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Nov. 6, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:55:01

HOW TO HAVE HOPE - Freedomain Call In

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	Hello. Hello, Stefan.
	Can you hear me? I can hear you just fine.
	How are you doing? I'm fine.
	How are you, Stefan? I am well.
	I am well. Nothing but good news these days.
	No complaints at all. All right.
	But on to you, my friend.
	How can I best help? Well, in thinking about talking to you, I've been just kind of self-reflecting on some of the things I wanted to talk to you about.
	And I've realized that at the root of it, As I imagine you can expect, is my childhood.
	So I guess first I wanted to say thank you for everything you've done for me, my family.
	You've been such a beacon of light in my life in ways you can't imagine, you know, through self-knowledge and through just having standards in your relationship.
	And I only wish I found you when I was younger.
	Well, I appreciate that. I don't want to blow past that compliment.
	That's very kind, and thank you.
	Thank you so much. So, shall we dive into the childhood?
	Yes, we shall. Where would you like me to begin?
	Right at the start, I suppose?
	See, I don't know how to describe your childhood, but wherever you want to start, I'm fine with.
	It was an awful childhood.
	It was awful.
	Verbal abuse from both sides.
	I grew up with my mother and my father.
	Verbal abuse as far as I can remember.
	My parents are immigrants from South America.
	I was born in the United States.
	So I believe, meaning it's more than a belief, that they Didn't resolve any of their long-standing childhood trauma.
	I mean, they were raised in a very third-world barbaric way themselves.
	It was only through deep digging on my part that I was even able to discover that.
	And... Absence any sort of self-examination, absence any sort of just honest appraisal of how they were just fucking brutalized by just their barbaric parents, all of it was just inflicted on me and my sibling.
	So... As far as I can remember, it's just like one of my earliest memories is just being chased around the house by my mother, who was the primary caregiver, my father.
	She was a stay-at-home mother insofar as she stayed home.
	and she didn't teach me a damn thing.
	But one of my earliest memories is just her chasing me around the house with a high heel.
	I don't remember what I did to incite her rage, but I imagine it couldn't have been anything.
	I was actually nothing more into that.
	So it was an insane situation.
	And that was my mother.
	My mother was very physically violent with me until I became large enough where it made no sense to be physically violent with me anymore.
	My father was a very avoidant individual where he disappeared into the workplace because he hated His wife, he hated his children, I think.
	And he liked to be able to just kind of always have this ready-made excuse like, oh, everything I do, I do is for the family.
	I do everything for you.
	He was never really present.
	And whenever he was present, he was deep into his addictions.
	He was big into online gambling and smoking and sports.
	So even when he was at home, he wasn't really at home.
	Sorry, do you mean sports or sports betting?
	He was into sports and he was into sports betting.
	Because smoking and sports often aren't, you know, married at the hip.
	Yes, you're right. The reason I didn't bring that up is because something I recently remembered is I remember my mom was very emotionally incestuous.
	She would oftentimes, you know, Come into my room at five hours of the night to whisper sweet poison about my father.
	And I remember one of the things that she said to me about him was that he almost bankrupt the entire family before I was born because he was a heavy gambler and she had to like take out loans or her credit card for him to start his business, which ended up being successful for him.
	but this is the sort of makeup that comprises my father.
	As I got older, it got more intense, the verbal abuse from both of them,
	because I started to just vocalize my preferences and just vocalize how dissatisfied
	I was with public school and with life in general.
	And around the age where I guess I would be in the fourth grade, so I'm guessing around the age of nine, ten, I was moved from my hometown to a completely different state, very, very far away from where I was born, which just, in my opinion, sort of really destabilized the direction I was going.
	Not that in any way my childhood was good, but it got even worse when we moved.
	Um, the public schooling situation got significantly worse.
	Interestingly enough, when I think back of like, you know, sort of my public schooling, um, in my hometown, it was leaves in, um, This is better than the area that I ended up where I live now and where I spent the rest of my formative years.
	I ended up finding out that the average IQ there is higher.
	The schooling curriculum is a little better.
	And honestly, the teachers there were just, maybe I was lucky, but the teachers there, I just recall them being more curious and more conducive towards engendering my creative spirit.
	And it was my hometown.
	I probably just had my friends and I just had More security there.
	So when that was all kind of rugged pulled from me, I just completely lost all motivation.
	In school, it created this feedback loop of me making bad grades and skipping class and my parents coming
	down on me for that.
	As I got, as I entered into my late teens, early 20s, when I could start driving at least, I just found every
	excuse to not be home.
	Bye.
	I regretfully say that I did a lot of drugs, nothing extremely hard or illicit, but marijuana.
	I think I've done some MDMA at festivals.
	The way I was raised, you know, the way I was just kind of crushed down as a child, sort of, not sort of, it completely just made me want to dissociate at every odd hour.
	So I found myself associating with the other children from abusive situations.
	I'm sorry, I'm a little I'm a little nervous right now.
	No, you're fine. Full disclosure, there are holes in my memory.
	I've listened to bomb in the brain extensively.
	As I'm in this path to recovering my childhood memories through dream work coming back to me, there are holes in my memory.
	In my mid-twenties, I got into essentially the first kind of college course that a college guidance counselor kind of told me would be a good fit for me.
	I'm so sorry to interrupt.
	Your mic is fairly bad, and I really have to concentrate to hear what you're saying.
	Are you using a headset?
	Let me try changing my settings.
	Thank you. Can you hear me?
	Yeah, I think that's a little better.
	Yeah, just, you know, I mean, after we process it, it's just a little easier to make sure people can hear you, right?
	Okay, so, sorry, go ahead.
	Absolutely. So, my mid-20s, I would get into a college program, which was not very thought out.
	Nobody in my life was really telling me what I should or shouldn't do with my life, so I sort of picked something that seemed like it would be economically viable.
	In many ways, it is.
	But I'm rather dissatisfied in the career choice I reflexively made from the childhood I came from.
	As of about a month ago, I've cut my final ties with my father.
	Completely. I don't talk anymore.
	I haven't spoke to my mother in two years.
	I feel like I'm at that point in my life now at this juncture in my life where I know I'm holding higher standards for my relationships starting with my family of origin and as I'm making these changes I just feel this swelling up of just regret about some of my career choice primarily but just the years I feel have been taken from me and Sort of what to do with that and how philosophy can kind of help guide me.
	Does that make sense? Sure.
	I feel like we're skipping most of the teenage years or dating or anything?
	Oh. Dating for me was rather difficult.
	My father was obese and my mother would fill the house with junk food.
	So I was a very fat kid.
	So, the girls I would be interested in wouldn't be interested in me.
	I would make them laugh.
	They would find me funny, but they weren't interested in me.
	It would be one of these things, too, where when I went into high school, I sort of knew I was fat, and I knew that a lot of the women who I would want to be in relationships with would not want to be in a relationship with me since I'm signaling to them you know that I'm unhealthy so I would lose weight my senior year of high school and going into my college years women would women would not I'm not going to say flock to me but I had a much easier time with women going forward It's nice when you lose weight and a handsome face emerges.
	That's pretty cool.
	It is cool.
	I just didn't know what to do with it.
	I knew that I had to lose weight, but I didn't realize at the time that the weight that I had put on was defensive.
	I think you speak on this.
	The sort of emotions and the sort of things that well out and the sort of vulnerability that I remember feeling when I lost.
	I think between my junior and senior year, I lost something like 89 pounds just running and swimming.
	Now, sorry to interrupt, did you end up with any of that sort of loose skin issue that happens to some people who lose a lot of weight or did you do it young enough that that wasn't such an issue?
	Thankfully enough, I did it young enough where that was not such an issue.
	I think I may have a stretch mark, but I'm rather tan to where you can't even see it.
	Yeah, I was funny because I was just talking with my daughter the other day when she was like, why is it so hard for people to lose weight?
	And I said, well, everyone knows what to do, and it's not that hard.
	To do it, I mean, you know, you're a little hungry, a little uncomfortable, and so on, but the reason people don't lose weight is the weight is emotional, and when they lose the weight, all of the emotions that they ate to cover up come out, and then they're both hungry and emotionally tortured, and that's pretty unplanned. You know, like, salvation is one ding-dong away.
	And it's interesting.
	It's very interesting that you say that, because as I'm connecting with just my feelings at that time, I didn't have the words for it then.
	And I was in a very unsafe situation because as I was losing weight, my parents were constantly mocking me for losing weight.
	I remember my dad would see me running outside in the cold and he'd laugh at me and be like, oh, look at Rocky Balboa over here doing his losing weight.
	Just kind of like doing this thing where...
	Yeah, the sabotage. Yeah, yeah.
	Sabotage thing, right?
	And my mom would...
	Who, interestingly enough, would always...
	Call me a fat ass and tell me to stop eating was now saying to me, oh, aren't you losing too much weight, honey?
	Honey, I feel like you're losing too much weight.
	You know, I like you better.
	And I just remember at that time just like being rather upset that my parents weren't proud of me or, you know, And they weren't proud of me.
	Well, do you know, do you know, sorry to interrupt, but do you know why parents sabotage kids who lose weight?
	Because it gives them access to a better partner later in life that can help break them free of the family system.
	Oh man, you are a PhD FDR! Well done, yeah, yeah, quite right.
	Yeah, they lose hold over their kids if their kids lose weight and get into a high-quality circle of people.
	As you say, the high-quality circle of people will be like, whoa, your family is...
	It's hard for me to...
	I guess... I know that to be true.
	It's just... It's hard for me to think that of my parents because they're just so barbaric where I... This obviously must have been just a really unconscious thing for them.
	There's no way I can imagine them consciously.
	Maybe they could have, but when I think about them, I just think of them as just being really in their childhood and being really barbaric about it.
	Like, ha ha, you're losing weight, ha ha.
	Okay, but I find this interesting, and I just want to pause at this for a sec, because, I mean, I do get this a lot, where people fight to try and understand whether parental sabotage or dysfunction or abuse is conscious or unconscious.
	So why does that matter to you?
	Why does that matter to me?
	It's almost like unconscious cruelty is less cruel, they're less responsible, I have to hold them less accountable, they're less bad.
	Is it that kind of thing?
	When you phrase it that way, it could definitely be that kind of thing.
	Because when I think about them, they're evil people in the truest sense.
	And they were...
	You know, in no way were they possessed by some, like, you know, you know, they're not like these insane, you know, they didn't have physical brain damage that caused them to do what they did.
	They did what they did, like, knowing they knew what it looked like.
	You know, they do how to act in public compared to how they act.
	Well, yeah, and I mean, you know, it doesn't take a lot of conscious...
	You know, super conscious self-knowledge to say maybe calling your kid a fat ass or, hey, comes Rocky Balboa, you know, like, that this is not good parenting.
	Like, that's, I don't know about conscious or unconscious, it's like, that's being an asshole no matter which way you cut it, and it doesn't take a huge amount of self-knowledge or virtue to know that, and we know that because they wouldn't do it in public so much, right?
	Right. So, yeah, it's just funny, like, could people die for this, like, this cover or this camouflage of avoiding judgment?
	Like, well, it must have been unconscious for them.
	It's like, first of all, no, it wasn't, because they did it.
	Unconscious stuff is really, really murky for the other person to understand.
	So, like, an unconscious thing, like, there was a guy who called in on Sunday...
	In the dial-in show on Sunday morning.
	And he was, you know, really frustrating to work with.
	So, he was very frustrated in his life.
	And so, the way he acted it out was to create frustration in other people by inviting me to help solve his problems and then giving me no emotional feedback whatsoever and pretending to be indifferent about his life, you know?
	Now, that's unconscious, I think.
	But he wasn't calling me a fat ass.
	He just wasn't being a basic jerk about things.
	So, unconscious stuff tends not to...
	It's dysfunctional, but it's not abusive.
	The moment the abuse comes in, it's totally conscious.
	I mean, would your mother say, Well, no, I call them fat ass because that's the best way to help people lose weight.
	Or, I call them fat ass because I thought that was a term of endearment.
	Like, she wouldn't say anything like that.
	I mean, so, I don't quite get the...
	You know, my mother hit me.
	Was it conscious or unconscious?
	It's like, no, she didn't hit me in public.
	She hit me in private. She knew that hitting me was bad.
	She felt bad about it from time to time, although progressively less so as time went on, as these things tend to go.
	But there's this dive for the cover of, well, I must have been unconscious.
	And it's like, I don't know what that means.
	And even if it was, this is 100% unconscious.
	So what? I mean, are you not responsible for knowing how to parent and dealing with some of your problems before you become a parent?
	Of course. Yeah, I mean, unconscious is like this kind of shield that people give their parents, which I don't understand.
	Because also, I mean, it's knowledge you can't possibly get.
	I mean, let's say that you were to grill your parents on whether it was unconscious or conscious.
	Well, first they deny anything bad ever happened.
	And then if they admitted anything bad happened, they'd say it was your fault.
	And they would never admit to malevolence on their part or even conscious or unconscious.
	So saying that something is, well, it must have been unconscious.
	It's like, well, you'll never be in possession of that information because the only people who will tell you are abusers.
	And so they're never going to tell you the truth anyway.
	anyway, so it just seems like a real murky, foggy, don't blame them kind of
	thing, but it's kind of where people are drawn to, which is kind of what I wanted
	to pause on that for a sec.
	Thank you for pointing that out.
	In the process of you explaining that, I realized that I've been doing that for a very long time.
	Even when I was, you know, being verbal about the abuses going on in my house with friends and things like this, I always kind of lighten the blow a little bit because, um, Growing up in the first world and seeing, not that the standards are anywhere passable to me at this point, comparing the sort of third world shenanigans that my parents were engaging in in the household, I suppose I must have been taking responsibility from them because I've always had this sort of pocket excuse.
	Like, well, they're from the favelas, essentially.
	What can you expect?
	Which takes away more and more responsibility from them.
	Well, you said that at the beginning, which is kind of why I bookmarked it in my head to come back to.
	I didn't want to interrupt your story at the very beginning.
	But it's a funny thing where people say, oh, well, you know, as you say, because they came from the favelas or something like that, how could they have known any better?
	And it's like, no, no, no.
	If I move to Japan, and I raised kids in Japan, but I never learned Japanese.
	I moved to Japan, never learned Japanese.
	Do I then get to say to my kids, well, you know, it wasn't really my fault because I never learned Japanese.
	My kids would say, well, what would they say?
	Yeah, I. What would they say?
	You broke off there towards the end.
	I'm sorry. So if I move to Japan, don't learn Japanese, live there for many years, and then say to my kids who I had in Japan, well, I didn't really succeed because I never learned Japanese, what would my kids say?
	Why did you learn Japanese?
	Well, number one, why didn't you learn Japanese?
	And number two, if you didn't want to learn Japanese, don't move to Japan!
	Right? So your family wanted to move to a place with, you know, property rights and free speech and, you know, the relative rule of law and a more civilized environment and something less brutal and less violent, right?
	Okay. Fantastic.
	Good for you, I guess.
	But then they have to learn the language of the place they're going.
	And so if...
	I'm moving to Japan, and I'm raising my kids in Japan, I should learn Japanese, and I should also learn something about how Japanese parents raise their children, right?
	Of course. Because my kids are going to live in Japan.
	So when people move to, I don't know, let's say America, when people move to America, okay, well, obviously, child, the treatment of children in America is significantly better than the treatment of children in Mexico, right?
	Okay, so you're moving to a country where they treat children better.
	Well, there's no way I could have treated my children better.
	It's like, what are you crazy?
	You're literally moving away from a country that's a hellhole in part because people treat children badly, and you come to the new place where they treat people better, they treat children better, and you treat your children like shit.
	It's like, that's exactly why you left Mexico!
	How dare you come to a more child-positive culture and abuse your children because you wanted to flee from a place which is a shithole because people abuse their children?
	How dare you?
	No, it's like saying, I want to go to the library to practice my jazz trumpet.
	It's like, shut the fuck up with the jazz trumpet.
	It's a library. Read the room, know your environment.
	You want to come to a place where people treat children better?
	Fine. Treat your children better.
	And they had so much access.
	They had so much access that they didn't have before to literature and to people.
	Because when they came to this country in the 80s, some of the stories they told me is just how warm and welcoming people were to, I guess, the culture at that time in America was very excited about immigration, or at least maybe where they Landed, they were pretty excited.
	Everyone wanted to have the exotic friend.
	Sorry, people, they welcomed your parents because it's partly like, well, you guys are refugees from places where they treat children badly.
	You must have come here because you want to treat your children well.
	Woohoo! Right?
	Right? But they don't understand.
	They don't understand that most of the people who come from places where they treat children badly continue to
	treat their children badly and then they wonder why their children don't do as well.
	These societies just keep replicating themselves as a result.
	So they come here to just try to recreate the same conditions that led to the shithole country to begin with.
	Yeah, it's literally like fleeing a plague and bringing the plague to the new place.
	When you don't have to.
	You can just wash your hands. We have hand-washing techniques.
	We have antiseptics now.
	No, fuck that. Yeah, yeah.
	Whatever analogy works for you.
	But yeah, no, it is...
	To me, you move to a new place, and in particular with child treatment, you move to a new place.
	If you move to a place where children are raised relatively peacefully and you raise your children abusively and violently, you are besmirching any of the virtues of your new society.
	You know, like if I move to Japan and I teach my children, you know, Japan is a very high-trust society, so you can steal stuff and people won't really take much precaution about it.
	Like, you can pick their pockets, you can steal stuff.
	Like, if you go to someone's home, you can just take something, and because they live in a high-trust society, they'll think they just lost it.
	So if I went to Japan, which is a high-trust society, and said, hey, you know what we should do?
	We should totally take advantage of this high-trust society to steal shit.
	I mean, that's foundational arseholery, isn't it?
	Foundational. And it strikes me as just being, it's insidious because, you know, like, what was the point?
	I guess the point is just, you know, more economic opportunities, obviously.
	Well, the point is that they get resources and value from the Better Child Raising Higher Trust Society, and their contribution to that is to raise traumatized children We're half broken and don't have any trust.
	And it's like, oh my god!
	We're just unleashed into the world.
	Alright, good luck. You're 18 now.
	Good luck. Have fun.
	Yeah, go compete with the kids who are raised with more sensitive parents.
	Go compete with the kids who are raised with conversational parents.
	Go compete with the kids who maybe get Nintendo taken away for a couple of days rather than chase through the house with a high-heeled shoe.
	It's very difficult to compete.
	Oh, and good luck attracting the girls.
	I mean, anything more than an exotic curiosity scenario.
	Good luck attracting the high-quality girls when you're severely traumatized.
	It's really crippling the kids.
	I find it so contemptible.
	For me, it's like you have less excuse.
	Because you fled the environment of violence, and then what do you do?
	You bring the environment of violence in your home.
	So your parents fled because of violence or destabilization or whatever it was, and then they bring exactly that to their home, and it's like, oh God, it's vile beyond words.
	Thank you for making that connection and for pointing out that it's even worse, because it is even worse.
	You're right, because I'm thinking back on those days and just...
	Again, not having the words for it, but having to compete with the children who are raised better.
	And having to make friends when your temper is more volatile and you're more reactive and you're more hyper and you have a tougher time concentrating and competing with the kids in school who have parents who sit down and help them with their homework and whatever it is.
	Good luck with all of that, with your dad smoking and puffing and gambling and your mom smoking.
	Eating and yelling and screaming and throwing things.
	Yeah, good luck, kid.
	It's horrible. Teachers just didn't care.
	Well, they did it in the first place, though, right?
	They did it in the first place, yes.
	And that does happen, for sure.
	I mean, there are obviously some good teachers in the system.
	So then you went from a place where at least you had a refuge at school to a place where it's all shit, right?
	All shit. That's exactly what happened, yeah.
	The exit hole has closed off.
	I'm going deeper and darker into the dungeon, not up towards the light.
	I think back to those years, and I really had a pathway to greatness there.
	A little bit of that could be possibly wishful thinking, because I'm guessing once I hit the teenage years, some new struggles would have arised.
	But at that point, I would have had these long-standing friendships from my childhood.
	I would have had Well, business contacts and networking.
	It's huge in life.
	It's huge in life.
	It's why people join fraternities.
	It's why there are class reunions.
	It's why now, of course, with various websites, people use the stuff to stay in touch.
	But yeah, I mean, most jobs are filled without a job application.
	Most jobs are filled through contacts, and you lose those contacts because you're raised in a way that makes you Kind of tense around functional people, or more functional people.
	You lose a lot of that stuff.
	And as a child, I was just, when that was, the move specifically, when that was transpiring, I just, I'll just never forget the classroom.
	You know, I was saying, crying, me crying.
	Everyone was confused.
	Like, why are you leaving?
	Where are you going? Why, you know, why are you You know, it's halfway through the school year.
	Like, why can't you really stay the rest of the school year?
	I remember just not having an answer because the answer was something like, well, you know, dad's got a new job, sort of, or, you know, things aren't really working out for us over here.
	Let's try this new state, you know, very far away.
	Now, how old were you at this age?
	I was nine years old.
	I mean, that's a little early, but it's very common around the double digits age for parents to move, abusive parents to move.
	I don't know if you know why.
	I think it's because it has something to do with the sort of pair bonds that you're forming with the people in your environment.
	It has to do with the sort of allies that you can form at that time, right?
	Yeah. Do you have older siblings?
	I have a younger sibling.
	Younger, okay. Yeah, so a lot of times, I was 11, you happened to be 9, but a lot of times when you get old enough to really begin to notice other families and how dysfunctional your own family is and so on, parents move you so that you don't have any bonds and don't have any connections, not just with your friends, but with your friends' parents who might be able to do something about the abuse you're suffering.
	That makes perfect sense because I just remember even at that point, whenever I would come home from hanging out with a friend of mine, I always had the sense that my dad hated whenever I'd go over friends' houses.
	He would just start prodding and You know, he would just start, like, for no reason, completely unsolicited, start, like, attacking, like, the physical appearance of a friend or just being really shitty.
	Like, you know, that friend of yours, I think he's going to turn out gay one day or something.
	Like, I remember just as a kid being just like, what the fuck is wrong with this person?
	Why are you saying that? That's my friend.
	I care about that. I love that.
	Well, now you know, right? I mean, see, you and I have not had children that we've harmed that we need to bond into the vats of secrecy.
	So we're not terrified of, you know, our brutalized kids going and talking to the world, right?
	So... But I think that's usually it.
	Yeah. You didn't want me to tell the secrets that were going on.
	You didn't want me to say it.
	Stupid motherfucker should have never let me.
	When I think about it, I think that's a big...
	The reason what saved me, I would look, I would scan the environment, I'd see these pictures on the walls of kids holding trophies with their dads, dads on fishing trips.
	I'd see them and I would cry, but I'd always held on to those images because I knew that that is what I must replicate, not what was going on in my house.
	I had that sense very early on.
	So my dad was right to suspect that this was going on.
	It absolutely was.
	Well, and it's funny how, sort of to go back to this, well, my dad was ragging on my friends, but it was unconscious.
	It's like, I'd like to know where else this unconscious defense arises in life.
	This defense of, you know, uh, yes, I did crash the car while drunk, officer, but it was unconscious.
	Uh, yes, I did assault that guy, your officer, but it was unconscious.
	Yes, I did rob this bank, but it was unconscious.
	You know, like, where else does this show up?
	I did fail that test, but unconsciously I passed!
	It doesn't show up anywhere.
	It's rather silly when you think about it.
	I forgot about the exam, but it was unconscious.
	Oh, okay, here, you can rewrite it again.
	I don't know, just this magic word, unconscious, gets you off the hook.
	It just doesn't exist.
	It certainly doesn't exist for kids, right?
	And so, yeah, it's weird.
	I was held fully accountable, fully responsible as early as possible.
	If I got a course mark on a test or a teacher was calling about why I wasn't turning in homework, there was no excuse that would have gotten me out of any sort of trouble.
	Unconsciously, Dad, I did turn in the homework.
	My lack of turning in homework was unconscious.
	Oh, well, that's fine. That's fine, kid.
	It's like this ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card called Unconscious!
	Do you imagine that that's just, like, that must have been my defenses?
	Like, maybe remaining units of my parents that were saying that to you?
	No, it's your parents' defenses, because if finally cornered, what do people say?
	I didn't mean it. I didn't mean for you to get upset.
	I didn't mean for it to be traumatic.
	I was trying to be a good parent. I didn't mean to.
	I didn't mean to says, consciously, I didn't want to.
	Now, if there was a negative effect, it's not my fault, because I didn't mean to.
	And it's just a bullshit bunch of nonsense syllables that people piece together to avoid responsibility or to try and get out of accountability.
	And that's predictably how my confrontations with my parents ended up.
	It was all the bullshit apologies and the fucking fogging and the, you know, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had.
	You know, literally, like, it's like they had the playbook and every single one of them.
	Right. And tragically, that playbook works, which is why it exists and why it perpetuates.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Needless to say, that is absolutely the case.
	Then you leave the family system and then the people you thought were your friends are now telling you, like, hey, your mom, I think she was just stressed out.
	You have to understand, she was from the third world.
	You have to understand, like, what the fuck?
	What's wrong with you? I thought I broke out of the prison.
	I just broke out of, like, solitary confinement.
	I'm still in the prison.
	Fuck. Well, I mean, it's like, You know, you break out, and then you break out of prison, and all of your friends are just, like, sweating buckets trying to drag you back in.
	It's like, what the hell are you people doing?
	They don't want to do it for themselves, and I guess it's rather threatening to everything going on for them that you're doing it.
	Right. Well, no, you see, I mean, if you were a woman in an abusive relationship, people would be cheering you getting out, right?
	You left that loser.
	Good job. He was a dirtbag.
	I always knew it. You stand up for yourself.
	You don't take any crap. Proud, independent woman over here.
	Here comes proud, independent victim of child abuse who managed to not only leave his household, but have some virtue and some morality intact.
	He wasn't totally crushed, unfortunately, like my sibling was.
	You'd think that that would be lauded Nope.
	No, no, no, no. And also, of course, the powers that be need us traumatized by our family so that we don't think of questioning the powers that be, right?
	All right. And that's where I'm at.
	I guess I'll recircle back to my teenage years, but something that occurs to me now is I didn't realize how important it was to actually have the confrontation with my father because I've confronted my mother two years ago, and we haven't talked since.
	And I haven't really spoke to my father in those two years, other than an odd text message here and there where he would text me and say he loves me or something.
	I'd be like, I'll talk to you when I'm ready, Dad.
	But it wasn't until actually finally confronting him and holding him accountable for all the shit he put us through.
	Is when I felt like, you know, after leaving there, not only did I feel proud of myself, very shortly thereafter, I also just felt this natural feeling of wanting to raise my standards even higher than that.
	I started to then, like, you know, scan my environment and be like, well, you know, if I don't need my parents, like, why do I need to, you know, this one or that one?
	Like, why is it that, like, if I'm not, you know, my standard is, you know, For example, it's going to be no verbal abuse.
	Why do I still have people in my life who are verbally abusive?
	After you defeat the Kraken, it ain't hard to defeat a lobster, right?
	Right, right, right.
	I must have underestimated.
	With that knowledge, I really wish I could not have waited as long as I did.
	I just did it sooner because it's really been life-changing.
	Well, I mean, I recommend this because I'm an empiricist, right?
	So if somebody says, oh, I love you, I love you, I love you, okay, well, then you should, you know, if your friend says, you know, man, I'm your best friend, I'd do anything for you, and you're like, hey, could you spend half a day to help me move next month?
	And he's like, nah. Okay, well, then I doubt the love thing, especially if you've helped him move five times, right?
	So, if your friend, you know, claims to have this wonderful relationship and loves you and cares for you and so on, but won't lift a finger to help you, well, that's important to know because then he's just lying, right?
	He's just lying, saying stuff to get resources from you.
	So, it's the same thing with parents, right?
	If they say, you know, I love you and I care about you, then they should be fine having conversations that are difficult.
	I'm not saying easy, like fun, but, you know, if you have a difficult conversation, they care about you, so they'll submit to difficult things.
	And if they won't, if they're like, no, I'm not going to have this conversation.
	I'm not going to admit anything.
	I'm not going to accept that you're telling the truth.
	I'm going to continue to attack and gaslight and fog and avoid and minimize and all that kind of crap.
	It's like, okay, so you don't love me because whenever I do something that's uncomfortable with you, you just attack me.
	And gaslighting is a form of attack, because it's saying, you're crazy, it didn't happen.
	So you're willing to sacrifice my sanity for your vanity, which means I don't really exist in the relationship.
	You know, like when I said to my mom those many years ago, or I said to my dad, you know, here's what happened in my childhood.
	And they're like, no, I didn't. I'm like, okay, so you prefer your delusions to my reality, so bye-bye.
	Because it's not a relationship then, right?
	Right. It's not love.
	It seems to be...
	Well, it's hatred, really, because they're willing to sacrifice my sense of reality and truth, my knowledge of what actually happened, for the sake of just surviving the next couple of minutes.
	They're willing to burn down my entire sense of reality and call me insane and delusional because I upset them.
	I mean, it's worse than no relationship.
	That's virulent. That's like a brain virus that attacks you.
	Anybody who fucks with my sense of reality is completely disposable to me.
	I'll just tell you that straight up.
	This is my principle.
	That doesn't mean I'm always right.
	I'm pretty humble about that kind of stuff.
	But if I know something happened and someone tells me it didn't, nope.
	Don't care. I'm not interested.
	Don't fuck with my sense of reality because that's a brain toxin.
	I'd rather have a serious illness than lose any sense of reality or question a sense of reality because you're totally screwed if you lose that, right?
	The amount of crazy-making that you're describing that's out there, it's overwhelming.
	It's just that. Well, it used to just come from families.
	Now it comes from everywhere, right?
	Media, movies, TV, you name it.
	It's just crazy. I'm not going to say it's hard for me to hold on to my sanity because I listen to you, I read you, and others.
	I choose the healthier meals than the unhealthy ones, but it's just sometimes I'll empathize with other people and I look at where they're at and I just see them like, wow, it's really difficult to carve out some sanity for yourself in the society that is very much oriented towards just breaking you in every single possible way.
	And if your parents won't do it, the public schools do it, the military will do it, the higher academia will do it.
	Hollywood, you name it. It's like, how do people even wonder, you know, Zoloft prescriptions are through the roof and things like this.
	It's really sad. Oh, yeah.
	You try to bring any sense of reality.
	I mean, this was my experience on Twitter, right?
	Just try to bring some basic facts and reality to people.
	I mean, it's sort of my famous Taylor Swift tweet where I said, you know, 90% of her eggs are dead by the age of 30.
	It's like, well, that's just a fact.
	And the amount of rage that people have towards facts is like, okay, well, I don't have to care what happens to you.
	Like, if you rage at me for facts...
	I don't have to care.
	In fact, I won't care.
	I resolutely won't care.
	I won't care what happens to people who rage against facts.
	If you say to someone, smoking is bad for you, and they rage and scream at you and try and get you fired and harm your income and defame you and so on, it's like, okay, so when you get cancer, I'm not caring.
	That's the price you pay for railing at me because I'm pointing out facts that are designed to help you.
	It's a beautiful thing to decouple from the world.
	And say, the world hates the truth-tellers, so I don't have to care what the liars do to the world.
	Like, if you choose lies over truth, I think it's sad, I think it's a bad idea, but it's a great relief and release for me.
	Like, you know, I asked my mother...
	Accept what happened to me and let's talk about it.
	Let's try and work out some kind of resolution.
	She chose attack and lies and screaming at me and so on.
	It's like, whew, that's unpleasant.
	Don't get me wrong. It's really unpleasant.
	But the upside is, I don't have to care what happens to her after that because there's nothing else I can do and I gave it my best shot.
	I don't know if that's been your experience or not.
	Halfway through my...
	Because I actually had a paper written out for both of them.
	So when I was... One of the things I've...
	I stated at the beginning of my paper was, you know, please let me finish.
	Do not interrupt.
	I told them something I knew.
	I kind of knew what happened. But, you know, I wrote it there anyway.
	Like, please respect me enough to let me just finish what I have to say.
	This might be hard to listen to, etc., etc.
	And halfway through confronting my...
	Both of them really. It was at the halfway point for both of them where both of them just stood up in just, like, indignation.
	Like, where is this coming from?
	What is this? You know, the...
	We haven't spoken in years, and now you're coming here telling us how evil we are, how bad we are, and we're the worst parents ever, and we did everything we could, and we moved to the good zip codes to send you guys to the good schools, and blah, blah, blah.
	And I remember just having almost an out-of-body sort of experience.
	I got a little meta with myself where I was just really studying their body language when both of them had that temper tantrum at the juncture of my paper.
	And I just remember thinking, like, wow.
	These people are dead to me.
	Were they ever alive?
	When did I ever exist to them?
	This is sad, but I can't have them in my life.
	I can't have them around my offspring.
	Well, especially because I assume that when you were a kid, you weren't allowed to have tantrums and yell at people for telling you the truth?
	No. No.
	As a child, I believe I was...
	I just, you know, I remember one of my earliest memories was, you know, because I was born...
	I guess my head was really big, so I was a C-section baby.
	And I just remember... That future FDR brain, baby.
	I just remember as a kid...
	Not a kid.
	This is like maybe a newborn.
	These are like really early memories.
	But I just remember just feeling like my mom wasn't very...
	Like, attached to me.
	I would later find out she went right back to work, essentially, after I was born.
	And, you know, one of my grandmas came to watch me.
	And I wasn't breastfed.
	And I just remember just being in, like, a playpen in the basement and just watching, I don't know if you remember this TV program, Barney the Dinosaur.
	I just remember looking at Barney and just, like, wishing he was my mom and my dad.
	You might as well have been in orbit.
	What do you mean by this? Well, I've been that far away from people, right?
	You're in the basement watching TV, like one of those Romanian orphanage kids.
	I mean, you might as well be in an orbit around the world as far as contact with people went.
	I think of that often, just me.
	Yeah, that's exactly it.
	There was no one there. It was just me and a guy in a purple dinosaur suit.
	And one of the things he would say I think at the end of his show was with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you.
	Don't you say, I love you too.
	And he would hug himself and kind of model that for, I suppose, the viewers.
	I remember just hugging myself in the playpen in the basement.
	I mean, that's really, really sad.
	And I'm so sorry for all of that, my friend.
	That's just I mean at least you were able to find some self-soothing at that but that never should have been your job
	I did the best I could My fucking ass. I didn't do anything.
	I was hugging myself.
	Right. Well, and the funny thing is, and I don't mean to take your mom's side here, but let's go real dark and cynical, if you don't mind, and say that her putting you in the basement was doing the best she could because you'd have been even more fucked up if she'd been around.
	I've recently thought of that, too.
	I've been thankful about that, you know, like, I believe she was more than a belief.
	You know, she may deny it, but I have, you know, I think she has hinted at this in the past, but, you know, deny she ever says to me.
	But I believe she was sexually assaulted, I think, from a family member.
	Well, she's from Mexico, isn't she?
	I'm afraid the rates of childhood sexual abuse in Mexico are not zero.
	It's actually, like...
	More the Brazil-Argentina area, but that's probably absolutely still the case, especially the area where she's from.
	I'm very aware. She's from the murder capital of Brazil.
	From my understanding, that's what I'm told, at least.
	From my understanding, too, and she denied this when I confronted her in our last conversation.
	I think it was an older cousin or an uncle, possibly.
	But now she says, well, I don't think that happened.
	Did I say that? But she behaved in that way.
	She behaved in a way that betrayed just the lack of pair bonding and early sexual trauma or many sexual partners.
	She definitely was icy and cold and would oftentimes shoot these murderous glares at me throughout my childhood and well into my teenage years, these killing me in her head kind of looks.
	And I just remember just being really confused because it was like, Very strange as a child, seeing death in your parents' eyes.
	Oh yeah. Sorry to interrupt, but the memory sort of popped into my head.
	I had a friend in my mid-teens who was very smart, very funny, very cynical.
	And I was listening to the song Hungry Heart the other day by Bruce Springsteen, and it starts off with this big, yeah!
	You know, this big yell. And I remember my friend driving, and I was in the passenger seat, and that song came on the radio, and he turned to me and just mimicked that yell at the beginning of the song, like, perfectly.
	And I was like, wow, that's...
	I don't know why, it was very funny.
	But earlier, we would be playing Dungeons& Dragons or something, or chatting, and, you know, my friends and I... We'd often just sort of fall asleep on the couches, right?
	We had one of those big sort of 70s L-shaped couches in the house.
	And we'd just sort of sleep and then in the morning we'd make some breakfast or something like that.
	And I remember my friend wouldn't stay over.
	He'd never stay over. Now most times he'd just catch the bus home because he lived a good hour and a half walk away.
	But I remember one time it was too late for the bus, right?
	And it was like, I don't know, 2 in the morning.
	The bus stopped at 1.30 or something.
	And rather than sleepover, he just walked home.
	Like in the middle of the night at the age of 14 or 15, he walked home for an hour and a half.
	In a big city and I remember saying to him, hey man, did anything bad ever happen to you at night?
	No. I was like, um, there's a reason why you can't sleep over us anywhere, right?
	There's something. Of course, I never did find out what happened and his life went fairly badly after high school, but that's the kind of stuff that in hindsight you sort of realize.
	How awful. Now, what's happened?
	You said offspring and so on.
	So what's happened with dating and all that sort of stuff from teens on?
	Sure. It wouldn't be until I was 21 years old or so is when I'd have I wouldn't even call it a girlfriend.
	I didn't really even have girlfriends until my You know, my now wife, but I had like these women who, you know, we were, you know, we were kissing and we were, you know, we never had sex, but we would make out and we would essentially do everything other than sex with each other.
	I had a series of those, probably like four to five before meeting my now wife at the age of 26 when I met her.
	And those women, oftentimes I would not get sexual.
	Not oftentimes. I would not like, you know, actually have sex with them because, um, Even at that time, as dissociated as I was, they were just very much like my mom in very fundamental ways.
	In hindsight, and I wish I realized this then, they were also kind of signaling to me all throughout our very short relationships that they were probably molested by family members.
	Oh, how are they signaling that?
	How are they signaling that?
	I'm not doubting you. I'm just curious what signs you saw.
	So for me, I noticed that with women I encounter in the world who've had abortions or who have had been sexualized as children, there's like this kind of coldness that they can demonstrate that I assume has something to do with whatever kind of poison was put into them by Maybe literally being raped and not doing anything with that poison?
	Or like knowing that you...
	Oh, you mean dehumanization?
	Right, dehumanization.
	Well, sure. I mean, they were used as objects.
	And so human beings are defined as objects you use.
	And that's where the coldness comes from.
	If you displease them or if there's something that they're upset about, they just dehumanize you because they themselves were dehumanized.
	And the emotional whiplash, even at those times, would just immediately bring me back to my childhood.
	I'd be like, wow, that's just my mom.
	And I was not nearly as curious at that point in my life then, but even as curious as I was, they would just not go there with me.
	It would be one of these things where I would try to be like, well, how are things like for you as a kid?
	And they'd just be like, shut the fuck up, kind of.
	Oh, really? Okay.
	So their parental alters had completely taken over their personality at that point.
	Don't you be digging where the body saw, brother.
	I remember one of my last...
	She referred to herself as my girlfriend.
	I suppose I can say...
	We dated for six months, but I now kind of suspect that she was also nursing another relationship, too.
	That's something I just kind of...
	Just her very suspicious behavior when I sit and think back of those years.
	I think she was carrying on two relationships at the same time, but I never really got confirmation on that.
	She was very...
	I remember even just at the early goings telling me essentially that I'm going to be in charge of the household.
	When we get married, I'm going to be calling the shots.
	I'm going to be... I remember meeting her dad.
	He was this dead guy that was just in the...
	Spiritually and intellectually dead, he was just glued to the television set with his nagging life, just like...
	Coming over our house and meeting the parents, just seeing that he was just defeated and waiting to die.
	And I remember just thinking, like, is that going to be me?
	Am I going to just be defeated and waiting to die?
	That's a chilling phrase.
	That's what he was.
	That's what he was. He's like, hello.
	There was nothing in there anymore.
	The lights were on, but no one was home.
	I just remember asking my then-girlfriend about that and her being like, oh, that's just my dad.
	My mom is more of the breadwinner.
	She's more of the primary parent at the household.
	I just remember thinking at the time, And then very early on, she started being just very contemptuous towards me.
	And whenever I would go against her preferences, she would just like claws out, just call me awful things.
	And it just fizzled after six months where I just was like, listen, I can't go on with this.
	Obviously, you don't really like me that much.
	Obviously, you'd do better with someone more suited to your specific needs.
	She texted me for like six months after that begging me to come back and I never did.
	It's funny when you date people and, you know, the women obviously, right?
	And you come to the realization they're just like tall kids.
	I mean, I remember breaking up with a girl once and she tried to win me back and there were lots of phone calls, which were very expensive back in the day.
	And I would call her, you know, sometimes it was not, you know, not the cleanest break, because these things sometimes aren't.
	And I just remember afterwards, she's like, well, you owe me for half of the price of these phone calls, and that's on my dad's line, and he's really mad at you.
	And I'm like, Daddy?
	Daddy is your negotiating tactic. I'm like you just like a big kid
	Once you see it just can't unsee it No, that's true. Like, oh, like, So, where are we now?
	What's prompted the contact to me?
	Well, I've taken like a good two years of not listening to your content.
	I got really into politics.
	Ah, yes. Well, that would do it.
	I've been there. Yep.
	I got really into politics.
	And, you know, this was around the time that you were, you know, being, you know, essentially jettisoned out of everything and being banned on everything.
	And, you know, in the political movement we were in, they were very much, like, don't talk, you know, not like don't talk to Steph, but they were very, like, anti-Steph people.
	You know, they were very... I completely understand.
	And I totally sympathize.
	That makes sense to me. Does it?
	Oh yeah, totally. I mean, if you're really into politics and you believe that there's hope, then when I abandon politics, I would be perceived as a betrayer and a guy who's abandoning the field at the time of the greatest battle, or almost someone who drew people into the field of battle and then said, good luck, peace out! I mean, I can completely understand where people are coming from with that sort of stuff, and I do sympathize.
	Yeah, that's spot on.
	That's exactly what it was.
	You were offering something different.
	You were saying things that they didn't want to hear.
	So it was just kind of like, don't look there.
	Don't feed the ducks.
	Don't pretend the ducks aren't there kind of thing.
	Well, I mean, the funny thing is that people, I mean, they got mad at me.
	And again, I completely understand that and I sympathize with it.
	But what they needed to do was they needed to get people to support me.
	So one of the reasons I left politics was, like all my colleagues just...
	Ghosted me when I was deplatformed, right?
	And it's like, okay, that's sort of important.
	What do they know that I don't know?
	These are people who were more embedded in political systems than I ever was.
	And it's like, okay, so if people wanted me to stay in politics rather than yelling at me, it's like, it's easy, just get people to support me.
	And that may be something that I would then consider, right?
	But they just kind of like they recoil and don't do anything to support me which only adds to okay
	Well, this is too dangerous then Yeah, I see that now
	I mean, if people were organizing some big grassroots thing, right?
	And I'm not saying whether they should or shouldn't have, right?
	But, you know, when I was kicked off a bunch of platforms, if people were like, no, we're going to get a grassroots movement going.
	We're going to get a petition. We're going to get everyone together.
	We're going to organize a concert for Bangladesh or, you know, whatever, like whatever.
	We're going to get a whole bunch of people together and they're going to make sure that you are going to, and they're going to say, well, if he's not back, we're gone.
	And, you know, they could have really got a whole movement going.
	But nobody did, right?
	And again, I'm not complaining about that.
	I don't think that's a bad thing.
	It's just information, right?
	But rather than people rallying and saying, gosh, we've really got to make sure that Steph has a good place to land.
	He was really inspiring, took a lot of bullets for the course.
	But everyone, like even the people who were like, man, I'm really mad at Steph.
	It's like, well, you could solve that by...
	Getting a big thing going where I feel supported and cared for.
	You know, paying something back for everything that I'd given to the world by rallying around support for me.
	But they didn't. They just got mad at me.
	I mean, I understand that, but it's very immature, if that makes sense.
	Very powerless. I mean, people had a massive capacity to get me back in the fray, but instead they just shat on me and it's like, okay, well, that's more information that's helpful, I guess.
	How short-sighted and how stupid?
	Because what you're saying is that maybe there exists a reality where you may have stuck around longer if people actually signaling to you that you were wanted there to begin with or that they would come to your defense in your time of need.
	Yeah, I think so.
	I mean, I did take a lot of bullets and did a lot of good for the course, and I was very early on.
	I mean, I obviously looked when I was being deplatformed, and people were like, they could have said to so-and-so, hey, you've got to have staff on your show.
	I mean, the guy just got deplatformed, and there was none of that really going on.
	People weren't inviting me on their shows, and there was no particular movement.
	There was no, you know, we've got to get him back.
	This is so unfair. There was no crowdfunding.
	There was like nothing, right? Again, I'm not blaming everyone.
	But I just want people who are maybe listening to this, like, don't feel helpless.
	You know, if someone's not doing something you want, right, you have two choices, right?
	If someone's not doing something you want, you can find out why and work to address that, right?
	And one of the main reasons was I was ghosted and not supported by people, so the way you would solve that is get people to stop ghosting me and start supporting me, right?
	If I say, well, this is why, you address the root causes and you try to, you know, deal with the person's objections, assuming the objections are reasonable, and these were reasonable objections.
	So, if I say, here's why, and people can then solve that and influence my behavior that way, that's sort of one thing you can do, and I think that's a fairly mature and positive thing to do.
	It might not work 100% of the time, but it's a reasonable thing to do.
	Find the root causes of why someone's doing something, address those causes, hopefully get them to change their behavior accordingly, right?
	You know, like if somebody says, I can't afford this car, then you find some way to put them on payment plan or lower the price or lower the interest rate so that you can address that issue.
	That's one thing you can do if someone, like me, is not doing what you want.
	The other thing you can do is just rage against them, shit on them, besmirch their name, call them traitors, bastards, hypocrites.
	Just rage at them, right?
	And no honorable person will change its course based on rage.
	No honorable person.
	I mean, look, I've had...
	Many better abusers than anonymous people on the internet in my life, and I've mastered them all.
	So no honorable person would say, oh, this person is raging at me and calling me terrible names.
	For sure I'm going to do what they want.
	I mean, I just looked at that stuff like, are you kidding me?
	Like, in what world does this work?
	Oh, that's right, in your world.
	And I'm afraid you're going to get stuck there.
	Not yours, like the person I'm talking to.
	Right, right. And you saw that, and you were just like, well, goodbye.
	Right call. Right call.
	Okay, good luck.
	I'm not going to care more about people than they care about themselves.
	Well, and I'm not going to care about people who think that the way to motivate a philosopher is to scream abuse at him rather than find and address reasonable root causes.
	Which they're not going to do. I was around people who are just very anti-philosophy.
	No, I get that. The last thing I would say is, let's say prominent guy X used to be a big supporter or fan, or we did a bunch of shows together, and that person ghosted me, then people could say, look, we're going to really encourage people like person X to support Steph and say positive things and X, Y, and Z, right? Or, you know, we're going to organize a boycott.
	Because then that person has no loyalty, right?
	Because they're saying that my lack of loyalty or whatever is a problem, but then they never had any problem with other people's lack of loyalty to me or to my virtues or whatever it is, right?
	And so, yeah, but there was no movement about that.
	And so it's like, okay, so people don't really care that much about me, which is fine.
	Like, they don't have to. Obviously, I've got people in my life who do.
	But yeah, it's just kind of funny when people are like...
	You should put your entire life on the line for what I want, but I'm not going to even organize an online petition for you.
	And it's like, fuck you. No way.
	You've got to be kidding me.
	What a ridiculous equation that is, right?
	You put everything you hold dear in danger...
	Well, I... what?
	Oh, I'll tell you what, I won't call you an asshole.
	I'm like, eh, that's not a deal.
	That's not a deal I'm interested in.
	If you got me bothered to create a petition, why would I put everything on the line for you?
	Anyway, I just wanted to point that out.
	What does that say about your own self-worth that you would even, like, you know, want to...
	I mean, you being the philosopher that you are, you know, you're just like, what?
	Oh, yeah, no, like, that's not even remotely tempting.
	Worked so hard to get this wisdom and these people are like apes.
	Because that's what they were like.
	They were anti-philosophy and very heavy on the Christian nationalism stuff.
	I allowed myself to just become awash in that.
	Sure. I needed to, because I was an atheist my whole life, essentially.
	Maybe agnostic for a little bit.
	When I met my now wife, she was one of these Baptist Protestants.
	And one of the things she told me very early on in our relationship is that if we were to have kids in the future, I want them to be raised Christian.
	That's a I said, that's an absolute, that's a deal breaker, right?
	And I remember at the time, just comparing her to the women that I've, you know, who I had encountered before, like, you know, some of the things I've told you, and I just remember, like, she's from a lot, you know, she's, she wasn't from a good family, but she was like, you know, she was way more, you know, put together and way more virtuous than these people were and had more capacity for virtue.
	Well, she was Christian, so she had some real morals, right?
	She had some real morals, and she had some really good father figures in her life, and I discovered that about her at that time.
	So I wasn't very principled in my atheism at the time, so I'm just like, you know what?
	I'm willing to give this Christian thing a fair shake if it means, A, I can marry this woman, and or, B, also find some better people to associate with, because even if I don't agree with them on The whole God thing.
	At that time, I had kind of assessed that these were just friendlier, kinder people than the people I had met previously, on average.
	They had some virtue just from going to a Christian school and going to church and stuff like this.
	And that tied into my involvement in politics because With the Christian nationalist stuff, it's very much, you know, like, oh, you know, God's on our side, you know, the Holy Spirit is with us.
	A lot of this sort of rhetoric where, you know, as long as we pray hard enough and we evoke Jesus' name hard enough, that we're going to get the final victory kind of thing.
	And I, you know, that was just anti-empirical, one.
	And two, I just, you know, it was, you know, from not, like, Engaging in your content and engaging in philosophy for those two years where I stopped listening to you.
	I just let my standards drop all throughout the board and I just allowed myself to just get lost in this kind of group delusion thing.
	No, and again, I sympathize with all of this and I understand it.
	And I mean, just very briefly, it's a big conversation and I want to make sure we get to what you wanted to talk about.
	But to me, this sort of religious nationalism stuff, it's like, well, you know, it's like, well, I'm going to rewind the horror movie and it's going to turn into a comedy.
	And it's like, no, I mean, we did that.
	The Christians and the nationalists were unable in the 19th century, and again, we don't want to blame anyone now for this, but they were unable to resist the temptation offered to them by the government to take control of the schools to avoid the Catholicism, in particular the Protestants, right?
	They're like, oh yeah, we'll give control of the schools to the government so that we can maintain our Christian values.
	And it's like, yeah, that's not going to work.
	I mean, because, you know, agnostics and atheists are going to take it over and program your
	kids to the exact opposite.
	I mean, that's, you know, it's to deal with the devil.
	So for whatever reason, like, and even now, I mean, I know absolutely for sure that there
	are some, many Christians who believe that the school is pretty bad for the soul.
	And obviously they're right.
	But I, we need something really different.
	And...
	Because the religious nationalism thing was tried, and that's where we've ended up.
	So the rewind and hoping for a different ending is hoping that somehow, you know, and honestly, it's literally like this time communism will work.
	I mean, I hate to sort of be that reductionistic, but it's like, no, we need something really different.
	Peaceful parenting, stateless society goals, and so on.
	That's not been tried before.
	And I'm a big one for trying new things when everything else doesn't work.
	Part 6 has been really good.
	All of it has been really good.
	But Part 6, Peaceful Parenting, your book has been really, really edifying and really good.
	And that is where I'm at now.
	Oh, good. Thanks. It gets spicier.
	I imagine it's tears.
	You've got me crying in each single one.
	I'm glad. I mean, I'm not glad that you're crying, but I'm glad it's helpful.
	All right. So let's get to your day-to-day now.
	What's going on? So I'm married now.
	My wife is pregnant with twins.
	Oh, congratulations. Or not.
	It's going to be very exciting.
	Thank you. No, I'm very excited.
	They're due here very, very soon, within a month or so.
	And the reason I reached out to you, Stefan, is because I'm in my early 30s now, and I realize that a lot of the decisions that I've made, more specifically my career, I suppose, is what I'm really getting at.
	I made them in a dissociated state when I was very far away from my true self and I was just reactively and reflexively doing things in the environment.
	I'm trying to figure out what the next step for me is to either entrepreneurship or into just doing something different with my life, figuring out how I can better be of value to people.
	Because the job that I'm at right now has turned rather, especially after all the COVID stuff, it's the healthcare industry, This turn, I've really seen how immoral it really is at its core, and I really don't want to do it anymore.
	Yet, with a pregnant wife, two newborns on the way, it's one of these things where it's like, is now the time to just stop what I'm doing and just try something different?
	With the economic situation being what it is, with inflation being what it is, it's a little, I guess, nerve-wracking and scary to be having these sorts of revelations at this stage of my life.
	Needless to say, I wish I had come to self-knowledge sooner and come to these revelations sooner and come to my parents sooner, but things being as they are, I didn't.
	Now I'm kind of stuck in a job, which I fucking hate, and it's just...
	What is it that you...
	So, I guess two questions.
	What is it that you hate about your job and what are the moral compromises you've seen
	in the industry, I guess, particularly COVID and post-COVID?
	I hate that it's...
	Wow, that's a lot.
	I hate that.
	I hate that it's...
	Okay, I'm gonna just go ahead and say it.
	I hate that it's predominate...
	dominate.
	It's essentially a female-dominated field.
	Most of my co-workers are females.
	That's very frustrating because I don't have any issues with women as a whole, but women that I've worked with and I've worked with throughout the years are very traumatized, and it's difficult as I become less traumatized to work around these people and it not just be a very grating experience for me.
	I hate that the most about my job.
	The room for growth in this job is just, you know, there's really none.
	I could, you know, take a master's or a PhD and then get to the highest point of it.
	But at that point, I feel like there will be some, like, soul death that would accompany that.
	I say that because I know people in my field who have went to the logical conclusion of the job and something happened between their associates and their PhD where it's like they're just gone.
	Because I think you just have to make sort of compromises in the field itself and sort of like accept a lot of lies about the medical field for you to really just go forward, especially after COVID. And what about COVID is what like opened my eyes to that is when all that vaccine stuff was, you know, rolling around, which everyone seems to have already forgotten.
	I was threatened.
	You know, like you need to get your you need to get or schedule your your shots here or we're going to fire your ass.
	And I remember just being like, okay, well, I'm not going to do it.
	And it was like a last-minute thing where our governor here in the state passed a bill.
	But I was already on my way out, essentially.
	I was being kicked out of the door.
	I just remember at that time at work, the things that were kind of being said by doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists were just very genocidal.
	People in my workplace were saying things like, and I quote, We need to get the unvaccinated and we need to just arrest them or put them in like camps with one another and I was like sitting next to a guy who was saying that and you know rather than like being met with like Like, it looks of, like, what?
	He was, like, you know, just, like, thunderous applause.
	Like, yeah, you know, yeah, this COVID thing is crazy.
	People are dying left and right.
	These unvaccinated people killed my mom, you know, and then everyone's just, like, and I was just looking at that situation and just being, like, holy shit, like...
	Yeah, yeah, like, they don't even get the basic principle that whoever's pointing at your, quote, enemy is almost certainly the enemy.
	But anyway, go on. And I just remember, like, sitting and just My work desk and looking at that and being like, are they gonna, you know, am I gonna be able to even, like, hide for much longer?
	Like, am I, are they gonna, like, just eventually, like, make me wear something that denotes that I'm unvaccinated?
	Like, you know, these are the sort of things I was thinking about.
	Or take you away to a camp. Take me away to, like, some of the footage I was seeing out of, you know, I think Australia and some other place at the time that seems to be what was going on or some of that stuff was starting and these were you know that's where my head was at and I just remember at that time just being like like I work in an evil system with a lot of evil people and I can't in my good conscience go up to patients and things like this and push this experimental thing on them.
	So I didn't.
	And people noticed that I didn't.
	I had been spoken to about that by managers and things about well-known.
	It's important that people are well-educated on the pluses of taking this vaccine and I'm just like, well, it hasn't really been researched.
	I wouldn't want to drive a Honda that hasn't went through any of the tests and just take it on the highway.
	Well, except the Honda's based on technology that's 100 years old that's worked.
	Right, exactly. Not even a good analogy.
	Essentially, it's one of these things where I just knew at that point that...
	Whatever I may have thought about the medical system up to that point, which would have been something closer to like, I think there are basically good people in this that are doing the right thing.
	And I think we're trying to spread this message of prevention and not actual just pushing medication and pushing therapies on people to now where I'm at.
	Well, I think the entire medical industry is essentially corrupt from its absolute center.
	It's not about health. It's about anti-health.
	And the vaccine stuff really just, like, showed me just like, well, you know, we're fully in league with the governments and we're fully in league with just the most evil, predacious people in this world.
	And by me taking a paycheck in this job, I am complicit to some degree in it.
	And I can't say otherwise, you know.
	And all the subversive things I've done at work, you know, Where I've been honest with, like, people.
	Because I've had people who've been like, you know, should I do this thing?
	Or should I take this thing? You know, so-and-so said I should.
	And, you know, I would never tell people what to do.
	But I would always, like, kind of just encourage their skepticism.
	I realize that that's eventually going to just get me fired or get me in more trouble.
	It's probably... Instead of doing this, like, I can do things from the inside and just, like, be a thorn in their side.
	I realize that that's rather silly.
	And it's just going to... Make me unemployed.
	It's funny. You're just talking about vaccines and then saying thorn in their side.
	It's not... Anyway, just kind of an interesting analogy.
	So it was really the...
	Honestly, if it wasn't... Maybe it would have come at some other point, but if it really wasn't, Stefan, if it wasn't for the genocidal ideations that were just all around me with the whole vaccine stuff and the unvaccinated stuff, I wouldn't have maybe come to some of these sort of like Because even before then, it's not like I was happy at my job.
	It was one of these things where I'm like, eh, it's not the worst thing ever.
	And I can see myself growing in this and maybe investing and maybe starting a small business in my mid-30s or something.
	But now it's like, dude, these people might be smiling at me now, but I know in my heart of hearts that I know what lurks in their heart of hearts.
	It's going to just take another lockdown or another...
	Which is probably going to happen because it worked the first time.
	And the next time, it's probably, you know, will I be able to get away and hide and not get whatever sort of forced medication or forced therapy on me?
	Probably not. Well, and your kids too, right?
	I mean, so you've got your father protector thing going on here too, right?
	All kicking in. As soon as I heard that, you know, as soon as the ultrasound technician put her probe on my wife's belly and she said, there's not one, there's two.
	I just felt this like Excitement and just, like, sickness in my stomach.
	Like, oh man, they're being born in such a shitty time.
	I'm so glad for them, but my heart breaks for them because I didn't make this world that they're going to be born into, and I'm going to do everything.
	They're being born in a shitty time?
	Man, am I going to push back against that with you, my friend?
	Oh, okay. I think I know what you're...
	I think... No, no.
	Tell me what I'm gonna say.
	I'm curious. Okay.
	It's... I feel like it's not...
	It's a very anti-child time.
	You know, like, whenever I broach the, you know, the subject of peaceful parenting with people, it's just the, you know, the poo-pooing and the, oh, you know, they're gonna turn out like pussies kind of thing.
	The over-sexualization of children.
	I thought everyone left pussy.
	All right. Go on. The over-sexualization of children.
	It's just not a very anti-natalist sort of society.
	A lot of my friends, former friends, they're all dog moms and dog dads.
	No one wants to have kids. My two children are not going to have...
	Okay, okay. Sorry, fuck the world. Sorry.
	Maybe this is what...
	Maybe because you're giving me politics and sociology, right?
	Which, you know, I understand and sympathize with.
	All right. I'm going to spin you a tiny scenario.
	Give me 30 seconds, all right?
	I'm not trying to give myself all the praise here, but if you had never encountered me
	or the arguments for peaceful parenting, how do you think you'd be parenting?
	I wouldn't spank a...
	I wouldn't yell. I wouldn't verbally abuse.
	But without the morals behind it, how tough would that have been to maintain?
	I mean, kids can get under your skin like nothing else, man.
	You're right. I can see myself not have been able to maintain that, especially if they got under my skin.
	When would it have been a better time for your kids to be born?
	Like, forget the politics and the sociology and the antinatalism and all this kind of crap, right?
	So for you... And your kids, and you as a father, if they'd been born 20 years ago, well, they still would have, you know, well, now they'd be in their 20s when there may be a draft.
	So, you know, there's that.
	But they would have been born prior to you ever having heard about peaceful parenting as a moral and a philosophy.
	Absolutely. So if you were your kids, when would you choose to be born?
	Well, after you came in contact with peaceful parenting, which is kind of the present, right?
	Right. Yeah, that's true.
	Forget the world, man.
	If you kids, look at the entire 150,000 years of your brutal lineage.
	Right? In Central America, right?
	Or South America. Like, think of that entire 150...
	Now, you get to choose when you're born.
	Oh, I'm going to wait for the peaceful parenting guy.
	Yeah, I would have...
	Your kids are the luckiest kids in your entire freaking lineage, brother.
	By a metric amount, too.
	Like it's oh by infinity Yeah, that's true
	It is true. I mean, that's, you know...
	Now, your nationalist friends are going to give you all the doom and gloom.
	I'm giving you the sunbeam of hope through the clouds.
	Your kids, like, all the kids, like, the world had to wait for the internet for the message of peaceful parenting to get out there, without a doubt.
	There's way too many forces arrayed against it, right?
	So the world, so post-internet, post...
	I'm not just saying just me, because there are other people talking about it too, right?
	But post-internet is when peaceful parenting comes around.
	Your kids are...
	They couldn't have been born at a better time in all of human history.
	It feels like a revolution of a kind.
	It feels like a turning point in our development as a species.
	Oh, it's going to be bigger.
	It's going to be bigger than the end of slavery.
	I mean, there's no question of that.
	It's going to be a bigger revolution than the end of slavery, and that was the biggest one before.
	So, yeah. I mean, and, you know, it's a long, hard road.
	Slavery took like 100 years and so on, and Well, everywhere is peaceful except America.
	Brazil ended slavery without a civil war.
	But, yeah, I mean, your kids, like, in terms of, oh, it's a terrible world, it's like, no, no, no, it's the best world for them, man.
	And the beauty of it is, the beauty of it is, is that, especially after you've seen what you've seen in the workplace, and we've all seen it to various degrees or another, you are no longer obligated to the world.
	You are only obligated to virtue and your family.
	You are no longer...
	I mean, gosh, think of all the people out there.
	I mean, you've got the dog moms and the antinatalists.
	Think of all the people out there burning up their youth and fertility to try and change the system!
	It's like, yeah, why?
	So you can save all the people who want to put you in a camp?
	Excellent! Good job, everybody!
	Because, you know, our enemies, you know, they really need our help so that they're strong enough to continue to attack us.
	So, you have peaceful parenting, your kids get that benefit too, and...
	You don't have to give one tiny rat's ass what happens to the population as a whole.
	In my view, again, I'm not saying maybe you do, but I'm just saying that for me after, yeah, I mean, the last couple of years, I mean, you know, COVID deplatforming and watching people turn on their fellow citizens like a bunch of feral jackals, it's like, yeah, man, does that ever lift some obligation off my shoulders?
	And that's a beautiful thing, man.
	I don't want to stand in the way of people and their decisions.
	Yeah, let them do what they want.
	I mean, they're NPCs easily programmed to do evil.
	And why would I care really what happens to people who don't think?
	Like, I can't do anything. Since thinking and arguing is the only thing I have to offer, people who don't listen to reason, there's absolutely nothing I can do.
	People who listen to reason, man, yeah, let's reason together.
	Let's polish each other's thoughts.
	Let's, you know, sort things out.
	But people who just like, oh, the TV tells me to hate you.
	So, fuck you.
	I wish you were dead. And it's like, okay, well, I mean, peace out.
	Like, I can't reason with that. And I'm going to focus on, you know, my listeners, my business, my family, my friends.
	And, yeah, the world as a whole?
	I mean, you know, it's moved beyond reason.
	So, I got nothing to say. It's not doom and gloom.
	It's not. It's something different.
	My two kids are going to get something different.
	Something completely different. Yeah.
	And who knows where that's going to lead, honestly?
	I don't even...
	Nobody knows. Nobody knows where the end of slavery was going to lead.
	Nobody predicted, oh, we've got a giant industrial revolution and wealth is going to go up 200-fold.
	Nobody guessed that. So we don't know.
	But, you know, there'll be...
	There'll be a wild human revolution and, yeah, probably incomes will go up another 200 times and we'll never have any poverty and never have any war.
	So, yeah, I mean, that's how it rolls and, you know, we do our best for that.
	But, yeah, obligations to the world.
	I keep track of the world.
	Just, you know, personally, I keep track of it because I need to know what's coming down the pipe.
	But I'm an anthropologist now.
	I'm an observer. I'm an observer.
	I don't intervene. Because the only intervention that's possible in a rational universe is reason.
	And it's not a rational universe at the moment.
	So, yeah, good luck everybody with your not reasoning.
	I mean, you know, I don't try to explain complicated things to people I don't speak the language, right?
	We don't share a language. You can't do it.
	I don't try to program a computer with Braille, right?
	I mean, I don't know, you probably can, but I don't try and program a computer with Esperanto.
	It's just not to say it doesn't fit, round peg, square hole.
	So yeah, I mean, I focus on promoting reason and virtue within my circle, within these kinds of calls, within the world that is interested in philosophy, but...
	Oh, yeah, no, man, we're taking to the hills.
	We're heading up to the top of the monastery.
	We're just waiting for the dark ages to recede, and we're just keeping the knowledge alight.
	But, yeah, your kids are incredibly lucky, man.
	I mean, there's no luckier generation that has existed in your bloodline ever, I think.
	And that's only possible in the current world.
	And I say this in part, I mean, this sounds like it's not related to your entrepreneurial
	thing, but it is.
	Bye.
	Because being an entrepreneur is all about enthusiasm.
	And I guard my enthusiasm very closely.
	It's very, very closely.
	I guard my enthusiasm. And if you've got this doom and gloom stuff going on, the doom and gloom happens when you try to reason with people who won't reason.
	Because then you feel helpless, you feel hopeless.
	But you focus your efforts on the people who do reason, and the rest will just do what it does.
	It's just background noise, background static.
	Maybe it'll go well, maybe it'll go badly, but I'm not under the delusion...
	That I, as a reasoner, can reason with people who refuse to reason and attack reason.
	It's one thing to not reason.
	Like, it's one thing for me not to speak Spanish.
	It's another one for me to punch up Spanish people or something, right?
	So the world has chosen sophistry.
	The world has chosen to listen to lies.
	The world has chosen to eschew and avoid reason.
	Okay. Well, then that puts me out of the conversation.
	I can focus on my life.
	Ooh, thank you. Appreciate that.
	I mean, it is really quite a lot more relaxing.
	And I just, I don't have to care, you know, because that caring for the world stuff is a hell of a burden, man.
	It's a hell of a responsibility.
	And I think a lot of the hopelessness and the black pill comes from, well, the world won't listen to reason.
	It's like, yeah, okay, so focus on the people who will.
	As opposed to, the world won't listen to reason.
	We're all doomed. It's like, nah.
	Just focus on the people who will.
	I mean, focus on what you can affect.
	In that last part you said, it rings very true for me because earlier in this call I told you that my standards are raising from the confrontation I had with my father.
	I'm at that stage now where long-standing friendships are ending.
	That sense of helplessness that you described, I'm encountering that firsthand with even my You know, my younger sibling, and I'm at that stage now where I, you know, especially as, like, you know, my fatherly instincts are coming in, I realize that I can't have these people around my children.
	I won't have them around my children.
	And I suppose I still just need to let go of that.
	I'm a fairly big fan of not having people coughing up blood around newborns.
	Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, that's just a real thing.
	I don't bring downers in.
	Because I'm not going to pretend that people who are frustrated at trying to control what they can't control are of any use to me or mine.
	We've got to get the right speaker elected!
	Okay, yeah, good luck with that.
	That's going to change everything, man.
	No, it is what it is.
	And, of course, the thing, too, is that to be enthusiastic, to sell anything, you need to be enthusiastic.
	Yeah.
	So you need to be enthusiastic. Now, there's real enthusiasm and then there's false enthusiasm.
	So the false enthusiasm is, oh, this political movement is going to change the course of state.
	But you need to be genuinely enthusiastic. And if you can't find that enthusiasm,
	I think it's very hard to be an entrepreneur.
	And look, I've obviously, I'm a bit kind of battle scarred, but this is...
	I hope I have some credibility.
	I've had to be pretty nimble to maintain my enthusiasm in what it is that I do.
	I mean, I've been doing this for 40 plus years now, right?
	43 years. And I've had my ups and my downs.
	Maintaining my enthusiasm has been a challenge.
	And I've constantly had to dodge.
	Because, you know, philosophers are hunted.
	They're hunted throughout history.
	They're certainly hunted in the present.
	So you've got to do some twists and turns to stay functional.
	And so, yeah, whatever it is that rationally increases your enthusiasm, and hopefully what I've said, I think it's reasonable and it's certainly empirical.
	So whatever is going to increase your enthusiasm is going to make you much more likely to succeed as an entrepreneur.
	You know, what's that guy? There's a guy on Twitter, I think it's Pompliano or something, and he keeps posting, today's going to be an amazing day.
	Let's get after it relentlessly.
	Like, every single day.
	Every single day.
	Like, Metronome. Okay, like, you can roll your eyes and all of that, but man's got some enthusiasm.
	I'm sure it's cocaine-fueled.
	No, I'm kidding. I know it's not.
	But, you know, the guy, man's got some enthusiasm.
	I hope that I'm still bringing enthusiasm and excitement to what it is That I'm doing in these conversations, in the solo shows, and in the presentations and so on.
	So, yeah, I think the fundamental advice, I don't know obviously what you should do with your skill set, you know that infinitely better than I do, but you've got to find a way to get out of bed with a smile on your face and a spring in your step, because you have to sell yourself first.
	I mean, I'm not the spokesman for a hairy growth formula, right?
	Because I'm bald, right?
	So, you have to sell yourself first.
	And you need people to be enthusiastic about what you're selling, but if you're not enthusiastic about life, it's probably not going to work, if that makes sense.
	That makes perfect sense.
	And that's spot on, yeah.
	I mean, my world is more rational since deplatforming than it has ever been in my life.
	Because before, I had all these irrational people in my life.
	I won't sort of get into details.
	It doesn't really matter, but I think everybody kind of understands.
	Now, there's no one in my life who's not rational, and this includes the calls.
	I'm not even doing interviews with people who aren't rational, like sort of more formal professional interviews.
	So, I mean, I am surrounded by this deep, white, beautiful, sun-streaked, sargasso sea of sanity.
	It's beautiful. I mean, my life's the best it's ever been.
	And that's been the gift of the people who didn't support me.
	And I don't mean that sarcastically.
	It's a genuine gift.
	They were all telling me, listen, man, you've done enough.
	Go be sane. We might rail against you because we don't know ourselves, but we're going to act in such a way that you're a warrior who should be put to posture, and you've earned a beautiful life after all of your struggles and fighting, and I have it.
	And if you can find a way to have that beautiful life, By shrinking your concerns to those who listen to reason and avoiding those who don't.
	And this is why, again, I don't want to talk about the guy on the Sunday show, but it just kind of struck me that this was a conversation where somebody just wasn't really listening to reason that much and wasn't really...
	I mean, less than the first guy.
	So, it sort of stuck out for me as a very different sort of situation, to be in a situation where somebody's not really listening to reason, or they may be in an abstract way, but there's no particular connection, because, you know, that kind of passion and connection is everywhere around me.
	In life, everyone I work with, everyone who's in my family, my circle of friends, my social circle are all positive, enthusiastic, reasonable, rational, moral people.
	And I live in paradise.
	And, oh gosh, you know, bad things are happening in the world.
	Yes. Yeah. I mean, but that's the, I don't know if you've had Atlas Shrugged, but that's the Dagny Taggart, you know, bad things are happening in the railroad and she has to will herself to not pick up the phone.
	It's like, no, no, no, I screamed reason at the world for 40 years.
	I've done my part.
	My conscience is beyond clear.
	I don't think anyone could have done any more without going straight to a crucifix.
	So, I screamed reason at the world for 40 years.
	And now, I'm in my Elysium fields, I'm in my gold's gulch of rational, wonderful people.
	And, frankly, the world can do what the world's going to do, but I've certainly done my part, and my conscience is clear, and that's the most important thing.
	I want that for myself.
	I want the Elysian Fields.
	I want that. Well, and your kids need it.
	You know, because people say, well, if you raise your kids rationally, how are they going to deal with irrational people?
	You can't deal with irrational people!
	I mean... Well, if you raise your kids peacefully, how are they going to will the weather?
	You can't will the weather.
	I will prevent them from trying to do things that are impossible to do.
	Oh no, what a bad parent.
	How are they going to reverse gravity if you raise them peacefully?
	You can't reverse gravity.
	You cannot petition the Lord.
	Anyway, so, yeah, I mean, yeah, my daughter's going to have a very tough time dealing with irrational people because she can't deal with irrational people, so she's just going to avoid them.
	Ah, but what if they encroach upon you, and this, that, and the other?
	It's like, well, screaming reason at them isn't going to change that, so I'm just going to be as rational as I can, and be as nimble as I can, keep my eyes on the horizon, keep my wet finger to the wind, and keep my ear to the ground, and be ready, be resourceful, be nimble, and be in motion if need be.
	But yeah, I've got my crops, and we'll see what happens.
	Be of good cheer. Thank you, Stefan.
	And if you can find that good cheer and that enthusiasm, honestly, it's hard to find in the world these days, and that's going to differentiate you, I think, from other people who are carrying the burden.
	Like, you know the burden, right? You hear this in the callers, you know the guys who kind of talk like this, and it's really kind of tough for them to get any kind of enthusiasm into it.
	You were a little bit like this at the beginning, so I sympathize.
	But carrying the burden...
	It doesn't lift the weight off the world, it just puts it on you.
	You're just another person walking around with a burden.
	I mean, you feel like you have a burden.
	Do I have that wrong based upon your voice?
	No, you're right. It's a paralysis.
	Yeah, so, you know, fuck the burden.
	How does you, taking on a burden, lift it from anyone else?
	It just makes you heavier. It doesn't lighten anyone else.
	You being worried about the world ain't going to make the world better, because the only way the world can improve is through reason, and people have decided at this phase in history to reject reason.
	And that's okay. I mean, that's the default position of mankind.
	We shouldn't be overly surprised.
	But the important thing is, given how good I am at explaining things and how rational and empirical I am, I wanted, obviously, to give it my best shot, but I said this years ago that, you know, we're not going to make this cycle of history, but the next cycle will need our truth as an example.
	And, of course, every different corner of the world is in different cycles of history.
	There's not one cycle of history for the whole planet, so you just go off one wheel going down and go into another wheel going up, wherever that's going to be, right?
	Be nimble, be alert, and be resourceful, and, I don't know, have some food in the basement or something.
	Whatever, right? There's so much to be enthusiastic for.
	Yeah, so the world doesn't listen to reason.
	Guess what? It probably wasn't going to anyway.
	And everyone who let me be de-platformed into the void was clearly telling me, you need to go.
	Now, unconsciously, I know we're back to the unconscious thing.
	I get all of that, right? They may have railed me on top, but deep down they were acting in such a way as to tell me that you can't do any more good here and Sometimes you just have to wait for the world to catch up, right?
	Because you keep pushing ahead and people get freaked out and they attack you.
	And sometimes, like, I mean, what's the George Floyd stuff came out where there are a bunch of emails about how the coroner was like, no, no, no, he didn't die of association.
	Like, I was literally deplatformed for that.
	And if I hadn't been deplatformed and been able to cool some of the racial tensions around that, then 10,000 people would be alive.
	Because... All that stuff led to, like, about, you know, roughly speaking, 10,000 deaths.
	And, you know, billions and billions of dollars of goods would have survived and so on, right?
	It's like, okay, so I was working to cool these kinds of tensions, as I did with a wide variety of other stuff before.
	And, yeah, it turns out years later, yeah, I was right.
	I was right. And...
	That builds credibility for the next phase of history.
	Sorry, I don't want to make this all about me.
	I'm just trying to point out that as far as nimbleness goes with entrepreneurship, if you can find a way to be enthusiastic...
	I'm more enthusiastic about this show than I've ever been.
	I'm more enthusiastic about my life than I've ever been.
	And a lot of that has to do with shrugging off that load of obligation that comes from ability.
	If you're really good at explaining philosophy and you're really good at convincing people to reason rather than fight...
	Well, you have a pretty heavy burden until people decisively say they're not going to listen, in which case that burden is lifted and you can focus on enjoying your life.
	It's really nice and I think you have that opportunity.
	I think you have that opportunity.
	I mean, it's there if you want it and there's no one borrowing you from it.
	And you know what? In you saying that, it makes me realize, I mean, coming back after, you know, not listening to you for two years, that enthusiasm is, you know, it's just, you know, just I think you had a free trial for your locals or something, but I mean, after listening to you and not having listened to you for two years, it's like you're on fire, and I see that, and I'm like, holy shit.
	This is like him at his AAS game.
	Look at that.
	He has that enthusiasm.
	I guess that's ultimately what brought me to even Callie at the beginning was to see how, and I think you've done a very good job of explaining it, how not only you've maintained that, but how you've You've grown that for yourself, and I guess it really just does involve me just looking at my immediate environment and just the world as a whole and really just accepting that.
	I think when they're jailing people for free speech, it's clear that speech is too limited to change the course, I think.
	I mean, that's why they do it, right? So, yeah, let go of the world.
	I mean, this is an old thing from Voltaire, right?
	Forget about the world, tend your own garden.
	And I wrote a whole novel about this in my 20s called Revolutions, about whether you go for big change in society or you have a happy family yourself.
	Like, that's the big question for those with a great deal of ability, and you obviously have a great deal of ability.
	So, yeah, I mean, I can't tell, obviously, I'm just telling you my perspective.
	I can't tell you what to do, but It's a rational thing.
	So with my family, I reasoned with them for as long as I could, and then I got that I couldn't.
	So I let that go with my family of origin, right?
	And same thing with friendships.
	I reasoned with them as long as I could, and when I realized I couldn't, I let them go.
	And it's the same thing with the world.
	I reasoned with it as long as I could, and when I realized I can't, with the help of others, other people helped me to realize this.
	I let it go. Because that way madness lies.
	That way madness lies because you're trying to will things through reason and evidence that you can't will through reason and evidence.
	And when people don't listen to reason, what decides things?
	Threats, coercion, violence, bullying, manipulation, whatever you...
	I mean, that's not my... I don't do that.
	I don't do that stuff. I don't work in that world.
	I don't do that stuff that's not my world.
	I would not... There would be no price that I would take, no reward I would take to go into that world.
	Because I've seen where that world leads and it's literally straight to hell.
	So, it's the same thing, like, think of the world like your family, right?
	You try to reason with them, you try to be honest and to get reciprocity and to be treated decently with reasonable requests, and you see what happens, right?
	And that's what I did with the world for 40 years, and then the world escalated and attacked, and friends scattered and colleagues scattered, and people also attacked me for, you know, and that's fine.
	That just tells me, okay, good, peace out.
	It's the same thing I did with my family.
	Same thing I did with my early friends.
	Same thing you did with the girlfriends you had, the ones who you would do everything but sex with.
	You try and reason with them, and when you realize you can't, you peace out.
	It's the same thing with the world.
	Can you reason with the world these days?
	Facts don't seem to matter at all.
	In fact, facts are grounds for attack and great danger.
	And, yeah, I mean, I wish the world good luck.
	I mean, I know where it's going to go, and it's going to need some luck.
	But, yeah, I reason with the world.
	The world chose a different path, and that path has nothing to do with me.
	So I'm peace outing and building for the next round of history.
	However long it may take, it means two, three hundred years, five hundred, whatever that may be.
	They'll be very thankful.
	I don't think it'll take that long because the internet is unprecedented in terms of information spread.
	You know, I've had a billion views and downloads and all of that, so, you know, that's unprecedented in history of philosophy.
	Like, there's no philosopher who's ever achieved that before, and so it's the best shot the world has for a reason.
	I don't think it'll be hundreds of years, but, I mean, it doesn't really matter because, again, that's outside my control.
	All I can do is put the truth out there, and if people attack it, they attack it, and if they accept it or debate it or learn it from it, fantastic.
	But it's out of my hands, and I was relatively happy to reason with the world as long as the world was at least pretending to reason back.
	But, you know, age of reason is to some degree past, and people are just going to have to learn through experience now, and then they'll come back and they'll say, hey, I guess you were right, you know?
	You know, if you have a female friend who's like, dates a guy, you know, he's a bad guy, and you tell him...
	You tell her he's a bad guy, and she's like, but I love him, and he's so cool, and he's going to change, and he's promised, and then six months later or a year later, she comes back, and you're like, yeah, he was a bad guy.
	And maybe she'll listen to a little more the next time.
	I don't know. But that's, I think, where things are.
	Now, I mean, that's sort of my thing, and I can't obviously tell you the content of your entrepreneurial goals, but I certainly can say that your kids are the luckiest kids in your entire lineage.
	In like 4 billion years of history, your kids get born to a guy who listened to peaceful parenting philosophy.
	Luckiest kids in the universe.
	And, I mean, boy, that's a pretty great thing.
	I mean, would you rather live 50 years ago and be like your parents?
	I don't think so.
	So, no, this is the best time ever.
	Yeah, thank you. That's the perspective I needed to hear.
	Yes. That's all I can say is yes.
	That is true. Good. And I'm really, sorry, I didn't mean to make this all about me.
	I just really wanted to, sometimes you can transfer experience through the empiricism.
	Sometimes you can transfer ideas best through empiricism and examples.
	So I hope it wasn't like me rambling on about my life, but I really think that, like, it really struck me when you were talking about, you know, how bad things were and so on.
	And, yeah, I mean, the fact that we're able to have this conversation is absolutely unprecedented.
	Who knows where all of this is going to lead, you know?
	And it probably will take a generation for us to be vindicated in our facts.
	You know, every now and then people will say, oh, yes, Stefan Molyneux was talking about this like five years ago or whatever it is, right?
	But mostly it goes down the memory hole, but at least everything's out there and scattered and on the blockchain and is available for the future.
	And if you've been right about a bunch of things...
	But anyway, not about me.
	So about you, with regards to wherever you want to do, be enthusiastic.
	Be overjoyed that you can live a life of virtue.
	And let's say the world goes to hell, right?
	Let's say the world goes to hell.
	We at least got a chance to live a life of virtue before that, which is, I mean, the world regularly goes to hell, but most people don't get the chance to live a life of virtue, and we've had that opportunity, which is an incredible blessing.
	In the history of the world, and I don't think anything or anyone can take that away.
	It's such a...
	It's...
	Yes, all the words...
	Even if we're riding into doom, the songs that were sung about us will be glorious!
	And if that was enough for the Vikings, it's enough for me.
	Because the alternative would have just...
	50 years ago, it would have just been...
	Shit, without the virtue, without the peaceful parenting, it would have just been awful.
	A thousand years before then.
	Ten thousand years before then.
	Survival. If you had the choice, would you rather the world go to hell?
	Or you get to peacefully parent, right?
	I would choose peaceful parenting over everything.
	And if peaceful parenting requires the internet, and the internet is used to spread a bunch of lies as well, and the world goes to hell, at least peaceful parenting is out there.
	And, I mean, that's worth it.
	And so, if the price of peaceful parenting is that the world goes to hell, well, so be it.
	I'm just, I'm incredibly thrilled that I am in no way a parent like my parents or any of the other parents I knew growing up.
	I'm unbelievably thrilled that we get to have these kinds of conversations.
	That's unprecedented in the history of the world, and who knows what ripple effects, you know, what butterfly effects that's going to have, these kinds of conversations, but...
	We have done the very best we can in reasoning together in public in the world.
	That's never been seen before.
	And that will change the world.
	Does the world go through hell first?
	I don't know. It's not up to me.
	It's not up to me, but yeah.
	I mean, there's so much to be incredibly enthusiastic about.
	I mean, with regards to philosophy, which is really the engine that runs the future.
	So, I mean, if you can find that enthusiasm in yourself...
	Then whatever you do entrepreneurially will succeed.
	Enthusiasm is the engine of entrepreneurship.
	And if you can find that enthusiasm and that, you know, maybe this part of the world goes to hell, you go to some other part, you'll find a way.
	And the best way to do that is to be entrepreneurial, of course, because your skills then become more portable.
	So this is all getting you mobile if you need to move or if things turn around, then you can stay or whatever it is, right?
	But whatever you're doing... It's building skills to protect your family rather than just staring at the slowly approaching glacier and saying, well, I guess we're going to get ground into nothing.
	Yeah. That's what it is.
	It's the slow... Yeah, that's right.
	That portability that you describe, that's something I've been recently thinking about.
	It's just, you know what?
	There's the whole world out there.
	Yeah, there's a whole world out there, and listen, I'll be honest with you, man, there's a whole world out there that's looking at the death of the West going like, well, damn, we are inoculated against that.
	Like, we are the giant vaccine of all of these bad ideas out there to the rest of the world to give them the strength to not succumb to this nonsense, right?
	So, you know, what's happening in the West is a giant inoculation against everyone else ever doing the same stuff, and not just across the world, but throughout history.
	It'll be like, no, no, no, no, we did that before.
	We know we got all the 4K videos, 60 frames a second.
	We know exactly where that leads.
	Not going to happen, right? So maybe we're going through the paroxysm of inoculation against bad ideas.
	Okay, well, but we're getting some great ideas out there too, and neither this inoculation nor these great ideas have ever been present in the world before, and it is going to make the future a better place, infinitely.
	So many more options Thank you for reminding me of that Stefan
	Hey, man, you're welcome. You're going to be a dad.
	I want you to be thrilled. I want you to be enthusiastic.
	I want your kids to, you know, you're waking up saying, it's going to be a beautiful day.
	Let's get after it relentlessly.
	Without the cocaine.
	Just kidding. Yeah, yeah. I know.
	He doesn't do cocaine, but yeah.
	So is that a decent way to close things off?
	I think that's more than a decent way to close things off.
	Stefan, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.
	I love you, man. Thank you for always being there and committing to philosophy and the way you have.
	Thank you. It's my pleasure, and thank you so much for the great honor of this conversation.
	Keep me posted about how things are going, right?
	And if you get something going entrepreneurially, feel free to use my platforms to let people know, because I think that's great.
	Wonderful. Thank you, Stefan.
	Thanks, man. Best of luck with the babies.
	Take care. Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest Free Domain show on philosophy.
	And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement and your resources.
	Please like, subscribe and share and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
	And also, equally importantly, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate.
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	So thank you so much for your support, my friends.

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