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Aug. 24, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:35:18
FIND OUT WHO YOU SERVE!
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Time Text
Good evening. Wednesday Night Live, 23rd.
I'll get my shirt on soon. I just came out of the gym.
I'm stinky sweat.
So I'll put my shirt on in a sec.
Tech rant or travel rant?
Tech rant or travel rant?
Because somebody said, you want travel?
Is both a bit too much?
Hard to tell. You want tech rant, travel first, travel rant for sure?
When girth discussion.
Unfortunately, like I could do a girth discussion, I would do that by standing up.
The tragedy is that it's 16 by 9, so it wouldn't be wide enough.
The screen would not be wide enough.
Oh, by the way, did you see this thing where this very overweight woman got interviewed on fat acceptance?
The host was Port Trip, but she was landscape.
Does the tack rent have to do with roaming fees?
No. No, it's permission to swear.
I don't know. It's up to you.
Up to you. Let me know.
Permission to swear. Yeah.
Fucking printers. Fucking printers.
You know, when I come back in another life, I'm never going to buy a printer.
I'm going to buy a small Japanese man to sit in a box with calligraphy and pig ink.
That's going to be my solution.
Maybe, maybe, just maybe, I only need to print something once every month.
I don't care. I don't care.
Small Japanese guy in a cardboard box?
Writing things out by hand is faster than having a printer.
So what did happen today? I needed to fill out some stupid-ass paperwork.
And because people send you paperwork that they want you to fill out, do they include any place for you to fill it out?
Nope! So you gotta print it out, you gotta write shit down, you gotta scan it, you gotta send it back.
Why? Because apparently we're just retarded as a species.
We have all of this incredible technology, but no, we still must slaughter wood to get data across to people.
So, I have a printer upstairs, because I don't use a printer that often, right?
I have a printer upstairs, And I view going to touch the printer that's supposed to be wireless, I go viewing to touch that printer as a cowardly and emasculating mark of estrogen-laced surrender.
If you have to touch that printer, you should be able to put it in the attic.
It's a network printer. If I have to go and touch that printer, what's the point of having a network printer?
There's no point. So I will do just about anything to avoid touching.
It's a matter of pride. It's just a matter of pride.
I will not go and touch that printer.
I won't do it, ladies and gentlemen.
If there's any way to not do it, I won't do it.
A4 load ladder!
Pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft! I mean, every time I scan, every time I scan anything, it's like, well, the width is wider than the suggested...
Do you still want to scan?
Fuck, I don't know. Just make a decision for me and don't make it a stupid one.
That's all I want. Make a decision for me and don't make it a stupid one.
Well, the boundaries are outside the scan of the this, that, and the other.
It's like, I don't know. Just scan some shit.
It fits in the glass.
It's on the glass. How about you just scan it?
Don't tell me there might be some esoteric problem of some kind of width that I don't...
The thing is 8.5 by 11.
That's the glass. I put it on.
I close it. Don't tell me there's a problem when I'm doing exactly the dimensions that you have.
God almighty. It's like buying a pair of shoes.
Like I'm 10.5, right?
It's like buying a pair of shoes.
You buy a pair of shoes and the salesman says, well...
They might cut off your toes.
I mean, do you still want them? I mean, they're ten and a half.
You wanted ten and a half. Yep.
Okay, so you want ten and a half.
They might just slice off your toes.
They're cruel to shoot. It's like, no, I just told you ten and a half.
Doesn't matter. Don't care.
Might not work. So today I had to scan.
So printer's on.
I know that, right? Printer goes to sleep.
the printer's on. I'd like to scan please. Now I don't mind a no as much as I mind a
slow no.
A slow no is just a giant waste of fucking time.
So, printer, if you're going to fuck me, don't date me for six months first.
If you're going to screw me over, don't screw me over and waste my time.
So if you're not going to scan, say, you bought this thing for scanning?
You put the thing in the scanner, you went back downstairs, you want to scan?
I'm sorry. I know it says scanner.
I know there's a scan function on your operating system.
Why would you think that that would allow you to scan?
Are you insane? It's a lure.
It's a trap. But here's the thing.
It doesn't tell me it can't scan.
What does it do? It says, I'm working on it.
And I'm like, the fuck you are.
You are not working on it.
Don't fucking lie to me.
Don't hourglass me, bro.
Don't pretend you're doing something when you're not.
You ever have those shady workers?
You know, like the guy you drop your car over.
He's like, yeah, I should be ready sometime after lunch.
And you know he's got a sandwich in his hand and a cup of Tim Hortons in the other.
And you just know he's going to go and play Clash Royale for an hour or two and then maybe get you.
Because you're a shady worker, right?
So just like, I'd like to scan.
Well, here you go. Here's the scan app.
You've got a scanner. You put the thing in the scanner.
You came back downstairs. Wee, wee, wee, wee, wee, wee, wee.
Trying to scan, trying to scan.
It's like you're not trying to scan.
You're not. Don't lie to me.
Don't lie to me. And then it says, unable to scan.
Shit don't work. Now, I was a programmer.
Now, hit me with a Y if you've ever done any coding, done any error handling.
On error, go to X. X. Blah, blah, blah.
Resume exit. Right.
What's the one thing you're supposed to do when you provide an error message?
It's the one thing you're supposed to do.
What's the one thing, if you've never been a programmer, what's the one thing, I don't know, you might like to see?
What would you like to see?
error message I don't want an explanation what do you want a solution
Yes! Here's the problem.
Here's how to fix it. And what error message you get?
Not able to print.
Error 6223.4.5.5 green unicorn head.
Unable to print. Check your drivers.
Check your operating system.
See if it's updated.
Couldn't do it, bro. He's not working, man.
He's not working, man. He's not indie cards, man.
Like, Jesus, oh. Jesus, oh.
Just tell me what to do.
What went wrong? Printer is busy.
No, printer is not busy.
Nobody else printing in the house.
Printer is busy. And I'm like, fuck, I know I've got to go upstairs.
I know, but I can't.
I can't. Going upstairs is like appeasing my mother.
I won't do it. So what do I do?
What do I do? What do I do?
Because I'm retarded. See, I get drawn into, like, you know how sociopathy, you get drawn into being a sociopath?
I get drawn into being retarded.
What do I do? What do I do?
I know I should go upstairs, but I'm not supposed to.
Got a network printer. What do I do?
What do I do?
Try again? Yes, of course I try again.
And sometimes that works.
You ever have this? You try something, it says it's impossible, and then you try it.
It's like, oh, shit, I'll do that.
Yeah, so I tried it again, tried it a couple of times.
I was doing something else. Okay. Now, got the error message.
Maybe it's your drivers.
Right? Which is driving you up the bend.
So, what do I do?
Because I'm an idiot. I'm like, hey!
Maybe it's the drivers.
So then I go to get the drivers.
And I install the drivers.
Actually, I install the fax program.
There's a special fax program.
There's Windows fax. There's a special fax program.
So I install the special fax program.
And it says, maybe there's a problem with your drivers.
So then I'm like, okay, I'll go get the drivers.
I'll go get the drivers.
And I install the drivers.
Now whenever you install the drivers, you pray to all the unholy gods of high tech that you will not have to reboot.
Because my entire operating system is a 32 gig house of cards.
For me to reboot, well, let's just say it would probably be easier to tear down my house with my tongue and rebuild it again with my ass than to reboot my computer.
I have 25 notepads open.
I have 15 different Audacity files, which I'm currently working on.
I have so much open and waiting and ready and not ready that to shut down, I might as well just buy a new computer and reinstall everything from scratch.
Shutting down my computer is not an option!
So then, I install the drivers.
Dumpty dumpty dum.
Hey, what do you want to call your printer?
Just install the drivers.
Hey, where do you want to install them? Just install the drivers.
And then you know what? Windows always has this thing in the back where it's like, it doesn't show you, right?
Because you have this, you know, you have this setting.
And what does the setting say?
The setting says, listen, if anything's going to make any changes to the operating system, do me a favor.
Do me a favor. Put out a little message, but don't put it full screen.
Like it's supposed to blank everything else, go full screen and say, do you want to make changes to your operating system?
Do you want to make changes to your Windows directory or whatever it is, right?
So don't do that.
But do it someplace I really can't see it.
So that I have to Alt-Tab around to find the prompt that says, I'm not changing your drivers until you click this thing, which you can't see.
Hey, these drivers sure seem to be taking a long time to install.
Oh, right. That's right.
It's a hidden communion mind melt with the x86 architecture that I have to complete in order to change my drivers.
So then, drivers go in.
Start the application. It did, to its credit, it did actually find the printer.
You ever have this thing, it's like, oh, you have a network printer?
No, you don't. Just kidding.
When we say network printer, we mean it's on the cloud, which means it's on Aristophanes' cloud in ancient Greece, and you can't possibly reach it without a time machine and a fucking human sacrifice.
So, it did, to its credit, find the printer.
And then it says, oh, sorry, the printer is busy.
Now, if the printer is busy, what do you do?
What do you do if the printer is busy?
You go to the print queue.
Quick question. Is it easier to try and take down the vampire-less stat with a number 2B pencil, or is it easier to cancel a print job?
Have you ever tried this? Have you ever, ever tried to cancel a print job?
Yeah, the vampire is way easier, right?
So if, say, Trump had two things, right?
Take down the entirety of the deep state or cancel a print job, what would he do?
I'd say, well, take down the alphabet agencies.
That's way easier than canceling a print job.
Because canceling a print job, I know for a simple, basic empirical fact, that button does nothing.
Cancel print job. Nope.
I'm sorry. You can't cancel a print job.
That's like trying to recall a watermelon that you've already thrown off the bridge.
We just put that there so you think you can.
You think you can. Oh, I liked the original interview with the vampire, but it got very silly after that.
Now, one thing I do remember back in my days of the Atari 800 and then the Atari 520ST.
Okay, I want you to tell me what this sound is.
Brrking. Brrking. Brrking. Brrking. Brrking. Brrking.
That's right, that is a dot matrix.
Like tiny little ninja pummels, right?
So that shit used to work.
I used to have a program.
I still remember it. ZOA4 was bold, A4, double-lined.
I used to do that for my...
And then I did WordPerfect 5.1 on the old IBM computers, and you had reveal codes, which was glorious and magical, and stings work, right?
I still remember seeing the first Snoopy coming out of a dot matrix printer.
So anyway...
I can't scan.
And I'm like, you know, maybe I'll just try scanning it as a photo rather than a document.
Nope. So...
Now, listen.
There's times where I blame myself.
Right? The time I blame myself, even if the printer doesn't say it's out of paper, hey, if it's out of paper, that's on me.
That's absolutely on me.
I think most printers now, for environmental reasons, they default to double-sided printing, which is useless as tits on a bull for the most part.
So, finally...
You know, it is important in life to accept defeat, would you say?
It's a rational thing to accept defeat when you can't win.
So I needed to...
I had to go upstairs.
So I took another computer and tried to connect.
No luck. It didn't work.
So I finally went upstairs.
Now, there was a message on the printer.
Now, what did the message...
You know, it's got that little LED screen, LCD screen.
What did... The printer tell me.
Network printer? You should be able to put it in the attic.
What did it tell me? Well, some print job started by a distant ancestor had potentially exceeded the bounds of the printer.
No, no, it wasn't out of paper. Out of paper?
That's on me. Although it should tell me it's out of paper.
I'm not in the mood. That's right.
You know, you didn't help me with the dishes and I'm just feeling kind of stressed.
And I've kind of had...
It's not exactly a migraine, but it's like, right here behind the eyes, it's just been difficult for me.
And I'm just not feeling soft.
And I know you want to offer a massage, but you know what you actually want.
It's just sex, and I just don't feel like you respect me.
It's a piece of hardware, and I'm just not going to give it up.
I am not going to spread my A4, and you not get to load later.
So... What did the printer tell me?
It said a previous print job was out of bounds, potentially out of bounds.
Right. So, quick question.
Quick question. What's the point of a network printer that gives you the message on the printer but not on the client?
I'm just curious what is the point of that.
What is the point of having a network printer that's wireless?
It doesn't give you any message on the client, it only gives you a message on the printer!
On the printer! It's like having a remote control drone that you have to work the joysticks on the drone to make it do anything.
It's like, okay, then it's not a remote control drone, now is it?
Yours is wireless but will not connect.
Yeah, because it's actually easier and cheaper to just get some fucking carrier pigeons to go up.
up, you feed them a bunch of ink, they go and shit on the piece of paper near the printer
and that's about as effective as you can get.
It doesn't matter what kind of printer I'm dealing with, it's exactly the same thing.
So.
Now, what I did was...
I said cancel job.
Now, of course, I tried to cancel job.
First of all, it didn't show me that there was a job.
Then another application showed me that there was a job.
I tried to cancel it. Why couldn't I cancel it?
Why couldn't I cancel the job?
Because there was a message up on the printer.
So there's something on the screen of the printer that's supposed to be remote that can't be touched by anything on the client's software.
You literally have to go to the printer, cancel the job, come back, and scan.
I literally was looking for a force reboot the printer.
Like, get up there, like Van Helsing, with a giant railway spike, drive it through the shiny plexiglass of that printer, kill it for three days, have it come back to life, let me print.
I mean, don't you ever want to just turn these things off with a pair of pinking shears on the cable?
God! Just reboot.
Start again. Forget it. Just start again.
Reboot. Redo. Nope.
Can't reboot it remotely. Absolutely impossible.
So what I did was I went upstairs and it said, oh, printing might be slightly out of bounds.
Do you want to continue? Nope.
Do you want to cancel the job?
Certainly do.
Ready.
Oh, God.
Do you ever have it?
I don't know.
This is for the young man, right?
You ever have it where it's like...
I'd really like to have sex with this woman.
Okay, well... She wants to go out for dinner?
Yeah, we'll go out for dinner. Oh, she wants to go out for...
Drinks afterwards, too?
Okay. I can do some drinks...
Ooh, late night comedy show?
Yeah, right. Late night comedy.
Okay, well, you know, I like to laugh.
Let's do a late night comedy show.
Come back. Oh, you want like a coffee?
It's like 12.30 in the morning.
You want a coffee? Okay, well, we can do a coffee.
Oh, you want to show me a funny meme?
Okay. And then by the time it's even potential to have sex, you're like, no.
No. No.
I've waited too long, and it's all gone.
I think I've actually just climaxed in my own butt, and that's it.
It's all over. Forget it. We're all done.
Well, that's what it is like with this printer.
It's like, I don't even want to scan now!
You made me follow your rules till the end of time?
I don't even want to scan now!
Ugh. Ugh.
So, yeah, that was the day with my printer.
Then it scanned fine. And then I had to go have a lie down.
Just because things don't work.
And here's the thing, too. This is the thing with tech.
Like, if it's not going to work, just tell me.
Just tell me, look, you're going to have to swallow your pride and go finger the printer.
Like, you're just going to have to go do it.
You have to go massage the printer.
You have to tell it how pretty and smart it is.
You're going to have to buy it some dinner.
You're going to have to give it a back rub.
You're going to have to give it some multiple orgasm, AC, DC, multivariate electricity juice stimulation.
You're just going to have to do something with it.
You're going to have to find its G-spot somewhere in its innards, and then maybe it'll do what you want.
So... Just tell me it's not going to work.
That's it. I mean, how much time do you spend knowing that things should work and it doesn't work?
Did you bother to ask about it?
Right. Well, you know, I started off as some graffiti on the side of a really giant and old and beautiful oak tree.
I started off just as graffiti and it's always bothered me.
My origin story has just been horrible.
I mean, it always bothered me that I started as graffiti and the carving of JK Loves BW. Or BW Loves BJ's.
I can't remember, but it was just...
I started off as a carving on a giant, beautiful tree, just carved into its flesh, and I just couldn't...
Anyway. Need a call-in show with the printer.
Yeah. I'm glad Steph Overturn populated the printer end anyway.
Were you shirtless?
Were you shirtless doing the printing thing?
All right, I gotta define my shift.
Oh, never mind.
Oh.
All right, should we get, uh, should we get civilized?
But should we get civilised?
Thank you.
Hit me with a Y if you've traveled a lot.
Hit me with a Y if you've traveled a lot.
Sam Vankin, the psychologist?
Just a little bit.
There we go.
So yeah, somebody asked me, what do you think of people who travel a lot?
Now, ahead of time, just out of curiosity, what do you think I'm going to think of people who travel a lot?
Japan would be nice to see.
I think you'd come back from Japan depressed as hell.
Well, it was nice to travel before you had to worry about pilots dropping dead or...
non-meritocracy hires manning the flight paths.
In-laws just came to visit.
Every flight was delayed. Yeah, yeah.
No, the age of intelligence has passed.
Yeah, the age of achievement has passed.
Go look back sometimes and see what Pan Am was doing for economy class in the 1960s and 1970s.
Like, I first started flying when I was six years old.
I flew to Africa alone, well, with my brother, when I was six years old.
And it was fantastic.
I used to be able to go up.
I had a little British Airways logbook and I logged all my flights and I was able to go up and chat with the pilots and it was just really, really cool.
Really cool. And...
You were never scared of traveling to new places?
No, I didn't feel that regarding travel.
And of course, I did a lot of business travel before 9-11, right?
I did a lot of business travel in the 90s, and it was fantastic.
Like, I remember being late at a meeting and showing up 20 minutes for a flight.
I didn't even have a ticket.
And I got in the flight no problem.
There's no real security and all of that, right?
Because there didn't used to be security.
It used to be security.
A friend of mine was saying that everywhere they go in Florida, you've got to go through a scanner, even to go to places like Disney Springs and so on.
It's like, wow.
So yeah, travel used to be really great, really efficient, really fun, and was just wonderful.
So, you could carry a gun and smoke on a plane.
Yeah, I think so, right? You used to be able to carry guns on planes.
So... I want to just make sure I get the question right.
I want to make sure because the question was very evocative.
It's a great word. I don't use it enough.
Evocative. Somewhere over the rainbow.
All right. I was there.
Oh, you do believe that I was there.
No, I can't find it. Anyway, so yeah, somebody was posting about travel.
Passport bro lifestyle.
People traveling overseas to find a partner.
Yeah, I don't...
I'm not a fan of that.
I'm not a fan of that. I'm not a fan of that.
It seems kind of selfish to me.
So work travel doesn't really count.
No, there's the people who travel for fun.
Just travel. Oh, what do I mean selfish?
Well... You know, I think we have the remnants of a pretty great culture in the West, and if you go overseas to get a bride with a different culture, what are you going to teach your kids?
Where's the continuity and so on?
Biracial kids have significant mental health issues and all of that.
I mean, they have more mental health issues than the average, for whatever reason, we don't know.
But it just seems a little bit like, why don't you just find somebody of your own culture?
Not necessarily mean the race, but of your own culture as a whole.
So, and of course, women who travel.
Women who travel.
Is that a red flag?
If there's a woman who says, yeah, yeah, I've traveled to, you know, 30 countries.
How did she pay for that?
Hmm. Now there's a mystery.
There's a mystery. What's that meme of that woman with a big handful of hot dogs flying at her face?
Right, so I would view that as a huge red flag with a woman who's like, I've traveled all over the world, especially if she's young.
Now, if she comes from money, maybe that's one thing.
But women can work online to pay for travel.
Certainly back in my day, that's not how women made...
How did the women make money to travel?
How does a woman make money to travel?
It's expensive traveling.
You can travel low rent.
But yeah, I mean, generally they're dating on the fly, right?
They're dating on the fly. They're dating on the fly.
So I would view that as a significant red flag.
Let me ask you this. Tell me what you think.
I have my own opinions, but I want to know.
Does travel make people more interesting?
Does travel make people more interesting?
No, they just breath long about their trips.
You get interesting stories, but I don't think so.
So most people travel, not everyone, but most people travel in order to appear interesting.
Why is everyone hating on travel?
Yeah, I went to Morocco and I remember seeing the sun rise over the blah, blah, blah, right?
Why do you think a woman who travels a lot has a red flag?
Because she's sleeping around. I mean, I think for a woman, a man who travels a lot, a man who travels a lot can't get paid by sleeping around, right?
In general, right? Well, the carpet story was interesting.
Yeah, well. But, you know, that's one story out of a lot of travel, right?
So, you can meet tons of people and make amazing connections through it, but travel in and of itself is not interesting.
No, you can't in general.
So just about everyone I met when I was traveling was a do-nothing intergalactic space loser.
I didn't do a huge amount of travel in terms of like just recreational travel.
I remember having a glorious two weeks on my own in the Dominican Republic reading Jung and Nietzsche.
Oh, it was fantastic. I just loved that.
Sitting on the beach, I played a lot of beach volleyball.
I was just traveling on my own for a variety of reasons.
Just sat in a resort and swam and worked out and read and oh, it was just fantastic.
Went whale watching. And I went to Morocco and I did a road trip with a friend of a friend through Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, which was fun.
But as far as like meeting people?
No. You don't meet people who are successful.
You generally don't meet people who are successful when you're traveling.
And traveling has a certain amount of danger in it, in that it conditions you to hyperstimuli.
It conditions you to hyperstimuli.
So most people did not feel that those who travel were interesting.
I'll just tell you my personal experience.
In my personal experience, if somebody tells me that they've traveled a lot, I'm trying to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible.
I've traveled all over the world.
I'm like, I'm traveling all over the room to be anywhere but here.
Other path for women to travel is extreme debt.
Friend is $15,000 in debt over a few trips, no real way to pay it off.
Right. Right.
Somebody says, met the owner of a marina, got a job as a videographer on a fishing show and made a bunch of work contacts through traveling.
Okay. Yeah, for sure.
For sure. That can happen.
Let me ask you this.
Let me ask you this. When you talk to someone and they say they've traveled a lot, do you expect them to ask any questions about you?
In general. Just in general.
I've traveled all over the world and let me tell you this and let me tell you that and I've gone running with the balls in Pumploma and I have gone across a Serengeti on the back of a tortoise and I have done this and I have done that, right?
And don't you just feel yourself slowly shimmering out of existence in their mental space because
they're going on this big IMAX multidimensional time-spanning travelogue in their own head
and they're trying to lure you into their own trips and visions and memories and they're
desperately trying to make themselves interested because they went to some place called I don't
give a fuck-istan.
Selfish much?
You see, travelling is a way that you never have to ask anyone about anything to do with
them.
Thank you.
...
Right? Traveling is a way for other people to never ask you anything about yourself.
Because someone's like, oh yes, well I meant to go and see all the chariots of Japan and climb Mount Fujiyama Kaka.
And then I went over to South Korea and I did karaoke with the Vice, blah, blah, blah.
And then, okay, at the end of it, right?
At the end of it, do they ever ask you anything about you?
No, but they say, well, tell me a little bit about you.
And you're like, What are you going to say?
It's just an elegant way to tell people to shut up.
I'm more interesting than you.
Shut up. Oh, my God.
I mean, if I'm wrong, if I'm wrong, tell me, right?
I mean, I just...
No matter where you go, there you are.
Even if they ask something, I don't feel like answering after travel stories.
I mean, look, occasionally travel stories can be interesting...
But generally not. I mean, travel stories are interesting, the people who were in them.
So to me, travel stories are like one tiny step above the I was so drunk stories.
Which I've never understood.
Never understood. Hey man, no good story ever started with, I had a salad, right?
I was so drunk a whole lot.
Great. Yeah, you know, I guess you could beat yourself around the head with a two-by-four and stagger down the stairs.
That's not very interesting.
I was so wasted. Yeah, it's just...
It's really sad.
Really sad. So, for women, excessive travel in the 20s is a sign of a lack of intelligence.
For women, as a whole.
Oh, so sexist.
What's wrong with being sexy?
You should have seen what they wanted to put in the album cover.
It wasn't a glove I can show you.
So why...
Why is it a mark of less intelligence if a woman travels a lot in her 20s?
Yeah, she's wasting her prime years, right?
Thank you.
She's wasting her prime years.
She's wasting her prime years.
Yeah, well, it depends where she's going.
She could very much be putting herself in danger.
I saw this fascinating video.
I think it was on the London subway, and there was a migrant who was starting to attack people, and a woman with very tight shorts was desperately trying to pull her shorts down and cover up more of her skin.
Absolutely fascinating moment.
Absolutely fascinating moment to just see how female psychology works.
Oh no, there's danger. I better cover up.
I can't be a total garden implement.
Well, of course, you know, women complain about the patriarchy and then go around the
world and hit real patriarchy and it's really dangerous, right?
So the person who asked about food and dieting and weight loss, you need to lose 50 to 60
pounds, are you?
Yeah, if she travels to Dubai, it's a red flag.
Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.
I don't know if you're a male or a female.
You said I'm 45, single, have no kids, need to lose over 50 to 60 pounds.
Oh, you're male? You're male?
Okay. Just checking.
Nice to see so many people here.
Sorry, we're not quite doing any philosophy yet.
We're just doing general observations.
Travel is boring for the most part.
Now, again, I've done some travel.
I went to Hong Kong to do a documentary.
I went to Poland to do a documentary.
I went to California to do a documentary.
I've traveled a lot for business, but that's different.
Traveling for business is your job and all of that, right?
But travel as a whole doesn't make you interesting.
What makes you interesting?
It's a big question. Why should someone choose you?
Why should someone want to talk to you?
Why should someone care about what you think?
What makes you interesting?
Why should anyone...
Why are you here?
Why are you here? Why are you talking to me on this Wednesday night?
Why are you here? Why are we having this conversation?
Why are you here?
What makes you interesting? What's the only thing that makes you interesting?
Thinking. Thinking is the only thing that makes you interesting.
Do you need to travel to think?
Right? Do you need to travel to think?
I mean, again, I'm not big hate on traveling.
I guess it's fine.
I mean, when I was in Morocco, I literally...
My sisters and I have the one wish before we die, and it may sound strange as if our minds are deranged.
I did literally sang Tea in the Sahara while sitting on the back of a camel walking across the Sahara, right?
Tea in the Sahara with you.
That's a great song. So, I was going to do that in theatre school.
Tea in the Sahara, I was going to sing that song, and I was going to have a teacup full of sand and pour it into glasses while I was singing that song.
Just never got around to it for some reason as a whole.
So yeah, thinking makes you interesting.
Thinking makes you interesting.
Travel is a way...
To pretend to be interesting without having to think.
Well, I am interesting not because I'm thinking, but because I've paid for largely prefabricated experiences.
Lawrence from Just Poor, yeah.
Travel also is a shallow status thing.
Like it's a shallow status thing, right?
Especially now, right?
Especially now where you can post all of this stuff and get all of these, wow, so cool where you are.
God. I can't stand the people who want to elevate themselves without elevating others.
Ooh. Step on your face to gain an extra foot of height.
I just can't stand those people.
I try to be patient.
I really do. I succeed.
Once in a blue moon. By the way, August 31st, big blood red moon.
So, I try to be patient, but man alive.
The people who are like, I'm going to feel better because you've heard worse.
I'm going to post cool pictures of my trip so that you feel like you're stuck at home.
Oh, the Disney thing is completely mental.
The Disney thing, right?
America, there's three classes in America, right?
People who've never been to Disney, people who've gone once or twice, and people who go every year.
That's three classes in America.
The Disney thing, I really, really...
Yeah, it's like five, ten grand or whatever.
It's completely mental. And...
Have you been? Hit me with a Y if you've been to a Disneyland somewhere.
Is it Paris, California, Florida?
God, it's horrible. Like it's literally a nightmare, in my opinion.
Yeah, it's horrible.
I mean, yeah, okay, I get all of that, right?
It's a really creepy company as a whole.
It shows you, right?
Walt Disney was a committed anti-communist, and everything you build, at some point, if you've got a government, will be taken over by totalitarians.
Hello, Soul One.
Nice to meet you. So, yeah, I mean, who wouldn't like to just line up in staggering heat, jammed together like vertical sardines in an accordioned subway car with kids who are half your height so you can't talk to them.
You don't want to talk to anyone else in the lineup.
Everyone's kind of tubby and sweaty.
It's unbelievably hot, and you're inching forward like a caterpillar on Quaaludes.
And it's like, oh, God!
Then you get to a ride.
And you do your ride, and your ride is three minutes.
Or it generally blows.
It's a small world after all.
And random fistfights are breaking out across the quad.
And it's $13 for a slice of pizza.
And there are vending machines which will sell you a Dasani for only $7.
And there are no misting stations.
Or maybe there are, I don't know. I don't know.
Just horrible. God, go camping.
It's virtually free.
And your children want a $600 lightsaber that they will in fact break on the way home.
It's crazy.
It's incomprehensible to me why people would do this to themselves.
Yeah, no, it's crazy.
All right. Much better to take the kids camping.
Amen to that. Or just go on a road trip or something.
Like anything, right? You have to go during the cold months, low crowds.
Otherwise, yeah, it's miserable. Or you can also mortgage a child's kidney for a fast pass.
I remember going to Six Flags.
A fending machine soda was three bucks.
I thought that was insane. I still remember.
I did a rant many years ago about just what I rant.
Just how fantastic...
It was when I used to play soccer after school in the summer.
And it was a quarter to get a Coke.
Oh, God, it was so good.
It was so good. I mean, Coke is masochistic, right?
Because it's good, but it hurts your throat.
It's like somebody giving you chocolate and a migraine at the same time.
Not a good association.
See, it's funny, just a...
I don't want to...
Rant or a more serious question?
R or S? Rant or a more serious question?
I'm happy to do whatever. So we used to play soccer a couple of times after school, and particularly in the summers.
Now, in the summer, of course, nobody uses...
The football fields or the soccer fields out there at the high school.
Now high school was like five minutes walk from my house.
So we used to play. And then one day this Karen with the mustache comes over and is like, you can't play here.
It's like, what do you mean we can't play here?
We've been playing here for years. We play and it's great.
The kids are out. We do something.
We, you know, maybe someone's got some pop and we go over to their house afterwards or we go get an ice cream or something.
But no, apparently, apparently you couldn't play anymore.
It was, you needed a permit.
You needed a permit.
It's like, well, what do you mean we need a permit?
Well, if you want to play here, you need a permit.
And one guy, kind of a libertarian, was like, no, we don't need a permit.
You want us to have a permit.
We don't need a permit, because we've been doing this forever.
Don't get smart with you, kid.
You need a permit. Okay, well, how do we go about getting a permit?
Well, you've got to go down to this, you know, two bus rides away.
You go and you sign up and then you can provisionally book this space for playing soccer.
And it's like, well, what do you mean provisionally reserve this space?
Like if we go, and how much is the permit?
Oh, the permit is $10. Now, $10 back then would be like $100 now.
You ever do this? Where you've got, you know, 10 kids or 20 kids.
I think we played, it was about five a side.
Um, so when, when you were ahead and you wanted, uh, you wanted some, this is so ridiculous to remember these jokes, but I, when you were ahead and you wanted someone to pass the ball forward, you'd say, up, up, right?
And there was a guy named Charles I played with whose nickname was Chuck.
So, of course, when I was ahead and I wanted to pass him, up, Chuck, up, Chuck!
Anyway, so, yeah, so can you imagine?
Like, we're all pretty broke kids and stuff.
No, no, no, everyone just come and, uh, bring 10 bucks.
And we'll play. It's like, well, I don't have $10.
This is back when I was making about $2.45 an hour working in a convenience store.
So I would have to work four hours to play a couple of hours of soccer.
And that's if everyone brought it.
So who's going to lay out $100 in the hopes that a bunch of broke-ass kids are each going to bring $10 next time they want to come and play?
And it's once, right? Once.
Crazy. Crazy. And so what happened?
We couldn't play. We couldn't play.
It's really tough to know where childhood obesity comes from.
But I do remember there's another story I thought of just recently.
I went to go and see Tom Cochran and Red Ryder at Ontario Place when I was in my mid-teens.
He's got some great songs.
He's got a great solo album, Mad Mad World.
But back then, A Boy Inside the Man is a great song.
Great song. Who owned the land?
Well, it was owned by the state because it was school.
School property. So then we would go different places to play.
And it was just a game of whack-a-mole, hide-and-go-seek.
And maybe sometimes we'd start playing early in the morning, we'd start playing late at night, we'd go to a different location.
But it was tough to arrange all of that stuff before social media.
And sometimes we'd get to play and sometimes we wouldn't.
And so it was just a war of attrition.
We just ended up not playing.
We just ended up not playing. Anyway, so I was watching Tom Cochran and Red Ryder, and he was putting on a good show.
Guy's got remarkable hair, no question of that.
And a great, great voice and all. A good musician.
Although he did Mad, Mad World, and then that was about it, right?
Hush your tears, my darling.
There's nothing you can say.
The man in the moon won't fall on you.
He don't live there anyway.
But we were all standing on our chairs, boogieing along to Tom Cochran and Red Ryder, and the security guard was like, you can't stand there!
And we all just stood there, because it's like, it was one of these things.
Like, everybody just was aware.
Well, they can't drag us all out.
So we all just stood, and a few of us shook our butts at the security guard.
And it was like, yeah, power in numbers, right?
Power in numbers. Power in numbers.
Do you like Thomas Dalby?
Doubly. She blinded me with science.
I actually had a girlfriend who was so into Thomas Dalby that I know the song.
My heart is like a sieve.
Sometimes it's easy to forget all the bad things you did to me.
Because aliens ate my Buick.
I actually know some obscure Thomas Dalby albums.
Yeah, I thought he was pretty good. Not as good as Hojo.
Howard Jones. Great artist.
Humans Live. Fantastic album.
The album that came after that. He was fantastic.
And then, again, he just did nothing in particular, but Hojo was great, Howard Jones.
He had a good one called The Flat Earth.
Yeah, yeah. All right.
So, any thoughts on Steve Irwin, animal rescuer from the 90s?
I'm not sure what there is to think of Steve Irwin.
Very charismatic guy, very outgoing.
Seemed to be a good family man.
Died from a stingray jolt to the chest, didn't he?
Yeah, I mean, just in general, as a father, maybe don't handle deadly animals when you've got kids.
You know, just a general thought.
It seemed a bit compulsive towards the end there.
Like, just try not to do risky, stupid shit when you've got kids.
I mean, I guess his kid's now following, his son's now following in his footsteps.
There's kind of an amusing picture on the internet of Steve Irwin doing some show and then his son doing the same show in the same location and all of that, so...
Basically, zero risk with stingrays, freak accident.
Really, zero risk with stingrays.
Literally the only good role model we had?
No. Again, a very positive guy and kind of a fearless guy.
I'm not sure that that lack of fear came from the healthiest place in the known universe.
It's kind of like that Bear Grylls thing.
It's, oh, in the show, very little fear.
It's like, well, I'm not sure that's a very good sign of mental health, but it's literally called Stingray.
Yes. Are you Stingray?
Are you Barbie Ray?
What? Alright.
So I got the question about weight.
Yeah, not death ray.
It's true, not death ray.
Why did they paint all the houses' roofs blue in Hawaii?
Well, we catch them, we curse them in Steve's name.
Is that right? Is that right?
Yeah, that Maui stuff is amazing, eh?
Just amazing. Boy, I would have known the truth about Maui some years ago.
That is a...
Shocking. I mean, I'm cynical about the media, obviously, right?
But I'm even a little bit like, okay, so they sent the kids home and told the parents that the place had been cleared.
They actually prevented one mother from going to her own home to get her own kids, saying that the place had been perfectly cleared out.
She came home, she found her kid burned to death, clutching a dog who also had been burned to death.
Like... Nobody's talking.
I'm old enough to remember when Ted Cruz was raked over the coals for going on vacation during some emergency and George Bush over New Orleans was raked for just flying around.
But yet...
And they're not saying how many...
They know exactly, of course, how many kids are burned up, but...
Well, it's like Uvalde, right?
I mean, they literally will prevent you from...
They'll send your own kids home, not tell the parents, and then tell the parents the kids have been evacuated when the kids haven't been.
Well, as I say, the age of competence is over.
All we have is the momentum left from prior competence.
Yeah, Biden was making jokes.
He fell asleep. Yeah, it's kind of hot here.
And I remember when I had a kitchen fire, it's like, dude, what do you even say?
What do you even say? Yep.
It's a mysterious fire.
Alright. So yeah, I've got questions.
Now the government is looking to nationalize all of the burned up property.
Just appalling. I mean, nobody's going to change any votes now, right?
Yeah, Maui is like way...
I mean, Hawaii as a whole is way Democrat, isn't it?
Yeah. I'm no longer interested in throwing myself between people and the results of their own choices.
I mean that's when you realize people are really addicted.
Like you no longer want to throw yourself.
Like you've got some addict who's caught in danger by going out and doing terrible things to get his drugs.
It's like I'm no longer in a situation where I'm interested or even have any motivation to put myself between people and their own bad decisions.
I mean, this is what the ideology as a whole is after, right?
I mean, the guy who was in charge of the water supply believes that water is sacred, has to be worshipped, and didn't want to release it, I think, for partly religious and ideological reasons.
And it's like, well, I guess you got to save the water, didn't you, right?
And people won't.
I mean, they make the connections, they don't make the connections.
I don't really know what to say about it.
Thank you, Bamralog.
Thank you for your work on Peaceful Parenting.
I'm just a grateful dad. Thanks for what you do.
Are you suggesting the government burn the kids alive?
I find that too much to believe.
No, I'm not suggesting that at all.
I'm not suggesting that at all.
Incompetence results in disaster.
It's one of the very predictable things about incompetence.
Alright.
If you have tips let me know.
By the way, let me tell you guys.
First of all, of course, the magnificent Jared has been doing a fantastic job on the research.
We are barreling in with all of the details about what needs to be verified and is being verified in the Peaceful Parenting book.
So there won't be people who can say, well, where did you get that data from?
Because it'd be like, we got it from here.
Alright, so give me a guess.
Give me a guess. I've been working very hard on this book.
I did a whole bunch of review yesterday, and I have been writing.
And thanks to everyone for giving me these sort of mealy-mouthed parental excuses.
I've been working on that. Tell me, how many words do you think we got?
How many words, how many pages?
What do you think we got going on here?
When I anticipate its release?
I'm not sure. So there's a piece I have not put in yet.
So we have a little over 140,000 words and 385 pages.
Of course, some of that is footnotes and so on, but yeah.
So it is coming along.
It is coming along.
It's coming along!
Do you have a section on daycare?
Yes, we do. Did you guys get enough citations for the ACE experiences?
Yes, we did. And in fact, the ACE stuff, since I last did it like 12 years ago or 13 years ago, the ACE stuff has been updated.
And so there's even more and better data.
So the book is really coming along.
I just have to defang it a little because it's really ferocious and it's probably a little bit too ferocious for public consumption right now.
I want to release a police dog, not a pit bull, I suppose.
How long is the average novel?
Almost is not an average novel.
Almost is three novels. Almost is 370,000 words.
A short novel is 80,000 words.
Most novels are 120,000, 140,000 words.
So... Yeah, Almost is a giant, giant beast.
That was a year of my life.
Almost full time. Can we get a sneak peek for subscribers of the Pitbull version?
You could release an uncensored book version for supporters only.
Oh yeah, because that's not going to get leaked anywhere.
Right. Almost is not too long, but amazing the whole way through.
Well, I think so. I think it's one of the best books ever put on paper.
Are you planning to sell signed copies of the book?
No. Now, signed copies are too much of a hassle.
Anything which I have to touch is much less valuable if it can't be reproduced.
So if you order a signed copy, what do I have to sign it?
I've got to mail it off. Like, it's just, yeah.
The almost novel is far too compelling to feel long.
Yeah, I think so. And I think it was one of my, really, one of my best audio book performances.
So... Yes, so it's coming along.
I'm not sure. Hopefully by Christmas.
Hopefully before Christmas, the book will be...
There'll be a version out for people to read before that.
Why would it be bad if the uncensored version leaked?
Would it put you in danger? Well, of course it would.
Yeah, of course it would. Some of your best written characters and almost, in my opinion.
Yes, thank you. This is a spoiler, but I wanted to ask you, why did Lydia leave Lawrence at the end of Just Poor?
I cannot figure it out.
Hit me with a why if you've read Just Poor?
All right, so I'll just do a minute or two on this.
One of my favorite books.
So... Lydia is a really interesting character for me because she's incredibly attractive but also incredibly abstract.
She works in the realm of art.
She works in the realm of ideas.
She doesn't work in the realm of flesh.
And she's also a real daddy's girl and quite vain.
And she has good reason to be vain.
She's got moral courage. She's very artistically brilliant and a very good debater and so on.
So... But there's a lot of vanity in that.
There's a lot of vanity in being that special.
So when Lawrence was high status, but false, she was really attracted to him.
When Lawrence becomes low status, but true, she's too inhabited by the false self to make that journey with him.
She's too concerned with what other people think.
She's too concerned with her own status.
Have you ever had a fall from grace?
Have you ever had a fall from grace?
You think you're all that, and a slice of cheese, and you think you're all of that, like, more than a woman.
What is more than a woman? A woman in a six-pack.
You're all that, and a side dish of baked Alaska, and then, boom!
Slow or fast, you tumble down.
You've had a fall from grace, right?
Bitcoin prices, yeah.
Thank you for the tip. I appreciate that.
You've had a fall... I've had a fall from grace.
I mean, I was doing...
Gosh, what was it?
Um... 10 to 20 million views and downloads a month at my peak, right?
So I've had a fall from grace in more than one situation.
So you're up, you're down, right? We're in, we're out of the money.
Had a fall from grace, now going back up again.
All right. Now, let me ask you this.
Was the fall from grace G or B for you?
Was the fall from grace G or B for you?
In hindsight. Good.
Yes! Good.
Good, good, good.
Right. How did people treat you when you had your fall from grace?
Big question, right? How did people react?
So, minus 10, they crowed on you and they cheered your fall from grace.
Plus 10, they were sympathetic and helpful.
Minus 10 to plus 10, how did people treat your fall from grace?
Minus 10, minus 4, minus 5, minus 10, minus 7, minus 5, minus 2, plus 10, great friends, fantastic, minus 5.
Right. Zero.
That is very neutral of you.
Minus two. Right.
So for the vast majority of you, other people, to one degree or another, were happy about your fall from grace.
Right? They celebrated your fall from grace.
Right?
Was that good information for you to get?
Right.
A fall from grace lifts the curtain on the souls of those around you.
Thank you.
And you see them for exactly who they are.
in the same way that COVID lifted the curtain on the hearts and minds of those around you,
revealing to you and me exactly who they are.
A fall from grace is a rise in wisdom.
Now, in Just Poor, who are the three main female characters in Just Poor?
Mary, Lydia and Kay.
Mary starts at the bottom, gets to the top, self-immolates.
Kay starts at the bottom, gets to the middle, and gets what she wants.
Lydia starts at the top, is tempted by the middle, flees the depth.
She doesn't want to confront her own vanity.
I found the character of Mary utterly terrifying.
Oh, she's completely terrifying.
She is completely...
Mary is like...
Barbara Satan, Lady Barbara.
Mary is completely terrifying.
That level of ferocity, that level of willpower, that coldness towards her own humanity is terrifying.
She is a supervillain, and a complete genius, of course.
Yeah, Mary. Mary's terrifying.
But even Mary is courting her own survival.
She wants to survive in a way.
I don't know if you know the time when she decides to try and destroy society and takes down herself.
I don't know if you know when that moment is, but it's the moment when she has finally all the money that she wants, and she goes to try and become feminine, make herself pretty by a dress, and she can't stand to have anyone touch her, and she can't stand to look pretty.
She can't stand to have a dress, and she realizes there's no future for her.
I was yelling at my phone at Lawrence's decisions.
Right. Right.
Yeah, so with Lawrence, so the book is generally about stripping people of the unearned, right?
Stripping people of the unearned to get to their bare core naked self.
It's like my King Lear in a way, right?
King Lear has the kingship and the surrender and obsequence of his kids and so on and it's all unearned.
He just happened to be born into that position.
So just poor, just poor, poverty is justice, right?
Poverty is justice. Yeah, Lawrence needed to lose everything to find himself and get rid of the leeches, his own vanity being the primary leech.
And of course, the book is very much about fatherlessness, right?
Or an absence of dual parenting, right?
So we've got Lady Barbara who's trying to raise two children without a husband so she becomes too masculine and too aggressive.
And we've got Lord Serbs who's trying to raise Lydia without a mother and he has to become too feminine and therefore vain.
What was your favorite scene to write?
My favorite scene to write...
That book was a wild journey for me in terms of writing.
I will read you a little section from what I found the coolest part to write for me.
Nodded Bob.
Nodded Bob.
Um...
Uh... let's see here.
I like the earthiness of the country characters.
It was really, really great to write earthy characters because, you know, I write a lot of pretty intellectual characters and that was great.
So I... So the character, this is a little bit of a flash forward.
So the character Mary is incredibly poor, incredibly brilliant, gets cast out of her community, comes back and gets to the top of her community and then plans a feast in the mansion she has inherited.
So this is chapter 65, The Last Feast.
Mary had been as intimately involved with food as only someone who is nearly starved can be.
Countless times during her wanderings, she had conjured such fantasy feasts as she was now able to provide.
This takes place in the late 18th century.
Gathering her servants together, she wound them into a fervor of excitement, planning what she called the first and last supper.
They sat in the servants' quarters and had uproarious fights about what should be served, how it should be prepared, and the order in which it should be presented.
Their initial fear of Mary was banished to lurk in the dark wine cellars of the mansion as they laughed around the large, scarred oaken table, conjuring fantastic improbable dishes such as duck a la goose, crinoline pudding inside-out cake.
And the enigmatic yet popular banana surprise, which was widely regarded as best served with two crab apples at the root.
A real banana was produced, and an old washerwoman's demonstration of the best way to eat it made them laugh so hard they thought their eyes would explode.
Finally, they narrowed the list down to foods which could be both actually prepared and pleasantly consumed.
Then took the list into town to get the right ingredients.
Since Mary was planning on inviting her newly released paupers as well as the loom factory workers, she also had to eliminate several dishes she considered too rich for their stomachs.
The provisions were brought, the town invited, and there was great anticipation regarding the event.
When, however, it was found that the new poor were going to be there, enthusiasm in some quarters vanished.
This had been a prosperous village for some years now, and the villagers tended to associate poverty with bad morals, forgetting their own initial resistance to Lord Lawrence's reforms.
Of course, Christian charity warred with a distaste for idle vagabondage.
But in general, the sentiment could be vaguely stirred by fallen women with children or old men with absent limbs or eyes.
But able-bodied and shifty men did not find the gardens of human sympathy open for their wanderings.
Anyway, so I really like that beginning of how they're planning the feast.
And of course, the... The whole book starts with the table was prepared for more than a feast.
The table was prepared for more than a feast.
It was a humiliation as well.
A Kay Swimming in the Pond.
Yes, that was very nice.
Something innocent and tranquil and even beautiful.
Breath of innocence in all the turmoil.
Yes, yes.
So yeah, justpoornovel.com.
You should absolutely check it out.
It's a great book. And free, and free.
All right. Was there another question that I missed?
Oh, and the description of Mary's wanderings after she's expelled from Farmer Jigger's house gave me goosebumps to write and then 20 years later to read in the audiobook.
Just absolutely gave me goosebumps for that.
So yeah, fall from grace is a good thing.
We don't want it.
It's good for us. We don't want it, but it's good for us.
All right. Hit me with a Y if you struggle with any weight issues.
Hit me with a Y if you struggle with any weight issues.
No, says Joe. Yes, yes, yes.
Yes. I a little bit.
I mean, I a little bit for sure.
I'm down to 192.
I could get to 182.
I could go to 182.
All right. Yeah, on and off.
You're still breastfeeding and I think that contributes.
There was a great show from many years ago called Desperate Housewives where a woman kept breastfeeding her son even though her son was like five or six or seven years old because it kept her weight off, right?
So this is a young, this middle-aged man writes, Hi Steph, I wrote a question on Sunday about diet and weight loss and being in a trance.
You mentioned dissociation with food and I asked, who am I serving?
I did some research over the past few days.
Can you please elaborate or guide me in the proper direction where I can do more research?
By the way, I'm 45, single, have no kids and need to lose over 50 to 60 pounds.
50 to 60 pounds.
Okay, hit me with the number, poundage.
Sorry for the kilogram people.
Hit me with the poundage you'd like to lose.
I could lose 10. Hit me with the poundage you'd like to lose.
We got a 15. We got a 75.
We got a 10. We got a 30.
10, 15. We got a 50.
We got a 10, 15. We got a 30.
We got a 50. 50, 50, 50, 56.
Perhaps 30 for me. Plus 10.
You want to gain 10 pounds. Why not?
20, 15. I'm going to get 35.
zero right he had heavy
he's my brother right minus five
Did you see, there was a picture, I think this last week, of Keanu Reeves, who's 60, and he looks, I don't know, five or ten pounds overweight.
And people were like, he's flabby!
Like, right after Lizzo's nude pictures, they're stunningly beautiful.
Keanu Reeves being five or ten pounds overweight at 60 is flabby.
Just horrendous. Oh, oh, the hypocrisy.
It's just wild. My mom wants to lose 30!
All right. So, dissociation with food masks.
Who am I serving? You know what it is when you break the sound barrier, right?
Your airplane goes faster than the speed of sound, and you actually have to build the airplane to handle that stress, right?
You go past the speed of sound.
It's Mach 1, Mach 10, right?
So you have to build the airplane to handle the stress of going past the sound barrier.
I remember as a little kid seeing a football being kicked, I don't know, like half a mile away and wondering why the sound didn't happen when I could see it because I didn't like light is 186,000 miles a second and what sound is like 600 miles an hour or something like that.
So breaking the sound barrier, right?
Okay, let me ask you this.
Is it easy to do better than your parents?
.
Is it easy to do better than your parents?
We got a...
Yes, Paula, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, no.
Simple but difficult, no.
now.
Thank you.
Baby Boomers had it the easiest, right?
And I'm sorry, my question was very inexpertly phrased, so I apologize for that.
I mean, if your parents, like it wasn't easy, it wasn't hard to do better than my mother because my mother hasn't had a job in like over 40 years, right?
Is it emotionally easy to do morally better than your parents?
Like if your parents were violent, is it emotionally easy for you to morally improve upon your parents?
Piece of cake. Yes times a thousand.
Maybe it's just me. I find it hard.
I do find it hard sometimes.
It would hurt like hell because if it was possible then it hurts that I didn't
receive it from them.
I want to show them up. That's a motive.
That doesn't mean that it's easy to do it.
Well, my parents left me with babysitters for weeks at a time, so yes, sometimes, and no others.
I suspect significant waves of bullshit in the audience.
I could be wrong, but I suspect association and significant waves of nonsense from the audience.
No disrespect. I could be totally wrong.
I'm just telling you.
Okay, if you had bad parents, are you raised and trained and bullied and bribed and punished to obey your parents?
Right? Yes, of course you are, right?
Not anymore? No, you were.
I said you were. Were you? Right, so you were highly punished for disobeying your parents, right?
Now, do your parents, let's say your parents were violent, do your parents want you to be a peaceful parent?
No. So this is why I suspect certain waves of bullshit from my wonderful audience, and I'm really happy you guys are here, and again, I could be totally wrong.
But if we're trained to obey our parents and our parents don't want us to improve, isn't it tough to improve?
Because we're going against parental commandments that were beaten to us for 20 years.
Isn't this like trying to train yourself to not understand the language you were raised with?
Am I wrong about this? Again, I could be totally wrong.
But it seems to me kind of logical that if you're trained to obey your parents and your parents were bad, becoming good is going against your parents' wishes.
They don't want you to do well. They don't want you to do well.
Somebody says, I almost did not have children for fear I would become them.
I might have been dumbfounded after seeing how I raised my son.
You know, because parents always say, well I want my children to do better than I do.
And that's true in terms of money.
Right? You know, you think of the kids who come in from some other country, or the parents come in from other
country, they work two jobs to get their kids into school and
educated and all that sort of Japanese stuff.
Do your parents want you to be good if your parents were immoral?
Thank you.
.
Somebody says... I think that's why I'm childless today.
Subconsciously, I don't want to be like my parents.
No, that's not why you're childless.
I was never afraid to have kids.
I just knew I wouldn't do things the same.
Agreed. I understand all of that.
I understand all of that. I'm saying, is it easy?
Easy to do better because the bar is low, but hard to do because your parents don't want you to.
Right.
Right.
So if your parents say, well I wasn't an ideal parent because I had a bad childhood and you have a bad childhood,
become a good parent, do you not take away that excuse from them?
.
Don't you take away their excuse?
Like if you do wrong, because I'm just doing this whole section of the book, undoing parental defenses as to why they did wrong.
Why were they harmful? Why were they brutal?
Why were they aggressive? Why were they wrong?
wrong, what are the bad? So how easy is it for immoral people when you take away
their excuses? Take away their excuses.
Well, I had a tough childhood and that's why I was not an ideal parent.
And then you become a good parent despite having a tough childhood.
You take away that excuse, don't you?
I mean, maybe you don't try to, but you do, don't you?
Take away that excuse. What is it like for bad people when they have no excuses left?
What is it like for them? Just peel away, layer after layer, layer, defense after defense, armor after armor, just peel that away.
Well, you know, we had to hit kids because otherwise they don't turn out well.
It's like, well, my daughter's now going to be 15 in a couple of months and she's fantastic and I've never yelled at her, never hit her, never punished her, never, right?
So that's wrong. Well, I raised you the way that I was raised.
That's what parents do. Well, I'm raising my child differently, so you could have as well.
well, just peel away. You take away these excuses.
My mom didn't speak to me for seven years.
She now acknowledges what she did.
I'm not sure she does.
What happens when you take away the defenses
of immoral people, their justification?
What's underneath that?
Yeah. That's right.
Rage. Do you know how evil people contain their evil?
Do you know how they do it?
Do you know how they pretend to not be evil?
How do evil people contain their evil?
I don't know.
you With justifications, blame shift, they become victims, projection, small offensive motions, passive aggression, camouflage, virtue signal, smiling faces, they tell themselves they had good intention.
Quite right, you guys are, I'm getting a tan from this brilliance.
Make you feel guilty, they confabulate and brainwash themselves into believing the other person deserved it.
Camouflage, yeah, yeah. Lie.
Lots of people lie, but it's not specific to this.
Although you're right. Oh, I don't know.
Is it too early to hurt people with truth?
We've gone a long way from printers to ripping off soul band-aids.
Are you robust enough?
because this is gonna hurt. This is one of these statements that's just gonna hurt.
You love the hurtful truths?
Truth knockout? It's 1.30am here.
Please tell us the truth.
All right. The way that evil lives with itself is it pretends it had no free will.
It pretends it had no free will.
Kyra Stein, try and stay with the convo.
Determinism, absolutely.
What are all the excuses that bad parents use?
What are they all? What are they?
I had to. I had no choice.
I either had no choice because it was the right thing to do or I had no choice because of the way I was raised.
I did the best I could with the knowledge I had.
They take away their free will.
Because if you're forced to do something, you're not responsible for it, right?
We agree on that, right?
If someone forces you to rob a bank at gunpoint, you're not responsible for robbing the bank, right?
So you have to destroy your free will in order to pretend to yourself you weren't immoral.
Are we together on that?
There is no parenting manual Yeah, I can... Yeah, there is no...
Of course, A, there are parenting manuals.
Of course, there are thousands of parenting manuals.
You just didn't look for them. And these are the same, like, you have a dad who, well, there weren't any parenting manuals, but boy, it's going to take three months to research buying a new car, and then I'm going to read that manual cover to cover.
There are parenting manuals.
Of course there are. I mean, you literally get assigned a math textbook and if you don't study and you say, well, there's no textbook for math, they say, well, of course there is.
It's like, how many more?
Are there more parenting books or more math textbooks?
There are more parenting books. So you see, I couldn't get the information Therefore, I'm not responsible for the bad outcome.
I was programmed by my parents.
I was programmed by history.
You kids were bad.
I had no choice.
I was doing the best I could with the knowledge I had.
I'm in the right. I had no choice.
I had no choice. I had no choice.
I had no choice. Take free will, strangle it in the crib, and you don't feel immoral.
Hey man, I'm just a plaything of the universe.
I'm just a domino.
You can't blame me for what I had no choice but to do.
You can't blame me for what I had no choice but to do Will you ever allowed that excuse as a kid
Well you know I didn't study because I'm forced to go to school.
I don't have any free will about going to school.
Everyone who denies free will is covering up a crime.
100% no exception to this rule So your parents say if they were bad they say I did what I
did because I had a bad childhood But you don't get any
And their bad childhood was decades in the past.
But you, who are currently experiencing a bad childhood...
Get no excuse. Right?
So my bad childhood is why I did bad things.
My bad childhood decades ago is why I did bad things.
And I punished you because I gave you, so I don't have any moral free will, but you have perfect moral free will despite the fact that you're currently going through a bad childhood that I'm inflicting on you.
So my bad childhood gives me a moral excuse.
Your bad childhood, 100% responsible.
Infinitely higher moral standards for the child than for the parents.
Always. Always. Always.
Thank you. Appreciate the tip.
When you look at parental defenses, I mean, you all know what my mother's defense was, right?
Why did my mother do a bad thing?
She knew she did bad things. She couldn't pretend she didn't.
Why? What was my mother's excuse?
Why was she not responsible?
No, she didn't claim World War II, although that would actually be a more reasonable one.
I wouldn't expect you to remember this little bit of Molyneux trivia.
And what was my mother's excuse as to why she did bad things?
No, not because my dad left.
And again, I'm not...
Whether you know this or not, it's not particularly important, but it follows the pattern.
No, the doctors poisoned her.
That's right. Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, so the doctors injected her with bad things that drove her crazy, and she Epstein Barr, and...
Chronic fatigue syndrome, and she just, right?
I mean, I don't know what happened to her in the asylum.
Of course, I was like 11 or 12.
But, yeah, it's the doctor's fault.
They did this to her.
She had no choice. Now, of course, why she was immoral, as I pointed out when I confronted her, is like, you say this, but you also beat us up in England when we were little, and you hadn't met your Canadian hell doctors then, right?
So, the conflict goes like this.
The conflict goes like this. I'm not immoral because I have this excuse.
Take away the excuse. Well, I was not immoral because I have this excuse.
Take away that excuse. I was not immoral because...
Right? They've got ten excuses.
You knock them down one by one.
what happens when you remove the last excuse.
Right? When you take away the excuse, the evil returns.
So evil... It's kept at bay through excuses.
You take away the excuses, you re-expose the evil.
Excuses mask abuses.
Is it okay that we rhyme a little?
Excuses mask abuses.
Why am I saying this?
I'm saying this Because when you do morally better than your parents, you take away their excuses.
When you take away their excuses, you expose the underlying rage, which both you and them have kept at bay with the magic shield called excuses.
Your parents have excuses.
They demand that you accept their excuses and you collude by accepting their excuses.
And then the moment you say, I no longer accept your excuses, the rage comes back, the abuse comes back.
When you morally improve over your parents, you take away their excuses.
Right? Now, of course, if you do financially better than your parents, they can accept that, right?
Because I came from another country.
I didn't speak English.
You know, it took me a while to get settled in.
I'm glad that you guys are doing better.
You know, that's perfectly reasonable, right?
That's a reasonable... Reason.
It's a reason why they didn't do as well, right?
Morally, though, is another matter.
When I started taking away my mother's excuses, what's at the bottom of that digging?
What's down there? It's a volcano.
Take away the excuses.
So the only way that you get to be with people who are unrepentant evildoers,
the only way you get to be with those people in any pretend civilized way,
is if you pretend they had no choice.
Or we thought it was great parenting!
Did you check? You had to be spanked, otherwise you would have turned out bad.
Oh, did you do any research? Did you check?
Right? So when I was a kid, you ever heard this?
Never assume. It makes an ass out of you and me.
Right? You break out the word assume.
Do you ever hear that kind of stuff? Never assume.
Did you check? Well, I thought...
No, don't think! Did you check?
I thought the test was today.
Did you check? You're responsible for checking.
I thought I turned off the hose.
Did you go and check? I thought I had my wallet with me.
Did you check? I intended to.
I meant to. Well, did you?
Did you check? I thought I packed my toothbrush.
Did you, Jack? So you weren't allowed to make assumptions as a kid, were you?
I assumed this wasn't going to be on the test.
I assumed the test was tomorrow, not today.
I assumed that the homework was optional.
I assumed that I had packed my toothbrush.
I assumed I had my money with me.
Were you ever allowed to just assume things and it was fine?
Ever? Maybe once or twice, but not often, right?
No. So as a kid, you couldn't just assume you had to check, right?
You had to check. You had to check.
You had to double check, triple check.
You have to be sure.
So, so parents who punish you when you make assumptions, who then say,
Well, I assumed that hitting was good parenting.
Did you check? Did you look it up?
Did you check? Nope.
Well, you weren't allowed to assume things as a kid about things infinitely less important than actually hitting children.
My dad said that not all parents who spank are evil and they have good intentions.
He doesn't condone spanking now, so I'm not sure what he's getting at.
Okay, that's fine. Did your dad ever punish you for having good intentions with a bad outcome?
Or did you ever get to say, if your dad was angry at something you did, did you ever get to say, oh, no, no, I had good intentions?
Did you ever get to say that?
Was good intentions an excuse that was valid for you as a child?
It's the simple thing we do with UPP. You know, I thought I was ready for that test.
I thought I knew how to spell this word.
I had good intentions. I thought I would be okay.
I had good intentions.
I didn't mean to knock over that lamp.
I had good intentions. I didn't mean to spill that drink.
I didn't mean to hit my brother.
I had good intentions. I just wanted to do something funny and he got hit.
I had good intentions.
Was that ever... Oh, if you had good intentions, that's fine.
If you claim to have good intentions, that's totally fine.
Was that allowed for you as a child?
You're typing some long messages here.
I'm looking. Good intentions is good enough for my dad, not so much mom.
Oh, so your dad, when you were a kid, if you said you had good intentions, he wouldn't punish you.
He wouldn't think negatively of you.
There'd be no negative repercussions if you said, no, I had good intentions.
So if you failed to study for a test, but you had good intentions to pass it, that was fine.
You'd be like, yeah, fair.
Good intentions are fair. Did you get a defense called Good Intentions?
He didn't punish me for things I did that were accidents, like breaking his vials, for example.
What are you talking about?
We're not talking about an accident.
Spanking is not an accident.
Whoops! Accidentally pulled your pants down and hit you.
Whoops! You know, hate it when that happens.
You're at the mall. You know, there's a little bit of oil on the ground.
Whoops! Pull someone, you know, pull someone's pants down.
They end up over your lap and you just spank them ten times.
Oh my gosh! Officer!
I mean, it's an accident!
Spanking is not an accident?
What are you talking about? Accidents?
What are you bringing this in for? It's a completely unrelated example.
When you did something intentionally that turned out to be bad, did you get to say you had good intentions?
You planned, did something, executed it, and it was really bad.
Did you get to say, oh no, I had good intentions.
Okay, that's fine. Why should you give an excuse to your father that he didn't give to you as a child?
Was your father more in control of his behavior than you were as a child?
Did your father have more liberty, more knowledge, more wisdom, more maturity?
Did he have an adult brain?
Did he have more choice than you had as a child?
Lucy why are you saying what happened to freedomain.com with all the podcasts?
It's running. Don't interrupt me for saying something like that.
Be sure. Be certain.
Because I have to go and check to see if freedomain.com is still running.
So please try not to interrupt me when I'm a little bit of something when it's not even correct.
Freedomain.com is running.
As is FDRpodcast.com.
So please don't interrupt me when I'm in the middle of a flow with something that is a technical issue that is incorrect.
Somebody says, I think the double-edged sword is the abused parent instinctively knows they can't complain about their childhood, and then they hear their inner child's criticism echoed from their own children.
Both children, inner child of abused parents...
Instinctively know they can't complain about their childhood and then they hear their inner child's criticisms echoed from their own children.
Both children, inner child of abuse parents and their now child could simply be trying to connect with their parent.
That sounds confusing. It all gets filtered as criticism.
Okay, this is an overcomplicated, to me, pile of word salad to overstep something as simple as hypocrisy.
Isn't this just hypocrisy?
You, as a child with no freedom and liberty, where you're forced to pretty much do just about anything, you don't get any excuse called, I had good intentions.
But when I'm an adult hitting a child, I have this magical excuse called, good intentions, which means nothing bad happened.
And let me ask you this.
Can good intentions 20 years ago ever be proven?
Can good intentions from 20 years ago ever be proven?
Nope. They can't.
Not a chance.
Well, I had good intentions 20 years ago.
Good intentions from the same day can't be proven.
See, good intentions is a bullshit phrase invented so people don't have to apologize.
It's complete bullshit.
Good intentions. Good, good, good, good intentions.
No, it doesn't exist.
State of mind from 20 years ago, absolutely unverifiable.
State of mind 20 years ago, absolutely unverifiable.
And it's a lie.
It's a lie. How do I know That the phrase good intentions as an excuse for spanking is a complete and total lie.
How do I know with no reference to outside facts, no history, how do I know?
No, not because they feel the need to justify it.
You can feel the need to justify something that is in fact justifiable.
Everybody feels the need to justify things.
How do I know in the moment that the good intentions from 20 years ago is a total lie?
Alright, step with me through this.
If your father hit you as a child, would you feel better if he took total responsibility in the present?
If he didn't make excuses, you would feel better, right?
So he's fucking saying that he knows his bad intentions from 20 years ago, but he's completely
unaware of his bad intentions right now.
.
Does he have good intentions when he makes excuses for hitting you?
No. So this is how I know.
The supposed good intentions from 20 years ago are a complete lie because he doesn't even have good intentions now!
Talking about it now.
So when somebody Is in a very corrupt way acting with bad intentions saying, no, no, no, good intentions from 20 years ago.
It's like, no, you don't even have good intentions now.
Now, what the fuck would I believe you about 20 years ago?
Well, I'm a thief now.
I'm stealing from you now. But 20 years ago, although I did steal from you a lot, I had good intentions.
It's like, if you had good intentions, maybe stop stealing from me once in a while.
Maybe. Just maybe.
Keep your hands in your own fucking pockets and stop taking my wallet.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
Then I'll start thinking about good intentions.
But maybe stop doing bad things.
Well, the bad things in the past were done with good intentions.
So you can't get mad at me and you're not being unjust and it's unfair because I had good intentions.
It's like, where are your good intentions right now when I'm asking you to take responsibility?
You have no good intentions now.
Oh! Oh!
Honestly, I get like a soul-spinal body chill with this stuff.
How about you model good intentions in the here and now before you start telling me about all the good intentions you had when you were hitting my ass 20 years ago.
Or 30 or 40 or 50 Whoa
Shake it up shake it up. It's like it's like literally feels like putting my face in a bucket of maggots
Like, it really does. Like, analyzing, this is why this book is so fucking punchy.
It's like, I literally feel like I'm putting my face in maggots for a couple hours a day.
Like, it's so gross to me.
It's so manipulative. It's so creepy.
It's so vile. And it could be unjust.
I'm just telling you my direct experience is repulsive.
You see how powerful UPB is, though, right?
Don't lie to me about your good intentions, because you're manifesting bad fucking intentions right now telling me about all the good intentions you had in the past.
Oh, I had so many good intentions in the past.
I really didn't want to stab you in the past.
I had good intentions. Maybe stop stabbing me now.
Would you mind stop stabbing me now?
Then we can maybe start talking about your good intentions, but maybe a little less fucking stabbing now would be the thing to do if you want to tell me about your good intentions.
Yeah, spanking as a sexual component.
Yeah, the anus is an erogenous zone.
Yeah, it is very bizarre.
And, of course, people do it because you have to cover your butt, so the bruises don't show.
That's one reason. Alright.
Dissociation with food. Who am I serving?
So if you're overweight, do you want to be fat?
Simple yes or no stuff.
If I help solve your weight issues, do I get a donation?
Just out of curiosity. I just want to know if I'm working for anything real tangible.
I mean, self-satisfaction is good.
Helping people is good. If you did, fantastic.
Right. So if I solve your weight issues...
Do I get a tip if you haven't tipped for a while?
Just out of curiosity. You don't have to.
I'm just curious. See how motivated I'm going to be.
My motivation is a little bit out.
I mean, I'm a little bit of a puppet in your hands, right?
I'm donating next month when I'm spending your budget resets.
Stay at home mom life. Appreciate that.
No problem then. Hey, if you're low on cash, take it and enjoy.
Don't worry. You'll make money later and you can make it up.
That's fine. Don't worry about it. No problem.
Alright, if you're overweight, do you want to be overweight?
Of course no, right? You don't want to be overweight.
Now, do you know exactly what you need to do to lose the weight?
What do you need to do to lose the weight?
We question, what do you need to do?
What do you need to do to lose the weight?
Eat less, move more.
Boom! Eat less, move more.
Eat less, move more. Eat healthy and exercise.
Right. Have you looked up the science of losing weight?
How many calories do you need to reduce to lose one pound?
How many calories do you need to lose?
To lose one pound Oh calories to lose one
I typed in calories to love one bad.
Yeah, so if you cut about 500 calories a day from your usual diet, you may lose about half a pound to a pound a week.
So yeah, it's about 3,500 calories to lose a pound, right?
None of this is diet advice.
I'm just looking at the math.
Hit me with a why.
Do you track the calories you eat over the course of a day?
do you track the calories you eat over the course of a day?
yes no no no no no no no no no no right you keep a food diary?
Now, you know that there are apps, right?
There are apps. I think one's called Lose It.
There are other apps.
You can enter your food and you just look it up and it gives you, no, it's not perfect, but you can enter your food and it will tell you.
You got MyFitnessPal.
Yeah, I've tried Lose It.
So you just enter your food and then you can figure out Whether you're going to gain or lose weight, right?
So, can you manage what you don't measure?
Can you manage what you don't measure?
What you cannot measure? No.
Right. So, you know you don't want to have the extra weight You know exactly what you need to do to lose the extra weight, but it seems that most of you aren't tracking what you eat.
So, out of curiosity, why are you not tracking what you eat?
Are you tracking your exercise, right?
Are you tracking how many calories you burn over exercise?
I do about 4,000 calories a week in exercise.
So do you Track your exercise and track your food.
Because all the stuff I like blows out my calorie target.
No, but I do lift weights every day.
I use the apps before it gets annoying to write everything down.
Try skipping breakfast and lunch.
I've lost 80 pounds and kept it off for four years.
Well, of course.
But you see, you're just telling...
You're bragging here. I'm sorry.
This is kind of annoying because you're bragging.
So you're saying, eat less.
What did I just ask everyone, my friend?
Sorry. The vanity stuff around losing weight is just annoying.
Well, I've done this.
I've lost... Just try doing this.
Everybody already knows that they should eat less.
Right? So you're not telling them anything they don't already know.
Please, show some respect to the people you're talking to.
Okay? They already know that they should eat less.
So then you say, well, try scraping breakfast and lunch.
They already know that they should eat less.
I don't track, maybe I should.
My excuse is that I find it a pain in the butt to use the app.
Yeah, the shallow answers, yeah.
No, it's just, oh, I've lost all of this weight, you should just do this, right?
All right. So...
If you want to lose weight and you know exactly what you want to do, but you're not doing it, it's because you're serving someone other than yourself.
You follow? If you want to lose weight, you know what to do, but you're not doing it.
It's because you're serving someone other than yourself.
Right? If you don't want to go to work, but you go to work, you're serving your boss, not you.
Because if it was up to you, you wouldn't go to work, right?
You're serving someone else. And that's fine.
We do this from time to time, right?
When a mother, a new mother gets up for the third time at night because the baby's crying, she's serving her baby, not herself, because she doesn't want to get up.
So who are you serving?
It's a fundamental question in life.
Who are you serving? Who are you serving?
It's just a fundamental question to ask in your life as a whole.
That's why I got out of politics.
I don't want to serve those people anymore.
Who are you serving?
Who benefits from you being fat?
Right? Who benefits from you being fat?
It's not you, right? It's not you.
I mean, don't you see...
Do you see a lot of really old, overweight people?
I mean, do you see a lot of people who are overweight?
.
Do you see a lot of them? No.
Whenever you see a really old person, aren't they skinny?
Losing weight, even just 5-10% of excess weight can add years to your life.
Years to your life.
It's a slow-motion fat bullet that kills you.
Right?
You ask myself that didn't come up with an answer.
Thank you.
Right. Fundamental question in life.
If you want to succeed, right?
You want to succeed. Who loses if you win?
Right? I'm typing this in.
Who loses if you win?
Who loses if you win?
Who's unhappy if you're happy?
Your haters. Yeah, of course.
The bad people, right.
Your enemies. Yeah!
Yeah. Hit me with an E if you have enemies.
I'm going to hit a couple there.
Ibrahim! Allah, Allah, Allah will pray for you!
Right, e to the power of e, yeah that's right.
So you got your haters, you got your enemies.
Only if I confront them?
Nope. They're in your head.
They're in your head. The calls are coming from inside the house.
So you've got your enemies.
Do your enemies want you to succeed?
If you get away and you're a zebra, is the lion happy?
Who are you in a win-lose relationship with?
even if it's in your head?
Who are you in a win-lose relationship with even if it's in your head?
Or I guess especially in your head.
It's called the MECO system.
Who loses if you win?
Yourself? I don't know.
I don't know what that means.
You can't be in a win-lose relationship with yourself.
Like your core identity.
If you've got a parent who says, well relationships are tough man, and that's why I couldn't stay married, you know
relationships are tough.
Thank you very much.
How happy is your parent if you have a good, happy, loving relationship?
That's easy. Because they're proven wrong.
And their justifications are taken away.
And if their justifications are taken away and they've done wrong, they have to confront that evil.
Oh yeah, they totally changed.
they will have just completely changed.
Is there anyone left in my life who is opposed to me getting into philosophy?
Anybody in my life who is opposed to me getting into philosophy?
Of course not. Because they'll sabotage me.
I'm not an idiot, right?
They'll sabotage me. Of course they will.
Of course they will. Of course they will.
Because if I win, they lose.
So stop! I'm not sure I want to rant directly at you.
Because how often do I rant directly at you?
Rant at you?
Stop being naive.
Thank you.
Stop being naive. There are people in your life who desperately need you to fail.
And if they're not in your life, they're in your head.
You're in a war for the future of the world and the future of yourself, like it or not.
We didn't ask for this war, it's just the way that the world is.
But stop being naive.
There are people in your life, in your past, in your circle, in your head, who desperately want you to fail and will do anything to achieve that goal.
If you're a good person, do you find good people overabundant in the world that is?
Do you find we're just crowding out the place and you can't swing a cat without hitting a really good person and boy, just evil people, immoral people, sabotaging people are just really, really hard to come by and everyone's just great and supportive and wonderful?
Do you find the world entirely overburdened with an excess of virtuous souls?
No. Who were you surrounded by?
Who are you surrounded by?
The baddies. Statistically, right?
You may have wonderful people in your life.
I've got great people in my life.
But I recognize we're a little bit of an oasis in a desert of amorality, immorality.
Right? You're like people trying to have picnic in a war zone.
You follow?
You're like people on the beach at Normandy saying, Hey man, like all this clatter clatter of small arms fire
is totally interfering with our volleyball game.
There's a war.
And if you pretend there's no war, you lose.
Do you follow? If there's a fight coming up, and you do nothing to prepare for it, how does that fight go?
Just out of curiosity.
How does the fight go?
If you're not prepared for it, if you think there's not going to be a fight, you lose, of course.
There's a test called combat with immorality.
That happens all the time.
It even happens in your dreams, doesn't it?
There's a song, Rich Man North of Richmond, where he says, I know that you know.
I've been listening to this song by Marillion.
He knows, you know, but he's got problems.
This is a drug song, right?
You're already in a drama of good and evil.
You're already in. Yeah, I know, he's not...
Yeah, he's woke in his own way.
I get all of that. Everybody rushes to some ginger singer like, hey, he's the new moral philosopher.
Or nope, just a musician.
Now how do bad people resolve conflicts?
Thank you.
Good people try to resolve conflicts, win-win negotiation and so on, right?
How do bad people deal with conflicts, right?
What have we got here?
Manipulation or escalation, violence, threats of violence.
Shout louder, they deal to win.
Gaslight. Blame.
Force. Evade.
Not evade. Dominance.
Projection. They destroy people.
They destroy your reputation.
They destroy your capacity to earn an income.
They try to destroy your relationships.
They try to destroy your peace of mind.
And eventually, it escalates to straight-up death, right?
I mean, historically, right?
Make quarter billion people murdered by their own governments in the 20th century alone outside of war even
Who wants you dead Even in your head?
Who wants you dead?
Who wants you dead?
All the people to whom your virtue makes them feel evil, don't want you around.
.
I mean, my mom literally tried to set me up with my sister's best friend in front of my now wife as violence towards my life.
Yeah, when I was dating my woman who became my wife, a friend of mine brought another woman for me to meet.
I had a family member try and set me up with a woman who was 400 pounds.
Steph, how do you define the term child abuse in the book?
You can just tell me that this topic is troublesome for me without trying to distract me.
Like, you understand I'm in the middle of a rant here, right?
You understand I'm in the middle of a conversation here, trying to talk to people directly about things, and you bring up something like this.
Do you have no capacity to wait?
You can't put that on the sidebar for just a little bit and let me finish?
That just amazes me.
It amazes me what people do.
It amazes me what people do.
You're not saying that.
You're trying to distract me from this conversation so the bad people in other people's heads don't get provoked.
It's amazing. It's so rude.
It's so rude when I'm in the middle of trying to talk about something for people to drag
off some other topic.
So if you're overweight and you won't lose weight, it's because people in your head,
in your environment, somewhere, somehow, those people want you discredited, they want you
to look like a loser, and they probably want you to die early.
.
Tell me I'm wrong. Isn't that the effect?
As a good person, do they want you to be out there in the world with great credibility
and great health and good relationships and happiness and showing everyone the full flaming
power and might of your virtue?
They want to discredit you.
you My dad literally sabotaged my weight loss, says Anthony.
I see the game now and don't fall for it.
If you're healthy and happy and virtuous, you discredit the practicality of evil.
Evil wants to feel that it's practical.
It's last resort is it's the only sane course of action.
You're in a battle.
Thank you for listening.
It's a battle of the mind.
It's a battle of the mind.
And that's why when I said to people, is it tough to do better than your parents morally?
And everyone was like, yeah, it's easy.
No, it's not. No, it's not.
Because those people who just did morally better than their parents throughout our evolution,
Just in general, when they showed up, their superiors and those with great power in the tribe as being immoral and corrupt, what happened to those people who just did morally better, happily and joyfully in their tribe, in our tribes evolving?
What happened to those people? Did they do well?
Hunting accident. They either died or became leaders who took over the tribe.
They did not become leaders who took over the tribe.
Because virtuous people don't want power over others.
Because it destroys your soul.
Yeah, they got ostracized.
They got killed in a hunting accident.
They got abandoned, left behind.
Nobody protected them when the predators came.
They were done, baby! Gone!
Here's a little hemlock potion for you, brother.
Yeah, booked, burned, cancelled, they got heretics, they were burned.
Or, at the very least, at the very least, women wouldn't mate with them, right?
Women wouldn't mate with them.
Vince says, I've been surrounded by addicts my whole life.
They see me as a proud crab crawling out of the bucket, but I know the truth.
I may be doing a bit better, but I'm still miles behind.
But the best way to lose it, life, is to surround yourself with losers.
Everybody knows this. I mean, this is not a mystery.
The best way to lose at life is to surround yourself with losers.
I just don't want you to be starry-eyed and naive about the battle that you're in.
.
This phenomenon is a timeless ghost.
So great to hear it vocalized.
I've never heard it said so clearly.
Thank you. Doing better is really, really, really dangerous.
Improvement is the most extreme sport known to man.
Do you follow? Almost all throughout history, model improvements were suicidal, even suggesting them, let alone embodying them.
Don't you sometimes feel like moral mice at the feet of ancient corrupt dinosaurs just trying to survive and burrow and run from place to place and get by and not talk and not get caught and not get found out and not be cornered and not be exposed and just let me live five more minutes being a good person before the giant chicken feet of the T-Rex of corruption comes down on your ass?
Do you ever feel that? Maybe it's just me.
Do you ever feel that? That you're hunted for breathing?
You're hunted for thinking? You're hunting for asking questions?
You're hunted for being skeptical?
You're hunted for having a mind?
For not being an NPC? For being critical?
For being curious?
for having facts.
Don't you feel like you walk around the world with your head lit up with
NPC sniper rifles like you're some tomato?
Welcome my son.
Welcome to the machine.
The machine is not the right analogy because the machine is amoral.
You know the dance, right?
We all know the dance.
Thank you.
.
How much truth can I speak before people turn on me?
How much honesty do I dare?
How many facts can I speak before they turn into torches and pitchforks
in the hands of the mob?
.
How honest and funny can I be before the laughter stops and they chase my ass through the woods to string me up?
How much truth can people handle before I'm a heretic?
.
How many facts can people swallow before it becomes a sickness?
They only believe they can cure themselves off by attacking me or you.
And what happens?
What happens if I tell the truth and some people start to attack me?
What happens to everyone else?
Is anyone going to stand by me?
Is anyone going to stand with me?
Is anyone going to defend me?
Or do they just slowly step back?
Step over the bodies and the jackals.
Step away from the firelight that's consuming his legs.
Move back from the mob.
Slither into the night.
I have, as somebody says, I often feel my truth impulse is a death impulse.
I find you can talk about just about anything except child abuse.
Most people I've talked to can be swayed to libertarian ideas, but if I mention how evil most people are, I can feel the temperature of the room drop.
No, there's a whole bunch of things you can't talk about.
Oh yeah, I feel like I'm in Jurassic Park sometimes and I don't move or interact much so that I don't attract their attention.
I'm sorry for interrupting earlier.
That's okay. At times I've made it a game of trying to send the message without triggering the defense.
Covert moral vigilance with small successes here and there.
It's a guerrilla movement, isn't it? It's an underground movement.
It feels like walking on a minefield sometimes.
People can erupt depending on the topic.
And do you feel this is different between men and women in the audience?
Do you feel it's different between men and women when you're talking?
Is it different?
Is it different?
Women are worse than your experience Don't they get it? I mean, I think sometimes women get a little bit more tense about certain topics.
Women seem to freak out more with potential disagreement than men do.
I think a lot of men sort of jump into it and like, let's roll it up and let's get it up, right?
Let's get it on. I mean, aren't we in a dance with the world?
On a minefield? Dodge, slither, dive, shoot something up in the air to tell the truth, run away from the repercussions.
Aren't we in this crazy complicated dance with trying to improve people without rousing the mob to hunt us down?
Women's sensitivity is often the excuse invoked for avoiding certain topics.
Don't upset your mother! Well, um...
So people were saying, do you think that the ferocious, peaceful parenting book could be dangerous?
Yeah! Yes.
And I have, I mean, I've been told this many times that I have a way of bringing
topics up with people that they don't realize just how volatile these topics
are because I'm fine with it.
And I've been told many times, like, the way you talk about it, you talk about the wildest stuff.
And people were just like, oh, that's interesting, as opposed to, now, maybe later.
But I have this kind of odd ability to just talk about volatile stuff, at least I had for a long time, without triggering people's defenses.
I don't know if you've experienced that from me, but...
Lloyd DeMoss might be the most inflammatory.
Maybe.
But Lloyd de Maas' work doesn't change any individual's decision.
I'm actually having a great time despite the challenges.
I imagine the times could be even worse.
Well, I'm not bothered by the topics and most people don't judge
your topics, they judge only whether you're bothered by the topics.
So if I talk about the topics in an unbothered way, people are like, well, I guess this is okay.
And then maybe later they repeat it and then they get attacked.
And oh my gosh, then it's bad, right?
So if you're overweight, it's because bad people in your life, to some degree or another,
want you discredited.
Want you unloved? Want you self-doubting?
Want you self-disgusted with yourself, perhaps, if you're very overweight and that's your experience, right?
And maybe they want you, I mean, you'll be taken out of life years earlier.
Maybe they want you out of the way, in a way.
Who are you serving? Who does it benefit for you to be overweight?
Who does it benefit for you to be overweight?
Doesn't benefit you? Doesn't benefit virtue?
Doesn't benefit love? Doesn't benefit pair bonding?
Who does it benefit?
So you see why when I said how is it, how easy is it to do better than your
parents or better than those around you?
And you're like, no, it's great. It's fine.
Yeah, it looks easy. I'm like, no, it's not.
And that's naivete, right?
And that's dangerous. You're like that fresh-faced kid in the World War I movie who's always totally eager to fight, right?
It's going to be great. No, be cautious.
For God's sakes, be careful out there.
It's dangerous out there.
Respect the danger.
Respect the challenge. Be alert.
Head on a swivel. Don't be naive.
Lord knows I've done it.
I'm not saying this is bitter hard one experience, right?
Don't be naive. It's dangerous out there.
Because you think it's easy to speak the truth, be virtuous, and do good in society, but you can't even lose 20 pounds.
Don't talk to me about what's easy.
Start with the 20 pounds, then fix the world.
You follow me? This is what I mean when I say the bad people want you discredited.
Well, I know how to live, and I know what's virtuous, and I know what's good.
But you can't even lose the 20 pounds.
You're discrediting yourself and virtue and philosophy.
Now that connection hurt. Yeah, but I'm telling you, I made this, I did this years ago.
I said, David, I can't remember.
It was a guy who had, it was a professor, Roderick Long.
Good writer, good researcher.
Easy 250, 300 pounds.
So how are people going to listen to you about how to live?
If you present as significantly overweight or unhealthy or sallow or you've got bad teeth or like, groom yourself, look decent.
Because once you have the truth, you understand you have a responsibility to present it well.
And it should be a selfish responsibility because it'll keep you happy.
You have a responsibility to present the truth well.
If you want people to listen to you on radical ideas about how to have peace and reason and virtue in society, but you can't drop the 20 pounds, you're just giving people an excuse to not listen to you.
Right? Don't give people an excuse to not listen to you.
6 foot 245 pounds?
Yeah, that's pretty heavy. I'm almost six foot 193 and I could use another ten
Start on what you can control Start on what gives you credibility.
Right? I'm almost 57.
Would you say, I'm fairly fit?
I think so. I think so.
I think so. I mean, I did 45 minutes of hard weights today while writing, and I did an hour of pickleball.
And I walked, not a huge amount, 9,300 steps, because I did a call-in show as well this afternoon.
And I walked during that time.
Not bad. Now, why do I do all of that?
I don't love exercise.
I don't love exercise.
If it's any consolation, I don't love exercise.
I like playing sports, but I don't love doing weights.
Why would you? It's retarded.
Maybe I like the feeling afterwards, feel a little swollen.
I don't like doing weights. Why on earth would you like to...
It's boring.
Of course it is. It's ridiculous.
At least I can write or, I don't know, play a game of Catan or online or something.
But it's retarded. You're a machine.
You're moving stuff. You might as well be a crane or a forklift.
It's ridiculous. Ooh, cardio.
Hey, I wonder if I could really make myself feel like I'm about to die, to feel healthy.
That's great. I love doing that stuff.
And now I can't even run, right?
Because I'm over, I'm pushing, you know, 57.
So I got to do a bike machine because it's like, listen to a podcast.
Yes, great. Do stuff while you lift.
Yeah, but it's boring and it's stupid.
Lifting weights. It is boring.
Okay, so yeah. But you get to live for years longer and you get to not have brittle bones and you get to not have diabetes and you get to not have joint problems.
Yeah, you got to do it. It's like brushing your teeth.
How much fun is it to brush your teeth?
Boring as hell. How much fun is it to go to the dentist?
Boring as hell. Had a colonoscopy recently.
The tunnel movie will be out in IMAX. Boring.
Ridiculous. Bad. Dull. I had to drink like an ocean worth of...
Basically, it tasted like seawater.
I had to drink like, I don't know, 10 liters of seawater or whatever the hell it was, right?
It was just disgusting.
horrible. I felt like I was going to throw up for hours.
But just be credible to yourself.
Be credible to others. It's just the way that it is.
If you want to tell people how to live, you can't look...
Bad. You just can't.
You can't look back.
But other people want you to lose credibility, so you're serving the people who want you to lose
credibility, to lose weight.
Oh my God. Dude.
So that comes out to minus 600 calories per day.
It's target daily calories, 27 to 3,200.
Plenty of room for enjoyable food without fasting.
Macro system works well for people.
I'm trying to have a deep conversation about things with people and people are
still talking about grade 5 math.
Because I want to show people how wise I am and how easy it Because I want to show people how wise I am and how easy it
is for me and- oh vanity vanity vanity vanity vanity vanity vanity!
It's easy just do this it's just maths.
It's just numbers. I mean, I don't know why people...
I mean, how many times have you heard me over the course of call-in shows, me saying...
Oh, I struggle with this too.
I'm not perfect in this way at all.
We're all down in the trenches together.
You understand? I've been doing philosophy for 40 years and I say to people just starting out, I struggle with this too.
I might just do what I do.
It's so easy. It's so simple.
Just don't do this and just do the math.
Just reduce this and do a little more exercise.
It's simple. God, it's exploitive.
It's predatory in a way.
Because you're insulting people's intelligence.
Well, just, you know, lower your calorie intake and increase your exercise.
Everybody already knows that. That's why I asked that at the beginning so I could pick on the people saying the obvious.
Everybody's already admitted they know exactly what to do.
So the answer isn't to tell them exactly what they need to do.
You're literally like coming across someone.
They got a log.
Their legs are trapped under a giant log.
A tree fell over. Their legs are trapped under a giant log.
And they say, have you tried lifting it?
Yeah, I can't lift it.
Well, you should just lift it. Just lift it off your legs.
No, I already told you I can't lift it.
No, no, but you should just, you know, just lift it.
Because it's stuck in your legs.
If you lift it off your legs, you'll be able to get up.
Just lift it. You asked me at the very beginning if I could lift it.
I said no. Why are you telling me to lift it?
So everybody already told, have you tried not being under a lock?
Yeah, that's right, James. Hey, I've got a thought.
Why don't you eat less and exercise more?
...
Oh my god...
I mean, the Captain Obvious Navy is forever sailing across the shallow seas of this useless planet.
Shop around the edges of the grocery store.
Yes! Try to eat this.
Have you tried the carnivore diet?
Oh, my God.
So this thing that you know exactly how to do that you haven't done for 20 years, you should just do that thing which you haven't been able to do for 20 years.
Well, I don't have this problem myself, so I just don't understand why you're so bent out of shape about it.
Hey, if you're an alcoholic, have you tried drinking less?
Hey, if you're a drug addict, maybe don't take drugs?
Listen to people figure out what the actual barriers are.
The actual barriers are people don't want to expose themselves to danger by being both virtuous and attractive.
You follow? Because if you're attractive, more people are going to want to listen to you.
If more people want to listen to you, do you become more in danger?
Who is in more...
Do you become more in danger when you speak the truth and you're attractive?
Right.
So you can have the truth or you can be fit, but being both is very dangerous.
You follow? Am I happy I don't have great hair?
I am very happy I don't have great hair.
If I had great hair, I'd be way more of a target.
So, your fat, or your overweight, is a shield to the mob who will hunt you if they find out more about you.
you, and if you're more attractive, people will find out more about you, they'll listen
to you more, and you'll get more blowback.
So you can lose the 20 pounds if you drop 20 pounds worth of my books.
Do we understand how deep this goes?
We do, right? We do understand how deep this goes, right?
You have the article warning folks, don't get fit, it will turn them alt-right.
Yeah, you understand, like, you don't know what your political beliefs are until you've lifted some weights.
lifting weights makes you want to have a smaller government.
So let me ask you this.
If you're a conservative female and you're gorgeous, do you get more hate than if you're ugly or homely?
Of course you do, because you're more of a threat.
You're more of a threat if you're attractive.
Who are you serving? Well, in a sense, you're serving your own survival.
Like, you understand this is a way to survive.
Because if I'm really attractive and I'm morally good, oof.
I have plausible deniability.
Well, yes, it's true. I am a very virtuous person.
But I'm... So I'm not really that much of a threat.
Don't worry about it. I'm fine.
Just let me...
Let me survive.
Let me live. Let me live.
Let me get by. Let me pass.
Let me through. Yeah, they called Ann Coulter every name in the book and then some.
Yeah, red-headed libertarian, Tomi Lahren, that Dutch girl.
I can't remember her name, but it's something unpronounceable.
Yeah, a lot of leftists are unfit.
If you look at the people, this is a note for you Jared, the men who were in charge of the French Revolution were
famously ugly.
So being attractive and being morally good is not a good combo.
Thank you.
It's not a good combo.
So... In the modern world, losing weight is like ditching camouflage and fighting a flare in Vietnam.
Is that why Arlo was an airhead?
Yeah, the Bolsheviks were trolls.
Yeah, for sure. Why Arlo was an airhead.
But Arlo wasn't an airhead.
That's the problem. Arlo used his looks to distract everyone from his depth because his depth was dangerous.
I mean, because when he lost his status, he completely had a psychological breakdown.
He had no robustness because he'd coasted on his looks.
My wife was a savage soccer goalie and she hasn't depreciated if it wasn't for the fact
that I can dig ditches and literally fix anything, I'd be doomed.
And I love it. Oh, are you one of these, I can't believe my wife is with me.
She could do so much better.
You're not one of those guys, are you Vince?
I mean, please, don't be one of those guys.
That's just terrible. I can't believe she's with me, man.
I'm such a lucky guy.
I don't know what she's doing with me, man.
It's just weird, but you're not, right?
Please don't. Don't be that guy.
Okay, you're not that guy.
You sounded like that guy.
Because your value you bring is you dig ditches, you can fix anything.
Okay. All right. Just wanted to check because that's an insult to your wife if it is.
All right. Did we answer the question of why it's tough to lose weight?
That it draws the predators and the mob and the danger?
Did we get there?
I mean, there's other reasons too, like parental stuff and people who want you sabotaged and people who want you to fail and people who want you to lose credibility.
But you understand that People gain weight to protect themselves from danger, right?
What's ouching, Vince?
What's ouching? Like, you know, women who are, and men too, I suppose, who are victims of sexual abuse gain weight so that they do not stay sexually attractive because sexuality has been used to harm and half destroy them, right?
So a lot of people who are obese are obese because they were sexually abused, right?
And so for them, fat wards off danger, right?
So for you, understand, for you, fat wards off danger, right?
And there is a little bit of suicidality, I think, or self-destruction in being significantly overweight because it's like, man, trying to be a mouse at the feet of these dangerous dinosaurs is too stressful and I don't mind checking out early.
There's a correlation of binge eating disorders and sexual abuse of 0.3.
Well, that's assuming that people admit to both binge eating disorders and sexual abuse.
I bet you it's a lot higher, but we'll never know for sure, right?
It's good for people going into battle to have an extra layer of fat for protection.
Well, I'm just saying we're already in battle, so...
So did we get a fair amount of the way towards unpacking some of the weight?
Who am I serving? Well, you're serving the people who want you harmed, and you're also serving your own survival because of the people who want you harmed, right?
And also, of course, when supply chains get interrupted and all the stuff I write about in my novel, The Present, we may have a desire to overeat for fear of shortages in the future.
So, I don't think anybody really promised a tip if I got good clarity on weight loss.
So, if you find this helpful, I certainly would appreciate a tip.
It's a little low tonight, but that's not too bad.
And two hours, 36 minutes, I've been working hard.
So, if you can help out.
Of course, if you listen to this later, I would appreciate your support.
Freedomain.com slash donate.
Yeah, Vince, not a bad attempt at a joke.
The fact that the joke came to your mind is important, right?
Don't just walk away from what you said.
Don't leave your actions in the lurch, right?
If somebody says, I have a lot more thinking to do, that's for sure.
Your weight serves someone.
Your weight serves someone. And you've got to figure out who that is.
These are some possibilities, most likely ones in my view.
Also wanted to mention, boy, did I have a great call-in show today.
I have one of these, one of my favorite.
I can't figure it out.
Well, Rachel, if you want to call in, we can talk about it.
I did a great call-in show.
It's one of these rare ones where I get, I did a call-in show with the wife, and then I did a call-in show with the husband.
So good. So good.
And so it's going to be a chunky one.
It's over four hours because I did over two hours with her and then over two hours with him.
And one of these two views of the same thing is really wild.
It's really cool. So I will get that out certainly to donors over the next day or two.
And then generally, I'm so thankful to the people who support the show.
That I'm just going to give you guys pretty much advance on everything.
I mean, I hope that you listened to the woman whose son wanted her to call in.
I thought that was really great. A call, but particularly about men and women.
So I appreciate you guys dropping by tonight.
FreeDomain.com forward slash donate if you would like to help out.
I'm just going to wait for a second in case I don't want to interrupt it if there's some little tippy tips coming in here and there.
So the mom calling was great.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why did you ask the mom in that recent call-in about how she parented?
I'm sorry, I don't really remember that too well, but if you can think of...
Give me a...
Why didn't you ask the mom in the recent call-in about how she parented?
I'm dealing with the issues as they come up and trying to make as much progress with somebody who hadn't really listened to the show, so you can't go...
That's why I ask people a lot of times, how long have you listened?
So I can figure out how fast I can go with them, right?
So that's why I ask you guys, are you ready for something that hurts, right?
Tim, thank you very much.
Love you too. Thank you for all of the great comments and advice and feedback and tips and videos that you send.
They're fantastic. Our talk was great.
This weight gain thing is observable.
I hope so. And just see how you feel.
When you get to the bottom of this, you will stop wanting food as much and you'll be more liberated to exercise.
There's someone in your head telling you not to exercise.
And it's not you because it benefits you.
There's someone in your head telling you not to exercise.
There's someone in your head telling you to overeat.
You're serving someone. You're serving someone.
You've got to unpack who that is. You're trying to protect yourself from someone by appeasing them.
If you lose weight and your parents are overweight, they'll get mad at you because you're doing what they haven't.
So, if you get married and your sister is bitter and lonely, she's going to be resentful and it's going to impact your thoughts in your head.
Thank you very much.
Karos! I really, really appreciate that and I hope you will check out...
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I hope you will check out...
I've got so many call-ins. I've been to so many call-ins, but I hope you will check out the one that I published with the husband and the wife.
It was really, really a great, great show.
All right. Thanks, everyone, so much for your time and attention this evening.
Lots of love for you.
I'm sorry, for some reason, I hit the start record button on the camera, but it didn't work, so I'll just have...
For most of it, I'll have to use the recording on Locals, which is not super great, but...
No, no biggie. Have yourself a wonderful night.
FreeDemand.com slash donate to help out.
JustPoorNovel.com AlmostNovel.com GodOfAtheists.com FreeDemand.com slash books.
It's been completely revamped.
Thanks, James. And we've got some great access to books there.
I hope you will check them out. Lots of love.
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