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Sept. 24, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:46:40
OH HAPPY SPECIAL MAGICAL DAY LIVESTREAM!
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So yes, happy birthday.
It is the 24th September. Technically, I'm not born yet.
I like the song says, I was born, well, not on a Tuesday night.
I was born about 5 p.m.
September 24th, 1966.
Now, you know what that means, my friends.
You know what that means. What that means is that I have to do a whole lot of scrolling when it comes to year of birth on the Internet.
That's a lot of scrolling, I'm not going to lie.
It is some serious scrolling.
And it's just a fact.
It's just a grim and brutal fact that it is a lot of scrolling.
Just pointing that out.
And I don't think, is that going there at all?
No, it's just hung on the word submitting, right?
Okay, well, let's not worry about the text side.
Let's go. Were you at Woodstock?
I was not at Woodstock.
I was not at Woodstock.
Well, did I have breakfast in bed?
I'm not a breakfast guy.
I gotta tell you, I'm not a breakfast guy.
I haven't had anything to eat today.
I've had one coffee and now a decaf.
And as the sign says, just give me coffee and no one gets hurt.
So, no, I don't do breakfast, really.
My daughter loves a good brunch, so we'll go out for brunch sometimes and I'll have...
Why decaf? Oh, I only do two cafs a day.
I only do two caf coffees a day.
I can't do more. It just makes me kind of...
It's not pleasant then.
It's not pleasant then. Like, you know, so I don't really drink, but occasionally if I have a drink, one or two drinks is kind of fun.
After that, it's just unpleasant.
And I remember that from when I was younger.
I haven't been drunk probably in...
Oh gosh, I was probably 21.
I remember after I played Macbeth, There was a cast party, and I got drunk then.
That was it. That was it.
It's just not pleasant. It's not pleasant for me.
All right, so let me get to your comments.
Thank you very much for your very kind words.
It is great to be able to spend a little bit of time with you today on this special day.
You know you have one of the best jobs in the world when you want to work on your birthday.
Well, amen to that. Amen to that.
Happy birthday, Steph. Hope you have a good one.
So far, so great. Happiest of birthdays, I'll be in the middle of Yom Kippur.
But happy birthday, Steph.
Sending love from us. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Happy birthday, 07.
Sorry, that's 007.
Thanks for the great work you do in gifting us with philosophy.
Happy birthday, HB. Well, there's some efficient typing.
Happy birthday, Steph.
I've been listening to your show for eight years, hopefully straight, with no interruptions.
Don't sleep. You continue to be hilarious, original, honest, and enlightening.
Stefan, you're the man. Thank you very much.
Thank you for the tip. Pandeli!
Another year of the greatest philosophy show on the planet.
And we're all here for it.
looking forward to tonight's stream. Feliz cumpleanos. Feliz cumpleanos. Feliz cumpleanos.
I don't want to squirt on a piano but thank you.
Happy birthday, Steph. You are truly the emperor of inoculation.
If it wasn't for you and your show, I wouldn't have a wife and kids.
I'm glad my wedding anniversary falls on your birthday, so there's no way I'll ever forget it.
Have a great one. Thank you, Rob.
That's really, really kind. I appreciate that.
Happy birthday from Krakow!
Poland, absolutely one of my favorite places on the planet.
Thank you, Job. I appreciate the tip.
Happy birthday, Steph. Happy birthday.
Yay, lovely. Good morning.
You are a master at identifying people's character through conversations.
What do you think about personality tests such as Myers-Briggs, etc.?
Are they accurate? Are they crystal ball vague?
What's going on with them? So Myers-Briggs is just a bunch of nonsense that was invented by a couple of secretaries.
It has no predictive value.
It's just people like to feel special because they like to feel defined.
The reason that personality tests exist is because other people don't pay attention or hold interest in people.
Other people should be telling you what you're like, what your personality is like, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and you should have people around you, just as you do for them, to help you understand yourself.
Now, of course, the Myers-Briggs and other personality tests exist.
Because people are isolated and lonely and nobody cares about them and nobody expresses any care for them, so they run for definition to tests.
Now, Myers-Briggs, to me, is pure nonsense.
What matters is your moral outlook.
I mean, I could probably whip off a test, maybe I'll do it one day, I could probably whip off a test in about an hour that would tell far more about someone than any of this Myers-Briggs four different types of personality Jungian crap.
And the questions would be something like, do you believe in objective reality?
Do you believe in objective truth?
Do you believe in objective morality?
What are the standards you submit yourself to?
Do you have any of these things?
Right? And those who are subjectivists and relativists and so on are going to be squid-fingered manipulative a-holes who are going to slowly dismantle the personalities, life success, and income of everyone around them over time.
So it's really not what is your personality type.
It's do you believe in good and do you believe in evil?
And if you don't, run!
That would be the only couple of questions that I would have about things, right?
Right. Happy birthday to Steph, a man of brain and brawn.
A moral neighbor who always remembers to cut his philosophy lawn.
Oh, manscaping. In the realm of epistemology, thank you.
A day of celebration for Mr.
Molyneux, a man whose moral conscience justly tells him what to do.
I do take orders, yes.
He's a human being with a mighty soul and he's so universal like my remote control.
Oh, this is a wrap! Oh, I get it.
Happy birthday to Stefan, a man of brain abroad, a moral neighbor who always remembered to cut his philosophy lawn.
A day of celebration from Mr.
Molyneux, a man whose moral conscience just tells him what to do.
He's a human being with a mighty soul, and he's so universal like a remote control.
A special happy birthday to Stefan Molyneux.
May his family always gloat and remember on this day, he was birthed a philosophy goat.
Thank you. Happy birthday.
Thank you, Nate. Thank you, Mike.
You only look a day older.
Not bad. Not bad.
A little jowly. I noticed that in the woodworks.
A little jowly, but what the heck, right?
You know, time passes and the alternative is much worse.
All right. Thank you for your tip.
Happy birthday. Thanks for what you do.
Birthday gift. Love you, Steph.
Thank you, Nate. I appreciate that.
And let's see here.
Let's see what we got. Tomorrow, a new personality test.
Two types. Rational and irrational.
Yeah. So, the test of morality, you understand, the test of morality is the test of vanity.
This is my birthday gift to you.
The test of morality is the test of vanity.
Or, to put it more specifically, the test of objectivity is the test of vanity.
The test of objectivity is the test of vanity.
Objectivity says, my will crashes uselessly and pathetically and emptily.
With no muscularity or spine up against the brick walls of absolute objective and rational standards.
My will is not omniscient and omnipotent.
I am not a god, which is to say I am not a narcissist, and philosophical tests of objective reality exist so that you can find out who's insane.
Because insane people think that they can just make up their own definitions, make up their own morals, make up their own reality, make up their own truth, or that there's no such thing as truth and so on.
And when people say there's no such thing as truth, what they say is, I don't want any of your pesky objective standards to stand in the way of my total domination over your entire personality.
That's what people say.
When they say, ah, we don't believe in truth, everything's relative, they say, I want to erode the brick walls of your rational defenses so that I can swamp and overpower and tsunami your entire personality and render you completely under my control.
It's a dare. It's a dare.
Because you'll notice that the people who say there's no such thing as truth are equally the people who are the most verbally abusive.
That's an inevitability, right?
So, all right.
Hey, I made a comment on this post with a little birthday present from me to you.
Thank you. So, yeah, so you want to know, are you insane?
Are you insane? It's a good thing to know with the people around you.
And people who don't believe in objective truth Believe that they themselves are the sole arbiters of truth.
When people say there's no such thing as objective truth, what they're actually saying is that I personally myself am the standard of truth.
And if you don't agree with me, I will F you up in foundational.
Yeah, so the test of objective reality is, are you a narcissist?
Are you deluded?
Are you vainglorious? Are you a megalomaniac?
Are you psycho? Are you insane?
Because morally insane is always emotionally abusive and often physically as well.
So if somebody is not willing to obey anything, then they will be unrestrained in their manipulations, bribes and attacks on you.
If there's no objective standard that people have to subject themselves to, then they will be absolutely unrestrained in their abuse of you.
And sad, sad but true fact.
And a very enlightened fact as well.
A very enlightened fact. Oh, can we actually do this?
We might be able to do this. Give me just one.
Splitty one, splitty second.
See? They say that you can log in.
But I'm not sure that you can.
Alright, where are we going here?
Yes, yes, yes, yeah.
Well, it doesn't look like I can edit that, so.
Yeah. Yeah, we won't do that.
All right. So I hope that helps, and I hope that that is interesting and useful and of utility to you.
But yes, absolutely stay away from people who don't believe in objective reality or objective truth.
They are simply announcing that they will be unrestrained in their abuse.
I love when Steph points out the hypocrisy.
He tells him he disagrees, and they reply, you're wrong!
Truth claim, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know friends and family who fit that picture.
Well, narcissism is the default position of humanity.
We're all born, quote, selfish, right?
We're only concerned with our own.
So you have to outgrow that, right?
Your nose deep in work and bam, it's your birthday.
Surprise, productivity, meat cake.
Happy birthday, Steph. Thank you very much.
I appreciate it. Hope you guys will check out the truth about the Wild West as well.
All right. The Molyneux personality test.
Two types, rational and irrational.
So... Yeah, this is a good way to put it.
Rational... I mean, there's no such thing as irrational, fundamentally.
There's rational and anti-rational.
Right? There's rational and there's anti-rational.
That's really all it comes down to.
And rational are the people who say that you have a voice...
In the relationship, right?
So people who believe in objective truth say, oh, you have a voice in the relationship.
And this is what I'm always telling people, like people who disagree with, Steph, you've got to go back on Twitter.
I mean, it's like, yes, absolutely, you have a giant lever to change my mind.
I'm thrilled and happy. If I make a mistake, it would be an act of great friendship and love to correct me.
So I would really appreciate it if you would correct me.
No! They just scream at me and stomp their feet and bribe and threaten and insult and dangle the health and welfare of children in front of me to get me to do what they want.
The one thing they won't do is actually address my arguments and tell me how I'm serving virtue better by going back on Twitter.
So yeah, there's rational and then there's anti-rational.
And that's really about it.
You either subject to reason or you oppose reason.
Because if you are narcissistic, then you are the measure of all things.
And therefore, you absolutely hate subjecting yourself to an objective standard.
And therefore your natural enemy is reason and evidence and philosophy, because those are designed to contain the madness of the hyper-extravagant and off-spilling personality.
Type and reduce it to, or actually elevate it to the truth, elevate it to reality.
Mad people can't get anywhere without intimidation or bribery.
So it's really tragic.
All right. My family and I would like to tell you, happy birthday, Steph.
We have three children and counting because of your influence.
Thank you very much. And congratulations.
They're all peacefully parented, as will be their many, many descendants.
Thank you for surviving, flourishing, and most importantly, circling back for us.
You are the one and only celebrity worthy of our celebration.
Have a beautiful rest of your birthday month.
Thank you. Please inform my family that it is in fact a month and not a day.
Happy birthday, brother!
Is Myers-Briggs or astrology better at classifying people?
No, no, no. See, Myers-Briggs and astrology are fantastic at classifying people.
Because what you do is you classify people into those who think that Myers-Briggs or astrology can classify people and those who know that it can't.
Steph looking better every year.
Thank you. I can't remember I was saying this the other day.
I'm very glad that I'm bald and don't have that kind of wispy hair stuff.
My dad had a little bit of that wispy hair stuff, just a couple of things up there.
I would shave that crap off.
It's better to be bald than to have, I don't know, anemic hair.
My therapist doesn't believe in objective reality.
Fantastic. Then you can just tell her you already paid her.
So, yeah, she says, I'm going to need 200 bucks for this session.
You say, no, I already paid you. Paid you at the beginning of the session.
And you'll be fine. You'll be fine.
All right. Thank you, Monsieur Kahn.
I appreciate that. Enjoying the Wild West video, Real Eyebrow Razor?
Yes. I really like the Wild West thumbnail.
Yes, it was fantastic. I'm actually on the thumbnail.
Somebody on the show did it.
It was great. Halfway through, The Truth About the West.
Fantastic presentation. We'll be sharing this with friends and family.
Somebody says, thank you for the tip.
Terminator. Last night I was at a party, a debate over the responsibility of the safety of children ensued.
I tried to argue that children don't hold responsibility for their own safety because safety must be taught to children.
It's the responsibility of parents to remove threats from the children's environment.
They argued that a mother who must take their five kids to the grocery store can't be 100% responsible for their children's safety.
So who is responsible then, if not the mother?
Is it the store owner?
Is it the father who's at work?
Who is it? No.
A mother who must take their five kids to the grocery store can't be 100% responsible for their children's safety.
All right. And that's a very good challenge and I understand that.
And of course I have One child.
So I, you know, I recognize that that's a challenge that I have not had to face.
Oh, wait. No, it is in fact a challenge I've had to face because I and one other daycare teacher when I was a teenager and worked at a daycare for a couple of years, we had 25 to 30 kids aged 5 to 10 that we would take on field trips and we would take to the bowling and we would take to the mall and we would take to movie theaters and all of that.
So, yes, I do have a lot of experience with actually dozens of kids and only one other adult around.
Actually, I wasn't even an adult back then.
I got that job when I was 15 and worked there until I was, I think, 17 or 18.
So, yeah, five kids at a grocery store.
Okay, a couple of options, right?
A couple of options. First of all, the older kids have to have some responsibility for the younger kids, right?
So let's say she's had her kids two years apart, right?
So she's got, I guess, kids all the way from a 10-year-old to a baby.
Okay, so the 10-year-old has to keep an eye on the younger kids.
And children are part of the family, and children have...
A value to add to the family, and that value should be added, right?
Should be part of what the children add, right?
I mean, by the age of 10, I had my first job at the age of 10.
I was painting plaques for the silver jubilee anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's ascension to the throne.
So I literally had a job.
I was paid piecemeal for painting these plaques, because they wanted to say hand-painted.
So I had my first job at the age of 10, and just, yeah, so a 10-year-old should absolutely be responsible.
So, yeah, you instruct the children, and you model that, and you help them.
And, of course, if you love your children, then the children will love the younger children.
They'll model that behavior, so they'll want to help and take care of the children.
You talk about the children.
You get their buy-in to the rules ahead of time and so on.
All of this is entirely possible and stuff that I've actually done with kids who aren't even mine.
But they really liked me, of course.
I mean, children have always liked me, and I really like kids.
So you can get all of this stuff done.
The other thing, too, is if it's too tough, just order the food together.
Like, you can order groceries online in most places, not every place, of course, but you can order groceries online, and you can get them delivered to your house, and that might be a lot easier, right?
Or, of course, you can go to the groceries when your husband comes home from work.
There's lots of options.
Also, you can order, you know, if it's really tough, you can order a whole bunch of food that you can just keep, right?
It's a prepping food, a survivalist food.
You can order a whole bunch of food, mountains of it, and then you don't really need to go out that much to get these kinds of things.
All right. Thank you for...
Josh, thank you very much.
I appreciate the tip.
Are you 58?
Wait, I knew this.
57. I'm 57.
I'm 57. Or a comb over?
Those are gross. Yeah, those are gross.
I am 57.
All right, let me get to my recent massages.
My recent massages.
Your birthday month just started?
Happy birthday! Happy birthday.
Much love and happy birthday.
Thank you, Tiffany. I appreciate that.
I'm leaving out in a few, but had to drop by to send you some love and let you know how much you've impacted my and my fiancé's life.
Congratulations over the last decade.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you, Tiffany, and I genuinely hope that he hasn't been your fiancé for the last decade.
Generally, how do you determine when you've had enough children?
I think probably when you have to go in for replacement hip surgery or you can't climb stairs or you're out of eggs.
How do you determine when you've had enough children?
I couldn't possibly answer that.
So it depends. It's really nice if you can have extended family or friends help you out with your kids.
You know, this whole atomized thing where we're just kind of on our own in the suburbs.
That is... The suburbs exist because the inner city's got too dangerous.
So this idea that we raise isolated...
Like, if my daughter, like, her plan is still to make a duck farm, right?
To have a duck farm. So let's say she buys a farm in the middle of nowhere.
Well, where are my wife and I going to go?
We're going to go where she is so that we can help her raise her kids.
She wants a bunch of kids. She wants them young.
So... We'll go and, like, I don't know what else you would do.
I don't understand these boomers who are like, well, I want to travel and I want to have a boat and I want to...
It's like, come on, guys, go help your kids raise their kids.
I don't understand that.
Yes, but I really want to go and see the Leaning Tower of Pisa rather than cuddle my grandchild in my...
Live a spotted arm embrace.
I don't know. It's just weird to me. I don't understand that.
I mean, what on earth would be better than playing with your grandkids?
I don't understand it.
Was talking to someone on morality and free will.
Their argument for no free will and no objective morality was a mother having to steal for her kids because there is no other option.
They said they had to grow up for believing in moral standards.
See? That's what I mean. They don't have moral standards.
They're abusive. Yeah, grow up is one of these teeth gritting, absolutely don't ever do it, but intellectually punchable kind of, grow up, man!
It's not an argument. So what they're doing is they're saying, we don't have any moral standards, so if you don't agree with us, we're just going to escalate aggression until you comply.
Right? There's no objective reality is just morality code for I'll F you up if you disagree with me.
I will escalate aggression.
Because why? Why would they restrain?
Why would they restrain? They know the truth.
They are the truth. They manifest the truth.
And if you disagree with them, you're disagreeing with truth, objective reality, and the imaginary fantastical godhood of their own vanity.
And so you must be aggressed against.
So it's just self-defense for delusion, right?
Verbal abuse is just self-defense for delusion.
So a mother having to steal for her kids because there's no other option.
Why is there no other option?
Why is there no other option?
I mean, that wouldn't make any sense, right?
Because she says...
So they say that property rights don't exist when a mother has hungry children, right?
Property rights don't exist when...
I mean, this is just... Sorry, this could be Logic 101 guy, right?
But that's kind of the gig, right?
So they're saying property rights don't exist...
When mothers have hungry children, right?
So clearly they would give all of their property to mothers with hungry children, right?
These particular individuals.
So the mother wouldn't have to steal from them.
So let's say they just bought home a bunch of groceries.
I guess these days it's half a cart full of groceries for about $300.
Man, I filled up my car the other day.
It was $97.
I remember, honestly, when I got my first car, it was just under $30 to fill it up.
It was the same size tank. I had $97 to fill up my car.
Smoking. Oh, well, I guess people can feel good about their voting.
So they bring $300 worth of groceries home, and there's a mother whose kids are hungry.
The mother can't steal from them.
If the mother comes into their house and takes the groceries, it's not stealing.
There's no other option. So they don't own anything because they give all of their property to mothers with hungry children anywhere in the world.
They give all their property for that because property rights don't exist, right?
So if you take – you pick up the guy's cell phone and you walk out the house, right?
I'm not saying you would do this, but this would be a sort of theoretical, right?
So you pick – the guy makes this argument.
You pick up his cell phone. You start walking out of there.
It's like, where are you going with my cell phone? It's like, no, I'm going to sell it.
I'm going to give the money to mothers with hungry children.
They say, no, you're not. That's my cell phone.
It's like, well, then shut up. God, I literally, it's one of the things that enrages me more than anything else is the people who have all of these moral theoreticals and the moment you try to live by them with their property, oh, God, it's terrible.
It's just, it's so repulsive.
And they don't even notice it. Happy birthday, Steph.
I value your effect on my life and the world.
Thank you very much, David. I appreciate that.
Between 8 and 10, I was cleaning up my uncle's vineyard from all the rocks, one wheelbarrow at a time.
25 cents a wheelbarrow.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So, let's see here.
Let's get to your comments.
You got great comments. Great comments.
I did a whole show on the responsibility of children.
I've got so many shows I haven't released yet.
All right. Boomers always on vacation meme is real.
Yeah. Yeah.
So the boomers as a whole were completely detached from reality.
Boomers were offered an exit ramp from reality and they just snorted that thing like, Russell Brand in his heyday offer tabletop, right?
I mean, boomers were offered an arm ramp from reality.
They were given the devilish vanity thing.
The vanity thing, the devilish vanity thing is when you can feel morally good and other people have to pay for it.
You can feel morally good, other people have to pay for it, right?
You can see this with the migrant hot potato stuff going on in America at the moment, right?
So... The boomers were offered virtue without having to pay for it.
And when you take that, you're kind of doomed.
Because then genuine virtue becomes your enemy.
Reason, reality, responsibility all becomes your enemy.
So what they were offered was the welfare warfare state.
That you can, quote, help the poor.
You can have all of these laws and rules and so on.
And it'll all be funded through debt and borrowing and so on.
And rather than having the next generation, there's going to be immigrants and that's going to drive up the value of your house so you're going to feel wealthy and all of that kind of stuff, right?
Those people at the party are insane.
Yeah, yeah. All right.
I work at a grocery store.
That 97 amount feels low down here in America.
You can't get out of a store without spending at least $150.
No, the 97 was for gas, not for groceries.
Oh, yeah, you know you're in the end times when the restaurants have stickers on their prices, right?
Next it's going to be, well, it's just on a tablet because we have to update them every morning.
Philip says, hey, Steph, I remember you once gave three options, determinism, semi-determinism, or free will.
What? I would love to meet this deaf guy that everyone quotes.
You once gave three options.
Determinism, semi-determinism, or free will.
Okay. He says, I tend to agree with semi-determinism.
and most things are beyond your control.
How do we know without referencing anything that this is an incorrect
statement? Whether it's not a statement of mine.
I could say that there are three things that people believe, but I didn't give people.
So how do we know when somebody says, you once gave three options, determinism, semi-determinism, or free will?
How do we know that that's not my particular argument, right?
Without having to reference anything, how do we know that's not mine?
Right. How do we know?
Without having to reference anything.
Semi-determinism is free will.
Steph wouldn't make that error. It's right there.
It's right there. You got to read carefully, people.
Read with alertness. What's that?
For some reason, I loved that when I was a kid.
Be alert. The world needs more alerts.
Oh, come on, people.
It's my birthday. Give me the present of textual accuracy.
Hey, Steph, I remember you once gave three what?
What did I give?
Three... Three what?
What did I give? Three options!
Options! You have options.
Options means that you can choose things.
I gave you three options.
One of them is that you have no options.
One of them is that you only have some options, and the other is that you have lots of options.
Come on, people! The word is options!
You once told people that they have three choices.
One that they have no choice.
Am I wrong? Am I wrong?
Come on! So...
So I'm not talking about this person in particular.
I'm not talking about this person in particular.
But how you know that someone is a vainglorious, narcissistic, head of their own asshole, God in their own universe, is what they do is they say, anything that limits my will is determinism.
Anything that limits my will is determinism.
If I can't fly, that's determinism.
If I can't walk through walls and summon my own girlfriend with arcane rituals, that's a limit of my free will.
If I can't travel through time, then the universe is semi-deterministic.
If I'm subject to the laws of physics, if I am not a god, I don't have free will.
Yeah, that's not a thing.
That's not a thing. Let's see here.
Apologies if I missed it, but did you discuss in the past the famous paper by Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, in which he argues with positive moral obligations?
Apparently it's still a very influential paper, but it seems like a great, a giant argument from consequences to me.
Yeah, I mean, anybody who writes a paper about ethics, if they're not talking about child abuse and they're not talking about, say, national debts or, you know, state coercion, I don't care what they have to say.
Like, I don't care. I don't care.
I just, I blur out.
I just, I have no interest because it's just going to be propaganda.
Peter Singer is very pro-animal rights and things like that.
Anybody who argues for the rights of animals over the need for children to not be beaten, I don't know.
It's weird.
And what he's doing, of course, is he's giving people, I'm not talking about this guy in particular because I don't know him very well, although he is on my list of philosophers to do in the History of Philosopher's series.
He's near the end, which you should check out if you haven't.
The History of Philosopher's series is some of my best work.
And it is available for subscribers at freedomend.locals.com.
You should really check it out. You can use the promo code, all caps, UPB2022, and you get a free month to try it out.
If you want to buy a year, you get two months free.
Do you believe in animal rights, or do you think they are property rights?
Dave, why are you false dichotomy-ing me on my birthday?
Why would you false... Do you believe this, or is the answer this?
I'm sorry about how you were raised, but please don't inflict it on me.
All right. Let's see here.
So, yes. So, a focus on animal rights is a way of...
Making you feel like an activist and feeling good with people who aren't going to fight back.
Right? So this is the thing.
If somebody says, I'm really interested in morality and virtue and ethics and so on, but all they ever do is pick on people who aren't going to fight back, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a vanity project. It's a vanity project.
It's a vanity project. It's all right.
I chose to lock myself in a room.
Now I have no choices. That's a good way of putting it, yeah.
All right. Um...
If you don't beat your children and raise them peacefully, good chances that animal cruelty will cease.
Yes, that's right. We're cruel to animals, and this is one of the...
Like, you know the three signs of sociopathy in kids?
Do you know these three signs?
Or antisocial personality or whatever it is, like real problems with kids.
Do you know the three signs? Good to know about, right?
Good to know about. The three signs are bedwetting into double digits.
Cruelty to animals and fascination with fire.
All right. Today is also British philosopher Leon McLaren's birthday.
Quote, it became very clear to me that there was such a thing as truth and there was such a thing as justice and that they could be found and being found could be taught.
It seemed to me that this was the most valuable thing that one could pursue.
So I resolved to pursue this when I was 21.
Yeah, statements of intentions are nice.
But you don't invest in a guy who says, I believe that profit is valuable and possible and I aim to pursue that.
So give me a million dollars.
It's like, no, I'm going to need more than a statement of intentions.
Thank you for the tip, Doug.
Appreciate that. Happy birthday.
Are you married? I am married.
21 years. Thank you.
And it's beautiful.
Oh, my dad's a dark triad.
I never realized. Glad I cut him off.
I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry about that.
That's hard to hear.
that's hard to live with but being raised by evil is a great inoculation
um C for comments, R for rant
C for comments. In other words, I'll read your comments and respond to them.
them or offer rent. All right. All right. I'm just getting it to make sure I get this.
I love you.
you Get this accurate.
because the world did give me a good...
the world did give me a good gift this morning.
gift this morning.
The world did give me a good...
The world did give me a good gift this morning.
So, as you may, as you may recall, I've been talking a little bit about one, Mr.
R Brand. Mr.
R Brand. Hit me with a Y if you remember My rant on Russell Brand.
So Russell Brand is embroiled in a whole bunch of serious allegations about sexual aggression and other things and misconduct and so on.
And it has been quite fascinating watching people who didn't defend me rushing to this guy's defense.
It's just been... Really fascinating.
Now, the allegations could be true, they could be false, we'll probably never know, at least from a philosophical standpoint, beyond a reasonable doubt, but the world gave me a gift this morning.
So, this was, I mean, this was a while ago, so I don't know exactly how long ago, so I get that time has passed and so on.
But Russell Brand...
So this is from the Daily Mail.
Russell Brand befriended a heroin addict before reducing him to tears after offering him 50 pounds to let him sleep with his prostitute girlfriend as the couple's toddler roamed the house during depraved television documentary.
The production company boss called social services after seeing the footage.
Disgraced comedian Russell Brand made a depraved TV documentary in which he befriended a heroin addict, then reduced him to tears by offering him 50 pounds to let him sleep with his prostitute girlfriend.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal social services were called after Brand spent a week living with the couple and the toddler daughter at their Norwich home before making his sordid proposal, which was rejected.
At times during filming, Bran's sidekick, Matt Morgan, was left to look after the couple's child because everyone else in the house was high on drugs.
Bram was still the heroin addict himself at the time and later admitted to using with them the couple the whole time
we were making the program Right
That's pretty good That's pretty grim. You've got a kid in the house and they're filming a documentary all while high on heroin and making proposals to sleep with this drug addict's girlfriend for 50 pounds, reducing him to tears.
Have I been a perfect person in my life?
Nope! I don't hold that as a standard, but I have never achieved it.
And this is who my former colleagues are rushing to defend.
I gotta wonder, does it ever trouble people or strike people that this is the person?
That they are bending themselves over backwards to defend.
They let me sail off into the midnight Leith River of forgottenness.
But they're all rushing to circle the wagons around.
This guy. Oh, God.
The monastery philosophy that I have ascended to over the last couple of years is just great.
Is just great.
Because down there is vile.
Down there is vile.
You can go and look. You can go and look.
At who they defend.
Uh, who's defending him.
You can go and look at who's defending him.
Now, again, innocent until proven guilty?
Sure. But that's for a court of law.
If there's footage of this guy, and again, it was some time ago and all of that,
but if there was footage of some guy, as an adult, filming this kind of stuff and putting a child in this kind
of danger, or at least participating in the danger of this kind of
child, is really something.
Really something.
Come on.
Don't we have to find slightly better heroes than this as a whole?
It's uh... I mean honestly I uh... might... I don't know what to say other than it does
feel like a very generous gift.
Now, what happened to this kid, I mean, this is absolutely appalling and so on, but as far as don't look back in anger, oh, it's great.
It's great. It's great.
It is a great relief from the past.
It is a great relief from the past.
Because they have it. I mean, everybody has a choice who they defend, right?
And this is who people defend and not me.
And listen, no hate.
I mean, it's just I am an empiricist.
I am an empiricist.
And to be out of that world is a glorious and beautiful thing.
It has rendered me immune to regret.
It has rendered me immune to regret.
I don't regret having done what I've done, and I don't regret having changed it completely a couple of years ago.
It is a great relief.
I suppose, and it wasn't like I was tortured by it or anything like that, but, you know, every now and then, right?
Oh, that world, you know, these people are giving speeches, these people are, and it's like, oh, that world, that world, and it's like, no, that's, that was a thing.
That was not a thing. Now, of course, I'm not saying that people approve of everything that Russell Brand did, but nonetheless, this is who they're defending.
All right. Thank you, O'Brien.
Very kind... I appreciate your support.
Happy birthday, Steph! I believe Aquinas argued in times of need, all property is common property.
I can see his point.
If the top 1% own 100% of food, and it's a situation where they're oppressing the bottom 99%, made farming illegal or stolen their crops, in that situation, does it violate UPB for the poor to take food from the top 1%?
I don't think so, because the top 1% has already violated UPB and oppression at the bottom 99%.
So you probably know Prudhomme, there was an anarchist on the left, and he said, property is theft.
And this is...
A common misconception that he was saying all property is theft.
That's not what he meant. What he's saying is that if property has resulted from war, then property is stolen.
So if you have been farming some land for generations and then some warlord comes in, kills half your family, takes over your land and starts charging you rent, then he is in unjust possession of your property.
He simply has threatened you into being a serf.
If you try and leave, he'll kill you or kill your family.
So when he's saying property is theft, he's talking about the landed aristocracy.
My ancestors in Ireland did not acquire their property through free trade.
How did we acquire property?
By being really good warriors.
Now again, there's the times and you wouldn't want to cast all the morals backwards, but if...
You have to look at the origins of property.
And until the modern era, all significantly valuable property was acquired through theft.
Violence, threats, Coercion, debt.
In times of need, all property is common property.
But there's no such thing as common property.
There's only what you use, right?
You know the old statement that possession is nine tenths of the law.
Whoever has the property, whoever's currently in possession and use of the property is most likely the owner.
So there's no such thing as common property, right?
the only thing that there is is coercive redistribution in terms of common property
and again people who talk about, I'm not speaking about you or Aquinas, maybe a
little bit Aquinas but people who talk about property rights
Thank you. I appreciate the tip.
People who talk about property rights, who don't talk about the self-ownership of children, The self-ownership of children.
What do I mean by the self-ownership of children?
Well, children own themselves.
I mean, I know that they're dependent upon their parents and I understand that.
Parents have a need and right and an obligation to support their children.
But children are not property.
Self-ownership of children It means that you should not violate against them, you should not aggress against them, you should not beat them, you should not confine them, you should not violate UPB against children because they have self-ownership.
They don't have perfect self-ownership, of course, they're not adults.
And people who talk about property rights without talking about government education, I don't even know what they're talking about.
Government education is paid for through property taxes usually, and children are very often coerced to be there.
So, yeah, it's nice that Thomas Aquinas talks about starvation and stuff like that, but it's a bunch of nonsense, right?
The Mises Institute gang never see children as self-owners.
Frustrating. So they would say, well, a baby doesn't have self-ownership.
And of course a baby doesn't have self-ownership.
In terms of moral and abstract.
But you want to teach children self-ownership.
And the way that you teach children self-ownership is to treat them as if they own themselves.
As if they're responsible for what they do.
And they are. Yeah, Aquinas is arguing from the 1200s, not exactly a time of widespread private property ownership.
Well, and remember, like, we see the cancel culture of today, and the cancel culture of today is nothing compared to the cancel culture of the past.
The cancel culture of the past was like, here's some hemlock.
The cancel culture of the past was when Plato tried to run for office in Syracuse, He ended up being sold into slavery and only happened to be bought for, I think, 400 coins by one of his former students.
He was caught and liberated.
So that's cancel culture, man.
Cancel culture is crucifixion.
Cancel culture is being burnt at the stake.
Cancel culture in the past.
So whenever I... And I got this from the History of Philosophy series, which I'm very glad I did post-cancellation, because you look and you say, what could Aquinas...
What could Aquinas talk about without getting killed?
What could philosophers talk about without getting killed?
I mean there are philosophers who had to burn all of their own papers because the
laws changed and right so when I hear
arguments yeah cancel culture the Middle East Lifetime in jail. Or more.
Beheadings. So, yeah, cancel culture is really interesting.
And it's much less now than it used to be.
It's much less now than it used to be.
to be this is how far we've become relatively civilized.
Were there parallels between Socrates being put on trial and you being
cancelled?
So Socrates was put on trial for two reasons.
One was corrupting the young, and the other was not believing in the gods of the city.
Now Miletus, who drove the prosecution, was asked by Socrates, oh, so you know exactly, if you believe that I corrupt the young, then you must know exactly what affirms and enlightens them.
So tell me what that is, and how am I deviating from that and the other, right?
Now remember, though, that Socrates, the trial and death of Socrates, was written by his biggest disciple, Plato, who was a fantastic writer, of course, one of the things that he had in advantage of Aristotle, although, of course, Aristotle, we don't have any of his original writings.
We only have his students' notes, which is why it's kind of dense and so on, right?
It's like a zipped argument of philosophy.
And so Plato had a very strong incentive to defend Socrates because as the inheritor or the founder of the Lyceum and the inheritor of Socratic wisdom, those who went against Socrates would also have gone against Plato.
So one of the things that did seem to be happening in the Greek philosophical movement was pederasty, right?
Was the sexual abuse...
And rape of boys and young men.
And this is all over the place.
You look at the symposium where they talk about, you know, one of the ideal love is between an older man and a young boy and all of that sort of stuff.
So as far as corruption of the young goes, yeah, there was some pederasty.
Now, I imagine that that had something to do with what they meant by corrupting the young.
Not believing in the gods of the city, well, the Power runs on delusions.
Power runs on delusions.
And delusions are believed because of vanity and threats, right?
The bribe is vanity, the threat is punishment.
So not believing in the gods of the city is not believing in the popular delusions that are used to control the population.
And so if you are skeptical about those things, then you face significant danger.
All right.
For some, cancellation increases credibility.
Was Socrates a pederast?
I don't know that that's been established and there would be no way to know for sure.
But certainly the movement as a whole was very pro-man-boy love.
It was very pro-man-boy love.
And remember, I mean, there was a certain amount of male beauty fetish in ancient Athens in particular.
I'm sure you know that the Olympic Games, the participants were all naked.
They were all naked. So, you know, love Socrates in a lot of ways.
Love Socrates in a lot of ways is a very powerful but the fact that people hated him wasn't just because he asked difficult questions.
It was because he was part of a generalized movement that seemed to prey on attractive boys.
So, not so great for the credibility of philosophy as a whole.
And again, I don't know.
Of course, nobody knows for sure the details, but again, it's all over the text.
The text that was published and written and approved of by the movement.
Yeah, I could never participate in the naked Olympics.
I couldn't. It would be physically impractical for me to do so.
Yeah. I mean, for me, it would be impossible to differentiate between the caber toss and my own genitals.
It would just be, like, functionally impossible.
Oh, the shot put. So it is...
It's tough. Naked women's beach volleyball.
I'll be back in a moment.
Unless your event was pole vaulting.
Yes, that's right. That's right.
Get a hard-on for gravity. All right.
I have another rant, or I can continue.
Thank you very much for your tips, by the way, if you haven't tipped.
Today is a great day to do so.
It's a great day to do so.
The triple parallel bars.
You guys are really working this analogy.
I like it. I like it.
Let's all drag philosophy down to the meaty base balls of the brain muscle where it should be.
Does the owning of slaves undermine the credibility of the founding fathers because they knew better?
Hahahahaha...
Oh, come on.
Okay, quick question.
You know I said that it's real fun to think you're a moral person
by picking on people who can't fight back?
By picking on people who can't fight.
Oh, I'm such a moral person because I'm asking tough moral questions of people long dead.
Come on, man!
Do you know there are tens of millions of slaves right now in the world?
Right now! Tens of millions of slaves, a lot of them are in Islamic countries.
Why the F are you talking about the founding fathers when you could actually be working to liberate slaves?
You know, you can go and buy a slave in Libya right now for about $400 in the open-air slave markets.
Why don't you fight?
If you're just really troubled and bothered by slavery, why don't you talk about the slavery that's actually existing?
How about national debts and deficits?
That's a form of enslavement?
How about trapping kids in government schools where they're relentlessly
indoctrinated into the doomed self-guilt destruction of the universe global
warming hellscape of nihilism. Oh 6 p.m. in Ireland.
Your birthday time. That's right.
Born in Ireland. Ireland!
Happy birthday, Steph.
Hope you have a fantastic day.
Thank you, Marie. I really, really appreciate that.
That's very kind. That's very kind.
2 a.m. in Australia.
Excellent. If it was physically possible, I would go upside down just for Australia.
Just for Australia. Do you know how many millions of traffic sex slaves there are in the world?
And people are like, oh, but Thomas Jefferson!
God almighty. God almighty.
Just flip the camera.
Now it's attached by a bunch of cables.
I've worked to make this as efficient.
You know, in the past, I used to record separately, marry the audio video together.
It would drift a lot sometimes, so now it's just all wired together.
I cannot flip the camera any more than I can overturn my own intestines.
It's literally that complicated up there.
Looks simple here. Complicated up there.
So yeah, oh, slavery, slavery, slavery is like, I mean, I remember this back in the day when I was on Twitter.
BLM received all of this money and I said, you could just go buy and liberate a bunch of slaves.
We care a lot about slavery.
You could literally take that money and you could buy and liberate a bunch of slaves around the world.
No! That would be wrong.
We care so much about slavery.
I did the math. They got $100 million at $400 a slave.
What was it? They got a $100 million divided by $400.
Yeah, a quarter of a million slaves they could have liberated with that money.
All the people who were really troubled about slavery and ended it, right?
So America had slavery for the least amount of time of any All countries were slave-owning, right?
All countries were slave-owning throughout history and America had slavery.
Do you know how long America had slavery for?
How long did America have slavery for?
Yeah, it was about 80 years. Because they inherited slavery from the British system beforehand and they had about
80 years of slavery.
me.
Some countries in the world have had slavery for thousands of years.
So we're going to pick on the one country that had slavery for 80 years, fought a big war, into common parlance to end it, and that's just what we're going to keep circling back.
It's just pounding the white guilt vending machine.
It's all very boring.
And it's like so when people are like, well, the founding fathers of slavery.
It's funny. You know, England just recently finished paying off the debt that they incurred to end slavery.
Yeah, it's just, it's really boring.
Yeah, white European Christians first to end slavery and around the world as best if they could not.
They said, I think buying a slave is bad because it incentivizes the slave trade.
No. Slaves were bought, and that's how the slave trade was ended.
This is why England had such debt, because they paid off a lot of slave owners.
They had to pay off a lot of slave owners to end slavery.
So, no.
That's not even remotely true.
Quite the opposite is true.
And, of course, it was Obama and Hillary who led the war against Libya that destroyed the country.
But they care a lot about slavery, apparently.
Anyway, politics, boring, incidental, uninteresting.
All right. McCarthyism.
Should we talk about McCarthyism?
Just out of curiosity.
McCarthyism is interesting.
Yeah. Yeah.
So McCarthyism, you see, was just like the worst thing in the known universe when I was growing up.
Boy. McCarthyism was just terrible.
Because, you see, McCarthyism was the attempt to fire people based upon their beliefs.
To drive people out of the industry.
To get them To end their careers and to diminish their source of income.
Because of their beliefs, you see.
It was just terrible. McCarthyism was just awful.
Wretched. Can you imagine?
Trying to harm people's reach, their careers and their income because of what they believe?
Oh! It was just the worst thing ever.
It was like a nightmare of hell on earth.
Approximately 300,000 movies, documentaries, stories, books and novels have been written about the absolute hellscape and evil of McCarthyism.
God, it was just terrible!
Back in the day, you see, people who were communists were out of just being communists and although nobody could fire them directly, there was a movement to get them fired.
It wasn't illegal to be a communist.
But they really, really, gosh, you know, McCarthy just tried to out people as communists.
And some of them got fired.
Some of them had to take a break from their careers.
Some of them just...
The worst thing in the known universe was McCarthyism.
Anytime anybody said that there should be consequences for having, I don't know, Pretty murderous beliefs like communism.
Anybody who suggested there should be any kind of negative economic consequences for holding despicable beliefs.
Anybody who said that was a McCarthyist witch hunter and the worst human being around and alive.
Anybody who ever suggested that people should face negative economic consequences for holding vile beliefs.
God, that was just...
Do you remember that? You've heard of this, right?
Do you remember how horrible McCarthyism was?
Man, I'm really really I'm really thrilled that we went past that
Bye.
See, under McCarthyism, people faced negative economic consequences for what they actually said, wrote, and believed.
However, now we've moved beyond that, and people now often face negative economic consequences for stuff they never said, wrote, or believed.
I mean, I was cancelled in part because people said that I believed in eugenics because I said that we should try and protect children from pedophiles and child abusers.
Isn't that wild? Isn't that wild?
So, yeah, McCarthyism was the worst thing in the world until it wasn't and then it became an essential protection of democracy.
Telling the truth about bad people is the worst thing in the world.
Lying about good people, though, is fantastic.
That's the protection of democracy.
All right.
Thank you for your tip. Happy birthday, Steph.
Just tuned in. Wanted to say that your rant about Rand the other day inspired me to buy a copy of Atlas Shrugged.
Also, I'm personally wearied by de facto communism, weird enough to brave 1,168 pages.
Ayn Rand is a past master of plot.
Well, I shouldn't say that.
The second half of The Fountainhead does in no way match the first half.
But Atlas Shrugged is one of the very, very best plotted novels in the entire world.
I mean, if you like murder mysteries and mysteries, right?
I remember this, the tagline from the book when I first picked it up.
it is about the murder and rebirth of Mansoul.
Yes, it is a...
And in terms of the cause and effect between beliefs and outcomes, yeah, the train tunnel scene is fantastic.
The novel is just...
I mean, it's beyond brilliant.
It's absolutely beyond brilliant.
It does for economics and politics what I have done with politics and family dysfunction with my novel Almost, which you can get for free at freedomain.com.
Slash books, freedomain.com slash books.
You should pick up my novel, Almost, which talks about family dysfunction and its relationship.
So going from the immediate to the most abstract is really, really great.
And she does that. She doesn't do that at a familial level.
She doesn't do that at a familial level.
So, I mean, one of the challenges with Ayn Rand is, and she herself admitted this, she hated psychology.
She hated psychology.
And so you have brother-sister Dagny Taggart and James Taggart who are just opposite moral entities for no reason.
There's no reason. There's no causality.
There's no bomb in the brain stuff.
Whatever. She was not abused and he would be abused or something like that.
So people are just incomprehensibly good or incomprehensibly bad with no causality.
And of course, that's fine.
I'm just saying that's what's missing from her books.
It doesn't talk about parenting.
It doesn't talk about childhood.
It doesn't talk about the effects of childhood on adult personalities.
And so her model was to say, her model was the aesthetic opposition to evil as a whole.
That was her goal, her plan.
I can't read her mind, but based upon her actions.
Her goal, her plan was to say, okay, I'm going to explicate evil, I'm going to portray it, and I'm going to show how horrible it is.
And as a result of that, good will do better and evil will do worse.
I'm going to show how repulsive evil is and how destructive it is.
And And her plan, her program, has failed.
It has failed.
And my goal is to say that we cannot fix the world without fixing childhood.
Can I fix the world without fixing childhood?
That is, um, that are morals if they don't apply to childhood, forget it.
If our morals don't apply to childhood, I don't care what they are.
I think it doesn't matter. It's just nonsense and noise and vanity and posturing.
It's a grift. It's a grift if your virtues don't first and foremost apply to childhood.
It's a grift. It's a lie.
It's a demonic offering of vanity over virtue.
I'm a good person because I oppose central banking.
Yeah. But central banking leads to child abuse as well, right?
The debt of central banking leads to the dissolution of families.
The dissolution of families leads to increased abuse of children.
So I'm actually helping to fix childhood, and we've seen lots of people here, and thank you very much for your support.
We've seen lots of people here who have said that they're raising their children peacefully.
I get messages like this all the time.
So who has...
Reduced violations of the non-aggression principle the most.
I'm going to take this medal.
I'm going to take this medal. Who has reduced violations of the non-aggression principle the most?
The Republicans? Nope.
The Democrats? Nope.
The Left? The Right? The Libertarians?
Nope. And I'm happy to be corrected on this.
Absolutely happy to be corrected on this.
I try to be empirical. But who has reduced violations of the non-aggression principle the most?
Remember, we're cooking close to a billion views and downloads.
There's a guy there, you have no region.
close to a billion views and downloads close to a billion views and downloads
Now, most people become parents, right?
Let's get the numbers going, right?
So let's say that 75% of those people are Close to a billion views and downloads, and let's say people download 100 shows.
So that's 10 million people. 7.5 million of those people become parents, and at least half of those people will go for peaceful parenting.
And so that's 3 to 4 million families where the children are not being circumcised, beaten, hit, aggressed against, isolated, and entrapped in their own rooms, and so on, right?
So let's say most people who listen to the show have more than two kids.
So let's say you've got four million families, peaceful parenting.
They've got three kids each.
That's 12 million people.
12 million people not being aggressed against, and that's going to go on and spread and widen over the course of time.
10 million people.
12 million people.
Now, again, I mean, this is why, you know, when I say help the show out, I mean, yes.
If you can tell me other people who got 12 million people out of the non-aggression principle, who rescued 12 million people from the non-aggression principle, I would be really happy to hear that.
That's 12 million children not beaten.
And it's probably way more than that, because most people wouldn't necessarily download 100 shows, so we could make tens of millions of children And this doesn't even count the people who talk about the ideas without referencing me, who spread the word, who spread...
Tens of millions of children not being hit or beaten because of what we're doing here.
They get tens of millions of people out of violations of the non-aggression principle.
Or, to put it another way, there are tens of millions of people as a result of what we're doing here who are protected by the non-aggression principle.
Tens of millions of people now protected by The non-aggression principle.
Trump with pro-life Supreme Court justices probably did pretty good.
Yes, that is certainly true.
That is certainly true.
But as far as cost benefits go, as far as cost benefit goes, this is certainly the most efficient.
The thing is, though, that my stuff will be sustaining, whereas the blowback on the Supreme Court stuff is probably going to be quite long.
If you had such a profound effect on so many people's lives, where did they go when you got cancelled?
Hard to fathom. Well, of course, a lot of them did come.
But remember, the cancellation stuff was a threat.
I mean, the cancellation stuff is not a threat to me.
It's a threat to other people, right?
It is a threat. Oh, you're referencing this guy.
You talk about this guy. You watch this guy.
You're in trouble, right? So it probably was just a certain amount of self-protection.
Somebody says, I met someone recently who believes you can't reason with children because they're uncivilized, and hitting them is the most effective way to ensure they will behave well.
Right. So, if he disagrees with the fact, you can hit him.
If he disagrees with the fact, you can hit him.
So let's say he believes in the famous fine people hoax, right?
And you share with him the facts, and he doesn't accept it, you can hit him, right?
Because anybody who doesn't listen to reason can be beaten, right?
So this is children, this is people who are mentally deficient, according to this guy, this is people with Alzheimer's, people with senior forgetful moments, just a natural aging out of the brain process.
So... Yeah.
I wonder if considering child abuse lowers life expectancy that we may be raising a generation of centurions, right?
So let's say, let's go to our 12 million, right?
Our 12 million kids no longer being hit or abused.
So severe child abuse takes 20 years off your life, right?
So, well, again, I want to be conservative.
I don't want to say 20. Let's just say 10.
So this is going to add – so 12 million people get 10 years added to their life, right?
So that is, of course, 120,000 person years divided by an average life expectancy, say, of 85.
So that's 1,411,764,765,000.
So well over 1.4 million human lifetimes have been added by this show.
You follow?
1.4 million human lifetimes of extra life has been added by this show.
What that means, of course, is that people are surviving into old age that they wouldn't have necessarily before if they were abused.
abused, they're surviving into old age, which means that they're available to pass on peaceful
parenting and reinforce it to their grandchildren.
It's the minus ten years to the lifetime, including the time spent suffering, that was
Nope. That's straight on death.
This is how you know society is largely bull, right?
Because everyone's, like, concerned about health and this and that and the other, and child abuse is far worse than smoking, right?
You understand? Child abuse is far worse than smoking when it comes to people's longevity.
You see all these campaigns against smoking, but you don't see the same campaigns against child abuse, right?
People don't care about health and longevity, right?
They care about power, right?
Most people. So this is, you know, when people say, oh, you don't have an effect and it's a smaller show and so on.
If peaceful parenting is so rapidly spreading, then why isn't it widespread already?
Okay, let me ask you this, my friend.
What have you done to spread peaceful parenting?
you And maybe you have. Maybe you've funded documentaries or run seminars or posted like crazy or written articles or whatever it is.
And if you could link me to what you've done, I would really appreciate that because I can help spread the word.
Don't have kids yet?
You talk to people who don't have kids yet.
So, I've linked to your show, shows many times.
Okay, so how's that gone?
I appreciate that. How's that gone?
How's it gone for you spreading the message of peaceful parenting?
Because people ask me questions which they can answer themselves.
I always find it quite odd, quite interesting.
Thank you for protecting children.
Thank you for the tip, my friend. I appreciate that.
Got a handful of likes, less than 10 per share.
Okay, so why don't you ask people?
Like, there's no need to ask me. If you're engaged in the process of spreading peaceful parenting, which I think is fantastic, just ask the people why they don't care, why they don't share.
Why would you need to ask me?
Ask the people. Ask the people why they don't care, why they don't share.
I mean, I know the answers as a whole, but I just, you know, I want to empower you guys
to get the answers yourselves.
I mean, were you raised aggressively?
If you were raised aggressively, you can talk to your parents, right?
And say, why did you do that?
And you can see what the pushback is, right?
I mean, I think most of us here know what the pushback is for, but if you get used to getting answers from me, you won't be as effective or good at getting answers for yourself, right? So I want you to, instead of saying, oh, I got a question to Steph as to why it's hard to spread peaceful parenting, You don't need to ask me.
You have all the information that you need.
Do you follow? You don't need to ask me at all.
At all. But just to indulge, I suppose, for a moment...
Let's see here. I've changed a few lives using your arguments.
Fantastic. I've changed friends' minds on spanking.
Huge white pill. The coach can't lift your weights for you.
Well, you can show you good form and posture, but you've got to lift your weights yourself.
Okay, so why is peaceful parenting hard to spread?
You guys know this, I'm sure.
Why is peaceful parenting hard to spread?
Why? Why? I can't believe Annie Lennox, a great singer and a songwriter, but a mascoholic.
It's just so sad.
Well, artists are very creative, which means they're very susceptible to propaganda, which is why propaganda tends to target artists so much.
Ah, because it exposes bad parents.
It requires people to hold their parents responsible.
People who need it aren't listening.
Because people's internal parents don't want them to.
Because people will naturally try to defend their unpeaceful parents.
Power depends on not peaceful parenting.
That's certainly true. Because moms at work and parents don't have the necessary love or patience to reason with their kids.
I'm not sure that follows as an answer to the question.
Because single mothers rely on violence often.
Certainly aggression. Maybe not violence, but they certainly do rely on aggression.
because single mothers, in particular with their sons, they don't have the respect of their sons, so they have to be
aggressive.
Use of force, violence is a win strategy for our government.
It's very hard to influence people unless they're curious and wanting advice.
I do have close friends that don't have children, and they've been intrigued by not spanking, and they've been watching me raise my daughter, waiting to see if I will be able to do it.
It's laughable. I think they will be affected by my peaceful parenting.
All right, I think we'll do story time here.
An analogy is the best way to get this across.
Many parents don't know how to be interesting.
But if you're curious, you're generally interesting.
So, get comfy.
And if you could not type...
If you do me a favor, I don't ask this really in general.
But if you could not type while I tell this story.
I want to tell you a story all about the housemate blues.
I want to tell you a story about Farmer Jake.
Now, Farmer Jake...
He's a hard-working farmer who lives in a country where there's a very long winter.
Now, Farmer Jake works insanely hard late spring, summer, early to mid-fall, tilling the ground, planting his crops, turning it over, protecting his crops.
Maintaining his fences, putting up his scarecrows, patrolling, eliminating predators.
He works insanely hard, like mad hard, like 14 hours a day, back-breaking labor.
Not much to do during the winter, though, obviously.
It's really cold. He doesn't have a lot of winter crops.
Even the ground gets frozen, so he can't even grow turnips.
So Farmer Jake is incredibly hard-working, but Farmer Jake has a problem.
The problem is that his crops are ephemeral, which is strange, but he lives in a semi-magic land.
His crops are ephemeral.
So Farmer Jake's crops will sustain Farmer Jake, his wife, his children, grandchildren, cousins, his extended family.
Farmer Jake's crops will sustain everyone, unless one of his children disbelieves in the existence of
those crops.
It's strange, right?
I mean, they feel solid, they're tactile, you can smell them, you can eat them,
but the moment someone doubts the existence of those crops, the ground empties and there's nothing but frozen holes and
nothing for the winter.
So Farmer Jake has a huge problem.
It's his only source of food.
And if anyone in his family disbelieves in the crops, the crops vanish.
They are faith crops, belief crops, credulity crops.
And if farmer Jake stops believing in them, he will realize that he's not planting seeds, he's planting ideas, beliefs, subjugation.
So given that farmer Jake is going to starve to death along with his extended family, if anyone, particularly in his children, disbelieves in the crops, says, wait a minute, you're not planting any crops.
This is all just miming.
So how much control does Farmer Bob have to exercise over the minds of his children if they doubt the miming that he tells them to do.
They don't see the crops.
But if they say they don't see the crops, nobody gets to eat.
That is a weird situation to be in, right?
You'd have to be really totalitarian.
You'd have to tell your children that to disbelieve In the crops was a great sin and a great evil and would cause the destruction of all that was good, noble, true and virtuous and living in the world.
And you would have to severely punish any child who even remotely doubted the existence of these crops because you would be facing starvation and death if anybody's belief in the crops even faltered in any significant way.
And if any kid talked to other kids about, I don't really think there are any crops here, man.
man I think we're just eating imagination so you have to control your
And if your kids started to doubt the crops, everybody's going to die.
And if your kids were playing with kids from other families, and the other families heard your kids or Jake's kids talking about don't think the crops are real, they would drive those kids home.
They would forbid their children ever to speak to Jake's kids.
They would call up Jake and say, how dare you send your child over here to disbelieve in these Conceptual crops to the point where we're going to starve.
If we're going to starve, man, we're coming over to your place because we believe in those crops and we're taking all those imaginary crops from your bellies, your food, your larder.
Doubt is death to the resources.
Doubt is death to the resources.
And that's how everybody lives.
And that's how everyone lives throughout human history.
Doubt is death to the resources.
Doubt is poison, doubt is toxin, doubt is genocide.
So the analogy, of course, I'm sure it's very clear.
The analogy is that Jake expects his children to take care of him in his old age, but his children will only take care of him in his old age if they believe in Jake's virtue.
If they believe that Jake sacrificed himself and was a good parent and cared about his children and did the best he could and loved them and maybe he made a couple of mistakes but nobody's perfect.
If the children, like, Jake is planting the survival of his old age in the allegiance of his children.
If his children begin to doubt Jake's virtue or doubt the virtue of the parenting style or doubt the virtue of the parents as a whole, not just Jake but the whole class of parents, if that spreads, Then the parents die in their old age.
They die of loneliness, they die of boredom, they die of a lack of resources, they die in their old age.
So the parents who control the universe in this story have to severely punish and in fact ostracize.
If any kid continues to doubt First you take them out to the woodshed and beat them if they begin to doubt the existence of the crops and eventually you just take them out to the wilderness and leave them there.
I mean, how many stories are there in fairy tales of parents who just lead their children
out to the woods and leave them there?
You must believe in the common delusions of virtue or you will be beaten and killed eventually.
Thank you.
Doubt is death to the harvesting of resources.
So the parents, and of course the elders are in charge of society, the parents and the elders will viciously and violently punish and ostracize anyone who pokes at the virtue of the elder classes because it is required that the children believe in the virtue of their elders in order to take care of their elders when the elders are too old to fend for themselves.
Right? You get old, you can't hunt!
You can't wrestle pigs.
You can't repair fences.
You're old. So what sustains you?
What keeps you alive?
Is a belief in the virtue of your life.
And anybody who begins to doubt the virtue of that life robs you of resources.
you cannot allow that.
I mean this is the story obviously of the Emperor's new clothes.
Thanks.
you So why doesn't peaceful parenting spread?
Because it robs the elderly of the resources that they desperately need to survive their old age.
so they will oppose it with great prejudice and great aggression.
And the deplatforming is a sign of both physical weakness and an inability to answer arguments.
You silence those you cannot emerge victorious from.
Does that make sense? This is sort of why it doesn't spread, right?
Conceptual crops. People plant virtue in their children to harvest comfort and survival in their old age.
What about with the welfare state?
Well, it's the same process. People believe the welfare state is virtuous.
And so if people come along and doubt that virtue, they are interfering with the resource acquisition of delusion.
Truth interferes with the resource acquisition of delusion, of lies,
and government is a methodology by which you make lies profitable.
My father is a hippie boomer.
In the recent years, he has doubled down hard on his left-wing views.
Yeah, for sure. Yes, wow, that was so helpful.
Thank you. You are a saint, angel of peace on earth.
Well, thank you. I really, really appreciate that.
That's very kind. And I really, really appreciate the sentiment.
Makes sense. I'm experiencing this with my parents and boomers at work.
Russian men die young from alcoholism.
Russia has some of the highest domestic violence rates.
If Vladimir Putin really wants to restore his nation and take over the West, he should spread peaceful parenting.
I would not hold my breath for any political leader to start focusing on peaceful parenting because you don't become a political leader if you're peacefully parented.
Thank you for helping 12 million plus, including me.
Have a great birthday. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
It's very kind. Putin has been fighting against alcoholism, though.
That's helping. Well, The Russian people can't speak of the great secret of their 70 years.
So, whenever you force people into silence and ostracize them from the world community, depression and anxiety.
What explains the push to ban spanking children in many countries recently?
I assume that it has something to do with false protection, because...
Because they may ban spanking, but they won't ban the national debt.
They won't ban abusive indoctrination in government schools or anything like that.
Russian youth are also generally supportive of free markets.
Putin could have beaten the West by simply making Russia a tax haven type nation.
But the specter of communism is still haunting Russia.
Are you insane? Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but are you crazy?
If you make Russia a tax haven and a truly free market society, what do you think would happen to Russia if it did that?
I mean, let's just be a geopolitical realists, right?
What would happen to Russia if it was economically dominating the world by
being a free market tax haven for the best and brightest?
Fallout 5, Moscow. Well, there you are.
I don't know.
Wait.
I'm out.
If there's time, a low priority work question.
Yes, Paula, of course.
I have a resource hired to mentor the other engineers on the team.
This resource always exceeds the requirements but talks down to the rest of the team.
Uses negative sarcasm daily and complains about corporate tasks that will never change.
Measuring good versus bad is becoming a close tie.
I do not directly manage this person but want to turn it around for the team.
Any advice? Yes, there's one simple way to do that, and I don't know whether or not you can achieve that, but what you do is you pay bonuses to that resource based upon the productivity of his team members.
It's just a matter of incentives, right?
So he's got vanity, he enjoys being better than, but you have to tie his success into the success of his team.
A coach understands that if his team keeps losing, the coach is going to lose his job.
And if the team wins, he's going to get a lot of bonuses.
So his sole economic motive and focus is to improve the quality of his team, to have them win.
So I assume that this person does not have his economic incentives aligned with the goals of the organization, which is for him to increase the productivity of his team members.
So if you're having trouble at work, then It's almost certainly because the economic alignment is not in accord with the business alignment.
So people who have a business alignment, like a business goal, and don't align the incentives for their employees are just useless.
I don't know what they're doing, but it's completely pointless.
If you have a business goal, you need to move the economic incentives to align with that business goal.
What on earth does it mean?
What on earth does that mean?
Alright, any last questions or comments or tips?
If you don't mind, I would certainly appreciate it.
I'm going to go and my family asked me what I wanted to do today.
Oh, let's put out some guesses.
What do I want to do this afternoon with my family?
They said, anything you want.
What do you want to do? I decided not to inflict karaoke.
What's my favorite meal? Play volleyball.
It's a little chilly for that, but yeah.
Air tunnel skydive.
My favorite meal? It's a good question.
I do like a good seafood Alfredo pasta.
That's nice. But I can't really eat it that much.
It's a bit heavy. You won't believe it.
You won't believe it. Carrot cake and boulderscape.
The park in Ducks.
That would be my daughter. Unreal Tournament.
No, my wife doesn't play, of course.
Did you ever tell your daughter the Father Christmas is real?
No. I don't lie to my daughter.
A game of Catan, maybe. No, that's not special enough for the birthday.
We heard about that weather being perfect.
I predict a nature walk. Oh, we did a nice long hike yesterday.
It was great fun. I will have dessert today.
Monopoly. No, my daughter's too old for Monopoly.
Monopoly. No, you wouldn't believe it or not.
And it just came to me this morning when I was chatting.
A cheat day on the non-aggression principle.
No, I decided that it would be great fun for us to all bake together.
So after this, we are going to go and bake together, which will be a lot of fun.
Yeah, that's going to be great fun.
We have to bake something non-sugary, so we could go for scones or something like that.
But it's going to be a lot of fun.
Yeah, you wouldn't have guessed that. Like, I'm not a big baking person, but it can be a lot of fun.
My daughter also gave me a great gift there this morning.
So she's playing Baldur's Gate on her own, and I'm playing Baldur's Gate.
And we sort of watch each other play and so on, but it was too much of a hassle to try and join into the same game.
It was not very well done, in my view.
The... Yeah, I'm a chief technical officer and I can't figure out how to get someone to join the game.
We had no problem in Diablo, but...
Anyway, so I was facing a difficult battle, and last night she said, oh, I think I could do it, no problem.
So this morning I said, you are now giving me the greatest gift.
Either you do this battle, no problem, in which case, great, I've moved on, or after claiming that you can do this battle, no problem, you have a problem, in which case it's glorious for me either way.
So, mincemeat pies, I might be...
We'll unleash his inner Gordon Ramsay during the bake-off.
Boy, if there's ever a man whose personality was defined by his hair, that's the guy, right?
Although, me too, right?
I mean, I talk a lot about eggs and look like an egg.
All right.
Any last tips or comments?
Happy to hear. And thank you guys so much.
What a wonderful way to spend time on my birthday.
What did you mean Russians can't speak about for 70 years?
Yeah. Sorry, I should have just expanded that to say people can't speak about as a whole.
All right. Posted this before. Didn't get answered.
My married parents told me that my Catholic churchgoer mother has a boyfriend.
My father is okay with this.
I'm in my mid-20s. Do you have any thoughts on this?
I'm concerned I won't be able to find a quality woman if they're still in my life.
So your Catholic parents have an open marriage?
How does it feel to be 57?
It feels fantastic.
It feels fantastic.
It's great. That's one thing about beating cancer is that every day is a blessing.
All right. Your parents, they have a Catholic and they have an open marriage?
Yeah, so I don't in particular think about...
One of the things that happened for me in my late 20s, early 30s was I stopped thinking about my family of origin.
I stopped thinking about my family of origin like it was me and them.
What I started to think was, hmm, what is a potential wife, a woman I want to marry, what's she going to think of my family?
So... That's the tipping point from the past to the future.
The past is all my family, my thoughts, my interactions, all that happened decades in the past, sometimes.
But to me, philosophy is about the future.
We learn from the past to change the future.
So what you want to do, I think, is you don't want to say, what do I think of my family?
What you want to say is, what is the highest quality possible partner of mine going to think of my family?
So if you, like with my family, it was like, hmm, I'm going to invite a wonderful woman into my life and she's going to spend the next 50 plus years with my family.
What is she going to think of my family?
Forget about what you think of your family.
That's all in the past.
What you want to think is what your future spouse thinks of your family and your future children and all of that.
That's what you want to think of because that's the future.
That's what matters. Thank you, Chris.
I appreciate that. A happy birthday against death.
Wishing you a great day. Thanks for coming back for us and everything you do to help the world.
It is my pleasure. It is my pleasure.
Yeah, look at your family from the outside in, from the highest quality person you can get a hold of.
Think of an absolute goddess or god of reason and virtue and philosophy and say, I'm going to jam you up face by jowl with these people for the next half century.
Right? I mean, obviously, I hope my daughter, you know, she dates, she meets some great guy, he's going to look at me and say, yeah, you know, let's be a pretty good person to have around.
Oh, because you understand, from males to females, this is really important, right?
Because men, we marry a woman.
That's not, we, oh, I can date this woman, I asked her to marry, I'm going to marry this woman.
Whereas, what do women say?
What do women say? They don't marry a man.
They don't marry a man. You're going to spend most of your time at work as a man.
Who does a woman marry?
Who does a woman marry? Not a man.
No, she doesn't marry resources.
She marries a whole family.
She marries a whole extended clan.
You're marrying one person.
She's marrying 40 people.
So for you, what you do is you say, oh, that's cool.
We have a wedding and there's, you know, 200 people at the wedding or 500 people or 100 people or whatever.
You say, wow, that's a fun time. I get to see everyone and then they all scatter.
Whereas when you start dating a woman, she looks around at all the people you know and she says, okay, they're going to be in my face for the next 50 years.
Phone calls, advice, help.
They're going to come over and help me raise my kids.
Right? Because you're like, hey, great.
Getting married to this woman, she's going to be a great friend, going to have great sex, going to raise my kids.
I'm going to be off at work, but she's going to be dealing with your family for the next 50 years.
So your view of your family is kind of irrelevant, because that's all about the past and your history.
What matters, particularly for a man, though also for a woman, what matters is...
Yeah, meet the parents from the future wife's perspective.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, for you, it's like, yeah, my mom can be a little critical.
For your wife, she's like...
She's like a wicked witch of the north.
She's a little critical to you.
What's she going to do to your wife?
Yeah, my dad can be a little authoritarian.
It's like she's going to come home from brunch and your dad's going to be yelling at her precious little babies.
No, no, don't do it.
You got to look at your family from like an outsider's view.
They're coming in and...
Yeah.
There's a tough state of mind for me to entertain.
Part of me is saying I don't deserve quality because unrealistic standards.
Yeah, there's a guy who wrote in, and I answered this question the other day, but I haven't published it yet.
A guy who wrote in was like, oh, you know, I'm married and I've got a one-year-old kid.
I keep thinking I could have done better.
I could have done better. And it's like, I'm pretty sure your wife could have done better if you're still doubting everything, right?
Unrealistic standards. So you may have unrealistic standards if you're asking for higher quality than you're providing.
So what is a realistic standard for a salary?
A realistic standard for a salary is some multiple of the value you provide to a company.
So if you can sell a million dollars worth of product for a company, you can ask for a pretty big salary, right?
200,000, 300,000, you can ask for a pretty big salary.
Think of it all as piecework.
Think of it all. All salary is piecework.
All income is piecework.
How much value you're providing, that's what you're going to get paid.
At least that's what you can reasonably, right?
So, if you say I want to make $200,000, but you can't provide that much value to a company,
you're not going to get paid $200,000.
So you may bet the company's going to go bankrupt and all that, right?
that, right?
So, the quality you can ask for is the quality you can provide.
Do you understand? So you say, well, I've got unrealistic standards.
Well, maybe it's because you want someone to be of higher quality than you can provide.
So one of the things that you can provide is either a good family structure in your sort of family of origin,
or no family structure if it's highly dysfunctional and like unreformable.
So maybe you do have unrealistic standards.
Maybe you want a higher quality person.
Like, you know, it's the old thing like, I want a slim woman, says the fat guy.
It's like, no, because she won't want a fat guy.
Like the slim woman won't want a fat guy because she's an active person.
I couldn't have a fat wife because I'm an active person.
And my wife couldn't join me on my, like, three-hour hikes and workouts and pickleball and whatever, tennis.
So, no, you gotta, you gotta.
So if you want quality, be quality.
And if you want, like, unconsciously, you know how much quality you're bringing to the table.
And if you want more than you're providing, you're just gonna be alone.
Right? If you're going to be unemployed if you want to be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars while only providing $50,000 worth of value.
Right? If I want a quarter million dollar pay but I'm only going to provide $50,000 worth of value, you're just going to be unemployed.
You're just going to be unemployed.
It's the same thing. If you want more value than you're willing to provide or are able to provide Oh, I want a super good-looking woman.
Okay, well, you better work to be a super good-looking guy.
Fit, healthy, whatever, right?
But if you want what you can't provide, you will be isolated.
And your parents giving you unrealistic standards is one of the ways that they will keep you isolated.
All right. To begin it all, any last tips?
It's my last birthday for the year.
If you haven't tipped for a while, if you haven't tipped for a while, it's a good time.
It's a good time. Send me off to my baking with a song in my heart and a spring in my step.
Anyone else have a weakness of farmers markets?
Just out of curiosity. Just by the by.
Anybody else? I just absolutely love farmers markets.
You went yesterday with the wife?
Girl I went out with rejected me because I couldn't buy her a house.
Well, bullet successfully dodged.
We'll tip on free domain.
Happy birthday, Steph. Thank you very much.
Honey gets me every time. Local is better.
Yeah, yeah. But some are just as expensive as a grocery store.
Yes, but you're helping farmers directly, which is great.
Cut out the middleman. Bought a cartwood and duck at the last one.
Yeah, I was at a farmer's market yesterday and bought a scone of the gods.
Like, it was a scone that was just like...
I can't buy more because I just live on them.
Oh, you marketed one? Oh, how nice.
Boy, that's an early morning.
That's an early morning, isn't it?
Because the farmer's market is your farmers anyway.
You're up early anyway, so I get all of that.
But yeah, that is an early morning.
That is an early morning, man.
That's rough. All right.
All right. But listen, guys, thank you for a wonderful birthday.
I really, really appreciate it.
And you should – I mean, I think you should go to a farmer's market.
It's great for the local economy.
It's great for the farmers. And I assume that the food is pretty good because there's always some – There was a guy at the farmer's market yesterday who was selling ground cherries.
Have you ever eaten those? And I'm like, hey man, are you available to be paid to go on hikes so that we don't die?
Because we always want to eat the things we find on hikes.
And he's like, no. And I'm like, dude, it was a joke.
But yeah, farmer's markets are great.
Good for the local economy, good for the farmers in cutting out the middleman.
It's good. Anti-corporatism, right?
Anti-corporatism to buy directly from the people themselves.
I think it's great. All right, well, if you're listening to this later, freedomain.com slash donate.
Please don't forget to check out my free books at freedomain.com slash books.
All but one are free, and you should really check them out.
My novels in particular, The Present and The Future, I know.
I wrote a science fiction novel called The Future because apparently I'm just out of imagination, and then I wrote a novel about The Present called The Present.
It just kind of worked for me, so I hope you would check out those books.
They're really, really great, and I love them so much, so.
Yeah, farmers markets definitely better than wet markets, although we don't blame them for the pandemic.
So have yourselves a wonderful day.
Lots of love from up here. I will talk to you soon.
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