but don't feel bad.
	Don't feel bad.
	Enjoy.
	If you're low on cash, I sympathize.
	But I can solve this for you in about five minutes.
	Same.
	Air conditioner died and root canal.
	Wow.
	Wow, did you see?
	What were the temperatures in Florida?
	It's like over 102 degrees.
	It's like, holy surface of the sun, Batman!
	Your sneakers are gonna melt to the sidewalk.
	And your cat died.
	Oh, I'm sorry about that.
	All right.
	Well, not great donations, but I'm gonna help you anyway.
	The worth is very high in the thousands for someone who is seriously suffering from this, in your opinion.
	All right.
	Okay.
	So, um, let's take the example.
	Let me just, I think I stored it here.
	Let me take the example of someone who I feel attached to my musical instruments from my teens.
	I keep saying to myself, I'll pick them up again.
	Eventually the idea of selling them feels like a betrayal.
	Right.
	Now, you know, I'm not a huge fan of bullying, right?
	Others, people.
	I'm not a big fan of bullying other people.
	But let me ask you this.
	Is forcing someone else to go to the gym a violation of the non-aggression principle?
	It's gonna blow your mind.
	Is forcing someone else to go to the gym a violation of the non-aggression principle?
	Yes it is.
	Is forcing yourself to go to the gym a violation of the non-aggression principle?
	Is forcing yourself to go to the gym a violation of the non-aggression principle?
	Of course not.
	If I force someone else to do a live stream, am I violating their rights, freedoms, independence?
	Of course not.
	Now, I've told you guys, it wasn't the case tonight, but I've told you guys there are times when I have a headache, I'm kind of tired, I don't feel like it, and I'll make myself do a livestream, right?
	Yesterday, I was... What I wrote yesterday was so unbelievably dark,
	It gave me bone marrow chills.
	Like what I wrote yesterday was so unbelievably dark that I literally, this sounds dramatic.
	Honestly, I'm not kidding though.
	I hit my gag reflex.
	Like I, I hit, I hit a gag reflex.
	What I was writing yesterday in the Peaceful Parenting book was so dark.
	Treat yourself as you would treat someone you care about.
	Nope!
	That's entirely wrong.
	I feel the dark stuff coming in the subscriber only part.
	Yeah, maybe I'll read the dark part in the subscriber only.
	It's like, appallingly dark and I've written about totalitarian Nazi evil.
	So,
	Can you bully yourself?
	You can bully others, for sure, because you can threaten them, right?
	Can you bully yourself?
	Most of you say yes.
	Isn't that interesting?
	If I make myself do a live stream I don't want to do, am I bullying myself?
	It's an interesting question, right?
	Am I bullying myself?
	I cannot force myself to do something.
	Therefore, whatever I make myself do does not violate the non-aggression principle.
	Just try.
	I know you all want to go on tangents.
	You really stay with me on this one.
	It's really, really important.
	Because so many people are into the non-aggression principle.
	That they don't want to have discipline with themselves.
	Right?
	They've been bullied as kids.
	They've been over-disciplined, over-aggressed against, over-violated, abused.
	Right?
	But so many people are anti-aggression that they become self-indulgent.
	Do you have trouble completing things?
	Do you have trouble being stern with yourself?
	Which, you know, we sometimes need to be.
	Right?
	I do.
	I can sometimes be too, oh, you know, I've had it tough this week.
	So.
	Does sternness with yourself, just do it.
	Stop whining and just do it.
	Stop complaining and just do it.
	Does that feel like abuse?
	Does that feel like you're just being really harsh and mean to yourself?
	Yes.
	No.
	No, a lot of people say, right?
	Yes, but for good reasons.
	Well, it's tough to say that it's abuse if it's for good reasons.
	If you grab someone and drag them to the ground, that's abuse.
	But if they're about to walk into traffic, it's the only way you can save them, then it's not abuse, because it's a good reason, right?
	Michelle, you say, I have a really hard time regulating swing from too harsh to too lenient.
	Now it's called working out your priorities.
	I feel like I take that inner talk too far.
	Isn't this fascinating?
	I mean, I find this stuff really fascinating myself, right?
	Because the philosophy of the self is not the same as the philosophy of others.
	The philosophy of the self is not the same as the philosophy of others.
	I can't force other people.
	I can't make other people do a live stream.
	I can make myself do a live stream.
	I can't make someone else go to the gym.
	I can make myself go to the gym.
	I can't withhold food from someone else.
	I can choose to diet.
	Or to put it another way, suicide is not the same as murder.
	The philosophy of the self is not the same as the philosophy of others.
	I can't discipline others.
	Can I discipline myself?
	I can't make my daughter do things.
	Morally, I don't want to.
	I can't make my daughter do things.
	Can I make myself do things?
	Yep!
	Saw a lot of people typing.
	Because this is some... I mean, this is some seriously deep stuff.
	This is gold!
	Donated 20 bucks at freedomain.com slash donate.
	I agree, but emotionally I am conflicted.
	Absolutely!
	Absolutely.
	This is super complicated stuff.
	I said I'd switch to subscriber only at an hour, but let's do a little bit more on this topic and then we'll do that if that's alright.
	I mean, it's obvious when you think about it, right?
	Sorry.
	My phone is here somewhere.
	I'm sorry, let me just turn that off because it's kind of distracting.
	Okay, let me ask you this.
	I mean, this all sounds kind of goofy, but it's important.
	Can you steal from other people?
	Can you steal from other people?
	Of course you can.
	Right.
	Can you steal from yourself?
	No, you can't steal from yourself.
	How can you steal from yourself?
	How can you steal from yourself?
	Credit card debt.
	Nope, that's not stealing.
	Going into debt is not stealing from yourself.
	No, you can't steal time.
	How can you steal time from yourself?
	You can't steal from yourself.
	Let me ask you this.
	Of course, you can rape somebody else.
	Just about the most evil thing you can do.
	You can't rape yourself.
	Right?
	Watch you.
	I may not.
	I may decline to watch you.
	You can rob yourself of quality experiences by not doing... No, no, no.
	Come on.
	Let's not start messing around with language, you know, like, well, I've robbed myself of visiting.
	Like that's not stealing.
	Sitting and wasting time versus doing tasks you should be doing.
	That's not stealing from yourself.
	A tooth cannot bite itself.
	Yeah.
	Can I murder myself?
	Nope.
	You can't murder yourself.
	You can F up your reputation for short term gain.
	That's not stealing.
	Can you assault yourself?
	Fight club style, right?
	Can you assault yourself?
	Yes or no?
	You can't even lie to yourself.
	All of these examples are still chosen by the person doing it.
	That's right.
	You can assault yourself with drugs.
	No, you can't.
	If you roofie someone else, you inject someone else or put a drug in someone else's coffee, you're poisoning them.
	If you put a drug in your own coffee, you're not poisoning yourself in the same way.
	You're not assaulting yourself.
	No, murder is the unlawful killing of another.
	If you choose to kill yourself, which of course I strongly advise you don't, but if you choose to kill yourself, that's not murder.
	And that's why, well, the famous line that Hamlet laments that he can't kill himself because the everlasting has set a cannon against self-slaughter.
	I have to leave for a short meeting in 12 minutes.
	It kills me!
	This is gold!
	Well, you'll hear it later.
	What if you have multiple personalities?
	Oh, you nitpickers!
	Oh, no you can't!
	No you can't!
	Just relax into the facts.
	Relax into the facts.
	This sounds like the ultimate victim card.
	Being a victim of yourself!
	Right.
	You cannot bully yourself.
	At least you can't use the same word that you would use to bully someone else.
	This is why I'm using the technical words.
	Bullying someone is threatening them against their will to get compliance.
	You're not bullying someone if he says, I want you to yell at me so that I go to the gym, and then you call them up and yell at them to go to the gym, right?
	That's with their permission, right?
	What if you had a time machine and traveled through time and murdered yourself?
	I know you're kidding, but see, here's the interesting thing, right?
	So I'm giving you some straight facts, which are clear and simple, right?
	You cannot assault yourself.
	You cannot rape yourself.
	You cannot steal from yourself.
	And do you see how you're trying to create exceptions?
	Now, why are you trying to create exceptions?
	Let's talk about the emotions here, right?
	That's the self-knowledge time, right?
	Why are you trying to create exceptions?
	Two obvious statements.
	Can you be abusive to yourself?
	No.
	No.
	I mean, you can make bad decisions and all of that, but abuse is when you inflict against someone's will emotional pain, and usually when they're trapped.
	If it's wrong to beat up a friend or a friend's friend, then it's wrong to beat up yourself.
	You are your friend's friend!
	No.
	What if your inner parents abuse you?
	Well, that's under your control to some degree, right?
	How would you describe people who cut themselves?
	Well, they are acting out the murderous impulses of their, quote, caregivers, right?
	I feel dissociation and wanting to not process it.
	You cannot punish yourself.
	Fatties abuse themselves.
	No, they don't.
	No.
	No, because if you, if you kidnap someone and force feed that person until they become obese, Nicky Avocado style, if you kidnap someone and force feed them so that they become obese, then you have assaulted them.
	Fatties, overweight people do not abuse themselves.
	Because, I mean, just think of the law, right?
	And you can even think of the current law, think of the common law, think of a law in a rational society.
	If you force feed someone to the point that they become obese, you have assaulted them.
	If you eat too much, who do you charge?
	If you can't punish yourself, can you reward yourself?
	Well, that's usually, uh, well, I mean, you can do whatever you want, but reward.
	See, now we're talking about punishment and reward.
	It's a little bit different because we're talking about UPB, right?
	You can reward other people.
	I suppose you can reward yourself, but it's a form of manipulation, right?
	I've been really good on my diet this week.
	I'm going to have some bread pudding, right?
	It makes sense that the rules of our inner world slash life are not necessarily the same as the objective world.
	So you've probably heard this kind of cliché, right?
	And the cliché goes something like this.
	Actually, somebody just wrote about this recently.
	All right, let me just see here.
	Yes, the Babylon Bee wrote about this.
	It's a very funny group.
	The 10 most heinous acts you've committed in your wife's dreams.
	1.
	You went and got coffee, but you didn't get any coffee for her.
	And you had octopus arms.
	You're such an inconsiderate cephalopod sometimes.
	You made out with her sister inside the claw machine at Chuck E. Cheese.
	In front of children?
	Really?
	You drank a Bud Light.
	Drinking woke beer?
	Really?
	What are you hiding from her?
	You ignored her all day and just looked at your phone while she was being robbed by hot pirates.
	Yes, the pirates were super hot, but put down your phone, you jerk!
	You didn't tell her you were turning into an Asian woman.
	Now she's married to an Asian woman.
	How's she supposed to explain that to her family?
	Anyway, so they have a bunch of all of this, right?
	You can read it at your leisure.
	It's Babylonbee.com.
	Okay, hit me with a why.
	If you've ever done something violent,
	In your dreams.
	Hit me with a Y if you've ever... I'll answer that.
	I have done things violent in my dreams.
	Sometimes extraordinarily violent, even in your daydreams.
	Yes.
	Hit me with a Y if you think you're doing something violent right now.
	Just kidding.
	Fighting a monster count?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Those are fun dreams.
	Yeah, well, they're preparing you for combat, right?
	Julie says, yes.
	Francis says, yes.
	Paper eater, yeah, I'll say yes.
	Careful with that axe, Eugene.
	So yeah, you've done violent things in your dreams.
	That's all internal, right?
	It feels very vivid.
	It's all internal.
	There's no thought.
	There's no dream police, right?
	You can't use the same word
	For inner actions or thoughts that you would for outer actions.
	You can't have the same word.
	You can't say theft is stealing other people's property against their will and then say theft is also procrastinating.
	You can't stretch the language that much.
	If you stretch the language, that's a sign that you're disturbed by something.
	We understand that, right?
	When people stretch language, and I understand it's not criticism, it's just a point.
	When people stretch language, it's because they're disturbed by something.
	Which means that most of you are disturbed by the idea that UPB does not apply to your inner life.
	UPB does not apply to your inner life.
	That's why it's very clear.
	I make this very clear in the book.
	This is nothing new.
	It's called universally preferable what?
	What is the word?
	Universally preferable behavior.
	Inner thoughts are not behaviors.
	Universally preferable behavior.
	Empirically measurable outside.
	Not inner thoughts, not states of mind, not dreams, not daydreams, not fantasies, not whimsical journeys through the ether.
	It's behavior.
	And I say morality is a relationship between yourself and others.
	Thought crime does not exist in UPB.
	Absolutely not.
	There's no hate crime, there's no thought crime, there's no hate speech.
	You have dreams, I have to take a test but forgot to attend the class.
	Yeah, we all have those dreams.
	So, this is hitting a deep nerve.
	I just started to feel anxious and craving a cigarette, though I haven't smoked in months.
	Well, good for you for quitting.
	Well done.
	Hit me with a why if this topic's making you a little tense and uneasy.
	No, you okay?
	Some yes?
	Yes, a little?
	So, yeah.
	You're intrigued?
	So, Julie yes, yeah, okay.
	Right.
	You know you can donate on Rumble as well.
	Just letting you know.
	Why did you do things as a child that you didn't want to do?
	Why did you do things as a child that you didn't want to do?
	I'm uncomfortable because this means I can't just sit inside all day doing nothing.
	Fear of mom.
	Fear of punishment.
	Avoid a negative.
	Coercion because someone told me to.
	To survive.
	To comply with authority.
	Forced by parents.
	No choice.
	Was afraid of abandonment.
	My favorite toys got destroyed in front of me.
	Sorry to hear about that.
	Force too.
	Fear of punishment.
	Parents were bigger, stronger.
	What?
	You guys never had any fucking teachers?
	You never had any teachers?
	Come on.
	Why did you do things?
	Why did you do your homework?
	Didn't want to, right?
	Why did you go to school?
	Didn't want to, right?
	Why did you do all these things as a kid that you didn't want to do?
	Fear of condemnation.
	Didn't have the resources to go on my own.
	Fear of retaliation.
	Rage.
	Punishment.
	Teachers punished me through parents because my parents would beat me if I wouldn't.
	Parents' teachers would get mad.
	Teachers threatened to tell our parents to discipline us better.
	The public shaming by teachers.
	Yep.
	I got caned as a kid.
	I got positive attention from teachers for my work so I can't gripe about them too much.
	Didn't realize I had a choice until older.
	No TV if I didn't do my chores.
	Right.
	What is your template for motivating yourself without aggression?
	Kept up late into the night with no help to finish math homework, using cold water to stay awake late.
	Wooden spoon, got grounded.
	Wanted to remain in the social hierarchy.
	Didn't want to end up like my parents, but they obviously didn't help you not end up like them, right?
	Other than being a negative example, which isn't exactly parenting.
	The paddle, yeah?
	Yeah.
	Yep.
	The choice was to manipulate my parents to convince them that I was sick, the only safe place.
	Yeah, I did that.
	I got very good at forging my mom's signature.
	I'm afraid to share some dreams, to be honest.
	You don't have to.
	You want to call in, call in at freedomain.com.
	So, tell me this.
	Necessity to survive and thrive.
	No effing clue how to motivate myself without negative consequences at play.
	My teachers sucked and my parents didn't help me with them much except once in the fourth year.
	Going to school was better than staying at home.
	I'm sorry about that.
	I remember summers were sometimes kind of rough.
	I'd be like looking forward to going back to school and then three days back into school I'd be like, ah shit, school again.
	Right.
	Tell me something you did as a child
	For the sheer pleasure of it.
	Sorry, tell me something that you did as a child that you didn't want to do that wasn't based on fear, threat, consequences, bullying, shaming, bribing.
	What did you do as a kid that you didn't want to do and you did it through discipline?
	Not through fear, not through consequences, not through bullying, not through punishment or anything like that.
	Yeah, brushing my teeth.
	I did that too, yeah.
	Go to the gym to lose weight.
	Yeah, you had a goal there, right?
	Homework.
	Learned English.
	Went to the gym.
	Taekwondo practice.
	Played with the younger sibling.
	Doing my homework.
	Public speaking competition.
	Playing guitar.
	Excellent.
	Martial arts.
	Went to work and earned money so I wouldn't have to ask my parents for money or stuff.
	Yeah, I know that one, yeah.
	Karate.
	Guitar.
	Hopefully not in the same venue.
	Took care of my cat, raised pigs, trained a horse, bike into school.
	Well, you didn't want to bike to school.
	You didn't want to go to school, but we're talking about as a kid, right?
	Anything really outside the house.
	Yard work for money.
	Pick up sports.
	Oh no, yard work for money is for money.
	Mountain biking, build forts, started an online business.
	Right.
	Made things I enjoyed from Lego and was motivated to do it, yeah?
	So, one of the big problems of being bullied and punished as a child is you grow up either too harsh or too lax with yourself.
	Do you swing between being really harsh with yourself, panicking and making yourself do stuff, and then just kind of lolling about and lazing about and wasting time?
	Right?
	You go back and forth between these two, right?
	Yeah.
	You wait, you procrastinate, you delay, and then you panic and you make yourself do stuff because you're terrified of consequences, right?
	Swing, swing, swing, swing, right?
	You know, like those Newton balls.
	Right?
	I've been kind of stressed this week.
	I'm just gonna, I'm gonna veg.
	I'm just gonna play a couple hours of video games.
	I'm just gonna chill and
	Binge watch and, oh, I'm just, I need, I need a break.
	I need to relax.
	I need to unwind.
	I just got to stop.
	It's been that kind of week.
	I just go, and you just, you puddle, right?
	Just like no spine, right?
	You puddle.
	And then what happens?
	What happens?
	What happens?
	Then the two all-nighters rush, yeah?
	You're behind on your stuff, time crunch, I get my panic and rush through it, yeah.
	So you react, right?
	Is that, is that a fair way to put it?
	If you feel overwhelmed or stressed or too busy or whatever, then you just flop and then you panic and you work like crazy and then you feel overworked.
	So then you flop again.
	I mean, am I right?
	You're just reacting.
	React, react, react.
	Procrastinate, ignore and coop.
	I think you mean cope, but you flopped this week.
	Yeah.
	Julie sometimes swings between, right?
	So you panic, work hard, and then feel you've earned a rest, and then flop, and then panic and work hard, and feel you've earned a rest, and then flop.
	Is that an unfair way to characterize it?
	I'm certainly happy to revise.
	I don't do things how I'd really like to.
	It's not a steady cadence at all.
	Spot on.
	Sounds about right.
	Feel bad about not doing things.
	Don't have mental energy to do anything about it.
	Got depressed.
	Learned to lower standards.
	To live with the situation.
	Or get depressed.
	Very accurate.
	That's spot on.
	No, not for me.
	Yeah, it's not for everyone for sure.
	Not for everyone.
	Sounds like the salary life.
	You meant coping, yeah.
	I need to pack up for my first overseas trip in five years and also clean up the house so I don't come back to a cluttered mess.
	I have seven days left.
	It is exactly the salary life.
	Right.
	Greasing- Oh, thank you, C2.
	I appreciate that.
	Greasing staff's philosophical wheels on my own accord.
	I don't care what car you're driving.
	Great topic.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	Japanese salary man.
	Karoshi at death by overwork.
	Right.
	I'm going to have to rewatch this a few times to make sure I get all this.
	Yeah, no worries.
	No worries.
	So is it fair to say, is it fair to say that if, if you are not, if you are reacting, you're not in control of your life.
	If you're just reacting, you're not in control of your life.
	Like if you're walking down the street and you get chased by dogs, you're not in control of your life when you're reacting to being chased by dogs, right?
	You're not in control of your life.
	Which begs the question, if you're not in control of your life, who is?
	Who is?
	That's right.
	That's right.
	Jam text.
	Who is?
	Who is control of your life?
	Who's running your life if you're not running it?
	Got to chill there, yeah.
	Zuck.
	Right.
	Who is running your life?
	Were you ever taught self-management and self-ownership and self-discipline?
	See, self-discipline is when you do things that you don't want to do for the sake of the good you can achieve, not because of punishment or reward or money or... Who taught you to do things for the good in what you're doing?
	Nobody.
	My karate master.
	All right, that's good.
	Do things for the good in what you're doing.
	If you are reacting in your life, then you don't run your life.
	Who runs your life?
	The people who made you react in the first place.
	The people who forced you to be reactive in the first place.
	All the people who forced you to be reactive are still running your life because all you're doing is reacting.
	Do you feel me?
	Does this make sense?
	My parents told me I would be nothing unless they nagged or forced me to as I was lazy and unmotivated.
	Yes.
	So, when you veer between laziness and panic, you are veering between the resentful child and the abusive parent.
	That laziness is the resentful child which then provokes the panic of the abusive parent who then makes you do stuff out of fear and then you resent having to do stuff and you flip back to laziness.
	Does that make sense?
	That's the pendulum.
	You want that repeated?
	Okay.
	So there's no problem.
	When you are lazy, when you procrastinate, when you waste time, it's because you resent having been forced to do stuff.
	Right?
	Like the Soviet workers.
	Compelled!
	Or prisoners in jail compelled to do stuff.
	They just work slowly.
	They work resentfully.
	They'll do it, but they'll do it badly.
	Passive-aggressive.
	You don't want to do it.
	So you snatch whatever pushback you can against the aggression by not doing stuff.
	Then you panic.
	Now, do you know what the panic is?
	You're going to blow your mind, you're going to blow your mind.
	So here's what the panic is.
	Do you ever have this?
	You come home, you're playing a video, you're from school when you were a kid, you come home from school, you're playing a video game, your mom, your parents, whoever your disciplinarian is, they're not supposed to be back for another hour or two, right?
	You're just lazing around, you chill, you're relaxing, you're wasting some time, but whatever, right?
	And you hear that key in the lock and your parents are coming in.
	What do you feel?
	Ah, shit, they're here.
	Right.
	Anxiety, fear, panic.
	Yeah, the bullies may be home.
	I mean, if they were this way, the disciplinarians were home.
	So what do you do?
	Do you keep playing the video game?
	Do you keep reading the comic book?
	What do you do?
	Panic and then I'd run to switch the TV and open my textbook pretending I was studying.
	Yeah, for sure.
	Pretend you were cleaning.
	Hide your tracks.
	You rush to hide it.
	Run away and look busy.
	Turn off the mic.
	They might yell, oh, if you're playing online games.
	Pretend to have slept on the couch while gaming.
	I don't quite get that one.
	Put it all away fast.
	React quickly.
	Right.
	So you understand the panic that you feel after you've been lazy and you procrastinated, the panic you feel is your parents
	Key in the lock of the door.
	Sometimes I think I'm addicted to the adrenaline to panic after procrastinating.
	That is correct.
	That is correct.
	Oh, I'm, I was the same way for many years.
	I, I don't, I'm not above any of this.
	This is perfectly right.
	Oh, like I only played Gates for 50 minutes.
	Oh, you pretended to pass out.
	Oh, and you played for a short, right?
	You turn off the tablet, you jump up and you pretend to be busy, right?
	Oof, this philosophy is hittin'.
	So, do you resent having to look busy when your parents come home unexpectedly?
	Do you resent that?
	Do you get mad?
	Are you frustrated?
	Of course you are, right?
	And do you know what that trains you to do?
	You felt rage.
	Yeah, yeah, I understand that.
	So when your parents come home and you have to start doing something productive, do you know what that trains you to do?
	It trains you to resent productivity.
	It trains you to resent and be angry at productivity.
	Yeah, you got it.
	Resent the work.
	Resent being productive.
	Yep.
	Fuck you.
	You can't make me be productive.
	So you see, being productive is being enslaved.
	Being productive is being bullied.
	Be stealthier and slacking off.
	Right.
	I was not much of a sleeper as a kid, so what did I do?
	I would I would sneak a flashlight into my room and I would read books under the blankets.
	Your mind is being blown right now?
	Holy shit!
	Well, I always aim to add value.
	Always aiming to add value.
	So, we recreate this all the time.
	This explains why I fell down the left-wing rabbit hole in the late 90s.
	All this capitalist and bad nonsense.
	Right.
	You were never asked what you wanted to do as a kid.
	Right.
	Right.
	Right.
	So,
	Being lazy is being free.
	Working hard is being bullied.
	Every time I try to do something truly productive, it feels like I'm in opposition with myself.
	Sure.
	Make sense?
	Make sense?
	I mean, you know, all the leftists say, I shouldn't have to work!
	They think that capitalism rather than reality is making them work.
	They're angry at the laws of physics or basically the laws of biology that in order to produce you have to consume.
	In order to consume you have to produce.
	I feel freedom when I procrastinate and waste my time like I'm asserting my own power.
	Absolutely!
	Because of one thing and one thing only there is one reason
	Why you resent productivity.
	One reason and one reason only.
	And then I'll tell you why I'm telling you all of this.
	The reason you resent productivity is you resent both the rules and the rule givers.
	Because you resent the rules and the rule makers.
	Résentiment.
	Resentment.
	How do you feel if somebody you respect gives you a rule you respect?
	How do you feel?
	If you have a digestive issue and then somebody gives you a
	A rule saying, maybe, drink more water, right?
	Somebody you respect, who you know cares about you, gives you a rule, says drink more water.
	You drink more water and your digestive issues goes away.
	Do you feel resentment?
	You're fine, right?
	You're not mad at people you respect who give you reasonable rules that benefit you?
	Are you?
	I mean, nature does it all the time.
	Reality does it all the time.
	I mean, gravity, we don't jump off high things.
	We use sunscreen.
	Right?
	We're not enraged at having to conform to reality, right?
	If you're desperate to lose weight and someone gives you a good methodology for losing weight because they care about you, you don't feel enraged.
	You may be successful or not, but you don't feel enraged at either the rule or the rule.
	Give it, right?
	So you resent the rules and the rule givers external to yourself, right?
	Can we agree on that?
	Right.
	And hey, if it's any consolation, I'm exactly the same way.
	Respecting the rule giver, obviously key.
	Yes, absolutely.
	For children, you have to respect the rule giver.
	If you respect the rule giver, over time you will respect the rule, which is why credibility is so essential to parenting, and so on, right?
	And my wife says, do something, I'll just do it, because I know she's, right?
	Giving me good things for the benefit of myself, and her, and the family, and all that, right?
	So, hit me with a why, if you're ready to get your mind blown.
	You're going to involuntarily donate, so, because it's that valuable.
	You all are tough.
	Tough mental specimens.
	You may need to be hospitalized after that.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Can it be more blown than it already is?
	Yeah, we're only about 60% of the way there.
	Okay.
	You resent the rule and the rule giver and the rule maker, right?
	The rule enforcer.
	Can you reasonably resent a rule you impose on yourself?
	Can you be an unjust rule maker for yourself?
	Oh, you guys are good.
	So smart.
	I'm getting a tan.
	Let's go.
	All right, Julie, we'll go.
	So you resent the rules and the rulemakers, and you act as if you are someone you should resent as the rulemaker.
	You resent the rules you're imposing on yourself as if you were an external force that's unjust that should be resented.
	External unjust authority.
	Is there such a thing as an internal unjust authority?
	Is there such a thing as an internal unjust bullying authority?
	There is not such a thing.
	That's freedom.
	That's freedom.
	If you react to yourself like you are a bully, you will swing between
	Resentful laziness and panicked productivity for the rest of your fucking lives.
	You follow?
	Yes, that hits, says Julie.
	But this is what I mean by self-ownership.
	Oh shit, that's me too often, says Dylan.
	I feel like Neo being told there is no spoon.
	Can you say that again?
	I absolutely can.
	Felt a conflict inside myself hearing this.
	It seems to be the procrastination has grown a spine.
	You don't feel it.
	That's fine.
	You react to self-discipline like you're being assaulted and forced to do things.
	So you keep self-discipline at bay through resentment.
	And then the key of the lock of the inner parents comes in and says, get up and do something!
	Your disaster is coming!
	And you get up and you jump up and you do things out of fear.
	And then afterwards, how do you feel if somebody scares you badly?
	How do you feel if somebody blows a trumpet at you while you're sleeping or napping?
	How do you feel if somebody frightens you?
	Angry.
	Of course you do.
	Jumpy, vengeful, enraged?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	If someone yells at you to do something, when someone yelled at you to do something as a kid, you'd do it, right?
	I would.
	And then what would you feel afterwards?
	You'd feel resentment.
	You are treating yourself
	As an unjust external authority.
	You are treating yourself like you are possessed by a demon.
	Yeah, you used to sabotage and pretending I was dumb.
	Yeah, of course, we've all done that as kids, right?
	You didn't wash the dishes properly.
	Well, if you don't like the way I do it, maybe you just shouldn't do it.
	You are treating yourself
	Like you are haunted by dangerous and vengeful ghosts.
	You are constantly managing internal predators that threaten you and then when you escape from them you pass out and then they find you again.
	And you run away and you fight and then you get away and you escape and then they find you again.
	Do you know what you are in this mindset?
	We're getting close to the bottom here.
	Do you know what you are in this mindset?
	And I say this with great sympathy.
	Thank you, I appreciate it.
	It is amazing, but thank you, I appreciate the tip.
	Okay, do you know?
	No, you're not a slave.
	I know I've used the word slave before, so I'm sorry, I'm being unclear.
	The way that you think of it, you are occupied territory.
	You are conquered.
	You are occupied territory.
	You are conquered.
	You follow?
	You have been overthrown.
	No, because you can be defeated without being conquered.
	You are conquered.
	You have internalized the bullies and the slaves.
	You are inhabited by a hostile power and you are reacting exactly the same way that everyone who is controlled by an unjust external authority reacts.
	Roam with barbarians in the gates.
	You've become your own jailer.
	Now I think if they tried it, I would just let them rant slash tell them to ask if they were done now.
	Tell them they do not get to tell.
	Yell at me and others.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You have performed the necessary surrender of survival.
	To survive, you had to surrender, right?
	No, not an army man.
	Conquered territory.
	You had to surrender, didn't you?
	How do I set myself free?
	We'll get there, we'll get there.
	You had to surrender to survive as a child, am I right?
	I did.
	You had to surrender.
	Was I going to fight everyone?
	I couldn't.
	What, I'm going to fight everyone at the age of six when I was sent to boarding school, or ten, or when I was yoinked off to Canada at eleven?
	Whoa, no wonder my unconscious has given me recurring dreams of bullies.
	I've loosely understood the breaking free part as a hard part.
	Yeah, we'll get to the freedom thing.
	Don't worry about it.
	I'll get you there.
	I'll take you there.
	Don't worry, this will be in fact a happy ending.
	No, you had to surrender.
	You had to be conquered in order to survive.
	You had to be conquered in order to survive.
	Now, I know I was going to go subscriber only, but I think this is important enough.
	And I can't take people 90% of the way there without doing the final bit.
	Now, everybody who's abused has to surrender in order to survive.
	I remember going limp while being beaten, hoping they'd show me mercy if I stopped resisting.
	Yeah, I did the same thing for sure.
	Yeah, my mom's beaten my head against the metal door when I was four years old or whatever.
	I just, I went totally limp.
	Of course you have to, right?
	I often tried to fight but always had to yield in the end.
	Of course, yeah, you're trapped.
	You can't go anywhere.
	You don't have any economic or legal independence.
	They have complete control of your environment.
	And then they send you to school where it's the same thing.
	Right?
	You did guerrilla warfare?
	Sure.
	You understand, procrastination is guerrilla warfare.
	Procrastination is your resistance to being occupied in the same way that the French Resistance sabotaged the Nazi occupiers.
	Sabotage!
	This is the most emotional live stream I've been in.
	Good.
	Never physically.
	Parents left me with babysitters.
	What would be my surrender?
	I'm struggling to see, but I know it's there.
	So if you were neglected, then your surrender is to not ask for anything, to self-erase, to become a ghost so you don't bother your parents.
	Procrastination is you sabotaging the will of the bullies.
	Who only exist within you and therefore aren't even bullies.
	Oh shit.
	Okay.
	Spot on.
	Yeah.
	Well, I just, I just did the whole really dark chapter on neglect.
	Childhood's neglect.
	Same emotional here.
	It hurts, but I'm glad my child will never go through this.
	Fantastic, Julie.
	Well done.
	Well done.
	Put up my hands not to get hit by my dad's belt.
	He stopped counting and just kept hitting until I moved my hands away.
	Yeah, for sure.
	That's what I did.
	Says the kid who was neglected.
	I did everything I could to not be a bother.
	Yeah, for sure.
	But procrastinating now at work only hurts me.
	Right.
	I mean you know the story of the Japanese soldiers on remote islands who picked up decades after the end of the war who had no idea the war was over.
	They had no idea the war was over.
	Right.
	I mean, that's our inner life with our, with our inner parents, with our inner child, with our inner traumas, with our history, right?
	How do you tell, how do you tell yourself that the war is over?
	How do you tell yourself, or to put it another way, how do you convince yourself that the war is over?
	Reason and evidence?
	I mean that's a pretty broad brush you're using there my friend.
	How do you reclaim your country?
	How do you reclaim your body?
	How do you drive out the ghosts?
	How do you reassert sovereign ownership?
	Can you have more than one inner parent for each parent?
	Like a good inner mom and a bad inner mom?
	The good inner mom is not real.
	She's just an angel you make up so that you can retain your capacity to pair bond.
	Get the F away from abusers.
	Anger the abusers.
	Stand up to the occupiers.
	Watch the ending of the Matrix Revolutions.
	Leave the occupied territory?
	It's all very good answers by the way.
	Create your own values?
	You can create your own values.
	Preferences?
	Yes.
	I've had no contact from my parents for years and still struggle with this stuff.
	Self-discipline and be productive, no more excuses.
	I cut my family off, been raising my boys peacefully.
	I'm thrilled to hear about the peaceful parenting, that's great.
	So,
	You recognize the difference between, this is why I started this whole topic with there's no UBB for inner life, so you recognize the difference between others and yourself.
	I know this sounds like really basic and annoying and I'm sorry about that, but you recognize the difference between yourself and others.
	You recognize the difference between yourself and others.
	You say, well,
	I was bullied as a child.
	It's impossible for me to bully myself.
	I had to sabotage through procrastination as a child because I had to retain some sense of resistance to all the useless, stupid, busy work that was thrown at me.
	But my inner life is not my outer life.
	My inner parents are not my parents.
	The rules that I impose upon myself is not bullying.
	Self-discipline is not abuse.
	Focus, hard work in pursuit of a good goal is not abuse.
	They are not me.
	I am no longer a child.
	I take back what was conquered.
	I take back what was conquered.
	By recognizing a change of laws.
	Right, so when the Nazis occupied Vichy France, was there any point kicking out the Nazis if you just kept all the Nazi laws?
	No.
	How do you know when a country has been taken back?
	The laws change.
	The laws change.
	How did you know when America was independent of Britain in the late 18th century?
	How did you know that America was independent from Britain?
	They stopped paying taxes to their former rulers.
	Ah, Bill of Rights, no.
	No, it's practical.
	How do you know?
	How do you know you've kicked out the Nazis?
	You stop paying taxes to the Nazis.
	You change the laws.
	Now,
	Think of America as you and Britain as your parents.
	Right?
	Britain was a cruel and vindictive parent.
	It was brutal to the colonies.
	They had a revolution.
	Kicked out the British.
	They stopped paying taxes.
	America stopped paying taxes to England and started paying taxes to itself.
	No, no, no, I know, blah, blah, blah, you stopped being robbed by London, started being robbed by Philadelphia.
	No, this is an analogy.
	So you stop paying taxes to an external force and you keep your resources internal.
	The taxes in the analogy would be deference.
	You see, we're so bullied that we think obedience to sensible rules is slavery.
	You can't tell me what to do.
	Don't make me do anything.
	You can't make me do anything.
	Brush your teeth?
	No!
	Lose weight?
	No!
	Exercise?
	No!
	You can't bully me, right?
	Deference?
	Deference is when you submit your judgment to somebody else's aggression.
	If you... I won't do what you tell me.
	If you're making jokes, you're not listening.
	I get that, but this may be important enough to listen to.
	You cannot be a tyrant to yourself, which means what?
	What does that mean when I say you can't be a tyrant to yourself?
	You can't steal from yourself, you can't rape yourself, you can't assault yourself.
	What does it mean if you can't be a tyrant to yourself?
	No, you can't be a tyrant to yourself.
	No one has authority over me anymore.
	Not even you?
	What do you mean no one external?
	You're one with yourself because you want to do what's best for you.
	You can't bully yourself.
	You can't disown responsibility for your actions.
	The opposite of self-tyranny would be self-sovereignty.
	You can't force yourself to do anything.
	You can make yourself do stuff, but you can't threaten yourself with a gun, right?
	You can't rob yourself.
	You can't mug yourself, right?
	I feel if I stop fighting against my parents' bullying, there will be nothing left of me.
	Right.
	So you're like somebody who's been walking in a wind at 45 degrees.
	The wind is so strong, the only way they can keep walking is at 45 degrees.
	The wind stops, they fall down.
	Self-discipline is not self-abuse.
	Self-discipline is not self-abuse.
	Making yourself do something is not forcing anyone to do anything.
	Because you cannot force yourself.
	What if you just did what was needed?
	What was best?
	What was good?
	What was right?
	Not in reaction to being bullied, not in reaction to being forced to do stuff, not in reaction to anything, but just because it's the right thing to do and that's what you choose to do.
	And if you don't want to do it, just make yourself do it.
	Oh, I can't make myself do it!
	That's bullying!
	No, it's not.
	You can't bully yourself.
	Great point, gosh.
	I would say, in fact, that not exercising self-discipline is to self-abuse.
	Well, okay, so if you don't exercise self-discipline, what happens?
	So you don't exercise self-discipline and you procrastinate, what happens?
	What happens eventually?
	What do you do?
	We already talked about this.
	What do you do?
	What do you do if you just don't do what you need to do?
	You panic!
	Didn't we talk about this?
	You panic!
	You freak out, you pull two all-nighters.
	That's abusive, isn't it?
	In a way.
	Certainly abusive to your body.
	You freak out.
	So you understand that self-discipline is the opposite of self-abuse.
	Michelle says, a lot of my rage comes from my mom using that same language.
	Just do the right thing.
	And I hated that because she was vicious.
	Right.
	Right.
	You'll have to read the chapter on verbal abuse in my new book.
	It's brutal.
	By right, she meant narcissistically feeding her own preferences and ego, right?
	Self-indulgence.
	Is self-abuse.
	If you just indulge yourself and do whatever you want, you end up hungry, homeless, unloved, unwanted, right?
	Watch stress repeat.
	Yeah.
	You see, if you want to reduce the stress and panic that you feel, self-discipline is your only chance.
	Self-discipline is self-love.
	Whereas procrastinating because you resent your parents and teachers and then panicking because you fear consequences is just veering from pole to pole, neither of which you respect, right?
	See, to procrastinate and panic
	Is to follow rules.
	And you don't want to follow rules.
	So I never tell anyone in the call-in shows or here, I don't tell people what to do, right?
	You don't want to follow rules.
	You don't want to follow rules.
	You just resent it, right?
	How do you have self-discipline if you don't follow rules?
	I don't know about transcripts.
	How do you follow self-discipline if you don't follow rules?
	How do you achieve self-discipline if you don't follow rules?
	Sometimes I feel like I'm wrong to resent my parents because it was neglect and not physical.
	Neglect is worse than both physical and verbal abuse.
	The only thing worse than neglect is sexual abuse.
	You don't follow rules.
	You become rules.
	You don't follow rules.
	You become rules.
	You follow?
	You don't have a rule.
	You are a rule.
	You're not bullied by a rule.
	You embody the rule.
	You are the rule.
	Rule yourself and you're free.
	Be ruled by others, you're a slave.
	Self-rule.
	Self-ownership.
	Self-ownership!
	If you catch yourself thinking, what do I have to do?
	You've lost already.
	Listen, if you don't quit smoking, what do you end up ruled by?
	If you don't quit smoking, what do you end up ruled by?
	Lung cancer.
	Addiction.
	Emphysema.
	COPD.
	Death.
	Expanse.
	Pain.
	Surgery.
	If you don't quit overeating, what do you end up ruled by?
	Fat, bad joints, diabetes, right?
	If you don't pay your taxes, right?
	So, we all understand, right?
	And look, I'm not perfect.
	I had a biscotti today.
	I'm about 20% body fat.
	I could bring that down.
	I'm not perfect.
	This is like, I'm, I'm not like, I'm no Zen guy on a mountaintop.
	I'm just working with all this stuff.
	Right.
	But you own yourself.
	You got to follow some rules.
	And you either have the rules imposed on you, like, like enemy laws that you resent and hate.
	And you swing between procrastination and panic.
	Or you figure out what's best for you and be the rules rather than following the rules.
	I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do with the connection, okay?
	There's no point telling me that.
	Is there some button that says connect better?
	Just hang in there.
	And don't distract me.
	It's pointless.
	Yeah, health issues that eventually are irreversible.
	That's right.
	You can go to Rumble if you want.
	And you understand that you are interrupting me because your inner parents don't want to hear this because they don't want to give up their rule.
	Right?
	Your inner parents don't want to give up their rule.
	The inner teachers, society as a whole, they don't want you ruling yourself because if you rule yourself,
	Do you need laws?
	Do you need a government?
	Do you need a prison system?
	If you rule yourself, do you need external tyrannical authority ordering society around?
	And don't say we, you can say I, right?
	So you say we hear you but keep losing the camera.
	No, there's no we here.
	You cannot bully yourself.
	You cannot abuse yourself.
	You have to follow some rules.
	You can either follow them sporadically and panicked and resentfully, or you can follow the rules proactively and wisely and sensibly with self-respect.
	Steph, you're the only person who doesn't baby his audience and treats us like adults.
	Thank you.
	If you're religious, does God want you to follow rules out of fear?
	Or does he want you to love virtue out of respect?
	Thanks, Bob.
	Definitely getting another donation from me when I get home at freedomain.com slash donate.
	Right.
	How many times have you heard someone in a call and show with me, beg me to tell him or her what to do?
	Oh, how do I, what do I do?
	What, how do I, how do I approach this?
	How do I handle this?
	What, what would you like?
	How many times have you heard this?
	Many times.
	Most times.
	Yeah.
	Most times.
	And I, and everyone says the same thing.
	I had, I promised I wasn't going to, I promised myself I wasn't going to ask you what to do.
	And here I am asking you what I should do.
	Right.
	Now, why don't I tell people what to do?
	Yeah, Johan just asked recently, right?
	To empower them?
	Yeah.
	Because I don't want to be the new rulers of their country.
	I want them to overthrow external rule and they can't do that if they listen to me telling them what to do.
	Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
	While I'm kicking my parents out, Steph can now tell me what to do.
	Nope.
	Nope.
	I mean, here's the funny thing.
	Here's the funny thing.
	The funny thing is that the one thing that I do ask them to do, they generally don't do.
	Do you know what that is?
	It's one thing I always say at the end that almost nobody does.
	Yeah, people do the same thing when you argue for a free society.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, no, I don't ask people to donate in call-in shows.
	Call-in shows are free.
	Yeah, they don't follow up.
	I say, please let me know how it's going.
	And maybe 1 in 50 people follows up, even when it's been really dire.
	Like I talked to a woman not too long ago in genuine fear for her life.
	Astra to follow up.
	Some people, what can I do?
	Well, I'm not going to tell you what you could do, but I'd really appreciate it if you follow up.
	And they don't follow up.
	Do you know why?
	Because then they would be obeying me and they're resentful, then they're procrastinating.
	I'm sure they mean to, but they won't.
	Even though sometimes these call-in shows leave me on the edge of my seat, is this person going to make it?
	Sometimes even physically.
	You Skyped your follow-up.
	Yeah, appreciate that.
	You know, it's like Lord of the Rings.
	Well, we finally got rid of Sauron.
	Let's, uh, let's appoint Aragorn to be our new king.
	It's like, oh man.
	The king is dead.
	Long live the king.
	I will follow up now.
	Since me and my wife called in, we have not argued in the five weeks for our son being born.
	Fantastic.
	Well, Americans didn't appoint George Washington.
	They just kind of took over.
	And this is why it's so important.
	If you rule yourself, you cannot be ruled.
	You might have to obey.
	You'll do things you don't.
	If you rule yourself, not only do you not need external rulers, you can't be ruled.
	Don't need to be ruled.
	Self-ownership is the only path to a free society.
	See, if people procrastinate and then they need external authority punishing them to make them act, they will never ever want to let go of external authority because it's the only motivation they know.
	Panic is the only motivation they know.
	Punishment is the only motivation they know!
	And they feel, my god, if no external authority is going to punish me, I'm just going to sit here and rot!
	In my own filth.
	I'm going to be inert.
	I'm going to turn into toe jam.
	But if I rule myself, I am ruled by myself.
	No, you're not.
	You can't rule yourself.
	What did I say?
	Don't have rules, be rules.
	If you are the rules, you're not ruling yourself.
	You're just trying to find a way out.
	Of self-ownership.
	Why would you want to do that?
	Why would you guys want to find a way out of self-ownership?
	I hear it's how to own yourself.
	Well, you don't want to.
	There's a catch.
	There's an asterisk.
	There's a way out.
	Go be a slave somewhere else.
	Not here.
	Not here.
	You need pro-bacteria to keep bad bacteria out.
	You need self-rule to keep external rule out.
	Yeah, without the government controlling us, everyone will start killing each other.
	Right.
	Because this is a person who has internalized no rules, has no self-discipline, and therefore they feel like the only way that anything is going to move is if somebody whips it, beats it, prods it, kicks it, punishes it, jails it, taxes it, licenses it.
	Yeah, you want to rule yourself because you don't want to be ruled by others.
	Someone is going to rule you!
	Now do you know all the people who say, don't rule yourself, do you know why they say don't rule yourself?
	They say don't rule yourself so they can step in and rule the shit out of you.
	Why do teachers not let you learn from consequences?
	Why do they punish you?
	Why do parents punish you?
	So they can rule you!
	So conforming to an external standard isn't being ruled?
	Yourself is not an external standard!
	How is this complicated?
	You are not an external standard!
	Any more than your dreams can be studied by physicists the world over.
	Morals are not external standards.
	Do they exist somewhere out there in the world?
	Are they, you know, external standards like gravity?
	Electromagnetism?
	Radiation?
	Strong and weak atomic forces?
	Are they?
	What is being the rules?
	It's understanding what needs to be done and doing it in a manner that's respectful to yourself.
	It's following the rules that minimize self-abuse, self-attack.
	It's having the discipline to prevent disaster.
	It's having the self-respect to avoid veering between procrastination and panic.
	It's actually owning yourself, being responsible for yourself.
	How much fun do you think it is for me to write the Peaceful Parenting Book?
	Give me a minus 10 to a plus 10.
	How much fun do you think it is for me to write the Peaceful Parenting Book?
	Yeah, well you're right in the minuses.
	It is not fun.
	It is sad that I have to write it.
	It's also angering that I have to write it.
	So why am I doing it?
	Why am I doing it?
	Why am I doing something so unpleasant?
	Is it better for me and my child in the long run if children are parented peacefully?
	Does it take self-discipline to write the book?
	It does.
	I walk into my writing room like I'm facing a firing squad.
	Do I wish that someone had written this book a hundred years ago?
	I really, really do.
	If someone had written this book a hundred years ago,
	I might not have been abused as a child.
	I owe it to my inner child as well as my inner parent to write the book.
	The other books we wrote weren't as bad.
	No.
	They were mostly fun.
	I mean, if you're starving in the winter, as a kid, don't you wish that your parents had put aside more food?
	Or were better hunters?
	So what do you do?
	When you grow up, you put aside more food, you're better hunters, so your child doesn't starve as you starved.
	Am I forcing myself to write the book?
	I am not.
	I'm just keeping an eye on my responsibilities and the long-term consequences and I'm willing to do it to make a better world.
	I also am the recipient, as you are, of people who had moral courage before us, who made a better world that we can live in.
	But I'm not forcing myself.
	I can't force myself.
	I'm not a tyrant to myself.
	It's just the right thing to do.
	So you just do it.
	Does it benefit me in the long run?
	I hope so.
	I mean, if I drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow, it won't have benefited me in the long run.
	I think it'll benefit the world.
	Slightly off topic.
	Can you explain the difference between gentle parenting and peaceful parenting?
	Yeah, gentle parenting is conflict avoidance.
	Peaceful parenting is rational conflict.
	The truth of peaceful parenting goes back to the New Testament.
	You would think 2,000 years would be enough to get the message through and the Sicilian task would not be needed.
	It is said, yeah.
	Not sure if you've seen the Rumble Donation.
	Someone asked if the book is going to be in print.
	I certainly will hope to have it in print.
	Sorry about that.
	I have not.
	I've not checked on that, but I should be able to.
	It's somewhere over the rainbow.
	All right, where did that go?
	Vumble in the jungle.
	All right.
	The first Stefan Polny video I ever watched all the way back was his tribute to Gord Downie after he passed.
	Thank you, Jason, by the way.
	I appreciate that.
	I appreciate those two tips over on Rumble.
	Very kind.
	So, you understand that by trying to get you to become your own rules rather than react to the rules of others?
	I'm working as hard as I can.
	To have you free of reacting and to experience self-ownership for the first time in your life.
	True self-ownership.
	Not bouncing off the rules of others, not procrastinating because you resent and then panicking and doing and right?
	And how can you advocate for freedom if you yourself are not free?
	Right?
	How can you advocate for freedom if you yourself are not free?
	Why will anybody respect you when you talk about freedom if all you do in life is react to the bullying of others in the distant past?
	Are you free?
	No.
	No.
	It's, you understand, I'm trying to give you the greatest freedom possible in the world at the moment.
	Right?
	You can't be free of rules, regulations, taxes, borders, boundaries, passport requirements and people groping your ass at the airport.
	You can't be free of that stuff.
	But you can have self-ownership.
	That is the maximum freedom that is achievable in this world as it stands.
	I'm offering you the very maximum freedom.
	You can do this, right?
	You can achieve true self-ownership.
	You achieve this.
	You achieve this.
	And you will be irresistible in this world.
	The last thing I'll say here before we close off for the night, and I really appreciate you guys dropping by tonight.
	If you find this helpful and useful and you haven't tipped, I would really appreciate it.
	If you are a betting man,
	And you have to bet on one of two runners.
	One of the runners hates running and only comes out to practice resentfully when his coach screams at him.
	The other person loves running and does it whenever he can.
	Who do you bet on winning the race?
	Who wins?
	See, we talked about winners and losers earlier on, right?
	This is all the same.
	Can you win if all you do is procrastinate and panic?
	Can you win at life if all you do is procrastinate and panic?
	Of course not.
	Do you know what shit storms I've had to wade through to keep doing what I do?
	You guys know.
	You know what shit storms I've had to wade through to keep doing what I'm doing?
	Can you sustain any significant effort when you feel forced to do something?
	Can you?
	Somebody forces you to do something.
	Can you sustain any productive effort?
	Nope.
	I'm telling you not only how to be free, but how to win the fuck out of life.
	How to win the living shit out of life.
	Nobody can beat you if you are your own rule maker.
	Chris says this is incredibly helpful.
	Pure gold Steph.
	Thank you so much.
	Still not able to tip.
	Send a big tip when you figure it out.
	Freedomain.com slash donate.
	Did you read about, what's that Serbian guy, I can never pronounce his name, Djibokovic, the guy who didn't get vaccinated, right?
	What's his name?
	Oh, it's going to take a while to type out because it's a mouthful of Eastern European syllables.
	Djokovic?
	Djokovic?
	Yeah, all right.
	Uh, let me see if I can find him.
	Novak Djokovic.
	All right.
	All right.
	Did you hear this story?
	Here we go.
	Here we go.
	So Novak Djokovic said he was close to quitting tennis in 2010.
	Why was he close to quitting?
	He was close to quitting due to the pressure of expectations after winning his first major at the 2008 Australian Open.
	Now he's had 17 Grand Slam singles, three behind Roger Federer's record haul of 20 in men's tennis.
	It might have been very different for Djokovic after he let a two sets to love lead slip in the French Open quarterfinal clash against Australian Jurgen Miltzer.
	He said, against Jürgen Melzer in Roland Garros during the quarters, this defeat was really difficult for me emotionally.
	I cried a lot after this defeat because I had a moment in my life, my career, when everything happened in a fusion, in which I really did not see a reason to keep on playing.
	I wanted to quit tennis.
	But Djokovic says the last two months have transformed him.
	In 2011 he walked away with three out of the four Grand Slams while an era of domination at the Australian Open began.
	Now, do you know why?
	He was able to turn this around.
	The reason he was able to turn this around is he felt depressed about losing, and he was hungry for titles, and winning, and victory, and money, and acclaim, and applause, and sponsorships, and cups, and right?
	He was just focused on not the game, but the goal.
	Focused on the end goal, the end result, not the process, but the destination.
	You can't win by focusing on the destination.
	You have to focus on the journey, on the process.
	I mean, I've been doing philosophy now for 40 years.
	This is a new argument that I've made tonight, right?
	It's just never done.
	So the reasons, the reason that he was able to renew his love for tennis is his coach said to him, well, why did you get into tennis?
	What's with all this?
	I got to win and I lost and that's terrible.
	Why did you get into tennis?
	He said, I love the game.
	He said, well, play because you love the game.
	Don't play.
	Just because you want to win.
	Because if you play just because you want to win, then you will want to stop playing when you don't win.
	You play for the love of the game.
	It's like, I just love having a tennis racket in my hand.
	I love to play.
	Then you just play the game because you love the game.
	She says, I'm raising my sons peacefully listening to years of your advice.
	They are wonderful human beings and a delight to all that meet them.
	Steph, thank you.
	Appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	So I want you guys to win.
	I want you to win at life.
	I want you to win at love.
	I want you to win in your hearts and minds.
	I want you to stop reacting like pinballs bouncing around between procrastination and panic.
	I want you to become your own rules, to have self-discipline, because you'll be unbeatable then, and you'll be the best advertisement for philosophy known to man!
	Respect philosophy enough to be a good example of how it works.
	Don't talk up a diet if you're fat.
	Don't talk up how great this quitting smoking program is while chain smoking.
	Nothing wrong with being satisfied after you've reached a goal and finding a new challenge and new goals.
	All the greats do, especially when your body says it's time to stop.
	My friend, you are only taking away from the conversation.
	You're only taking away from the conversation.
	Are you saying that, are you saying that
	That this tennis star shouldn't play tennis 24 hours a day but should actually rest sometimes?
	Wow, you're a genius.
	Wow, what a sports genius.
	I wonder if he should ever sleep.
	I wonder if he should ever go to the washroom or eat.
	I wonder if he should ever put down a tennis racket.
	I wonder if I should ever not do philosophy and enjoy spending time with my family.
	Shouldn't do it 24-7.
	You gotta take breaks.
	Wow.
	What brilliance you are adding to this conversation.
	How absolutely necessary to remind people that they too need to take a shit from time to time.
	So, I want you to win.
	And the way to win is to stop reacting to rules.
	Be your own rules.
	And that way you don't have to enforce them.
	Yeah.
	Maybe you'll need to make yourself do stuff from time to time.
	So what?
	What's the alternative?
	You either make yourself do stuff from time to time that you don't want to do, or you end up being bullied by procrastination and panic.
	Right?
	So.
	Alright.
	Go forth and multiply.
	Hit me with a rating!
	Minus ten to plus ten.
	How was the show for you?
	8, 10, plus 11, plus 10, plus 10.
	Beautiful.
	Thanks to that plus 10.
	Nine.
	The Frenchman was great.
	Oh, the bit at the beginning.
	Only made the endmaster plus 10.
	This one goes to 11.
	This one goes up to 11.
	Beautiful.
	All right.
	Thank you guys so much.
	Really, really, thanks Julie.
	A hundred.
	Really, really appreciate it.
	Never heard a show from you that wasn't a 10, but sometimes, sometimes I even amaze myself.
	Well, you know, it all came out of this great question, which I should probably answer by the way.
	I feel attached to my musical instruments from my teens.
	I keep saying to myself, I'll pick them up eventually.
	The idea of selling them feels like a betrayal.
	So you set yourself a rule.
	And what's the rule?
	If I don't start practicing them in the next week, I sell them.
	Become your own rules.
	Don't just bounce off.
	Well, you know, I was kind of bullied to play them.
	I like playing them, but I don't want to play them because then I feel like I'm surrendering to the people who... Just set up a rule.
	You set up a rule!
	I pick them up in the next week or I sell them.
	See, it's easy.
	Just set up a rule.
	Just be the rule.
	Nobody's imposing that rule on you.
	Nobody's imposing that rule on you.
	I'm not obeying someone else by writing the Peaceful Parenting book because it's my rule.
	You can't obey yourself if you make up the rule.
	Right?
	If you make up the rule, you're not being bullied.
	You're not being forced.
	You're not bowing down to anyone because you're making up the rule.
	Does that make sense?
	Hit me with a why.
	Does this make sense?
	Just make up the rule.
	Make up the rule.
	And follow the rule.
	If you've got a book you've never finished, say,
	I'm either going to start this book over the next week, or I'm never going to think about it again.
	Make it eight days a week so it's your own rule, but now it's my rule instead.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Self-discipline.
	Yeah, just make up the rule.
	You know, there's a funny meme about, you know, a woman, I wonder what, my man's away from home, I wonder what he's thinking.
	And the man is trying to lift some weights and says, if I don't lift this I'm gay and my whole family dies.
	It's kind of funny because he's just making up a rule.
	I used to think that being free was not following any rules.
	This live stream has shown me the truth about freedom is to make your rules.
	Yeah, because if you're not following any rules, then you still have a rule called don't follow any rules.
	You can't get away from rules.
	You can't have a way to organize your day, right?
	So, and you can break your rules, right?
	I had a rule called I was going to start a donor only an hour and a half ago.
	I changed my rules.
	Do it within a week or don't do it.
	But don't just sit there, well yes, no, wrestling, procrastination, I've got to do it but I don't want to do it.
	Just make a rule.
	It could be any number of things, right?
	It could be any number of things.
	Like I don't want to, I've got the truth about the Wild West, I don't want to do another
	Blue screen PowerPoint presentation.
	I just don't want to do it.
	I don't want to do it.
	I don't know why.
	Doesn't matter.
	I don't want to do it.
	So I'm just not going to do it.
	I'm going to find another way to do it.
	I'm probably just going to record the audio and have someone put video to it.
	Whatever that's going to be.
	I don't know.
	Your left winger dissolves when you say the sentence, not having rules is a rule.
	Well, it is.
	Can't follow any rules.
	Is that a rule?
	Yes.
	Well, you just can't, right?
	Even animals follow rules.
	They're just hormonal, right?
	All right.
	Thank you everyone so much.
	If you're listening to this later and find it to be of value, I did keep this open because I feel it's a very important message and I appreciate everybody who's bringing up these topics that spark these great conversations.
	If you're listening to this later, I didn't go donor only.
	If you could help me out, freedomain.com slash donate, I would really, really appreciate that.
	Have yourselves an absolutely stunning, wonderful, productive week.
	Don't get bullied by anyone except your own self-discipline, which isn't bullying.
	So have yourselves a great evening.
	Lots of love from up here.
	Take care, I'll talk to you soon.
	Bye.

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