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Sept. 4, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:50:10
HOW TO NOT DIE!
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Good morning. Happy Labor Day.
I just have some questions to answer at freedomain.locals.com.
For subscribers, I did ask them for their question.
And I'm going to answer them.
I'm going to answer them.
And let's do this.
And I'm happy to take your questions, of course, as well.
I'm going to just give it to these questions.
Ah, yes, here we go. I've got 25 questions.
So about half an hour per question will be done around 1 a.m.
I'll be all set.
And let's just make sure that everybody's here.
about us here.
Everybody having a good time.
Perfect time for a live stream while I deep clean my house.
Excellent. What are your thoughts on the ethics of street photography, especially when it comes to photographing children in public?
Many thanks. I think it's okay.
I mean, somebody had asked me that they were going to do a sort of video essay on parents maltreating children in public, and I wouldn't necessarily put that out there.
So if you're putting it out there for sort of general public consumption, I think it's fine.
I mean, obviously, my documentary is there with children wandering around in the background.
I think it's fine. If it's something really focused and dedicated where you're putting it out there and it's focusing on the children, I would have some questions, but...
I don't consider it a big, huge or deep moral issue myself, so that would be my thing.
All right. When you read about Gulch for the first time, did you wish it was real and that you could live there?
I was always put off by the microtransactional nature of all the relationships, like charging a few cents for a friend to use your car instead of lending him your car because of trust and generosity.
What are your thoughts on this objectivist Shangri-La?
Um... Well, yeah, of course.
Of course I wish it was real.
Of course I wish it was real that I could live there.
Oh, yeah. The idea of being with people who were sort of rational and empirical and production-focused and all of that.
I get the microtransactional nature of all the relationships.
You understand that that wasn't because they wanted to charge a few cents for a friend to use your car, but just because they were taking a break from...
the exploitation, right? So they were taking a break from the exploitation.
Like so for instance, you wouldn't want to spend the rest of your life
lying in a hammock, you know, like a tree sloth by the beach.
But if you've had a really tough couple of months or whatever, then
going and flopping, doing that can be very helpful and positive.
So they've gone in a sense to the other extreme because of that.
So that seems like fun.
How do you convince children to keep their room clean?
I do a pretty good job keeping my home tidy despite growing up in a filthy house, and I want to instill the standard of a clean home without being a tyrant.
Well, how do you convince children to do anything?
How do you convince anyone to do anything?
But yeah, how do you...
How do you convince kids to do anything?
How do you convince anyone to do anything?
Right? So it's interesting because you're asking me to convince you.
So, I mean, there's a couple of...
Let me just tell people we're live now.
Live now. I used to be able to type, man, but since I've gone almost full voice dictation, my typing skills have atrophied more than the ethics of somebody dependent on others.
All right. So how do you...
Okay, we'll take this example.
We'll take this example. How do you convince children to keep their room clean?
Well, the first question you have to ask when you are trying to convince someone of something is, why?
I mean, it sounds blindingly obvious, I suppose.
But why do you want your children to keep their room clean?
Because if you don't know the why, then you will be very prone to manipulating people.
Why? Why do you want them to keep their room clean?
Now, if it has to do with, like, well, I had this bad childhood where my parents were super messy and this, that, and the other, and it makes me anxious when my children don't have their room clean and so on, then there's no virtue if it's trauma management, right? There's no virtue in it.
So, pretty sure you don't want to be doing that, right?
You really don't want to be doing that.
So why? Why should your children keep their room clean?
Well, it makes mommy happy.
Okay, then what happens is you're putting yourself in a position of vulnerability.
Like, there's nothing wrong with saying, well, you know, mommy grew up in a really messy household, and so I really need you to keep your room clean because otherwise I get traumatized.
It's nothing to do, like, there's no particular good thing in it.
It just makes me feel better because of my own trauma, right?
You know, that's, you know, so for instance, if, I don't know, you're a war veteran, you don't want jump scares in your home, right?
So your kids will like leap out, go rah, you know, and jump scare you.
And that really messes you up.
It jangles your nerves. And so you have to say to them, listen, I get that jump scaring is fun and we see a lot of videos with it, you know, jump pranking your friends.
But it's really unpleasant for me because I was actually in a situation where there was great danger and surprises.
So if you could not do that, you know, just as a favor for me, like I would really, really appreciate it.
I would really appreciate it.
That's fine, but then you're being vulnerable and you're asking for someone's consideration.
Now, how do we fundamentally avoid vulnerability?
Because it's vulnerable. You're testing whether somebody really cares about you.
And so we don't like to be vulnerable.
So what's the typical way that people avoid vulnerability when asking for a favor?
Do you know? Do you know?
You know, when you're over 50, let me just give you a foreshadow when you're over 50.
Hitting just the right sleep is kind of tough, right?
Hitting just the right sleep. So either you're a tiny bit under-tired or you have a little bit too much sleep and wake up with a mild headache.
That's your life. Hedging.
No, no, no. Make a win-win?
No. So the way that people avoid the vulnerability...
Of asking for a favor is they use the moral club.
They use the moral club.
So rather than saying, hey, listen, I have this vulnerability.
If you could find a way to work around it, I'd really appreciate it.
What they do is they say, it's moral.
It's respectful.
It's considerate.
It's polite. It's nice.
It's decent. It's good.
It's moral, right? That's what they do.
People flip to morality a lot of times because they don't want the vulnerability of just asking for a favor.
You follow, right?
I mean, everybody does because you then can bully people using the threat of shaming of
them feeling bad, right?
Bye.
So, you know, if I was really susceptible to jump scares or whatever, right?
And I said to my daughter, it's rude and inconsiderate to do that.
Like, it's really, really rude and inconsiderate to do that, and I don't appreciate it.
It's not a nice way to treat people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Immoral is bad, it's wrong. But then she'd feel bad, right?
And then she wouldn't give me the jump scares because she'd feel bad.
And that's moral bullying.
That's using the moral club. Boom, boom, boom, right?
You see this all the time.
Right, so people who've messed up their lives, right?
People who've messed up their lives.
What do they say? Do they say, you know, I really messed up my life.
I would really, really appreciate some help.
You don't have to, but man, and I promise to do better, but I've really messed up my life.
I really need some money. I need some support.
I need some free health care, right?
They don't throw themselves on the mercy of the society and say, I've messed up.
Could you help me please? I would really appreciate it, right?
What do they say?
What do they say?
No, not you owe them.
...
Maybe they don't say you owe me X amount of money They say society
Thank you.
It has a deep and virtuous moral obligation to take care of the most vulnerable and unprotected member of society.
And they have been, these poor people have been exploited.
There's a pattern of historical injustice and they are excluded and marginalized and society must embrace them and bring them into the fold and...
No, they say that society has a moral obligation to take care of people, and that way, because when you bring out the moral club, the reason I call it a moral club is because if people don't obey or agree, then you get to attack them.
People doing evil can be physically attacked.
We understand that. That's why the definition of evil should be as limited in scope as humanly possible.
Because people who are doing evil can be physically attacked.
So if some guy is beating up a woman in public, other people can use force.
He's assaulting her.
Other people can use force to prevent him.
So, whoever you define as evil can be physically attacked, which is why as the definition of evil has expanded and expanded and expanded in society, more and more and more people can be physically attacked.
Does this make sense? And that's the great danger.
Classes are cancelled today, but Steph is determined to teach me something anyway.
Whenever people say, oh, so-and-so is a racist, misogynist, sexist, classist, or whatever it is, something phobe or whatever, they're saying that this person is immoral and this is putting the lasers on their forehead for them to be attacked.
Right. Whoever we define as evil can be physically attacked.
Which is why the non-aggression principle in UPB defines a very, very, very, very small number of people as evil.
And they're not evil in what you think.
They're not evil in what you feel.
They're not evil because that upsets other people.
They're evil because they have taken specific actions of violence to harm the persons or property of others.
Very specific, right? So, you understand that this is the basket of deplorable statement that came out of, what was it, 2015, 2016.
Hillary Clinton was like, a quarter of America is like racist, sexist, blah, blah, blah.
And, of course, Trudeau did that.
So, yeah, they're just saying, okay, well, these people can be attacked, right?
So, yeah, the wider the definition of evil, the more violence you will see inevitably in society.
So, yeah, so, so, sorry to go from cleaning your kid's room, right?
I'm not sure if that's sarcastic.
It's great you've added neglect and personal abuse to evil.
Neglect, it's not sarcasm.
No, so neglect, it's specific to parent-child relationship, or really you could say it's to captor-capti relationships, because, I don't know, it's always struck me as interesting that the word kidnapped has kid in it, because as children we are involuntarily confined to our homes, right? So it's more around captor-capti relationships, parent-child in this particular case.
So, with kids, kids will sense the dishonesty if you have an emotional compulsion for them to clean their room because of your own past trauma.
In other words, if you want them to do it because you'll be upset otherwise, if you're direct and honest about that, they'll probably listen and probably do it and probably get what you want, right?
Ah, but, but, if you lie, and I'm not saying this is conscious, because this is the habit, right?
We feel vulnerable. We are asking something of someone, and what we're asking may be unjust.
It may not be unjust. I don't particularly know.
But when we feel this vulnerability, we retreat from this vulnerability, we pick up this moral club or this moral cudgel, and we don't ask for favors, we damn people as immoral.
We try to get what we want, not because people will want to please us and want to accommodate us and so on, right?
But we try to get what we want by being moral bullies.
You do it. I do it.
Everybody does it. Or at least we have that impulse.
Does that make sense? Have you ever had that situation where you want to ask a favor of someone and you are drawn towards creating a standard wherein they're immoral if they don't do what you want?
Sorry, a lot of people typing.
Not a lot of text showing up.
Yeah, I think everyone's...
Everyone's done it.
.
This is natural. I mean, this is where morality comes from.
You leverage morality to get what you want, right?
I've never met a kid who keeps their room clean.
I didn't start keeping mine clean until I was a teenager.
Is it a developmental thing to not notice the clutter?
Yeah, I mean... My daughter's pretty tidy.
My daughter's pretty tidy.
But then, of course, we've never said you have to keep your room clean because it shows respect to the people in the house, because it's moral, because it's...
Even the practical stuff, right?
So somebody earlier was saying that you should...
Well, if kids keep a messy room, they won't be able to find their toys when they want to play with them.
Okay. I don't know.
This could be a rant, but I don't know.
Is it too early in the day?
It's like drinking at noon.
Well, it's 5pm somewhere, right?
Rant? Oh, are you guys going to be the great instigators for me?
Are we...
Is it too early?
I'm going to need to hydrate if I'm ranting.
All right. Permission to swear?
It's a holiday. You don't know if you can handle a rant this early?
No, you know I won't swear.
I won't swear. Maybe later in the show.
But here's the thing, man.
Okay. You ever been around kids' parties these days?
Oh my gosh.
How many toys do these children need?
God! Beep!
Beep! Beep!
Beep! What's that sound? Oh, that's the sound of the dump truck backing up.
The toys that are going to bury the children at the party.
Oh my lord, have you noticed this?
I mean, I had four toys when I was a kid and three of them were my toes.
And because I had so few toys...
I had a little box of Lego I'd inherited from other people, which was fine.
All mismatched crap, even different sizes and all of that, but you'd make some stuff as best you could.
Everything was multicolored.
There was no consistency in everything.
Everything had the pox.
What else did I have?
Um... Oh, when I was in England, I didn't have a train set.
I did get a train set. I managed to cobble together a train set from an older cousin who was giving some stuff up when I was in Canada, in my sort of early teens.
But this is another reason why we got into Dungeons& Dragons, because one guy had the books, and I had a dice and a couple of figurines, and we got, you know, a thousand hours of entertainment out of that.
And I just, I didn't have a lot of toys.
And because of that, I went out to play.
But Lord above, this toy stuff is mental these days.
Have you noticed this?
You get overrun about this.
It's completely mental. How many toys do you need, future landfill?
We're going to have to get a bigger house.
Back then, we didn't have cheap Chinese toys.
Well, it's funny because when I was a kid, made in Japan was considered really bad, right?
I have a rule that family can't give toys as gifts.
We live in a very small house and it would be overrun with them.
I got some of my dad's action figures and then we went outside and beat each other with sticks.
I don't know what that means.
I was just talking about this with Izzy the other day, that she doesn't really have many toys.
Honestly, she doesn't really have many toys.
What did she get? She got some dragon figurines and she would make up these very elaborate dragon stories with her dragon figurines.
Before that, you could get these little plastic tubes full of little lizards and frogs and so on.
So we played with those a little bit.
My friend's three-year-old probably has at least 50 toys.
Stick sword fighting. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
She has ducks, but ducks are pets, not toys, right?
Bikes are kick-ass gifts, yeah.
My boy will literally be entertained for an hour or two with just sticks and rocks.
Great for creativity. Oh, yeah, like, so Izzy, we would go, one of the things she loved to do, both pre- and post-ducks, is we would go into rivers around where we are, or in the We would go into rivers and we got some, my wife got us some water shoes and we would hike up and down in the rivers looking for frogs, catching crayfish and all of that and seeing how deep we could go and all of that and it was a blast and it's completely free other than you've got to drive to get to the river.
So it's all free.
Legos for the win? Ah, she was never a huge Lego person.
We did a little bit of Legos, but it never really particularly grabbed her.
But no, she was not a toy.
She did some Dragon Veil for a while.
And there's a butterfly game called Flutter and all of that.
You still patrol creeks? It's church for me?
Yeah, these kinds of hikes and walks are fantastic.
And of course we did our role-playing, which was our sort of conversational Dungeons and Dragons and all of that.
And she just doesn't have, doesn't really have toys.
Around where I am, I see kids on electric scooters rather than bikes.
Oh, the electric scooters is so lame.
I mean, why would you need, why would you, as a kid, why wouldn't you want that joyful leg-pumping circular foot action of just biking and cranking everywhere?
That was fantastic, right?
But this electric scooter, do you know what it seems to me?
It's like, why are you using motors developed for 80-year-old diabetics with half a leg missing when you're 12?
You don't need toys if you have siblings.
Oh, the electric bike thing is completely lame.
I don't even understand that.
In a million years, I will never understand that.
It's wheelchairs for children.
Electric scooters and it's wheelchairs for children.
What did you say here?
I took my kid's bike to the bike shop and the $10,000 bikes were lined up waiting to get fixed.
Oh, it's crazy. I think people throw tons of money at toys now, just trying to replicate the experience kids get from being around nature, helping their parents.
Yeah, yeah. My parents brought us tons of toys and then threatened to come through with a giant garbage bag if we didn't keep them picked up yet.
The only person I know with an electric bike is my grandpa and he's still embarrassed about it.
Well, it's fine. He's your grandpa.
So that's different. But yeah.
So why is there the toy avalanche, right?
We know this one, right?
This is fairly simple.
Why is there a toy avalanche in the world at the moment?
Why, oh why, oh why is there a toy avalanche?
We all know this. There's a toy avalanche because you're not interacting with your kids.
You want them to have toys because you ain't interacting with them.
Go play with your toys.
Go hang with your tablet.
It's a lack of interaction.
And this could be my thing.
It could be my emotional history thing or whatever.
I'm fully willing to accept that.
But for me, if there's a house full of people and the kids upstairs alone playing with his toys, it's kind of depressing.
Now again, kids need their alone time.
I get all of that. But isn't it kind of depressing?
You've got some parents downstairs and some kids all upstairs alone playing in their room?
Like in solitary games?
Isn't that kind of tragic?
Again, with the caveat that, you know, kids need their...
I found parenting is way easier and less maintenance when you include them in your adult world and involve them in everything going on.
It's awesome and they love it. Absolutely.
Absolutely. I mean, it was kind of surprising to me when I was younger and I'd have chores to do, Izzy would just show up.
Can I help? And we'd chat and all of that.
So yeah, this idea that, well, I have to throw my kids a tablet because I have to get my chores done.
Kids love doing chores with you.
If you engage them in conversation and you tell them what you're doing and they're curious about the adult world.
I mean, if your kids don't enjoy spending time with you, parenting is a grind.
I mean, it's a horrible grind, right?
If your kids don't enjoy spending time with you, parenting is a grind.
So with regards to the question, how do you get your kids to want to clean their room?
Sorry, how do you convince children to keep their room clean?
Why? Why should they do it?
I did the same, says someone, when there was a firewood to unload from a truck, I'd always show up.
Gordon Ramsay is a superhero here.
I don't understand that, but I don't understand that.
But yeah, if your kids want to spend time with you, then they'll come out and spend time with you, and they'll help you with whatever it is that you want to do.
Oh, my son loves him.
Gordon Ramsay wants to cook like him.
My son loves helping with the laundry, vacuuming, cooking, etc.
I don't get it done as fast, and it might make a mess, but we enjoy the time together, and he is learning.
My son is very offended if he can't help me with whatever task I'm doing.
Yeah, if the kids want to spend time with you, if they enjoy your company, parenting is a blast.
If they don't, parenting is just, I don't know why you would do that.
Like, it's just be a slog. That would just, I mean, yeah, it's crazy.
So, why should your children?
You have to ask yourself, why do you want someone else to do something?
Michelle says, same. Our toddler cooks, cleans, and does laundry with me.
Sure. Sure.
If your kids like you, they want to be like you, and they want to learn what you learn, and they want to do what you do, and that's natural.
Decluttering saved my sanity.
Too much stuff meant constant tidying, like shoveling snow in a blizzard.
All right, are we ready for a tiny bit of sadness?
Yeah? It's sweet sadness, but it's really important.
Thank you.
.
Do you know what the best way to declutter is?
The best way to just get rid of all of the useless crap in your life.
Do you know what this is? A guaranteed, 100% surefire way to declutter.
Move! Throw it away!
What else have we got? Come on, give me, give me, feed me!
See more! Moving worked for me.
Yeah, yeah. But that's not the answer.
That's not the answer. Write it all down then by insurance and by insurance.
No, no. The best way to declutter is to die.
You die. No, think about it, right?
Think about a hoarder, right?
The hoarder dies, what happens?
They go in there with hazmat suits and fire flamethrowers or whatever they do.
And they just clean it out.
And what happens to all the stuff that the hoarder has?
What happens to all of the old magazines and the boxes and stuff and all the things they were going to get to and all the...
Like, what happens to all that stuff?
Sold or trashed? Yeah, liquidated and destroyed, taken out to the landfill, whatever, right?
Maybe they have a big bonfire in the backyard.
I don't know. Oh, your mom hoarded all her mom's stuff.
Yeah, but your mom's going to die. And that's the ultimate decluttering, is dying.
Am I right? Just the one surefire where everyone's going to declutter.
Everyone is going to declutter by dying.
Am I right about that?
See, this is why you come here.
Because you get this stuff, right?
Now, one of the saddest things in the known universe, one of the saddest things of going in the known universe, one of the saddest things in the known universe is going through particularly an older single person's stuff after they die.
Hit me with a why if you've ever gone through the process of going through an older single person's stuff after they die.
I've done it. A friend of mine's father.
Now think about this.
It's really important. If you're not living with one eye on death, you're not living at all.
Your uncle? Isn't it?
Hit me with another why.
Hit me with another why. If you...
Yeah, I did it.
Man who was a lumberjack and farmer.
Tons of tools and half-started projects.
Yeah. Sad getting his tools.
Yeah. Okay, hit me with another why.
If you have a friend whose hobbies will die with him or her when they die.
You got that one. What's this hobby?
So, I mean, when I was younger, I had a friend who was very interested in, he wanted to take photographs.
He took photographs of everything all the time.
And he was single. And part of me couldn't help but sort of stretch that forward expanding slither snake of time to the end and saying, okay, so he's going to have thousands.
He would print the photos out, right?
He developed the photos himself.
He'd print the photos out. And so, you know, at the end of his life, he's going to die in his apartment or wherever, and someone's going to come and they're going to see all these photographs, thousands of photographs, right?
And what's going to happen to these photographs?
Yeah, somebody with a ridiculous Beanie Baby collection?
Yeah, yeah. Beanie Baby collection is for children who don't have children, right?
Adult children who don't have children.
So, yeah, what's going to happen to all the photographs when my friend, a former friend, of course, at this point, so when my friend dies, people are going to go and they're going to find boxes and boxes of thousands and thousands of photographs.
That's exactly what she is?
Oh, yeah, all substitute stuff.
It all goes to the dump, yeah.
They're not going to... Who's going to buy old photographs?
Honestly. Hopefully someone will archive, but probably not.
No. Who's going to...
Nobody's going to know any of these people.
The locations are whatever.
Who cares, right? Plus, if you want a picture now, you just go to the internet, right?
They're there. They just toss out the photos.
So the tens of thousands of hours this guy spent buying cameras, learning the exact way to do photography, and then learning how to develop the pictures and storing and archive and cataloging.
Who on earth is going to go through 10,000 photographs?
Come on. Who on earth is going to go through?
Let's do a little math, right?
They probably had 10,000 photographs.
Let's say it takes 10 seconds to look at the photograph.
Right? So we've got 100,000 seconds.
16... Yeah, so this is like 30 hours straight.
Who's going to go through that? Unless you're a photographer for Time Magazine or National Geographic, no one.
What if he had fun doing it?
Okay, I mean, obviously that's an important question.
I brought old train photos from some old man's collection.
They were for sale at a museum in binders.
Dave, that's about as depressing a thing as I've ever heard.
It's as depressing a thing as I've ever heard.
What if he had fun doing it?
All right. My grandpa had over 10,000 vinyl records.
Oh yeah. Like my friend who would, he originally bought records home-pressed from live concerts, then he went to VHS, then he went to CDs, then he went to DVDs, and now that stuff is all available for free on the internet.
Okay, so what if he did have fun?
What's the counterpoint?
Well, what's the harm?
He took 10,000 photographs and he had fun.
What's the harm? That's an interesting question.
What's the rebuttal? What's the rebuttal?
Opportunity cost? No, because if you had fun, right?
Compared to what? Mmm.
It cost him his gene continuity?
Well, or watching life, not living life.
Now, I'll throw something out here, and you can tell me what you think.
Um... Was he only having fun because he thought he was doing something of value?
In other words, if he had known for absolute sure, if my friend had known for absolute certain that it's His photographs were going to be put in binders and then thrown out when he died.
Would he still enjoy it?
Like nobody was ever going to look at it.
They were just going to view that as an annoyance.
They were going to ship it off to the dump.
Everything that he spent, everything that he learned, all the time that he spent, if he just knew, it was for nothing!
If he knew for certain that every single one of his photographs was going to be incinerated by people who didn't give a rat's ass what he'd photographed, would he still enjoy it?
It's like writing a book that nobody is going to read.
I play drums, I don't care what happens with my drum set after I die.
Yeah. We should probably build tangible things.
Definitely not. But it wasn't for nothing.
It was for conversation during his life.
Is everything done for a legacy?
So you're bouncing back, Dave, about my comment about the old man's photos.
All right. Let me ask you this.
Let me ask you this.
Have you ever had a very interesting conversation listen to someone talk about his hobby of photography?
Nope no Ooh.
The F-stop this and the shutter speed that and the humina humina humina and here's how you develop and it's hard to
get these chemicals blah blah blah blah blah
And then I got the Nikon but it didn't have the right aperture
I mean my dad had this sort of phallic compensation telephoto lens that stretched out for approximately a quarter of a
mile that could be used to photograph the
atoms on a fleas ass on a mountain on the moon My dad actually won photography competitions
All right Alright, let's go one step further.
I'm happy to hear this.
Have you ever been really interested in someone talking about his or her hobby as a whole?
Any hobby, doesn't have to be a photographer.
Any hobby, anything that person is really interested in.
And tell me, I'm happy to hear.
If somebody says to you, let's say, you're at a dinner party, so you're kind of trapped, right?
You're at a dinner party, and the person next to you says, oh man, I'd love to tell you about my hobby.
What do you think? No, assuming you don't share the hobby.
Okay, assuming you don't share the hobby.
Sometimes, yeah. Forget, right?
Do you, have you ever, ever heard anyone talk about their hobby and be like, this is fascinating.
Stamp collecting. Huh.
Wow, that's crazy, man.
Oh, I didn't know that. Oh my God, shoot me, right?
I have one. There's a good story that goes with it, but it's not about the hobby itself, right?
Hobby conversations are passive-aggressive ways that Of hurting people by inflicting boredom.
It's a form of dominance.
A lot of people have hobbies so they can bore other people because they're angry at life.
Hobbies, and again, I'm not talking about when you're a kid or teenager or whatever, right?
But hobbies as a whole are generally avoidances of mortality.
They're avoidances of impact.
They're avoidances of genuine challenge.
They're just ways of whittling away the time until time ends you.
It's on how enthusiastic and entertaining they can be, expressing it.
Okay, so if you're enthusiastic and entertaining, why would you have a hobby?
Okay, what are the hobbies for?
What are hobbies for? This is an interesting question, right?
And I don't want to be down on hobbies or whatever.
I'm just, you know, just curious about it.
What are hobbies for?
Killing time. Wasting time.
Exercise? No.
Exercise is for eight minutes.
Maintenance of mental facilities?
Those are like puzzles and they're not...
It could be alright, I guess.
Could be alright. Energy vampires.
Wait, I consider rock climbing a hobby.
No, rock climbing is a sport.
It's athletic, right? It's not a hobby.
Is it a hobby listening to you?
No. An attempt to address one's boredom.
I'm trying to turn my hobby of music into a career, which is great.
Which is great. I had a great aunt who collected spoons.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
We've all known. Look at my collection of different matchbooks from various bars in the Midwest.
From 1950 to 1970.
That's really quite something.
I'm still missing something from the Astoria, but I do have these ones, and even a few of them still have the tinder heads of the matchsticks absolutely intact.
It's really... You're going to die!
Listening to me is not a sport.
It's an extreme sport. Camping is more of an activity.
It's not really a hobby. Many early saints say collecting anything is a sin, and then their bones ironically ended up being collected.
Alright, so what are hobbies?
What's our definition of a hobby?
Okay, well let's see, not just out of curiosity, let's look up the definition of a hobby.
No, hobbies aren't only collecting, right?
Hobby! I have my own.
What is the definition of a hobby?
A goose. A stupid fellow.
A strong active horse of medium size having an ambling gait.
Okay, that's not really helpful.
A pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in, especially for relaxation.
Writing is just a hobby of his and so on, right?
I once tried to collect a model of every airplane I've been on, and it got out of control.
My hobby is posting feedbacks on OnlyFans.
It's just for fun for me.
Right.
Yeah, so.
Hobbies, what are they for?
Okay, so give me some examples.
It doesn't have to be your hobbies, but give me examples of hobbies that you have, you pursue, you've heard of.
What are your hobbies? Collecting rocks.
I think it's called geology, but alright.
Chess? Not a hobby.
I collect memorabilia, video games, painting, drawing.
I was on track. You were on track to work for Disney.
Violin is not a hobby.
Is knitting a hobby? Well, you're making something.
I considered playing poker a hobby for a while.
Collecting plastic bags, really.
You refinish furniture, but you end up with something productive that you use out of that, right?
Photography, video games.
I guess I've never had a hobby.
LOL. Playing solitaire at home alone.
I no longer have a hobby.
I'm sensing hobby is an intrinsically wasteful endeavor.
Fishing, gardening, bikes, hikes.
Those are more activities.
Going to live music concerts.
More of an activity.
Sewing sew clothes before becoming a mom.
It's not worth the time at the moment.
Painting those D&D metal miniatures.
Oh, I remember doing that. Yeah, that was fun.
I always tend to do sports rather than hobbies like BMX and mountain biking.
Online chess or poker, read fiction.
if it's useful, it isn't a hobby.
So, if it's just for your own relaxation, it's a hobby.
What if you're creating something to be enjoyed by others, creating music or art?
It's not a hobby. It's something that some people would consider work, but you do it for personal enjoyment.
Making necklaces became a hobby when I had an injured hand that needed repetitive motion.
What about profit from a hobby?
Okay, are there hobbies that can conceivably or possibly be monetized in any way, shape or form?
My brother does telescope space photography.
I can't listen about it for a minute.
And of course, there is the Hubble telescope.
What's the point, right? Okay, are there hobbies that you can't possibly monetize?
Birdwatching? Yeah, probably not.
Yeah, birdwatching, oh my god.
Translation services, you can monetize that.
Remote controlled cars?
Yeah. Playing a video game?
You can monetize that. I mean, are you kidding me?
Half the money on the internet is porn and the other half is people paying other people to watch video games.
A train sets? Yeah, that's stuff to monetize.
So hobbies in general are things that you actually want to be doing but you're too chicken
to monetize.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you.
It's the stuff you actually want to be doing.
It's what you actually want to be doing.
But you're too chicken to get behind it and monetize it.
In other words, hobbies are where you pretend to be doing something and avoid the risk of rejection.
Right? You pretend to be doing something, but you avoid the risk of rejection.
Like, if my friend loved taking photographs, then what he should have done is he should have put forward a portfolio, submitted his photography, and made his living as a photographer!
God! I mean...
The moment, oh my god, the moment I could even remotely monetize philosophy, what did I do?
The moment, the literal second, I loved programming computers.
The moment I could get paid to do it, boom, I'm doing it.
The moment, well I didn't monetize on YouTube, but the moment that I had any chance to do philosophy rather than have it as a side thing that I enjoy pursuing, the moment that I could do it, what did I do?
Ah! Chewed through the bit of restraint and went for it.
Mind is blown. Bam!
Just got hit by the truth train.
Right. Hobby is a fake anxiety avoidance.
Yeah. Hobby is to career as pornography is to children, to raising children.
Remember the shows you did after you quit your old job?
I was pretty excited. I'm still pretty excited, but yeah.
What if you do it for health benefit, not a hobby then?
I don't know what that means. Is me working out a hobby?
No, I just need to stay strong.
Mind blown, the nukes are going off.
Right! The hobby is your true self saying, this is what we want to do, but your false self is saying, oh, we can't monetize it, we can't handle rejection, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Would you consider your novel writing a hobby?
So my novel writing was a side goal because I worked very hard to try and monetize it.
I mean, I took writing courses.
I had an agent. I worked very hard to try and monetize my writing.
I funded a film, a short film that I made based on a short story that I'd written.
And so, yeah.
To be fair, you might have a winner's bias, Steph.
Every rock star who made it gives everyone the advice to never give up because it pays off, but for most it doesn't.
Am I being a wet blanket or practical?
Well, that's your fear.
I wrote novels and never published them, so that was a hobby.
No, Michelle. That was fear.
Oh, hobbies corresponding to porn.
Yeah, hobbies are to ambition or career as pornography is to actually making love and having a family and raising children.
It's a dead-end street.
and it's a pretend situation.
So, to be fair you might have witness bias, Steph, ha ha.
Says this person, every rock star who made it gives everyone the advice to never
give up because it pays off but for most it doesn't.
Am I being a wet blanket or practical?
Well, so, first of all, If you have a dream, you should put 5000% into it.
Does that mean you'll succeed?
Of course not. I mean, there's no guarantees, right?
Of course. But you can't fail.
You can't fail. Let's say that you want to be a writer and you throw everything into writing.
You take courses. You read Stephen King's book on writing.
It's very good. You do your very best to be a writer.
You work hard at it.
You challenge yourself.
off, you read great writing, you just throw everything you can into being a writer, right?
And let's say you fail.
You can't make it as a writer.
Thank you for your attention.
How have you not failed?
I mean, there's a couple of ways in which you haven't failed.
How have you not failed?
I mean, you're not going to fail.
I want to be a documentary filmmaker, so I took my own money, got together friends, and I have a film set to be finished editing by the end of the year.
Fantastic. Now you can move past it and work on something else.
You showed integrity to yourself and your values.
Conscience is clear. There's a couple of ways that you win.
At least you honestly tried it. So you won't regret.
You won't have that regret.
Oh, I shoulda, woulda, coulda, right?
I shoulda, woulda, coulda, right?
That's horrible stuff. And the second thing is that you will learn something enormously powerful about the world and yourself.
Right? You know that you're learning something important about the world and yourself.
So I am a great novelist.
I'm a great novelist. And the fact that I never got published is because pretty sinister forces are in control of the media, right?
Because if you look at the stuff that does get published, it's all pretty horrible or ghastly or empty or useless or whatever, right?
Or destructive. So I learned something very important about the culture.
Now, let's say that I wasn't a great novelist, but I spent thousands and thousands of hours writing novels and so on.
Then what I would need to do is I would need to figure out why I believed I was good at something that I wasn't good at.
Why would I think I was good at something that I wasn't good at?
Do I not have people around me who are telling me the truth?
Am I covering up some deficiency in myself?
Because if something in your life really, really, really doesn't work out, odds are somebody in your head or in your environment is sabotaging you.
You follow? So you, let's say, you know, I mean, if I said, oh, I'm going to go be a dancer or a singer or something, people would be like, no, dude, like you're too old to be a dancer and you're not good enough to be a singer.
Entirely true, right? Absolutely true.
Now, it means that you either don't have people in your life who are telling you the truth or people are telling you the truth and you're not listening because of why.
You give it your all so you get to the end of the road.
The end of the road could be you're successful materially or you can do it.
The end of the road could also be if I failed, why did I fail?
I failed to be a novelist.
Why did I fail? I mean, there are people who succeed as novelists without a doubt.
I mean, J.K. Rowling is like a billionaire.
There are people who succeed as novelists.
Why did I not succeed as a novelist?
Well, that's important to know.
Your books are great, definitely better than some of the crap published.
Well, that's some pretty thin praise, but I appreciate that.
So why? So you get to learn something about the world.
You get to learn something about yourself.
So you can't lose. You've got to go all in.
So, winner's bias?
No. I don't say to everyone, if you try, you will succeed.
When have I ever said that?
I've never said that. And I've talked about the winner's bias, of course, right?
I've actually openly made this case that all the movie makers are saying, follow your dreams, man.
Give everything to your dreams and you'll succeed.
And that's nonsense, right?
Because they have winner's bias, right?
But you try to find out.
That is interesting. I do not regret not publishing.
But Michelle, if your books are important, why withhold them?
If they're of value, why withhold them?
Right? I'm good at music, but my dad told me I should go into the trades because I'll never make any money, so I did.
Doesn't feel good. Right, so what you would do is you would do music on the side and you would desperately try to get your music out there so you could make enough money to stop doing the trades and do what you love.
See, I do not regret not publishing, Michelle, but why would you deny other people the value of what you've created, right?
Or the knowledge of who you are or, you know, I don't know.
I mean, you wrote something in a consumable format and you won't let anyone else consume it, right?
I think I don't regret it because I view it as a devil's temptation that I could not have withstood the money, the fame.
Well, surely you can withstand it now.
I seem to be very good at withstanding money and fame.
I seem to be very good at limiting all that stuff.
So... Now, the way that you do it, right, so if you have someone in your life who's like, I love photography, blah, blah, blah, how do you know if it's fear-based?
If they really want to do it but they're too afraid, right?
As somebody you know, they love writing music and you say, well, you should do it.
You should find a way to do it.
You should record it. You should monetize it or whatever, right?
So, because I remember, I mean, saying this like 30 years ago with my friend who was really into photography, it's like, you should submit these photographs to magazines.
You should submit these photographs to agents.
You should submit these, you should, whatever, right?
This is pre-web, so you couldn't just create a website.
But it's like, find a way to do it!
Right?
And what did my friend say?
What did my friend say when I said you should do this?
I mean, we all had these conversations.
.
Well, you know, oh, you know, it's really tough to break into that field and...
Oh, you know, I don't even take it that seriously.
It's just like a fun thing and I don't want to do it for a living.
And I'm like, dude, you spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on all of this.
Don't tell me it's not important to you.
You spend so much time learning and taking photographs.
Of course you would rather do that.
I mean, you do all that for free.
And something that you do, and not only do you do it for free, it costs you.
It costs you.
So if something that you would do, even if it costs you, if someone paid you, of course you would do it.
Yeah, it's all about who you know and connections, so why bother?
It's not good enough. I'm just an amateur.
I mean, everyone's asked as an amateur.
Who cares about that, right? But if you were...
Pay to do something and spend thousands and thousands of dollars and thousands and thousands of hours.
Of course you would love it if somebody paid you to do it.
Of course, I mean, this is axiomatic.
Anybody who would argue against that is insane.
I spent 10 or 20,000 hours on philosophy before I got a penny and got educated and spent, I don't even want to think how much money on books and all of that, right?
So the moment it was like, wait, I could conceivably get paid for this?
Holy crap. Right?
I'm like the greyhound when the gate comes down.
Right? The moment I can do it, right?
So hobbies are like pools of avoidant cowardice as a whole.
I really understand collecting.
Okay. So, buy a booth at a stamp show and learn to buy and sell stamps and make a living out of it if you love stamp collecting so much.
No, it's, you know, it's just a hobby.
It's an amazing feeling to make money off something you love.
You're right, I love writing.
I may be justifying this position to cover for the people who don't want me to succeed.
Is it fear of the crabs in the bucket or your own inner crab?
A pro football player quit to go trade Pokemon cards for a living.
Yeah, okay. I mean, that's actually trading Pokemon cards is, you know, sports.
Organized sports is a kind of radioactive paralysis that goes out over the airwaves, right?
You all understand that, right?
The purpose of sports is to paralyze the population.
And I'm not even talking about that in a very abstract way.
Like, the purpose of sports is to paralyze It puts you in a wheelchair.
You follow that, right?
Because with sports you see all these people running around, you see a couple of people running around, and what's everyone who's watching doing?
They're paralyzed, they're sitting in a chair, they're doing nothing.
The purpose of sports is to inoculate the population to movement, to doing their own sports, to being active themselves.
I mean organized sports, broadcast sports.
I think it subdues the highest T driving down crime.
No, that's playing sports.
I'm talking about watching sports, organized sports.
I'm talking about broadcast sports.
Broadcast sports are a way of literally injecting a kind of paralytic venom into the general population by having them sit and do nothing and eat and be unhealthy while you're watching people run around and be unhealthy, right? Watching sports is inversely proportional to practicing them.
It's porn for achievement. At least I'm porn.
Maybe you're developing your forearm.
I don't know, right? But something like that, right?
Watching sports made me want to play more.
Yeah, let's make... I'm talking about the general population, but let's make it
about you in particular.
Because we wouldn't want people looking at the general trends, the general population and what happens to hundreds of millions or billions of people around the world.
Let's focus on you.
It's really important. Because philosophy is not about the world and about trends and about general principles.
It's about you and your exception, right?
I've always been pretty sporty, never understood the fun of watching sports.
Yeah, I love sports.
And occasionally I will watch sports to get some tips, for sure, yeah.
I mean, I'm aware that when I'm watching sports, I'm sitting.
Yeah, sports aren't about the players being active.
It's about the population being passive.
I watched a movie the other day where there was a scene that took place in a giant soccer
stadium.
And you know, when you see all of these crazy numbers of people at these sports games, cheering
and screaming and buying sweatshirts, and you know, I would imagine, like imagine sort
of a funny thing where I would have a philosophy booth next to the stadium.
How many people would go to the philosophy booth and how many people would go to watch people kick a ball around, right?
It's kind of funny. Let's see here.
I loved building my whole life.
Started when I was very little. Became an engineer.
Got to build skyscrapers as a construction manager.
Had health issues. Now bought a house to repair and rebuild.
Borking at doing it for others as a business, as a residential contractor.
Fear is a bitch. Yeah, it is.
Fear is a bitch. Somebody says, I'm a little late, but the hobby is being monetized.
I recently met a man who turned his train collection hobby into a $9,000 a month business by filming model train parts on YouTube.
He's paid directly from the manufacturer, but he started the hobby 15 years prior to YouTube.
Beautiful. I was super into watching football for a couple of years, but then I stopped for a year because I had to work Sunday mornings.
Then when I started watching it again, I couldn't see what I thought was so interesting about it before.
So, you know, one of the worst combinations is paralysis and stress, right?
It is not moving, but being stressed.
One of the worst combinations is paralysis and stress.
Because the fight or flight is designed to get you to fight or to fly.
So, high cortisol, low activity.
To me, I'm no doctor, I'm not nutritional advice, nor health advice, just my own particular observations that the worst combination is high stress, low activity.
High stress, low activity.
Now, think of the number of things in the culture.
Tell me the things that promote high stress and low activity in the culture.
What are the things that promote high stress and low activity?
Politics, news, yeah.
TV, yeah.
Doomscrolling. Retail jobs.
No, retail jobs are usually moving around a little bit.
I guess not if you're a cashier.
Outside the economy.
Yeah, video games, exactly right.
Yeah. COVID fear, for sure.
Stay home, watch TV, be frightened.
Media, pharmaceutical TV, Netflix, social media, video games.
Yeah. Twitter.
Ha ha. So what do horror movies do?
What do thrillers do?
What do high suspense movies do?
What do Jurassic Park do?
What does it do? It literally says there, drink coke, eat candy, sit still while a giant predator blows your eardrums out and screams in your face.
Look at the movie Jaws, right?
Sit there, drink sugar water, eat candy, sit still while you watch a man get chewed in half right in front of your face.
Stephen King novels, Stephen King movies, it's all about lie there, consume bad food,
get high stress.
People fainted in theaters during the exorcist, yeah?
Thank you.
Freeze in place. Right.
When you can't... So most of media is designed to paralyze you.
Watching The Walking Dead was great for running on the treadmill.
Yeah, so I mean, I do...
I sit while I'm watching...
While I'm doing these shows, I will sit, but I'll always exercise afterwards.
Of course, you haven't seen me do a call-in show in forever, for the most part, because I walk around while doing the call-in shows.
I work out while I'm writing, because I'm aware of this stuff, right?
Paralysis.
Original sin, you're going to hell, you can't save yourself for the most part, and all of that.
Yeah, like superhero movies are designed to make sure you never become your own hero.
Environmental toxins, I don't know.
You must be burning a lot of calories with the parenting book.
Yes, I am. Yes, I am.
I did 4,000 calories of exercise last week.
I did eight hours.
And that doesn't count the time that I'm...
I can't review and check the data and all of that while I'm on the...
I can only write new stuff, right, so...
Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
And I wrote some of my last books on a treadmill with a...
Thanks for constantly reminding us to move.
I always tend to fall back to sitting all day.
Yeah. Now, sitting and being relaxed is fine.
But sitting and watching thrillers, action movies, superhero movies, high-stress movies, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I guess some people do it not just while they're sitting, but while they're lying down, right?
You're literally lying down watching some screaming car chase.
Somebody says...
Yeah, Michelle, bang on.
It seems like the correct time for hobbies is the teenage years to figure out what you're good enough at to monetize.
Not necessarily what you're good at enough, but what you love and are good at enough, right?
So when I look at my life as a teenager, look, I'm not some template here.
I'm just telling you sort of where I came these ideas by, how I came by these ideas.
So when I was a kid, what did I do?
I wrote, I programmed, and I did philosophy.
And I was in plays in high school and all of that, right?
So I wrote, I programmed, I did philosophy, and I did some acting.
So what did I try? I tried writing.
There was no way to monetize philosophy back then, other than maybe to become a philosophy professor, but there was no way that was going to happen, right?
I mean, there was no room even back then for somebody who was pro-individualism, pro-free market, pro blah blah blah, right?
Certainly not in Canada. So what did I do?
So programming, I love to program.
So then the moment I got a chance to make money programming, I made money programming, right?
I mean, the moment I got to co-found a company and become the lead programmer, that's what I did.
So all of the things that I loved to do as a kid, and even Dungeons& Dragons, because I was the dungeon master a lot of the times, so I'm creating worlds, I'm creating narratives, I'm creating stories, I'm engaging with people in a sort of live, how good is my story way, which is kind of what I'm doing here.
So the purpose of your hobbies is to practice for what you can love and monetize.
That's the purpose of hobbies.
You know, like they sell...
What's the purpose of dolls for little girls?
The purpose of dolls is to practice pair bonding and baby caring and all of that, right?
I mean, there was this thing that was supposed to scare girls away from teenage pregnancy by giving them a baby to take, a fake baby to take care of that cried and needed this, that, and the other.
It actually increased the birth rate because apparently people don't understand evolution.
So, I mean, you know, what's the purpose?
Like, why do boys...
What do you do when you go to the beach as a boy?
What's one of the first things you do when you go to the beach as a boy?
You dig, you build stuff, you make a castle, you build a trench, you dig a hole, right?
Of course, of course, because the man's job is to provide and protect, which means he has to alter the environment.
Why do boys love building stuff and blah, blah, blah, right?
Because you've got to build a shelter, you've got to protect your family, and bury your little brother.
Better than bury a friend, right?
So, yeah, you build, you dig, you bury your friends, blah, blah, blah.
And what do... So, teenage boys at the beach will dig stuff as the young boys do, and they'll wrestle, and they'll show off their physicality and so on.
And what do the teenage girls do at the beach, right?
Do they dig? They do not.
They suntan. They show off their figures.
They walk around. They show off their physiques.
Right. They lay around in a horizontal position for obvious reasons, right?
So, again, it's just nothing wrong with any of this stuff.
I'm just sort of pointing it out. So hobbies are rehearsals for productivity.
Now why do I say productivity?
Because if you love it and you can monetize it, that's the most productivity you can possibly get.
You understand? Did I have to do a show today?
Nope. Got a little break in the schedule and I'm like, let's jump on and chat.
Let's jump on and talk. I mean...
I'm glad I did.
Hit me with a Y. Hit me 1 to 10.
How interesting and helpful is this, just as a whole?
I want to make sure I'm supplying value.
10. 5.
9. 10. 9. 8.95.
Ooh, two digits. Very good. 4.
Right. Oh, yes, by the way, speaking of monetizing, what you love to do if you could send me some...
Some tips, but really, I really appreciate it.
This is helpful because I just spent $500 to paint someone else's wall in another state.
I'm not sure what that means.
I'm not sure what that means.
Yes. Right.
So, yes, so hobbies are for children so that children can figure out how to monetize what they love.
So that they could be maximum productive, right?
So to put it another way, those tribes where the children got to practice doing what they loved ended up more productive than those tribes that didn't and therefore ended up winning more resources.
They would win in battle, they would win in farming, they would win in hunting or whatever it is, right?
So who should be the hunter?
Obviously we say the best hunter should be the hunter.
Okay, how does somebody become the best hunter?
They have natural ability and they love to do it.
Having natural ability isn't enough.
Just loving to do something isn't enough.
You need to combine the two, right?
They have to have natural ability and they have to love it.
Now, if you have natural ability and you love something, that's the best you can do.
That's the best possible outcome.
Because the natural ability means it's fun for you to do because you love it, you'll keep doing it and you'll become excellent, right?
You'll become excellent. I mean, Freddie Mercury was in a band when he was like nine years old.
Because he loved it. So who should get the farmland?
The best farmer. Who's the best farmer?
Somebody with a natural ability who loves farming.
Loves farming. Now, why is it so essential to give the most resources, like the spear, the farmland, or the money, or the capital, why is it so essential to give the most resources to the person with the best natural ability who loves it?
Why, why, why? Not just for the productivity in the moment.
Everyone else can benefit. True.
Because everyone benefits.
True. Oh. Maximized return on resources.
Yes, that's true. That's true.
Okay. Let's say somebody's good at something, but they don't like it.
Right? Let's say somebody's a good farmer.
But they don't really like it. And let's say you're in a monetary economy, right?
So you're a good farmer, but you don't really enjoy it.
What happens when you're 40 and you have enough money?
You've got enough tenants.
You've got enough land.
You've got enough laborers, but you don't really like farming.
What happens when you're 40 and you don't need to farm anymore?
You stop. And all of that skill, all of that brilliance just stops and the tribe loses it.
The tribe loses that incredible magic green thumb productivity.
You follow? You start building new hobbies?
Now, it's a disaster.
Why it needs to be heavily incentivized.
Right. So let's say Brad Pitt hated acting, and after what we see is Thelma and Louise was this big break, and then I don't know what he did, Death Becomes Her or something.
I don't know. I can't remember that Mr.
Death movie or whatever, right? So he did a couple of...
Now, if Brad Pitt hated acting, he would have stopped acting like 30 years ago, right?
Do you follow? Because he doesn't need to act for the money, right?
When people ask me how to learn programming, I tell them, if you only want to do it for the money, don't do it.
Oh, yeah. Look, we've all known someone who gets into a particular field for the money, for the status, for the prestige, for the security, for the whatever, right?
But they've not shown any particular affinity or plan or goal or whatever it is, right?
Public school teachers who can't wait to retire, yeah.
Yeah, like I know somebody years ago went into law and it's like, you don't debate, you don't argue, this is not a thing for you, you avoid conflict.
It's like, nope, they're going to fail.
So in other words, how we've developed is we need to make sure that the people who are the best at something want to keep doing it even when they don't have to.
You follow? Yeah. The people who are the best at something, they want to keep doing it even when they don't have to.
And the best way to do that is to test your natural inclinations and what you love to do with hobbies.
So hobbies are there to point you at something that will sustain your excellence throughout the entire course of your life and you will love it so much, what else will you do?
So let's say that you've got some farmer in a monetary system and he's a really good farmer but he hates farming so he retires and he doesn't farm anymore and he hates farming so he's not going to pass his knowledge of farming to the next generation.
But if you love to learn something and you love that thing, what else do you love to do?
You love to teach it.
You love to teach it.
So, the hobbies are there to make sure that the most resources go to the people who are going to sustain that excellence over the course of their life and transfer the knowledge and the gained knowledge to the next generation.
It's a form of social hoarding.
It's a collective thing and it's designed to weed out people who don't love stuff so that you don't give massive amounts of resources to people who are going to stop doing it.
And not teach others. So you don't waste all of that stuff.
Or to put it in another way, the tribes who united the most resources with the most sustained passion for maximizing those resources along with a massive passion to teach the next generation, they grow.
They grow. They excel.
They win. Does this make sense?
Which is why the countries that first developed the free market ended up ruling the entire world.
A tiny island. This is how powerful it is.
a tiny island like England rules a third of the entire planet
when will I stop doing philosophy Let me ask you this.
When will I stop doing philosophy?
It's enjoyable even joining in on a project somebody's really passionate about, yeah?
Thank you.
I'll probably be recording shows on my deathbed.
Why not? I mean, that's the big thing that we go through, right?
Oh, hopefully decades to go.
Now, let's say somebody gave me a bazillion dollars tomorrow.
Would I still do philosophy?
Of course I would.
Right. Right.
So, do you see why I am somewhat skeptical of the value of adult hobbies that don't translate into careers?
Do you understand? And particularly my friends are pretty good people and all of that.
So if your life-affirming good positive photographs aren't making it into magazines, it means you're withholding from society the benefit of your passion and your talent and you're letting crappier people infect the culture.
Right? I mean, gosh, can you imagine if I wasn't broadcasting, you'd be listening to someone talking about politics.
Your passion for this show has really helped me want this, yeah.
An adult with hobbies that he or she refuses to monetize or try is literally like a woman who wants kids buying a doll.
It's weird. It's out of sync.
It's out of focus. It's out of purpose.
It's the wrong time.
It's the wrong thing. It's like those people who have these eternal adolescences and they're, you know, still playing Dungeons and Dragons at the age of 40, but the same life avoidant losers that they were doing when they were 13.
Just left the kitchen roommates talking about fantasy football.
Right. Right.
So that is a good answer to my question earlier.
Somebody says, if a woman has dreams in the workplace but may waste her life and never get to have a family as a result, that could be a failure.
Almost happened to me, now I know I'm coming off as a wet blanket, LOL. Now, can you make the case that a woman who gives up children for her career is fantastic?
For the birth rate.
Can you make the case that a woman focusing, a woman who gives up kids, focusing on her career, is fantastic for the birth rate?
And I don't just mean because she's a warning.
Go ahead. I want to hear.
It's a great case. It's a great case.
In my view, you can absolutely support a woman not having kids and having a job for the sake of serving the birth rate.
I used to think so since finding you, no.
I can absolutely think of a case where a woman giving up her
capacity to have children or giving up having children in order to focus on her career
that she can have that that can vastly increase the birth rate.
Only if she contributes enough scientifically, medically, or technologically to benefit society?
Eh, not necessarily.
The case doesn't prevail, but there is one.
Depends on what career she goes into, like maybe a therapist, self-help, author?
Nope. A childless friend is to live at hundreds of babies and midwives in South America?
Nope. If she's honest and she helps her nieces and nephews?
Nope. Making pronatalist art, for example?
Eh. If she otherwise would have married a good provider but wouldn't give him many kids?
Pro-lifer? No!
She creates a company that hires a bunch of people so those people can afford to have families.
And she spreads her values by hiring people who are like herself.
So she hires, let's just say it's going to be mostly men who provide and the women who stay home.
She hires 100 men.
Those 100 men have two kids apiece because they have a job.
She's got 200 kids.
She can only have 8 to 10 kids over the course of her life.
In this case, she helps 200 kids come into the world.
A boss babe who's pro-family and men.
Now that's a fantasy. No, not necessarily.
Not necessarily. Because she just might be somebody who has a real genius for creating wealth, a real genius for founding companies and creating wealth.
And so she hires a bunch of people who are, you know, we assume that the company culture is somewhat like herself.
So she hires a bunch of We have to say men because if it's women then the women are going to have lower birth rates because they're at work, right?
So the higher men, and though she pays each of those men $100,000 a year because she's
so productive, those men can now afford families and their wives have a bunch of babies.
So a woman who is working can absolutely increase the birth rate.
Thank you.
Now the problem is of course that a lot of the women who are entrepreneurs Oh, by being a wildly successful employer.
Wow, obvious in hindsight. Well, that's the whole point of philosophy is it's obvious in hindsight.
Now, what's the problem though with female entrepreneurs?
Why doesn't it work out this way for the most part?
What's the problem with female entrepreneurs as far as the birth rate goes?
and not just themselves but their companies.
Yeah, they want to hire other females.
No, there are some very successful entrepreneurs.
So think of celebrity females who create beauty, lifestyle, scented vagina candle crap or whatever, right?
So they do all of that stuff.
Do they hire men or do they hire women?
They hire women.
And so they're taking women out of the family, out of obviously childbirth to a large degree,
child raising and so on, right?
Women or gay men, yeah, maybe.
So this is why I made this joke about Jessica Alba, who has some big lifestyle company.
And it's like, can you ever imagine like Jessica Alba or Gwyneth Paltrow starting an engineering company?
Yeah. Why would they...
Because if you start a computer company, an engineering company, a hardware company, a construction company, and they're going to start those things, going to get all of this goopy, girly stuff and hire all these women out, and that's catastrophic for the birth rate.
Chad comes in, she might not want to be a boss anymore.
No. That's not a thing, Bob.
That's not a thing. That's not a thing.
I mean, with some imaginary exceptions.
But a woman who is a girl boss, right?
right? A woman who's CEO of her own company. Why is she almost never going to have a successful
long-term relationship? Gwyneth is nuts. Yeah, that's certainly true.
Yeah.
...
Hypergamy. Yeah. So, she's generally going to want a man who's richer and more powerful than she is.
But a man who is richer and more powerful than she is has gained his wealth and his power in order to have a family.
And if she's a workaholic, as you have to be to be successful in these areas, she won't be able to give him the home, the family, the children, the lifestyle that he wants.
So he won't choose her.
I mean, he may date her, they may even get married, and they may even have kids, but the relationship is almost certain to not work out.
High testosterone, so she doesn't want to make more than her man.
Oh, high testosterone. Sorry, though.
Yeah, if you're a boss babe, a real one, you're working all the time.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
And, I mean, as a man, have you ever dated a woman who works all the time?
I have. Ever dated a woman who works all the time?
I mean, what's the point?
What's the point? They're traveling.
They're almost never available. They get work calls, emails.
They have to interrupt dates. Like, what's the point?
She's married to her job, and I'm an affair.
Why would you want that? We were married.
It was useless. Yeah.
You need to be devoted to each other, and the man's devotion shows up in his work for the family and all of that, but, like, you can't build a relationship with somebody who's married to their work.
That was my mom, and she was a horrible wife and mother.
Of course, yeah, right, yeah. Sorry to hear that, Michelle, but yeah, it's like, of course.
I mean, you can have it all.
I mean, it's a literal contradiction in terms, right?
You can't have it all. Lots of money.
We made it together, but she was solely focused on cash, even when we could afford to hire a replacement for her.
Yeah. That's just the way that it is.
That's the way. I mean, why would a man want a woman who's unavailable?
Acquaintances from universities like that.
She's super stressed with lots of stomach ulcers and mental breakdowns, but her boss gets her at her best.
Oof, that's harsh, but cold, but right.
Hey Steph, happy Labor Day!
Happy Labor Day back to you.
Made no sense to continue a relationship with her.
She wanted a dual income, no kids lifestyle.
No thank you. Right.
Decluttering. All your stuff's gonna get thrown out.
Right? All your stuff's gonna get thrown out.
I mean...
So here is...
You can see this in the audio, right?
So I'm holding up...
What is this? What is this?
What am I holding up?
A floor sample?
No, it's not a bit... No, it's a coaster.
Yeah, that's right. It's a coaster.
Rollercoaster of love!
Right, so it's a coaster, right?
Now, let's say that this coaster...
Let's say I was a single man, right?
Not married, no kids, whatever, right?
And let's say this coaster, I was gifted to be by my favorite teacher in high school as a mark of how well it is, how well I was going to do.
Right? This was infused with meaning and depth and history and this was my most inspiring coaster.
I did not make the coaster. I don't have hobbies.
Are you kidding me? I have a career.
So, this coaster is infused with meaning for me because it was given to me by my favorite
teacher who was the only one who could ever believe in me and he inspired me to do great
things with my life and this coaster, right?
Right.
And I'm a single guy, I got no kids.
And I die before this live stream's over.
Fingers crossed, no. Die before this live stream's over, right?
So, you know, it'll probably take a week or two for people to figure out I'm dead.
You've never seen one? You've never seen a coaster?
Well, you can't be married then because marriage comes with excessive pillows on the bed and coasters...
Everywhere. Because apparently you don't buy things to put things on.
You buy things to put coasters on so you can put things on.
That is just a fact of married life.
I don't follow it. I don't understand it.
But it is a genuine fact because my wife in general would rather get scalding burns throwing herself at the ground if I was ever putting a coffee cup anywhere other than the coaster.
I failed. I don't have coasters.
There's still time. There's still time to make...
You know the floor is lava?
Floor is lava, you'd say the name as a kid.
So yeah, everything that's not a coaster is lava.
And if you put something down not on a coaster...
There will be a rending tear in the space-time fabric.
Demons will pour through, seal your soul, and the world will end up as a furnace of flames.
Coasters are life. Yeah, coasters are absolute life.
You have six-plus pillows. Yeah, that's right.
That's right. You got to do it.
So you can't ever take a nap because there's just too many pillows.
You have to move the pillows, but that's bad somehow.
And the weird thing is, if you move the pillows on the coasters, that's also considered wrong.
I don't understand that. I persuaded my wife that rings on furniture is hard.
That's funny. No, it's just a thing, right?
Yeah, you buy a coffee table, but you don't put coffee on it.
You put coasters on it, and then you put the coffee on the coasters.
But you can't put the coffee on the non-coaster stuff, even if it's plastic, even if it's marble, even if it's formica.
It doesn't matter. Why? Because there could be a satanic ring of minor coffee atom refugees on the bottom of the cup that will magically transfer and create a grinning grimace of satanic proportions that, again, opens up that ribbon.
The space-time dimension, the demons pour through, and all of that.
So, yes. That's a reality.
Okay, so this is magic, massive meaning coaster, right?
Massive magic meaning coaster.
I die on the live stream a week or two, right?
And, um...
Does anybody else care about this coaster?
Does anybody care about this coaster other than me?
No. No. So why do we have stuff for the most part?
I mean, other than the stuff we need to live.
We have stuff because we have meaning.
The stuff has meaning for us, right?
But the meaning is not in the stuff, but in us.
And when we die, the meaning evaporates from all that stuff.
So just be aware, all the stuff that is meaningful to you will be worse than useless to most other people.
Does that make sense? We hoard for the meaning, but the meaning dies with us.
And all of the stuff that we keep because of its meaning is useless tchotchke, white elephant, garbage junk to everyone else.
Do you follow? So the meaning is in your mind, right?
The meaning is in your mind.
So I have this super magical meaning...
Coffee cup holder, coaster.
And the meaning is, okay, I look at this.
Oh, it reminds me of that great teacher, blah, blah, blah.
Okay. But the whole point of all that meaning, like, let's say that this coaster was given to me by the teacher who believed in me.
It's like, okay, well, I've achieved everything I want in life.
So why do I need the coaster?
The purpose of the teacher's vision has been fulfilled.
I don't need the coaster. Okay.
How much stuff do you have around you that is infused with meaning that means nothing to anyone else?
Like the story I told years ago on this show about a friend of mine whose uncle died and he inherited giant cabinets full of dead butterflies because his uncle never married, never had kids, but went all over the world collecting butterflies.
And they were sitting in the basement of his house, rotting away.
And he phoned people in museums.
Oh, do you want all these butterflies?
They're like, well, maybe if you ship them to us, we could have a look and see, blah, blah, blah.
And it was like crazy expensive to ship them because they'll be temperature controlled.
So they lived in the non-temperature controlled, non-humidity controlled basement, rotting into nothing.
Oh, but he had fun collecting the butterflies.
Yes, because he thought collecting the butterflies would do something to the world, do something for the world.
Did he just bury the butterflies?
What do I know? I don't know what happened to those butterflies.
But it's an annoyance for him.
It's worse than useless.
It was actively annoying to my friend.
Like, what am I supposed to do with these butterflies?
I can't just toss them out. I feel terrible.
I don't want to spend $5,000 shipping them someplace where they may not even be a value of use to anyone.
They'll probably just sit in the basement of that museum.
It's an annoying thing.
Every time I go downstairs, there's this crap.
This cabinet's full of butterflies.
And I looked at them. They were pretty butterflies.
This coaster that means so much to me.
I die and it's just an annoying thing that people have to deal with or dispose of.
You ever buried a parent?
You ever buried a parent? Hit me with a Y if you've buried a parent.
No. Getting rid of all your stuff when you're old so your family doesn't have to deal with it.
Yeah. Swedish death cleaning.
No, but grandma, yeah.
Yeah. Had to throw out most of my stuff since moving out of my parents because they also had black mold.
Basement's still full of stuff 10 years later, just beginning now to deal with it.
Now, when your parent dies, you go through all their stuff and you don't know the reason any half of it, you don't even know why it's there.
Why is it there?
Why is this there? Why is this old book there?
What does it mean? There's nothing written in it.
Maybe an inscription from someone you donate.
Like, why is this stuff here?
I buy old houses and repair them.
They often have personal items left.
Most get scooped up with snow shovels and dumped out.
Yeah. I keep picturing family members debating on who was stuck with the spoon collection.
Oh yeah, no, I mean, I know a friend of mine did a similar thing, bought a house and went in and there was thousands and thousands of vinyl records, a massive collection of vinyl records.
This guy had spent, the guy who lived there spent half his life
scouring the four corners of the world to get these vinyl records.
What happened to all these vinyl records?
Nobody wants them. Nobody wants these vinyl records anymore.
They just got... Giant garbage bags and tossed into the...
That's horrible.
A colleague burned up her small inheritance after her mother's death on storage unit payments.
Cost as much as her rent ended up rotting.
Leaky pipe and rats ruined the stuff.
Yeah. Yeah.
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day.
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Why don't people care?
What do you mean? Why don't they care about stuff that only means something to you?
Why would they care? Why would they care?
Why would anyone care about stuff that means only something to you?
Do you care about stuff that means only something to them?
No, of course you don't. You do?
You care about stuff that only means something to other people?
By definition, that's not true.
Mystical astral projecting grandmother had a house full of rocks and old glass bottles.
It was neatly set up, but it was an entire box truck to move them to a storage unit.
Why the hell would you put them in a storage unit?
Rocks and old glass bottles.
Well, we gotta hang on to those, because they could have the souls of aborigines in them.
Why would you move that to a storage unit?
Oh, because she was still alive and she wanted to...
She wanted to keep it.
Why? Now, why am I saying all this?
We can end on this note, because it's really important, right?
Because, I mean, you guys are younger in all of this, so, listen, if they find this stuff valuable, helpful, useful, and important, and, oh, mom wants them but doesn't have the space, grandma has died.
Oh, yeah, well, mother's hanging on to stuff, women hanging on to stuff.
It's like, you've seen the meme about the guy who makes a lot of money in the stock market, what his house looks like.
It's a bare house with one futon and a giant TV. That's it.
And it may be an Xbox. Why does this matter?
Especially for the younger people.
Time is limited? Yeah, that's a fairly common thing and I don't need a long speech for that.
I'm not going to do that.
...
you Having a life where things mean only something to you is fundamentally selfish and destructive and a waste.
And a waste. So if most of the things in your life only mean something to you, you're wasting your life.
It's a measure to not fuck up and waste your life.
What happens to all your saved games when you die?
What happens to all your photos, your butterflies, your coasters?
The books you loved that you never spread the wisdom of?
Love.
.
Turn to dust, trashed.
How much of what you do over the day has meaning to others?
You got it, right? Clicked.
This is the test. You look at your day, right?
How much of your day is consumed by activities that have meaning to others?
I mean, I hope that this conversation has meaning to you.
And there's nothing wrong with doing some things that have meaning to just yourself.
I played Doom. I guess I live-streamed it as well.
There's nothing wrong with having stuff that's just for you.
But if all you're doing is consuming things that have no meaning to anyone else, that only have meaning to you, you're wasting your life.
You're wasting your life. And it's parasitical.
Do you know why it's parasitical?
Because when you take without returning, it's parasitical, right?
Because everything that you live in, live under, makes your life comfortable.
The food, the shelter, the air conditioning, the car, the gas, the computers, the technology, the cell phone, the data, all of that is produced by people who are trying to give meaning to you, who are trying to give value to you.
Now you give them money back, I get all of that.
But everything that's around, that you see, that you consume, that you inhabit, that is all because people wanted to create Meaning for others or the possibility of meaning for others or value for others.
You live in a house. The guy didn't make the house for himself.
He made the house to sell. You watch a TV show.
You watch a movie. You read a book.
all of that was done so that you could get something out of it so that they share it,
they share it, they share it!
Consume, consume, consume, consume, consume, consume, consume.
I think it ends up being depressing.
because your meaning will die with you.
But how do you live on?
I mean, if you have kids, obviously, if you raise the kids, then your values and what's meaningful to you will live on in them.
But even if you don't have kids, how do you live on?
If everything you do has meaning only for you, and the meaning dies with you, then clearly
you will not live on.
But, but.
Bye.
God.
.
If you work to create things that have meaning for others, you live on.
Meaningless consumption, that's the fundamental antinatalist propaganda.
That's right, Michelle, very beautifully put.
Work to create meaning for others, and you are immortal.
And if you have the capacity for immortality, and you don't take it, then you live as an animal.
And it doesn't have to be a big show or a small show or it doesn't have to be a big book or a small book.
It can be conversations.
It can be something you do for others that restores their faith in humanity.
It could be something, a soup kitchen, whatever it is.
Something that creates meaning and value to other people other than just cash.
Cash is not meaning.
Cash is just exchange.
You're in a flow state today, Steph.
Maybe. Maybe. So what are you doing that creates meaning for others?
Because when you create meaning for others, they then transfer that to other people, they transfer that to their children.
If you're creating meaning for others, you live forever.
And living forever is fundamentally human.
It's the most fundamental thing about humanity, is that you live forever.
Because the only other thing that animals do to live forever is screw and eat and pass on their genes.
But we, what's fundamentally human about us?
Why do we have mental health issues?
Why do we have depression, anxiety?
Because we're not living fundamentally human, in a fundamental human state.
Fundamental human state is creating immortal meaning in the world, in your children, in your community, in your life, among your friends, anywhere.
We are immortal creatures because our thoughts can live forever.
What is meaningful to us can be transferred to others.
We can jump soul to soul and live forever.
That's why only human beings, in most religions, only human beings have souls.
Right? Only human beings have souls.
Why? Because only human beings can live forever.
And hobbies are consume, consume, consume and not share.
Or share only the description of the hobbies which is boring and alienating for other people, which is why I asked, have you ever heard someone talk about their hobbies and found it really interesting?
What is most fundamentally human about you, me and everyone is our capacity to become
immortal by creating and sharing meaning, truth, value, morality, virtue.
Only consuming, yeah, like Arla.
.
Arlo's beauty was for babies, but he wouldn't get Rachel pregnant.
He consumed other people's jealousy.
He tried to use his body for his own pleasures alone.
But your body only exists because billions of ancestors, generations...
Used to their bodies for something other than their own pleasure. So you are consuming
Hobbies are selfish in many ways based upon this sort of analysis
You .
If you collect stamps and you're single or whatever, or nobody cares about it in your family, you die.
They'll try and sell the stamps collection, or if they can't sell it, they'll just throw it out.
The only meaning that it has for other people is an impediments and an annoyance.
I see the connection to your travel podcast as well.
Yeah, travel is consumptive.
And again... I don't want this to be a false dichotomy.
I mean, we will do some things that are consumptive, absolutely.
Absolutely. We will do some things that are just for us alone.
There's nothing wrong with that. It's got to balance.
We eat and animals eat, and what I eat, you can't eat.
That's fine. Have you considered a book on aesthetically preferable behavior and synthesizing all of these thoughts into it?
No. It's an interesting idea.
Right now, I'm neck deep on...
Peaceful parenting.
Just make a note here.
All right, any other tips for today?
All I'm saying is that I think if you want to be happy, then participating The most human activity is probably going to make you the most happy.
The most human activity is the universals, is the concepts, is the ideals, is the values.
And you need to look at your day and divide it up into that which consumes to you and that which is valuable to others.
Now, of course, if you can unite the two, I gain great pleasure out of talking about these ideas with you, with the world as a whole.
It's a great joy to me.
So there's not a dichotomy here like I'm sacrificing my own pleasure to talk to you.
I elucidate and clarify my own ideas in the communication of them with you.
So I am doing philosophy.
I'm not teaching philosophy.
We are doing philosophy.
I get paid this week.
I'll be donating at the FDR website.
Thank you. It's freedoman.com slash donate.
So we're doing philosophy. I don't have all these thoughts preformed.
Well, today I'm going to talk about the selfishness of hobbies beyond the teenage years.
Philosophy is provoked.
Philosophy is part of conversations.
Why the live streams are so important and why this show is so fundamentally different since I started live streaming.
So we're doing philosophy here.
I'm not teaching philosophy. We're all learning philosophy.
We're all learning philosophy.
We're all striving for that Godhood of universals and immortality and infinity.
Infinity and eternity is what makes us the most specifically human.
Because we can all jump genetics, right?
I can only reproduce half my genetics with someone else, but I can give the ideas and the arguments to everyone, regardless of...
And I try to aim this so that you don't need, you know, big abstract intelligence, massive vocabulary and so on to follow this stuff.
That's the idea. Share what is greatest, deepest, and most glorious, and most essential, and most universal in yourself.
Immortality, meaning, depth.
And then you live forever.
You.
If Freddie Mercury were only sung to himself, his voice would die with him.
Everything that was for yourself alone will die with you.
Everything that's for others lives forever.
And when you take pleasure in that, you are truly united and will never be alone.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening today.
What a great pleasure to chat with you. Happy, happy, happy Liberty for everybody.
The immortality idea is huge.
You've been ablaze with pure clarity lately.
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. That is what we do together here, and I really appreciate that.
If you're listening to this later, of course, freedom.com slash donate to help out the show.
Very, very much appreciated.
And yeah, just divvy up your day, figure out what you're doing for the universals and what you're doing for yourself.
And if it's more yourself, you're probably not going to be super happy in the long run.
That's my particular guess.
Lots of love from up here. Take care everyone.
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