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Oct. 18, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:53:33
PHILOSOPHY IS NOT GOD!
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Time Text
Alright, good morning everybody.
It is the 15th of October 2023.
Still feels like science fiction.
But hey, sometimes it feels like science fiction just to be alive, to be breathing, to be north of the dirt nap.
Hello, hello. And you know what?
It's a chat show. It's a call-in show.
It's a voice thing.
So, if you have questions, comments, issues, challenges, criticisms, massive praise for my armpit hair braiding, I am all ears.
So, just you have to raise your hand and request to talk.
It shall be granteth.
It shall be granteth to you.
And I have topics, of course, in case you all aren't feeling super chatty, but...
Go for it, my friend. Just unmute.
I'm all ears. Hey, Steph.
I'd like to ask you a question about men growing up without fathers and if that has any obvious connections to them taking less responsibility in life.
Is that the question?
I can certainly riff on that, but if there's more that you wanted to flesh out, I'm happy to hear.
Well, I'm hoping to provoke a rant, but so far this is the question.
Okay, so it's not so much that children grow up without fathers.
I mean, yes, of course it produces irresponsibility.
It's very hard to do better than your parents, right?
I mean, this is why there's war.
This is why there are these cultural conflicts.
This is why child abuse continues.
It's really hard. To do better than your parents.
It feels like breaking the sound barrier with your head exploding and your nerves extending like Gollum reaching for a ring.
So it's hard to do better than your parents.
And so if you grow up without a father, clearly a massive amount of irresponsibility has been going on.
And either your mother chose a bad guy or an irresponsible guy, In which case she's responsible for her choice, and it was an irresponsible choice.
Or your dad chose a bad woman, in which case he's irresponsible.
I mean, what is responsibility other than the deferral of gratification?
That's all that responsibility is fundamentally, is the deferral of gratification.
And, I mean, I remember when I went through...
A bit of a ten-figure discount in my early teens.
We stole a couple of candy bars, a couple of toys here and there.
And I remember standing in the Eatons at the Don Mills Mall.
And it was super bright outside, and I was so tired of squinting without sunglasses.
And I stood in front of this rack of sunglasses.
And I was like, oh man, I should just take...
I mean, this is long before there were cameras and all that kind of stuff, right?
And particularly with sunglasses, you can either pocket them or you can pretend you wore them when you were coming in.
There was also a thing that you could do back in the day, which is you could switch the prices of things, because everything had these stickers on them, and that's the only way, because there was no scanning, of course, right?
They had these stickers, and you could switch...
Actually, I remember my mom telling a story when I was very little about how she left me to wander around the store while she was doing groceries.
I know this sounds terribly irresponsible, but it wasn't.
Back then, the world was so safe that you could absolutely do that kind of stuff.
I remember she found me in a corner of the store and I put stickers all over my face.
Naturally, she said that the moment was priceless.
Anyway, that's sort of inevitable.
So I remember standing in front of these sunglasses in this sort of, you know, the rack that goes round and round, this sort of circular island thing.
And I remember like, ah, I want to get some sunglasses.
I'm broke. And why was I broke?
Because even then I had jobs and had to contribute to keeping us afloat as a family.
So I was like, I want some sunglasses.
Now, It was really interesting for me.
What happened was a certain kind of fear of consequences arose in me.
And it wasn't like a fear of like, oh, I'm going to get caught or anything like that.
It was a fear of like, okay, this does not lead to a good road.
Like this road does not lead to a good destination.
So it was consequentialism more for my own soul than it was, well, you know, stealing is wrong and blah, blah.
Like society had no, no credibility with me.
About any of this stuff.
Not even a tiny...
What was society going to do?
Society was letting me get slammed up against walls and beaten and screamed at.
Teachers, priests, extended family, neighbors.
So what was... I don't mean to laugh, but you know, it's so long ago now.
It's like 50 years, right? So...
What on earth was society going to tell me?
About morals and virtue.
Like, you've got to be kidding me.
So it wasn't so much that, well, society has told me that this is wrong and I shouldn't do it because it's bad and immoral.
It's like society had no credibility.
Plus, of course, I mean, by that age, I don't want to sound overly precocious, but I suppose I was a little bit.
By that age, I had, I mean, I remember as a kid having a book, Great Disasters of the 20th Century.
And it had like the Titanic, the Hindenburg, World War I, World War II, the Great Depression, and all of that stuff.
Should have had Woodstock in there too.
Or just all the boomer cons falling for psyops.
And so society was like, well, y'all don't know what you're doing.
I mean, how could you have this many disasters if you knew?
What the right thing to do was in society.
And I remember it was shortly after I got caned in boarding school.
I had to go to the nurse.
And the nurse was watching some war that was like on TV. It was like a news.
And I remember tanks plowing through a wall.
And this was not a historical movie.
This was happening... I don't know.
It might have been Lebanon or something like that, right?
But there was... So I was like, okay, so...
And you know, in hindsight, this is probably the genesis for the bomb in the brain stuff.
But I remember thinking like, so you beat me and there are tanks going through walls.
I get beaten at home, I get beaten at school.
So you beat me and there are tanks going through walls.
There has to be a connection.
It can't just like, it can't be that you're so certain about how to fight evildoers that you beat children.
And you also end up with tanks going through walls.
Like, that can't be a thing that makes any sense.
And again, I don't want to sound overly precocious, but these were more sort of feelings or instincts, like something doesn't fit, rather than some big abstract analysis.
I mean, I was six years old, for heaven's sakes.
But it was just a feeling of, you ever have that?
Like, just things don't fit, things don't add up, things don't make sense.
And... So it's not so much that the individual...
Mother or father is irresponsible.
That's... It's not that individuals are irresponsible.
It's the fact that society doesn't call them out.
Right? It wasn't my mother's violence that was the real trauma.
I mean, my mother was like, I don't know, 110 pounds dripping wet.
And... She couldn't do me much physical harm after I was very young, right?
I mean, I could run, I could dodge, I could escape.
So, I mean, other than the time that she sort of beat me against the door when I was very little and trying to escape or run away from home, she couldn't do me much physical harm.
So the trauma wasn't the beatings for me.
And look, this could be different for everyone, so I'm certainly not trying to tell anyone else.
Here's her own experience, but I think that this is pretty common.
We have a commonality here.
The trauma is not the beatings.
The trauma is the silence about the beatings.
And, you know, this is all fresh in my mind.
What was it? There's a great line that Joanne has about Alder in my novel, The God of Atheists.
Alder is like a petty academic.
And she says, when she's his girlfriend, Alder was smart, she thought, but stinging smart, like a freshly spanked brain.
I always love that line myself.
But it's the silence and the complicity of society as a whole that is the real trauma.
That's the real mess. That's the real ugliness.
Because that's the thing that lasts.
Being hit by my mother is, you know, 45 years ago.
I mean, good lord, right?
And injury doesn't cause trauma.
When I was hiking in a creek when I was 13 or so, I obviously stepped on something bladed and sharp down there, and I ended up having to get stitches in my foot.
And that was painful, but I'm not traumatized by it.
And it was more painful than anything my mother did to me.
I mean, we all have the sort of falling off bikes and, you know, that sort of metallic acid battery taste in your mouth when you thump your head too hard.
Not that there's any good way to thump your head.
When I was probably eight or nine, I was getting some tennis balls off a garage roof, jumped down, my knees buckled, and my Two front teeth went into my knee and I actually still have the scar.
Like when I extend my leg, I can still see my two front teeth from when I was like 50, almost 50 years ago.
I can still see the outline of my two front teeth on my knee.
That's not traumatic. It was painful.
I'm really surprised I didn't lose a tooth, but it was, you know, and everybody has these, you know, kind of injuries or maybe less these days because one of the reasons children are so messed up is they don't have unsupervised play with peers.
But it's not the physical damage.
That's not the trauma. And again, I'm only including physical abuse here.
Sexual abuse and emotional abuse are sort of a different matter.
But the sort of physical abuse, it's painful.
It's shocking. It's surprising.
It's unpleasant. Obviously, it's pain.
But that's not the real trauma.
The trauma is that when you are moving through society being abused...
Again, just talking physically at the moment.
When you're moving through society being abused...
Society, which claims a great deep and powerful ability to find and punish evildoers.
You ever have that mutiny on the bounty stuff where, well, kids, we're all going to stay here until the person who did this bad deed confesses.
We're just all going to stay.
Everybody stays after school until we get a confession.
Who stole the apple from the desk?
Who went into the teacher's lounge?
Who hid in the bathroom rather than coming to class?
Who had gum without sharing it?
Who stole Bobby's lunch?
We're all going to sit here. So, society's like, well, you know, we identify evildoers, we find evildoers, and we punish evildoers.
By God! We are superheroes of virtuous scanning.
Accusation, conviction, and punishment!
We know evil by God, and we find it and we punish it.
And, you know, that's all I heard, and that's all I experienced as a kid.
I would go to these...
My aunts were very Christian, and there was some really nice stuff about that, I'll be honest.
Sorry, I hate saying, I'll be honest.
Like, I haven't...
I'm just, right now, you know, a certain amount of time into the show, 10 minutes into the show, I'll be honest.
But I would go with them to church and I would hear these thunderous, well thunderous for Britain, not super thunderous, I would hear these lectures about virtue and ethics and righteousness and sin and redemption and grace and so on.
God sees all!
Ah, yeah, God sees all.
God sees and records everything.
And maybe this was the sort of foundation for my atheism, why it came so easily to be.
God sees all, which means, God, oh yeah, I just made this connection.
God sees all, so God sees me being abused.
Everybody's praying to God for the right thing to do.
Give me righteousness! Give me morality!
Give me virtue!
Give me heaven! And we did the Lord's Prayer every morning in school, in church.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.
Amen. So God saw me being abused.
Everybody prayed to God and went to church and had a close relationship with God and studied the Bible and yearned to do good.
And this was also, of course, a source of UPB. It's a source of UPB. Well, religion ain't cutting it.
Like, religion ain't protecting the kids.
Whatever's going on with ethics, this ain't it.
This ain't it. People would get on their knees and pray to great God above.
Find me some virtue.
Let me resist evildoers and let me punish the wrong among us.
Let me be good, O God above.
And they found the evildoers certainly among the children.
They invented and found, quote, evildoers among the children.
That was going on everywhere.
But if you hired a security guard who had cameras pointed at every part of the store and spent his whole day watching those cameras, And said, oh yeah, no one's stolen anything today, and then you reach back on the replay and people are pilfering left, right, and center. What would you think?
Would you think, wow, that's...
Boy, that's a great security guard, man.
I'm really glad I invested in this system and this guy because, whew, he's just killer, man.
No. So you understand the analogy, right?
God is the security cameras.
And... Everyone around me was the security guard.
And I was the stolen goods.
And the store owner, I suppose.
Because that was the deal, right?
That was the rule. God sees all.
We pray to God for the courage to do good and oppose evil.
And you say, well, you know, but maybe they're more pacifist.
They just don't fight evil. They forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Well, I was not expecting people to put my mom in stocks or engage her in a boxing ring, but I was expecting them to not bear false witness.
Can we get that one done, brothers and sisters?
Can we get that one achieved?
Can we not bear false witness?
And you know, since you're punishing the immorality, they can't claim to be pacifists and then also beat the children.
They can't claim to be pacifists and also punish the children.
They can't claim to be pacifists and fail the children for not doing the brain-dead do-si-do of memorizing useless facts to regurgitate on government-sanctioned smelly photostat paper.
Sorry, you don't get to be a pacifist when you're punishing children, often violently.
So God, grant me the strength to see immorality and the courage and integrity to fight it.
Oh, look at all this immorality among the children.
Boy, we've got to identify that.
We've got to fight that. Yeah.
So either God didn't see me being beaten, or God saw it but didn't tell all the people praying to him to be able to find evildoers in their midst and fight them.
And promote virtue and oppose vice.
So either God didn't see me being abused, in which case he ain't there, or ain't what they claim.
Or God did see it, but all the people begging to be able to do good in his vicinity, he declined to tell them that this was the great good they could do in their vicinity, was to listen to me and help me.
Or, God saw me being abused, and everyone who prayed For knowledge of virtue and the ability to do good and fight evildoers, he told them, there's this guy, this little Steph, little Steph in your midst, man.
He's getting really badly attacked.
His mom's going crazy.
She's really violent.
You got to do something about it.
God saw. God told.
People heard.
But they didn't do anything.
And this is not my experience alone.
I'm trying to dig into our collective history here.
God saw the evils being done to the children.
God told the religious of the evils being done to the children.
But the people did not listen to God and protect the children.
What does this mean?
What could this mean?
What could this mean? If you believe in God and God tells you about a great evil in your midst but you don't believe Him then clearly you don't believe in God.
If you believe in God and God tells you about a great evil in your midst and you believe God but you don't act On that, then you don't believe in God.
If the supreme moral being reveals a great evil in your midst, and you are honor-bound to do something about it, and you don't, then you are a believer in word only, in social acceptance, in Sunday shiny suit best, In loving the sonorous sound of your voice as you claw your way through the upper echelons of the higher registers of the Christian hymns.
You don't believe.
You don't act.
Now, of course, one answer, there's many answers, one answer could be, well, you know, people are sinful and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, okay, I get that.
I understand that. People are sinful and they're in a fallen state and Adam and Cain and Abel and I get all of that.
But they're still punishing the, quote, evildoers they find among their children, and it's not working, and they don't believe.
So if people accept that there's a supreme divine being who commands them to virtue and opposes evil and commands them to follow virtue and oppose evil, but of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of adults Who came across me and I came across over the course of being educated in two continents in half a dozen or a dozen schools and traveling and living in Africa for a short time.
If not one of those people believed in God enough to accept the need to help children, Or at least listen to those children when those children grow up to be adults, if you're worried about confronting the abuser and the children being more abused.
But clearly, universally, it was not enough.
I remember we did a very boring priest.
We had a young priest who was kind of cool.
I mentioned this story before.
He was kind of energetic, kind of cool.
And I remember he was talking about Satan and he said, and God took Satan and threw him into a deep pond, a deep lake, and put up a big sign saying, no fishing!
That's kind of cute. It's kind of funny.
But all these people pursuing virtue, under divine commandment, under the threat of hell and the promise of heaven, was not enough to rouse them to do a damn thing.
To help the brutalized young in their midst.
It was not enough.
Statism was not enough.
School was not enough.
Family was not enough.
Extended family was not enough.
God above was not enough.
You understand?
I got pushed and harried and hunted and cornered into philosophy.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and desperation is 90% of creativity.
I got pushed, bullied, cornered into philosophy.
Now, of course, there may be a scattered few across this benighted planet who say, ah, you see, Steph, but that was God's plan, to let you be brutalized so you could prove universal ethics.
Objective ethics. That's why it happened.
No, it didn't.
No, it didn't.
How many people get brutalized without having the ability, the will, or the intellect to produce a proof of universal ethics?
And if you're going to tell me that an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly moral being couldn't find a better way to get universal ethics into the world than let a child be brutalized for 20 years, Well, I would have questions about the moral nature of this all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful deity.
A couple of questions, couldn't it be?
I mean, the first guy to use a tablet to download information from the cloud was Moses.
So God will write down the Ten Commandments on tablets and give them to a mortal?
But apparently I just had to be brutalized for 20 years and rejected and scorned and attacked and de-platformed.
No, no, no, no. Come on.
So it's not so much that you get harmed by your parents that produces the nihilism or the cynicism.
It's that society utterly colludes, enables, and covers up for the abusers.
It's not that your father left you.
It's that society supports such bad decision makers.
Supports and praises such bad decision makers.
That's the harm.
Because that doesn't end.
Right? I was last hit by my mother, you know, 45 or more years ago.
Let me tell you, the scars have pretty much healed.
Physically. I mean, long past, right?
Most I really got were bruises.
Never broke a bone of mine.
I've never broken a bone. But what does continue is when I talk about child abuse in public, you get attacked.
And it's not even that you get attacked.
It's everyone who colludes with it.
Everyone who colludes with it.
And I think, if I understand this community correctly, And I'm of course not at the center of this community because the center of this community is philosophy, truth, reason, empiricism, and evidence.
But if I understand this community, we were all chased and cornered into the truth by abusers, enablers, and those indifferent to our pain.
Philosophy is the port of last call when all other landings have been exhausted.
When everything else has lost credibility, why then, at least for me, why then, and only then, do we start to truly live philosophy?
When everything else has fallen away.
When everything else has betrayed us.
When everything else has proven false and manipulative and destructive.
Ah, then!
Does the goddess of philosophy open her arms and bring us to her warm and distant embrace?
Ah, then we can manage it.
So yes, without a doubt, being without a father gives you a lack of responsibility.
Sure, because that's what's modeled.
Have children, abandon children.
Be selfish. Choose your partners based on sex, not virtue.
Choose your commitments based on pleasure, not integrity.
Have no will other than the animal hedonism of the biological moment.
I find this woman sexy.
I will have sex with her.
I have a child.
I will marry her.
I'm unhappy in the marriage.
I will leave. That's just like a brain-dead idiot pinball being jammed around from bumper to bumper.
No will, no control.
The physics of hedonism are an insult to the potential of the human soul.
So yeah, it models irresponsibility, and that which harms children, but helps political power, which is the destruction of the family, is praised.
It harms children, but it helps political power.
Tyranny is largely driven by Those without secure bonds in their community are through marriage or family.
So to break up the family, which harms the children, is great for power and everyone cheers it on.
What do they care about? Power, not children.
So, I hope that helps.
Is there anything that you wanted to add at the end of that, my friend?
Oh, did you unmute me, Stephan?
Can you hear me good? Yeah, go for it, man. Awesome.
Hey, so...
We spoke a couple weeks ago, and I just wanted to thank you for that.
For the sake of the listeners, I won't elongate it too much.
You're a more virtuous person and way smarter than me, right?
I want to hear your opinion on this, but with everything that you were just saying, do you ever think of the book of Job?
How, for instance, his suffering wasn't deserved, but there was something behind the scenes that was going on that basically taught a good lesson, you know, that there should always be hope, in a sense.
Or, I don't know, like, have you thought much of the book of Job at all?
Yeah, I have.
When my daughter was young, I told her a lot of Bible stories because they're core stories or lessons or morals that are very much wound into Western culture and other cultures, of course, as well.
So we did the story of Job, and I'll just touch on it briefly here.
I'm sure most of you know it. Hey, well, look at that.
We're talking about the Bible on a Sunday morning.
Praise be. Yeah, awesome.
So, the story of Job is, Job is a wealthy, successful man, high status in the community, and God is, in a sense, bragging or saying, well, this guy is totally into me, man. He just loves me. And Satan comes along and says, oh, come on, man.
I mean, yeah, he's a big fan of yours, but that's because he's wealthy and successful and he has a great family and a beautiful wife and money and status in the community.
Of course, if you give someone all these gifts, they're going to love you, but you're bribing them.
That's not love. That's just gratitude for you giving them stuff.
And this sits like a canker in God's brain, and God's like, hmm, gosh, that could be a thing.
You know what? He doesn't love me.
Because he's wealthy.
And Satan says, well, yeah, of course.
Okay, if you think he doesn't love you because he's wealthy, why don't you just snap your fingers and take away all his wealth and see if he still loves you?
And God's like, yeah, okay, fine.
I'm going to stand by what I said.
You calling me out? Call me out.
Snaps his fingers. And the livestock, which are the source of Job's wealth, all die in the field.
Steflon, can I interrupt? Yes, sir.
So, I think in the story of Job, like, one of the things that gets exalted, right, or is exquisite, is the free will that Job has to make that decision, right?
Like, in the last three verses, he basically...
I'm sorry, are you interrupting my story to get me to the end after praising my intelligence and virtue and communication skills?
I asked, but I'll let you finish if you want.
If you could. I would appreciate that.
Thank you. Sorry.
Okay. So, what happens is that Job weeps over, and I'm butchering the story.
I'm just trying to get to the essence of it.
So, Job weeps over the loss of his livestock.
But goes to church and praises God anyway.
So then God turns to Satan and says, Come on, man, look.
You said he only loved me because he was wealthy.
He's back at church. He's praising me.
He still loves me. And he said, Well, yeah, but...
I mean, that's only because he's got a happy, healthy family.
He's praising you for that.
He's not praising you for you. He's praising you because you've given the gift of a happy and healthy family.
Long story short, everything gets stripped away.
Family gets stripped away.
Status gets stripped away. Wealth gets stripped away.
Property gets stripped away. To get down to what King Lear talks about, the bare forked animal.
What are we without social markers, right?
What are we without social markers?
All get stripped away.
And of course, the last thing to go, as it generally is in life, is health.
And Job is struck with pustulant boils and pain and agony and infections and So he went from a strong, healthy, virile, well-loved, wealthy, successful, high-status man to a half-rotting leper with nothing and no one.
And of course, at this point, he cries out to God and says, bro, bro, as the millennials would say, bro.
Like, this is crazy.
Like, this is going too far.
Can't we just reason in some manner?
Like, this is, these lessons, these, like, I don't even know what you're trying to teach me.
So, there are lots of lessons in the story, but since you wanted to mention what happened at the end or something that's important, if you could go ahead and do that, I'd appreciate it.
Yeah, heck yeah. So, I think one of the lessons in that story, right, is how exquisite and how much he...
How exquisite it was of Job, right?
Out of his own free will, right?
It's a story of humility, right?
Because Job always wants to make his case, right?
He makes his case once to his friends, twice to his friends.
And then the third time, God allows him to make his case for him.
His friends were accusing him of doing something wrong, but Job hadn't done anything wrong.
Job was a good man, you know?
So they're like, hey, you must have done something wrong for you to be punished this way.
And then he's like, no, God is wrong on this one, you know?
And I would love to make my case to God.
And that's what happens at the end.
God is like, okay, you want to make the case to me?
I don't know if you remember that, but that's...
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. It's been forever since I've read the story, so I appreciate that clarification.
And what is the case that Job does make to God?
Very interestingly enough, he basically, when he gets the opportunity, right, God in a way, a lot of people think it's like presumptuous, right, or braggadocious, but God is like, okay, Job, I'm going to give you the chance to explain yourself, but just to remind you, I am the one that created Basically, well, he is reality, right?
The ultimate reality, truth, logos, logic, you know, and he doesn't touch too much on that.
I'm just putting that in as well, because that is essences of God, you could say.
But he's also in the story of Job, he says, I'm the one that created the Leviathan, who is a beast that your guys' arrows cannot penetrate, you guys cannot be captured, right?
So, you as a creature, you know, like God is telling him, you as a creature, right, who cannot even contain one of my most magnificent creations, Tell me how I am wrong.
God is asking Job, tell me how I'm wrong.
Right? So, Job, when he finally gets the opportunity to make the case for God, right?
He says, God, and I'm paraphrasing right here, I'm going to insert a little bit of my thinking too, right?
But he basically humbles himself enough to be like, hey, so this is the most omniscient.
He's a god, right?
Omniscient. Logic comes from him.
Truth comes from him.
You know, reality comes from him.
Me as a creature, I have nothing to say to you because whatever you have to say to me is probably more correct since truth is I don't know if you've ever heard like the transcendental argument for God?
I have heard of it, but let's stay on Job if you could.
Okay, okay. So, this is where the story, in my opinion, gets super exquisite because that's like, you know, after what Joe went through was super unfair, you know?
You could even say borderline abusive because there was like literally no reason other than...
Borderline? Well, yeah.
No, listen, if a king, if a mortal human king had done to Job with no provocation what God did to Job, we would say that that was a fantastical abuse of power, right?
But God is not a king, though.
Well, I understand, but it's universally preferable behavior, which means it doesn't matter who's doing it.
Like, you don't say Bob is a murderer, but Job being a murderer is just great, right?
So it's the principles of behavior.
So if a human being had exercised his authority over Job in a way to destroy everything about him, infect him, poison him, kill his crops, his livestock, drive away his family, and so on...
I think God tells, what is it somebody, is it Job's wife has a dream that he's having an affair which is given by God?
So if he'd slandered and lied and broken up his marriage, we would not view that as virtuous in any other entity.
So when you say borderline, it's like, no, no, it is abusive.
Now, God could say, I'm above these moral distinctions because everything I do is perfect.
But from a philosophical standpoint, from a moral standpoint, the actions are tyrannical and abusive.
Absolutely. I do agree that it was very, very abusive and underserving.
I'll agree with that with you.
I kind of just said it as a joke because obviously it was very bad what happened to Job.
But this is where I'll make the case for the story, right?
The world can make you famous.
The world can make you rich. The world can...
Like, you can use philosophy to make your case, right?
Like, you have a good case.
You know, Job didn't deserve that.
That's very clear.
But when the source of truth, morality, reality...
It's giving Job the opportunity to basically, in my opinion, Stefan, it's like a shining of human free will right there.
It's just so amazing. Job uses his free will to accept that, hey, you know, If God is using me in this way, right?
Well, I am a believer in God.
I do submit to God, right?
And if he thinks this is what I'm supposed to go through, I'm not going to say anything, right?
So, right there, Stefan, Job, right?
Elevates himself, you know, you could almost say glorifies himself for such a use of free will, you know, because it's hard to kind of, like, you know, you see all the unfairness in the world and stuff like that, right? And it's kind of hard to accept that God would be okay with it, you know?
But then God, who is the only one that can give you significance in this world, gives Job that significance to put him in a position like that to then glorify himself, obviously through God, but Job elevates himself.
Through that trial, right?
Yeah, I'm sorry, let me just jump in here because I feel like the show is kind of getting away from us.
So, with regards to God and Job, I mean, it's a fascinating story and I certainly applaud everybody who recorded it and transmitted it.
It's a fascinating story.
So, does Job love God because of the benefit God confers upon him?
In other words, is love involved in benefits?
Well, I hope that this show confers benefits upon people.
This is why you're here and listening and interacting, conversing.
I obviously hope that the show confers benefits, but for somebody to say, I want to be loved even if I harm you, it's an infantile state.
And I'm not trying to be blasphemous and talk about God being an infant.
I'm just saying that from a mortal perspective, from a human perspective, Saying that you must love me though I cause you pain is an infant's perspective.
Because, of course, an infant does cause the parent's pain.
The shrill cry of an infant is unpleasant and produces cortisol.
It's designed to be unpleasant so that you'll resolve whatever's causing the baby to cry like that.
The baby grabs and so on.
And, you know, everybody who's a father knows that children are just like running into your...
Let's say, waste on a regular basis, the sleep deprivation expense, and so on, right?
Loss of sexual market value for both the father and the mother in the community.
Now, that's fine, of course, if you're monogamous and all of that.
Babies cause discomfort, exhaustion, pain, and loss of resources, and so on.
And we love them. So I think to say, you must love me even though I cause you pain.
Of course, you know, babies bring a lot of happiness too.
I get all of that. But saying, you must love me for who I am, not for anything I do for you.
And you must love me not only despite, but because of the discomfort that I cause.
Causing you, that's the perspective of an infant.
Now, of course, as an adult, when you sort of grow up and you become an adult and you want to put yourself out there in the marketplace of love, to say to someone, you must treasure me though I cause you pain, is psycho.
Again, I'm just talking about from a mortal perspective outside of the omniscience and omnipotence and all goodness of God.
From a mortal perspective, if you were to say to a woman, the more I harm you, the more you must love me, that would be psycho, right?
That would be completely sociopathic or, in fact, sadistic.
Okay, but please keep it brief because I'm sort of in the middle of a flow here.
So go ahead. Yeah, okay.
I think, you know, I feel like sometimes you judge the religion by the people, right?
No, that's not the argument I'm making.
No, no, that's a totally separate thing than what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the philosophy of relationships here, so this is not talking about judging religion by the people.
So if that's a comment you want to make, you're going to have to wait until I finish my thoughts.
Because this is taking me away from what I'm saying.
Okay. Okay, well, let me just make this one...
Sorry, I'm not trying to be disrespectful.
I'm just also in, like, a flow.
But I feel like sometimes you bring God to the level of, like, other people, right?
And then you say... I just...
No, I just addressed that.
No, no, no. Hang on. I just addressed that.
I said I'm specifically not talking about God.
I'm talking about mortal humans.
Okay, I'll let you finish. Okay, so I can't help you if you're not listening, right?
So if you get offended by something that I've specifically denied, and you want to jump in, we're not having a conversation.
We're having opposing monologues in different realities.
So, let me finish my thought here, and if you could just wait till I'm done, I would really appreciate it.
Yes. Now, it certainly is true, and I think it has been true for most of its inner life, that virtue brings both benefits in pain.
Now, it's easy to be virtuous when virtue is giving you great success.
It's easy to be virtuous when virtue is giving you great success and prestige and so on.
And one of the things that evildoers with power will do is let you gather a lot of success through your virtues and then they will use the threat of taking away that success in order to trap you in amorality or immorality.
In other words, they will let you get used to a certain amount of fame and money and influence and all of that.
And then once you have adjusted to that, then they will threaten to take it away unless you conform and comply with whatever it is they want you to say and do.
So sometimes the accumulation of resources, fame, prestige...
Money, reach, and so on, success, is allowed by bad people with a lot of power so that you then become used to that and you wouldn't have missed it if you didn't have it before, but now you're used to it.
There was a show, House, some years ago, and House was in chronic pain from some leg-wasting thing, and he was constantly irritable and badly groomed and all of that kind of stuff.
And then one day he comes into work and he's like, Pleasant and cheerful and well-shaved and well-groomed and wearing nice clothes and so on.
And of course, his friend, the doctor, the oncologist says, oh, you must be back taking painkilling drugs, right?
He was addicted to these drugs that were painkillers.
If you live with chronic pain and then you get relief from it, then going back to it is worse than if you'd never had relief.
So sometimes the powers that be will let people float up to the upper atmosphere of fame and fortune, and then when they're used to that and having that removed would maybe feel like a fate worse than death, I don't know, then they'll say, well, we'll take it away now.
We're going to take it away from you if you keep going down this path, and then 99 times out of 100, people would just be like, yeah, okay, I mean, I really like this level of fame, I really like this level of influence, and going back to a regular normal life would be agony for me, right? It's the hedonic treadmill, like whatever happiness you get, you get used to, and then you get kind of addicted to it, and having stuff take it away that you didn't even miss in the past becomes, to some people, it's sort of fate worse than death.
And we can see this playing out in the world on a sort of repetitive basis that People get to a certain level of prominence and fame and then they are threatened with having all that take it away and a lot of people crumble and just go with that because they're kind of addicted to it and so on.
So I think from that standpoint, virtue that gains you resources and success and maybe money and so on, the story of Job is also saying, well, that stuff can go away.
Will you still pursue virtue when it harms you rather than elevates you?
Will you still pursue virtue When it harms you rather than elevates you.
So our relationship to another mortal human being should never be, the more you hurt me, the more I should love you.
But we need to love virtue all the more when we're being harmed by it.
So when virtue got me success in the business world, when virtue got me a great wife, when virtue got me some prominence in the world and all of that, then virtue was good.
You know, we like virtue.
When virtue got me sort of harmed and threatened and attacked and deplatformed and money stripped and all of that kind of stuff, well, it was a little tougher to love virtue at that time.
I mean, obviously. And I think when we look at God as the principle of virtue, then the principle of virtue is saying...
You can't just love me, virtue, when I'm doing good things for you.
That's like only loving a child when the child is pleasing you, or being funny, or engaging, or in a great mood, or whatever it is, being convenient, right?
And so, when we look at the story of Job as saying, it's the story of our relationship to virtue.
Then yes, you do have to double down on your love of virtue when virtue is taking away everything that you don't need but you treasure, right?
So I need virtue, I need my wife, I need obviously to be alive, I need some resources.
So when virtue is taking away the things that aren't essential to you, That's when you have to double down on your love of virtue, otherwise you will be way too tempted by corruption.
So hopefully that makes sense with regards to the story of Job.
I think that's kind of what it's getting at.
Sorry, you wanted to add something here at the end?
Yeah, yeah, no, it's, you know, you get, I agree with what you say, you know, the point that I was making, right, there's two points that I'm making right here.
One is God loved the world so much that he gave everybody free will, right?
I don't know what's, what's your, you believe in free will, right?
Yes. Okay. Now, let me...
Because I still feel...
I know you didn't say this, right?
But sometimes I feel like you hold God to human standards.
So let me give you another example.
Hang on. If you want to talk about your feelings, I think that's great.
But let's not pretend that a straw man is a feeling.
So if you want to talk about your feelings, I think that's great.
You know, this is not a conversation where we shy away or shrink from feelings.
But if you're clouding a sort of straw man intellectual judgment, which is probably false, if you're cloaking that in terms of feelings, then that's not appropriate.
So if you want to talk about your feelings, I think that's great.
But when people say, I feel that you judge religion by its followers and so on, then what's happening is you're making a truth claim but pretending it's a feeling.
Now, I can't argue with your feelings.
This is why it's kind of deceptive.
And I'm not saying you're lying. I'm just saying that this habit is kind of deceptive.
Because if you say, I feel sad, what am I going to do?
Argue with you? No, because it's a subjective experience that you're having a feeling of sadness.
I can't talk you out of that.
I mean, I guess I could try. If somebody says, I feel sad, I say, no, you don't.
I mean, that would be crazy because I'm trying to contradict a lived experience.
Which is why people always want to...
Hang on. Let me finish.
Let me finish. Let me finish. This is why people always put their intellectual and moral judgments in terms of lived experience and my story.
Because if you are feeling a certain way, I can't possibly contradict you.
I mean, it would be irrational, right?
If you say, I just slammed my finger in the door and it's really hurting and I say...
No, you didn't. And no, it's not hurting.
That would be crazy because it's contradicting your genuine experience.
So feelings can't be contradicted.
But when you say, I feel that, and then you have an intellectual argument or judgment that's a truth claim, then you're mixing two worlds.
You're trying to gain the credibility of feeling, which can't be contradicted with a truth claim about objective reality, which certainly can be.
So I just really want to point this out in terms of noting it in you and in everyone.
When people say, I feel that, hang on, I'm still talking.
When people say, I feel that, then I expect a feeling word.
Right? I feel sad, I feel mad, bad, glad, whatever, right?
I mean, anxious, or tired, or in pain.
So there's a feeling thing, and that's a subjective experience.
However, if you say, I feel that, and then you make an objective truth claim about me, my perspectives, my arguments, Then you're cheating, in a way.
And I don't mean this with any negativity or hostility.
It's just that you're trying to sneak in a factual truth claim about objective reality or my statements or something like that under the cloak of something which can't be opposed, which is your feelings.
So if you say, Steph, you have said that...
Like if I say, I judge God by the actions of his followers...
If I have said that, now I understand that I did talk about feeling that, oh sorry, I did talk about my experience that Christians, the Christians, and it wasn't just Christians, but the religious people around me, We're not able to deal with my child abuse or give me any comfort even in the years after I became an adult and so on.
And so I said that that clearly was not enough.
So clearly religion as a whole is not enough to solve the problem of child abuse.
Now that's not judging God by his followers.
That's saying that the religion is not enough empirically to solve the problem of child abuse.
Now I'm not judging God in that.
I am judging the followers and I'm saying that their belief in God is not enough for them to It's enough for them to attack children and to punish children, but it's not enough to protect children.
So I'm not judging God.
I'm simply saying that the belief system is not producing the most moral thing that's necessary in the world, which is the protection of children.
But sorry, go ahead. Okay, that's awesome.
And look, Stefan, you're like 50, I'm 25.
I appreciate your clarity of thinking.
That's why I call in.
I know I'm kind of rough around the edges and sometimes rant, whatever.
But no, I say things with the full respect.
If you tell me to be quiet, I'll be quiet.
But I do try to like, sometimes, you know, just how the thoughts hit.
Sorry, when I told you to be quiet, I just said, let me finish my thought.
And I opposed a particular kind of sneaking in of a fact under the cover of feeling, but I don't think I've told you to be quiet.
Again, it's always wild to me.
I'm sure you have this experience as well, where you literally say something and somebody else has a completely different experience.
It's pretty neat. Anyway, go on. I think we're very different people, right?
So we speak a little bit differently and we still understand each other, but I'm not trying to put words in your mouth.
And when I said, I feel, honestly, you're right about that and I appreciate the clarity of thinking that you're adding to my speech, right?
Because I meant to say, I think...
I think that you are putting God to the standard of humans, right?
Which this is like an inverted perspective, because you would agree that truth, virtue, morality should be above human opinion, right?
Does that make sense? Well, a principle is above an example, for sure.
I mean, if a mathematician makes an error, that doesn't mean that mathematics is now disproven.
So yeah, I understand this, for sure.
But it's UPB. So it's UPB, which means that all sentient creatures capable of consciousness are subject to UPB. Now, you can say, I want a magical exception for God, but then we've just left the realm of philosophy.
Right? I mean, if you say, I have a theory of gravity that applies to all matter, except the Emperor Penguin, then you've left the realm of science.
And now you're in some other place.
So we would leave the realm of philosophy and we would go into the realm of theology if we were to say there are these universal morals...
But we can't possibly judge God by them, then...
I mean, this is a philosophy show, not a theology show.
So you've left the realm of philosophy when you are creating exceptions to universals, just as you've left the realm...
Like if you say two and two make four, except on the island of Madagascar, in which case two and two makes blue penguin.
Then you've left the realm of math, because now you've put in arbitrary exceptions to a universal rule, and math is all about universal rules, as is physics, as is philosophy, as is morality, of course.
So, as a philosophy show, I don't have the option.
It's not up to me, right?
It's not up to any individual scientist to say that the laws of physics are universal.
That's the essence of science.
If you are a scientist, you must accept that the laws of physics are universal.
Because if you can find an exception to the laws of physics, then your laws of physics are incorrect.
So if I say, the law of physics is that everything falls down, and then somebody points out that there are birds and helium balloons and clouds and whatever, then my law of physics is that everything falls down.
The moment you find a single exception, you have invalidated the law, and it needs to be refined to take into account the new information, the exceptions.
So you need to expand your law In order to incorporate the new exceptions so that you still end up with a universal.
So you say, well, things heavier than air fall down or whatever it is.
Things without enough upward mobile pressure fall down and so on.
So in the realm of philosophy, you know, this is a don't shoot the messenger scenario.
In the realm of philosophy, universals is, that's it.
I mean, the universals are all it's about.
In the realm of logic, universals are what it's all about.
And you can't just carve off exceptions.
It's not up to me.
That's just the very nature of the discipline.
Sorry, go ahead. Well, look, that's a lot of clarity.
You know, I absolutely understand everything that you said because I delve in philosophy and theology, right?
So I'm going to try to be clear with my language, but it's funny to me because I see so many similarities with you and your love for truth, reality, philosophy, right?
Logic. Philosophy is logic, right?
And some of these characters, right?
So check this out.
I'm gonna need a couple of minutes just to make this argument.
So free will is one argument that I'm putting on top.
Now the second story I was gonna say, right, is the story of Abraham and his son Isaac, right?
So Abraham literally wrestles God, right?
That's in the Bible, right? So he...
You could say he had like a Moses moment where he sees a burning bush, right?
He literally wrestles God, right?
And then not only that, but he has a miraculous...
The birth of his son Isaac was a miracle because Sarah, I think her name was, was like 80, 90 years old when she had a kid, right?
Which should be impossible, right?
So it was... A miracle, actually.
You know, it wasn't a natural birth.
It actually represents the new, it's like a symbology to the New Testament.
Anyways, not to get too into theology, right?
So, Abraham, Stephan wrestled God.
So, he saw God.
He knows God is real.
And then God gave him a miraculous baby, right?
So, like, let's assume those are the, what is it called?
Presuppositions, right? Like, we're assuming that that's true.
What's the word for that? It doesn't matter.
We know what you mean. Okay, okay.
So then, right, Abraham, who knows God, you know, I think Israel means he wrestled with God, is then asked by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, right?
His only and beloved son Isaac, right?
And, well, if God is the source from the truth, morality, virtue, and all the good things in the world, you could say, right, of all good, Abraham obviously has no argument.
What is he going to tell the source of all good?
That no, he's not going to sacrifice his son.
So by submitting himself To the truth, the source of all good, right?
Obviously the source of all good is not going to ask you to do something evil, right?
So it was a test, you know?
Again, it was a test of free will.
Because that's what's really exquisite, I think, overall on this earth, right?
Now, free will is the reason why there's a lot of suffering in this world, in my opinion.
Because if God is the source of all good, of all truth, of everything good in the world, right?
How is it possible that anything bad comes from him, you know?
In my opinion, it would be impossible.
So, like, what you were saying about the Churchians, right?
Like Kierkegaard said, the Churchians and the church.
I would blame them more than God, you know, because the religion is idealistic, sure, you know, there's an ideal, but I would be a little bit, in my personal life, right, like seeing those examples of Job and Abraham, right, I'm like, well, me as a creature, who am I to judge or criticize someone that's way smarter and it's the source of all good?
Since he's the source of good, truth, morality, virtue and stuff, He's never going to tell you to do something bad.
You know, that's like... Well, hang on, though.
Sorry, but I don't mean to interrupt this, but I always compare people's claimed ideals with their actual behavior.
And it's interesting to me, and whether I agree with this or not is not relevant, but you said, you know, Steph, you're way smarter or more virtuous than me, but you're criticizing me.
So you said, well, gee, I wouldn't ever want to criticize somebody way smarter and more virtuous than me.
And you literally said over the course of this conversation, at the beginning of this conversation, Steph, you're way...
Smarter and more virtuous than me, and you're criticizing, which is fine, right?
But you're attempting to correct me about my misperceptions, so I'm not pretty sure where your beliefs lie with your actions.
I want your opinion, you know.
I'm not trying to correct you.
No, no, no. Let's be honest.
Let's be honest. You think I'm incorrect.
And that's totally fine.
That's why I'm having these shows.
I have these shows in part so people can help correct me and so on.
So the fact that you think I'm wrong about something is totally fine.
But then when you say, Steph, you're way smarter or more virtuous than me...
And then you say, well, I wouldn't criticize anybody who is much smarter and more virtuous than me.
And it's like, well, that is what you're doing.
And I think that's a good thing. I think it's good.
I mean, I certainly would never want to claim some kind of virtue that would put me...
I'm sorry. Am I in the middle of talking again?
I'm sorry. Go on. I'm sorry.
I mean, seriously, you say you would never want to correct and you keep interrupting.
Do you understand? I would never want to correct someone who I claim is more virtuous than I am.
I would never... Oh, he's getting something wrong.
Let me interrupt him. Right, I mean, come on, man.
See, this is the thing. Even you don't believe this stuff.
Even you don't believe this stuff that you're saying.
Steph, okay, I'll let you talk, but I need to interject.
That's a contradictory statement.
I'm going to let you talk, but I need to interject is completely...
See, even you don't believe these things that you're saying.
Okay. I don't know how to act no more, you know?
Well, no, you understand that if you say, I'm going to let you talk and I'm going to interrupt you, that's a contradictory statement, right?
I'm like caught up in a hard place in a knife, you know?
Like, I'll let you... No, a contradiction is being exposed.
And there's nothing wrong with that. But a contradiction is being exposed.
And what's happening is you're trying to bring theology and philosophy together.
And they don't fit together.
Right, so philosophy is reason and evidence are the supreme judges of that which is true.
When you make a true statement about reality, it has to conform to the laws of reality.
It has to be logically consistent and accord to the evidence.
Theology is faith.
Theology is believe in opposition to despite evidence.
Philosophy doesn't have that as a standard.
So you're trying to mix two opposing epistemologies.
Epistemology is the study of knowledge.
And for Philosophy, knowledge, results from experience, reason, and evidence.
You need experience as a baby, as a kid, to determine the nature of reality.
From determining the nature of the reality through sense data, you can develop rules or theories about reality, which you then test in more and more abstract and universal ways, and you get, through evidence, you determine the nature of reality and thus the accuracy of reason for And then you use reason to extend yourself beyond the evidence of the senses so you can figure out the orbit of Pluto and things like that.
So it's a slow accumulation of evidence in the mind that gives rise to universal principles.
And the universal principles can never, ever contradict the evidence of reality or the dictates of reason.
Now, that's not the way that theology works.
Theology works in that this is revelation, this is true, and you believe it.
Not just despite, but in opposition to...
Reason and evidence. So you have two opposing epistemologies, and they can't mix.
I mean, you can try if you want, but you'll just end up bouncing back and forth between the two.
And so I wouldn't take philosophical epistemology to theology, and you're trying to reconcile—it's the faith and reason thing, right?
You're trying to reconcile faith and reason, which people have been trying to do for thousands of years, and you can't.
This is no disrespect to the theological.
This is no massive praise to the empirical— But you can't.
They're absolutely opposing.
One says, belief is subject to reason and evidence.
And the other says, belief is in outright defiance to reason and evidence.
Because there is no reason or evidence to support the existence of a God.
But you believe. And I accept that.
I'm not going to try and talk you out of that.
I'm just saying that philosophically speaking, you have no reason to believe.
You believe, which means you believe, In opposition to the epistemology of a rational philosophy.
And you can make that exception, but let's recognize that it's an exception.
And what you want to do, I think, is you want to gain the credibility of a rational epistemology, which you can't have because you're faith.
You're faith-based. Your knowledge is faith-based.
And you should respect and accept that and not try and cross-pollinate it with philosophy, if that makes sense.
And that's a fair argument, you know?
I do agree.
I like the clinicalness of your approach, right?
I do think, me personally, that philosophy leads to theology, right?
But we won't get into that just yet.
I wanted to tell you, Stefan, I'm not trying to interrupt you.
It's just that I also like to talk, right?
And I respect your opinion a lot.
And you do have... Lots of years ahead of me.
You've lived twice the life that I've lived, right?
So that's quite a lot.
But the reason...
I'm willing to even have an argument with you.
It's because you're not God.
You're a very wise man.
You're like Aristotle or another of those figures.
So I want to get your opinion just on what I think.
That's what I want to know.
I want to know your opinion on what I think.
I'm not trying to correct you or be rude.
I would never want to do that.
I never accused you of being rude.
Anyway, go on. Yeah, I was just making sure that you weren't getting offended because that's the last thing that I would want to do.
But that's why I don't think it's a contradiction for me to argue or make my case with you.
But I look at Job and Abraham, and it makes sense why they didn't argue.
And my question to you is, could you see why they didn't argue?
Well, if you desperately want to be cured of an illness, and there's one doctor who is 100% certain to cure you of an illness, Do you really have free will to be cured of that illness?
The last thing I want to do is die.
My first child is born and my wife loves me and my life is great.
The last thing I want to do is die.
I've got this illness and there's this one guy who's going to charge me $10 to cure me and he's the only guy in the world who can do it.
And you say, well, you have free will to not go to that doctor.
It's like, well, you do, but everyone's going to go to that doctor who has those premises.
If you desperately want to be cured, there's only one guy who can do it.
You can easily afford it. You're going to go do that, right?
I mean, some people choose illness all the time.
Well, no, I didn't say that.
What I said was, if you...
Oh, gosh, I don't know. Why is it so hard to listen?
I said, if you desperately want to be cured, now you're saying, well, some people don't want to be cured.
It's like, that's not what I'm saying.
This could be so much more efficient if you just listen.
You know, you got to be patient with me.
No, no, no. I don't have to be patient with you.
You have to listen to what I'm saying.
Because you're just waiting for me to talk, to stop talking, and then you're just interjecting your own stuff.
And I'm saying this because I assume you want to have conversations with high-quality people.
And when I say three times, if you desperately want to be cured, and then you say, well, some people don't want to be cured, you're not listening.
And so me being patient with you is not the issue.
It's not a fault of mine that you're not listening.
You have to accept that you're not listening.
When I say something three times, and then you immediately oppose it based on something I never said, then you're not listening.
And that's fine. I'm just saying that you've got to own that and not just say it's my fault for not being patient, right?
Because that's saying that it's me, right?
So the reason I'm saying is that if Job...
Now, let's go with Isaac was the kid.
Abraham. Abraham, sorry.
So if we go with Abraham, then Abraham is told by a being who can never tell him to do anything wrong that this is what he has to do.
So if Abraham wants to do good, and the most perfect moral being in the universe tells him what to do, does he really have free will to not do it?
Well, not really, because I guess he can say, I don't really want to do good, right?
And this is the whole story is an analogy of the conflict between the mammal and the angel.
I've sort of referred to these before.
If the angel works on principles, the mammal wants to survive.
So he wants his lineage, and he also wants to do good.
Do we do more good by having children and raising them to be virtuous, or do we do more good by being sacrificial martyrs to virtue in the world, right?
I mean, this is one of the tensions in Christianity, of course, in particular.
So, if you...
If you really want to do good, and God, who can't tell you to do evil, is telling you what to do, then you either, if you don't do what God does, it says you should do, then you've given up your desire to do good, which is, certainly, you have the free will to do that.
But if you want to do good, and someone who's morally, some being who's morally perfect is telling you what to do, then you have to do what that being says.
It's sort of like this, and let me sort of make it more personal to this conversation.
Am I free... Am I free to be anti-rational as a philosopher?
Am I free to be anti-empirical and anti-rational?
I am not. I am not free to do this.
Ah, you have free will. Yes, I have free will.
And free will comes with consequences.
I have the free will to jump off a bridge.
I don't have the free will to defy gravity.
So since philosophy is reason and evidence, if I am anti-rational and anti-empirical, I'm certainly free to do that, but I'm not free to do that and be a philosopher.
Like, you are free to be a scientist, but you're not free to propose that your scientific hypothesis is true because of faith, and everyone should just believe it because God is good.
Then you're a theologian, and you're not a scientist, right?
Like, if I choose to jump off a bridge, I'm dead, not a free will guy anymore.
So, I don't have the freedom to oppose reason and evidence and be a rational empirical philosopher at the same time.
You can either have your cake or you can eat it, but you can't do both.
You can't eat your cake and still have it in front of you.
So as far as free will goes, yeah, I'm perfectly free.
Tomorrow I could wake up and argue against absolutely everything I've ever believed over the course of the last 40 years.
I could wake up and just do, I think it'd be probably kind of disappointing to people, or they'd think it was April the 1st, as they've occasionally done.
But as far as free will goes, if you believe in God, And you want to do good, and God is telling you to do X, then you have to do X, or you have to abandon the idea that you are interested in virtue, if that makes sense.
And that is the tension between ideals and biology.
Sorry, go ahead. So it's a very obvious, you're saying it's such an, what you're saying, let me see if I get you right, is that it's such an obvious decision for Abraham to know what he needs to do that he's going to do what, like basically you said that he didn't have free will because it's so obvious because of who he is and what he wants to do that it's like it negates free will?
Is that what you said? See, okay, I'm just going to end up here because I want to get on to other callers.
Okay, okay. I've been having fun.
The way to have a conversation, this is just, I think, useful in general.
The way to have a conversation, if somebody's making an argument, then you should repeat that argument back to them in the words that they use.
Did I ever say he doesn't have free will?
Did I ever say there's no such thing as free will?
Did I ever say he doesn't have free will?
I didn't at all. So when I make a speech about you can't be free...
To be a rational empirical philosopher and then reject reason and evidence, right?
And you come on and you say, oh, so he doesn't have free will.
So this is the challenge, right?
And this is the challenge of listening in society.
And it's a tough thing to do. Now, look, I've had thousands of conversations both on the show and off the show where, as you know, like if I do a call-in show, I can do two hours.
I can do an hour and a half just listening.
Right? I'm just trying to absorb the person's life to make sure that I understand.
Actually, when people have complicated family situations, I'll draw out entire family trees on a piece of paper to make sure I know what's going on, and I don't really...
So you have a habit, and I'm just pointing this out.
It's not a big criticism, but you reinterpret according to what's going on within you.
And that's fine, but it's just not a conversation.
So I give a fairly detailed argument about you have free will, But you don't have freedom from the consequences of your choices, like you can jump off a bridge, but you can't then become immune to gravity, and then you're saying, oh, so that means he doesn't have free will.
So what I'm saying is that listening is tough.
I mean, I know it is for most people.
I don't find it particularly tough, but listening is tough for a lot of people.
And I won't continue with the conversation here because it's kind of going a bit...
It's not really a conversation for me, but what I would say is that if you really...
Even if it means you have to make notes, right?
But you really have to listen and then respond to what's the person saying.
Otherwise, you might as well do a solo show and I might as well do a solo show.
But if we're both...
If you're not really listening, then it's just not a conversation.
It probably gets quite frustrating to other people and they certainly are expressing that frustration.
In the chat. So listen, I appreciate the conversation.
Really interesting. And I'm glad you brought up all these issues.
Yeah, I just want to say goodbye. Yeah, thanks, man.
Appreciate it. Yeah, I really appreciate your time and I was just trying to be respectful.
I'm sorry if I, you know, I feel like we're just two different people and we communicate differently, but I appreciate the...
Yeah, I'm sorry. I have to mute him there because then again, he also wasn't listening after I told him to listen, right?
So it's just saying, he's like, well, we're two different people and we communicate differently.
It's like, no. So he wasn't even listening to what I said when I said he wasn't listening.
So look, I get it. It's just a challenging habit to...
It's a challenging bad habit to overcome.
And it usually comes out of a sense of humiliation or an inability to take feedback, which, again, I sympathize with because it usually comes from childhood.
All right, Mr.
Dukes, I'm all ears.
But you will have to unmute.
There we go. Hey, Stefan, how are you?
Well, thanks. How are you doing? I'm good.
So, it's going to be a little nerve-wracking for me, but I don't know if this is the right forum for this, but I'm going to ask anyway.
So, last Q&A session, there was a gentleman, and he was kind of disappointed about his current status in his life.
Yeah, so then you said, oh, let me take the position of a high-quality woman and let me vet you.
I don't think we actually did get around to that vetting.
Yeah, I don't think we actually did get around to that vetting because I think you kind of veered off from that part of the conversation, but that's fine.
Sorry, go ahead. That's true.
That's true. Right. So, but I guess the thought came into my head is like, I don't know where I stand because I understand the conversation.
He was like leading you down a path where he wanted to kind of avoid that.
Right. And maybe because he didn't want to find out the answer, but for myself, I kind of want to find that answer or I do want to find that answer.
So I was wondering if you could help me out with that.
You mean that you as a quality woman would?
Yes. I absolutely can't, for the simple reason that there's these ridiculous pauses between me asking you something and you responding, and I don't know if your internet's laggy or if you're muting or something, but I can't have a conversation with somebody where it's like five seconds after I ask them something they answer.
Oh, no, for real.
Oh, crap. I don't know how to diagnose this right now.
Is it still doing that same five-second pause thing?
Well, it's a couple of seconds for sure, and it's going to be having these sort of weird delays and pauses, and then I'm going to overtalk you because I'm not sure if you're answering.
So, I'll answer now.
Just ask this question now, and let me see how long it takes you to answer it.
No, I completely understand. Oh, so, I'm sorry, can you repeat that?
Yes, answer something now.
So like so I was gonna say that I'm like I'm a male in my late 20s
I would say average attractiveness, decent corporate job as a programmer.
I've only had one relationship in my life.
That's where I would like to start.
Yes, but I can't do the conversation, unfortunately, because there's too many pauses.
I need to ask you questions and you need to answer them and there's too much of a pause.
Understood. Understood. Can you call in on a cell phone or something like that?
If we have time after, I'll try again.
Maybe I just got to like...
Can you maybe call in on a cell phone or something?
Can you call in on a cell phone?
Maybe your Wi-Fi is slow or maybe you'll have luck with some other data provider.
Yeah, I mean, I could turn off my Wi-Fi, see if that works, because maybe mobile data might be the best.
Yeah, why don't you turn off your Wi-Fi on your mobile?
Are you in the bowels of a cruise ship or are you currently kidnapped somewhere?
Maybe I'm hoping the price I pay for this internet package.
I thought I was getting It should prevent things like this, unfortunately.
Are you on a VPN? No, I took off my VPN. I've had it on previously, but I took it off just for this.
Okay, yeah, I'm so sorry.
I guess, so Skype has, you can always do this with Skype, it has a sort of test call, so you can just go into Skype if you want, and you can just type in the word test when you're looking for people, and there's a Skype test call thing.
So you might want to check with that, because that will give you a sense of lag as well, but I'm afraid we can't do it, unfortunately.
It's a very interesting topic, and I could talk about it in more general terms, so let me just check in with the chat here.
If you hit me with a Y in the chat, if you would like me to give you the kind of questions that a quality woman would ask.
You're a quality man, and so on.
Yes? Okay. So I'm sorry we can't do this live, but I will do the kind of questions.
That, I think, would be asked by a quality woman.
So, of course, a quality woman is going to ask you, and so you're in your late 20s.
By the time you're in your late 20s, your life has some kind of shape, right?
Your life has some kind of shape, and you've now been an adult for more than a decade.
So you're going to have some standards, right?
You're going to have some achievements.
You've gone from theory to practice.
You've gone from hypothetical to empirical.
So if a woman has to, like most women would have to marry their guys when the women were like, you know, 17 or 18 or 19 or whatever throughout history, or maybe even younger, I don't know.
So they wouldn't really be able to know for sure what the guy's potential was, right?
Because it would be theoretical, not empirical.
Now you're in your late 20s.
You are either going to do well or you're going to do badly with women.
Now, you're going to do well. You said you've got a good, decent corporate job and you're a programmer and so on.
So, okay, you can provide probably a, depending on where you live, sort of lower middle class or middle class income and all of that.
But if you are in your mid to late 20s and you don't have any substantial achievements behind, like under your belt...
Well, you've got to get some substantial achievements under your belt.
Otherwise, a quality woman is going to say, oh, you live with your parents, you play a lot of video games, and so...
No. Right, because she's not going to...
She sees a whole history there.
And she doesn't just see...
So, a quality woman doesn't just judge you.
She judges your entire environment.
She judges your family, your friends, what's going on in your social life as a whole.
She judges your habits. She judges your...
Like, she will judge the...
She will judge the whiteness of your teeth.
And I'm not kidding about this.
She will judge the quality of your skin.
She will judge your posture.
She will judge all of these things.
Because a quality woman wants to be loved.
Right? And if she looks at you and your teeth are kind of yellow and gross, then she's going to say, well, how can you care for me if you don't even care for your teeth?
Like, your teeth will give you great pain if you don't take care of them.
And your teeth, you know, bacteria and all of that, you can swallow it.
It can actually end up in your heart and can be dangerous.
So, you know, teeth are very...
There's a reason why teeth are so painful when they go weird is because you have to rip them out.
Like, historically, that was kind of the thing you had to do.
So, you know, if you don't take care of your skin, if you don't take care of your posture, if you don't exercise, if you don't take care of your hair and are reasonably well-groomed and all of that, then if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of me.
Like, you won't. Like, why would you take care of me if you won't even take care of yourself?
Right? So she's looking for self-care.
Because people who take care of themselves have excess energy, time, and emotional resources to take care of others.
Right? So, you know, it's important.
You know, take a picture, have your friend, take a picture of yourself, and then look at it like you're a very high-quality woman.
What does she see? What does she see?
Does she see somebody who takes care of himself?
Does she see somebody who's ready to take on the world, who's going to go out and battle with the forces of light and gray and darkness to win resources for the family?
No. Or yes.
Or if not, yes, then get there.
I mean, if you're overweight, right?
So you won't take care of yourself enough to maintain a healthy weight.
Oh, but I'm sure you'll be able to take care of me and the kids and maybe my parents if they get ill.
Like, it's the sort of thing that if a woman wants to bring someone along on an expensive vacation, she doesn't go to her broke friend.
Right? Because it would be kind of humiliating.
So let's say she's, I don't know, she's going to go and look at turtles, Darwin-style on the Galapagos, right?
Right? And, I don't know, it's 10 grand.
So she doesn't go to her half-unemployed, part-time barista friend who's got $40,000 of student debt and say, hey, you want to drop 10 grand to come with me to the Galapagos?
She doesn't do that. Because her friend barely has any money for herself, and therefore she's not going to have any money for a vacation.
So, do you have excess?
What is a woman looking for? She's looking for excess.
Because if you only have enough to take care of yourself, you can't take care of a family.
I mean, she's a quality woman.
She wants to stay home with the kids, and therefore you're going to need to have excess.
Now, by the time you're in your late 20s, if you don't have any excess in particular, then she's going to be like, hey, man, you could be a great guy.
Maybe you're kind of funny or charming or whatever, but, you know, I'm here for the kids.
I'm here for monogamy.
And if you don't have any excess...
Then there's nothing here for me.
A woman is looking for an excess of love because she wants to provide an excess of love, right?
So if you love yourself, that fuels your ability to love others.
If you take care of yourself, that fuels your ability to take care of others.
If you respect yourself, that fuels your ability to respect others.
If you listen to yourself, it fuels your ability to listen to others.
All care starts with self-care.
Which is why, you know, the 350-pound Marlon Brando talking about all the social justice issues was never believable.
Never believable. All care starts with self-care.
All love starts with self-respect.
So a quality woman is going to look at your teeth, your skin, your posture, your hair, your grooming, your clothing.
And it doesn't mean you have to be, like, if you're perfectly polished, then that's vanity, right?
If you're like, you know, that famous scene from American Psycho where he's like putting on all this skin cream because he doesn't feel like he exists or whatever, right?
He's constantly working out and looking great because he doesn't feel like he exists.
So if there's an excess of self-care, then that's vanity and that's going to be there to exploit others, right?
So she's going to look for healthy levels of self-care where you're not draining others of their self-care.
Capacity for love, and you're able to provide the excess that spills over from your own self-respect to provide respect and resources to others, because she is going to have an excess.
Now, when you have an excess, so for a woman who's high quality, it means she has an excess.
She has an excess of attractiveness, of good humor, of positivity, of competence, perhaps of intelligence, and certainly of love.
So she's got an excess.
Now, if you've never lived with an excess, you don't know how dangerous it can be.
If you've never lived with an excess, you don't know how dangerous it can be.
So imagine that you have wealth as a man you can't hide.
For whatever reason.
Like you have to go out dressed in the most expensive clothes, driving a Lamborghini with a half-million-dollar watch on your hand.
Everywhere you go, you're constantly signaling how wealthy you are.
You understand that you would be in a dangerous world.
Because people might rob you.
They might befriend you just for your money.
They might want you to invest in their business.
They'll constantly be talking to your money and not to you.
And it would be very tough to connect with people, right?
So a high-quality woman, I'm not just talking about physical attractiveness, but somebody who's good-humoured and charismatic and fun and easy to talk to and intelligence and, you know.
And she, of course, has her own self-care.
So self-care doesn't make you beautiful, but it can always prevent you from being ugly.
Right? Self-care... Like, taking care of your teeth doesn't mean you have a perfect smile, but it does mean that your teeth won't kill you.
Or probably. And working out doesn't mean you're going to end up like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it means you won't look like, I don't know, pear-shaped socialist guy.
And taking care of your skin doesn't mean that you'll have beautiful glowing anime skin, but it means you're probably not going to end up with a half-baked pizza face.
Taking care of your health as a whole.
So, a woman who is going to move around the world as a confident, accomplished, successful, positive, charismatic woman is advertising her quality, and she can't not do that.
I mean, I guess she... But if she walks over kind of all shrunk-shouldered, staring at the floor and mumbling, right, then that would be a betrayal of who she is.
So she's not going to do that. So she's going to be comfortable and funny and confident in the world.
And she is going to be very aware that there are guys who are going to latch onto her to drain her resources, to drain her goodwill, to drain her good humor, and perhaps even to drain her bank account.
I mean, I think everybody's known at least one woman who had a boyfriend who ran up debt on her behalf.
I've certainly known a couple of women like that, and I live in fairly elevated circles, I suppose.
So she's going to look for access.
She's going to look for, you have more than you need.
Because she's going to need, and the kids are going to need, and if you don't have access, there's nothing there for her.
So she's no more going to want to date you than she's going to invite her broke friend on the Galapagos $10,000 tour, the vacation.
So yeah, personal grooming, personal health, personal posture, personal confidence.
She's going to look at someone who's empirical.
Now, empirical is the opposite of traumatized.
Trauma is when you think that the future is going to be just like the past.
Which is why when you break with the past, you also break with trauma so often.
So she's going to look for someone who is empirical.
Now, empirical means that when you meet someone, you're meeting them for the first time.
It means if, you know, you had your heart broken by three savage psycho women, And you meet her, she's going to want you to meet her, like, in the present, empirically as she is.
Not, oh, there's a female and all female are treacherous witchy betrayers and MGTOW and Black Pill and hypergamy and all that kind of stuff.
She's going to want you to meet her like you're meeting her for the first time, because that is, in fact, what is happening.
And she is going to meet you for the first time, right?
Like they say, dance like no one's watching, sing like no one's listening, and so on.
So, she's going to want you to live in the present, And meet her as she is without at all being clouded by the past, right?
I mean, if I interacted with women as if all women were like my mother, that would be profoundly anti-empirical and anti-rational because all women are not like my mother.
In fact, very few women are like my mother.
So it would be unfair and wrong.
And again, that doesn't mean that you have no history, no empiricism. If she's some,
I don't know, hyper-tattooed, pink-haired lunatic with a hammer and sickle tattoo on her cleavage,
then you might want to move on, because it's not like you have no experience in life.
But so yeah, a high-quality woman, and she's going to ask you,
okay, well, what do you believe? What do you believe?
Well, I believe in the will to power.
You know, like I don't have any morals.
And then she's going to move on because you're not going to be a safe or secure person.
Morality means predictability, right?
Integrity means predictability.
And women who are going to have kids with someone need that person to be positively predictable, right?
Predictable in a positive manner, right?
You're not going to buy an expensive house, then wake up the next morning and say, that's it.
I want to quit and become a street mime.
Because you need to have some responsibility.
So integrity is predictability, and predictability is essential for love.
And positive predictability is essential for morality.
Integrity means that your behavior can be predicted within reasonable As in, you guys tune into this, you don't imagine I'm going to be screaming abuse and profoundly anti-rational and promoting fascism or something, right?
So there's some predictability.
Now, you don't know what I'm going to say next, but I think you know that it's going to be of use and value, right?
And I don't mean to just tell you what your experience of me talking is, so let me sort of check in here with the chat.
So is it fair to say that...
You don't know what I'm going to say next, but you do know that it's going to be of value, if that makes sense.
And just hit me with a why, if that makes sense, right?
Yeah, I mean, why do you listen to, like, this is show 5200 or whatever it is.
Like, why are you still listening to shows?
You crazy people! Because you don't know what I'm going to say, but you're fairly sure that it's going to be of value, and that's why you tune in, and that's why, you know, if you support at freedomain.com slash donate, I would really...
I appreciate that, because I know that what I'm providing is value, and the good news is I don't always know what I'm going to say next.
Also, still hoping for a rant.
You may have a slightly different standard for me, but, you know, I don't push it, right?
I have to be authentic, too. Yeah, 99% of the time, it's interesting and a value.
You know, hey, man, if I can keep it at 99%, that's fantastic, right?
Because that means 99% of listeners will donate.
Anyway, so...
Yeah, a high-quality woman, certainly by your late 20s, she's looking at the people around you, right?
Again, I've said this before, men judge women individually, and women judge men socially, familiarly, right?
You're marrying a woman, she's marrying a whole tribe, a family, a circle of friends, and so on.
So she's going to look at the people in your life.
And the reason is, she does that quite sensibly, because you're going to be off making money, and she's going to need help raising children.
And she's going to get help raising children, in part, from your family and your friends.
Right? Oh, thanks, Bo. You do support.
I appreciate that. 1% of the time it's old person noises.
That's really funny. And I'm not saying entirely inaccurate either.
But, you know, I used to think age was an insult until I saw the alternative 12 years ago when I had cancer.
So now I never consider age an insult.
It's a very, very big plus.
I got 99 problems, but a rant ain't one.
So, you may not see your parents that much, but a woman who's evaluating you is going to know for absolute certain that your parents are going to kind of come and descend upon her when she has kids and spend a lot of time with them.
And so, she's going to need to deal with them, and if they're not positive influences in your life, then she's going to have to deal with them a lot more than you.
And look, we all know what happens when we get married, in particular to a quality woman.
What happens... When you get married, what happens to your social life and your social engagements and your social planning, right?
This is to the husbands out there, right?
What happens to your social planning, to the planning for your social life, what happens when you get married?
Who takes it over? Anybody know?
Are you all married or not?
Yeah. Your wife takes it over.
Everything is figured out by the woman because you're working and you get a social life and planning and yeah, absolutely.
Your wife will, you know, you say, oh, you know, it'd be nice to have a dinner party and your wife sort of takes it all over and plans everything and makes it all happen and negotiates with everyone about what to eat and all that kind of stuff, right?
I mean, when you're a male kid and you've got all the time in the world, you just head out and hang with your friends, right?
At least that's what used to happen now.
Everyone has to go to Chuck E. Cheese and spend 50 bucks.
But... When you get married, your wife takes over your social life.
And that's great. I mean, honestly, that's a division of labor that's really good and important.
And so if your wife doesn't like your family and friends, or a girlfriend or a girl who's evaluating you doesn't like your family and friends, she's not going to want to get together with you.
Because they are a reflection of who you are.
I mean, do you know, what is the most concrete manifestation of your values?
This is really important in life.
It's not just about dating. What is the most concrete manifestation of your values?
Type away, my friends.
Let me know. Your partner, your kids, friendships, the person you choose, the person you choose...
Yeah. The people you choose to associate with.
Yeah. A man is known...
You've heard this before, right?
What is a man known by? A man is known by...
A man is known by...
What?
What? The company he keeps.
Yeah, we've all heard this before. And it's so funny because I remember hearing all these cliches when I was a kid and you kind of roll your eyes a little bit and it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it's true. So she's going to judge you by your social circle.
Because you can say anything you want, but who you choose to associate is empirical evidence of your values.
You are who you roll with.
Yes, that's right. I've been taking notes.
I've got a lot I can work on.
Right. Right.
You'll be out there working, and she's going to be dealing with your family, and she's going to be arranging things with your friends.
Now, here's the thing too.
A woman wants you to be loyal, right?
Now, if she doesn't like, let's say, your family, if she doesn't like your family, is your family going to like her?
No. Now, if...
If your family doesn't like your girlfriend or your wife or the mother of your children, does that threaten pair bonding?
If your family doesn't like her, is putting her down, is saying you're too good for her, is saying she doesn't deserve you, that she's mean, nasty, problematic, witchy, negative, whatever, right?
So, if she doesn't like your family, she knows that your family is going to try and undermine her marriage to you.
Right? Does that sort of make sense?
Now, is she going to want to get together with a man whose family is going to undermine and attack the marriage?
Yeah, she doesn't want to have to pull you away from your mother.
She doesn't want to get into a battle.
I mean, you know, the famous wife-mother-in-law conflicts, right?
Yeah. So, if she doesn't like your family, then she knows that you are going to be listening to two opposing stories about her.
Her story about her, I'm good.
Your family story about her, she's bad.
Now, She wants you to protect her.
Listen, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys.
You and I do not even remotely understand how incredibly vulnerable women are for most of their lives.
Like, we don't get it.
We can't get it.
I mean, I'm a fairly imaginative and creative person, but we cannot conceivably imagine How vulnerable women are for most of their lives.
She needs you to be 100% committed, 100% reliable.
She's giving up her youth, her beauty, her attractiveness to some degree.
And she's getting pregnant and she's going to have permanent children for the rest of her life.
So you better Be a stand-up guy who's 100% committed to her.
So a quality woman will not in a million years marry a guy who's too weak to stand up to his own family of origin if they need to be stood up to.
Do you follow? She's testing your ability to be strong.
She's testing your ability to be strong.
Because she knows there's big-ass predators out there, and if you scream and faint at the sight of a mouse, she's never going to feel safe.
Never going to feel safe.
I mean, I got asked, of course, and I got married after I could ask, what's your family like?
When I could finally answer, they're bad and they're gone, I got married.
Does this make sense to you?
Dysfunctional families keep you close so they can make sure you get married to dysfunctional women.
Because functional women will not want to get involved in any of that.
And they'll be smart and wise and self-assured enough to know that they never should.
And hit me with a 1 to 10.
How useful is this? I want to make sure I'm on track to providing value.
Good. Good, okay.
But what if you're alone after removing all the toxic people?
How do you breathe when you're not breathing cigarette smoke?
Right? How do you eat when you're not eating poison?
I mean, these are really big and deep mysteries.
How do you live when you're not constantly slicing your arms or pounding your head into a brick wall?
Man, it's tough. Very difficult things.
Because the toxic people are there to keep the healthy people away.
To keep you in the tribe of the underworld.
The dismal gathering of the broken.
The crabs in the bucket pulling you down to the boiling water in the Chinese restaurant over and over again.
Steph, I've heard you say that maturity is when you run out of excuses.
Is that related to what you just said about getting your family out of your life and getting married?
Hmm I wouldn't say that I did it with that conscious purpose,
but that was the inevitable result Thank you.
.
We always have, everybody understands, you have to face down your fears to get the prize.
And you have to face down, if you've come from a dysfunctional family, you have to face down your fears of loneliness in order to get love.
Because the loneliness is in the past, the love is in the future, and you have to face down your fears of loneliness In order to get love.
You have to, hell, let me ask you this.
So when you go down this journey of philosophy and self-improvement and wisdom and knowledge, maybe it's exercise and hopefully eating well and all of that too, when you started going down this road, how many people came along?
I've asked this before. It's a new crowd every time.
When you started going down this road of improvement, how many people came along with you from your past?
Zero. Fucking zero.
Zero. Zero. Zip.
No one. Now, you understand...
Only my wife.
Oh, good for her. They actively tried to stop me.
Yes, that's right. So you know what that means, right?
About sort of the people who...
Like when you start to think and be wise and improve, do you understand what this means when people reject or attack you for that?
It means they don't care about you at all.
They're only addicted to your failure.
Your lack of wisdom, your incompetence, your loss, your loser-ness.
They don't care about you at all.
They only care that you keep failing.
Much like wondering, what will I do with my time if I'm successful and not worrying about how to pay my bills?
Yeah, yeah. Said no one.
And yeah, maybe people will catch up over time.
Certainly nobody's left for my...
I mean, my life is divided into three epochs.
Childhood. Talking but not doing.
Doing but not talking, and then talking and doing.
Right? So childhood, and then talking but not doing philosophy, doing but not talking in the business world, and then talking and doing in the world of philosophy.
So when people attack you for improvement, it means that they're only there for your failures.
They don't care about you.
They only care that you keep failing.
Does that make sense? I want to make sure I'm...
I want to make sure I'm comprehensible.
That's so black, but true.
Yep. Absolutely addicted to your failure.
Because when I started really succeeding in life, particularly in love, people, they really disliked it.
Really kind of hated it. They really kind of hated it.
It was very sad. It was very tragic.
And, you know, in hindsight, of course, woefully predictable.
But that's just the reality.
So does that help in terms of what a good woman is looking for?
What do you believe? Okay, so what do you believe?
Well, I believe in reason and evidence and virtue and blah, blah, blah.
Okay, fantastic. So now that you're in your late 20s, I don't have to take your word for it.
Now I'm going to look for proof, right?
A reasonable, competent woman looks for proof, not words.
She looks for deeds, not action, not words.
Does that make sense? So you're going to say, oh, here's what I believe.
And she's going to say, great.
And she's going to say, that sounds great.
What's the evidence? You follow?
That sounds great!
What's the evidence? Now, if your life doesn't match your words, she's going to know that you don't have integrity.
And listen, there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, you always have to have an ideal.
Before you get there, right?
So there will always be a time where your deeds don't match your ideals, right?
So if you want to lose weight, you have an ideal body and it's going to take a while to get there.
So the gap between words and deeds, words and manifestations, theory and practice, goal and evidence, there's a gap.
And there's always going to be a gap as long as you're trying to improve.
I'm trying to make this show better every single time I do it.
Every single time I have an ideal show in my head and I'm always aiming to improve.
So there's always a gap between what I want and what I can achieve.
And that's how I think.
I always aim for 10 times the quality that I provide because that gives me the maximum possible quality that I can provide.
So, you say, well, I believe in these virtues, and she's going to say, okay, great, now you're old enough that I need to see the evidence.
Now, if there's a gap, that's fine, as long as you're conscious of the gap, right?
But if you say, well, I believe in all of these great things, and there's no evidence for them, or there's counter-evidence, she won't trust you because you say, you don't do.
And if you say, but don't do, then you live by words, not deeds, and therefore you can be talked out of loving her.
You can be talked out of loyalty, you can be talked out of monogamy, you can be talked out of pair bonding.
Because words are more important than deeds.
Does that make sense? Sorry, I know I'm going super fast here.
Let me know if this does make sense.
Yeah. If your words and your deeds don't match, and you're not even conscious of the disparities, you cannot get a quality woman.
And, you know, this is equally...
All of this is pretty true for men.
There's some... Like for women looking for quality men.
And maybe we'll do quality men either tomorrow or when I do my show on Wednesday Night Live.
We'll do how to get quality men.
There's differences because men aren't as vulnerable in the same kind of way.
They're vulnerable in other ways because the women come armed with the state these days.
So there's other vulnerabilities which need to be taken care of.
Somebody says... Yeah, something like Oliver in the present.
He acts in accordance with his words.
Yes, that's right.
That's right. Yeah, I mean, Arlo exercises his body for vanity, and Oliver exercises his integrity for virtue.
Yeah, we'll have it, Rourke, a little bit as well.
Somebody says, had that toxic person who to my ear admits he thinks I was a failure and did not believe I could improve.
Well, three years on, I did go to college and got my diploma, so reason and evidence proved him wrong.
Did not let fear stop me.
Good for you. Good for you, my friend.
Well done, indeed.
Alright, look at that.
We cooked off a cozy two hours of great theology.
I appreciate all the callers.
You know, if I'm a little abrupt with callers, a little short with callers, it's all designed to be helpful and instructive, so don't feel bad.
I'm really glad that people are honest and direct with me about what they think and feel, so I really, really appreciate that.
If, you know, this isn't a live tipping scenario.
And it's funny, too, because if people, like, I have to go where the tips are, right?
I have to go where the income is, like everybody, I respond to incentives.
So I like doing these voice call-ins, but if people don't donate, then I have to go back to the live streams because that's where I get my donations from.
So if you find these valuable and you find them helpful, sort of the back and forth with the listeners on a voice standpoint, if you can go to freedomain.com slash donate and help out the show, I would appreciate that.
I'll look for the sort of donations today.
But if you only tip when it's like, oh, it's super convenient, so I can just tip, then I'll just have to go back to doing live streams where I read.
I like both. I think that there's a wider variety of topics with the live streams where I read, but there's also more tangible examples of interaction, of course, when I'm dealing with voice.
So if you find these helpful and you want to steer me towards more voice and less of the sort of read the text live streams, then just freedomain.com forward slash donate.com.
You can also tip on the Locals post as well.
Yeah, of course, I'll post this on Locals.
You can tip there as well.
And if you're subbed, I really, really appreciate that.
And of course, it's deeply grateful.
Remember, if you're a subscriber on Locals, you are getting the Peaceful Parenting book as it is coming out of the magical voice box.
So you are getting the Peaceful Parenting book.
There's a whole feed there for donors.
I've done two chapters.
I'm going to try, hopefully, and get another one done today.
But yes, you are getting the Peaceful Parenting book.
If you are a subscriber, freedomain.locals.com, I would really, really appreciate that.
And you know what? For the rest of the day, anybody who donates will get that feed as well.
You don't even have to subscribe. Anybody who donates, you know, don't send me a dollar, obviously, right?
But anybody who donates for the rest of the day, this is the 15th of October, anyone who donates for the rest of the day, I will send a feed to the Peaceful Parenting book because it is.
Oh, thank you, Carlos. I appreciate that.
That's very, very kind. Really, really appreciate that.
Yes, also, freedomain.locals.com.
We've put a list together of all the premium shows that are up there.
Like, there's many, many dozens of premium shows that are up there.
Like, there's spiciest and wildest call-in shows, some solo shows that are just crazy good and not for general consumption for reasons that will become clear when you listen to it.
Also, my analysis of the Pink Floyd album, The Wall.
And so, you're enjoying the truth about the mild west?
Yeah, that's right. The wild, wild west is up there, although you can get that, of course, just about anywhere that I'm about.
But yes, if you go and subscribe at freedomain.locals.com, you can use the promo code, all caps UBB2022, and you get the Peaceful Parenting book.
And also you'll get links to all of the...
Because, you know, I did all these great shows that were for premium and they just kind of get buried under the shifting sands of the feed.
So we've got a place where they've all been gathered and put together.
And thanks enormously to my brothers James and Jared for all of that.
And so have yourself an absolutely glorious Sunday.
I hope you are having a great, great weekend.
And I have something going on this week.
Maybe I'll talk about it, but do me a favor.
Do me a favor if you could.
Wish me luck. Just type wish you luck.
Wish me luck for something that's going on this week.
Maybe I'll get around to it, but I need some good fortune this week.
I will ask for good luck.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
All the luck in the world. Got something going on, which I may get to tell you, but thank you everybody so much.
What a great honor and a pleasure it is to chat philosophy with you.
Man, it is the greatest thing in the world outside of family.
All right. Lots of love, everyone.
Take care. Talk to you soon.
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