Nov. 15, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:11:30
5309 QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF!
1 November 2023 LivestreamRebel bands, bleeding your capacity for heroism, revolutions without bloodshed, Bitcoin, controversy sparked by complimenting women on traditional hobbies, the importance of both mothers and fathers during childhood, and questions to ask yourself.Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!Get access to the audiobook for my new book 'Peaceful Parenting,' StefBOT-AI, private livestreams, premium call in shows, and the 22 Part History of Philosophers series!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
And, yes, you should absolutely check out the great work I am piggybacking off Jared the Magnificent's research, The Truth About the French Revolution.
And it's available for subscribers at freedomain.locals.com.
I just did part two today, and let me tell you, it's blowing my hair back.
Blow my hair
Back.
So yeah, you should check it out.
Freedomain.locals.com.
Just sign up.
You can use the promo code ALLCAPSUPB2022 and get it for free.
If you don't like it, you can just get and just cancel it.
Costs you nothing.
I can't do better than free.
Let's see if the new Napoleon movie is woke or not.
All you have to do is scan the extras, right?
Scan the extras.
But yeah, we've got a great thesis about the French Revolution, and we're also working on the truth about Napoleon.
So, that's going to be fascinating.
Fascinating stuff.
So, looking forward to that.
Hit me with your questions, comments, let me just go back here.
Tips, donations, absolutely welcome.
In fact, more than greatly and deeply appreciated.
Last time I was this early, Steph had a mullet.
Never had a mullet.
I had a ponytail when I was in art school.
Well, that's kind of inevitable, right?
That sort of feels inevitable.
Are you enjoying The Planet O Bitcoin?
The truth about Les Miserables.
Why do people like it?
Well, are you talking about the musical or are you talking about
The book.
The book, are you talking about the mondo-lengthy, Atlas-shrugged, with a revolution spice book?
Or are you talking about the sort of shaved-down, shorter one?
The musical, It Goes On Forever?
The musical is magnificent, in my humble opinion.
He thinks that man is me, knew him at a glance.
Yeah, music is... I mean, you hear Colm Wilkinson do Bring Him Home, and man, if that doesn't move you to tears, I don't know what will.
The movie is terrible.
The movie is just appalling.
Not just because they had some significant non-singers in it, but also because the director made this weird choice in the movie with Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman and so on.
He made this weird choice to have the actress sing, not in a studio, but just sing live and just do it over and over and over again.
He could have busted their voices into a million pieces.
No, if you want to put the headphones on and you want to listen to the original cast recording with Colm Wilkinson of Les Mis, it's magnificent.
It is a beautiful, beautiful story.
And really well done.
And I saw the stage twice.
Anne Hathaway.
Anne Hathaway was great in that.
You know, it was great in that.
She embraced ugly in the way that only beautiful people can.
No, I thought Anne Hathaway was great.
A lot of people find her annoying.
Oh, come on, man.
Nobody finds anyone anything.
I mean, look into, you know, you've heard this thing like, Nickelback!
Nickelback is bad, right?
Have you heard this?
Like, Nickelback is just... Nickelback's embarrassing!
Look at this graph!
You know that there's no truth behind any of that, right?
It was just a meme.
It was just a meme that just became kind of popular and now everyone hates on Nickelback because they've heard everyone hates on Nickelback in the same way that right after Halloween you get the thawing out the Mariah Carey All I Want for Christmas song.
Like it just it's become a thing nobody thinks for themselves and nobody knows what's going on.
Of course I take this kind of stuff personally, right?
People think I'm bad because other people have heard that I'm bad.
Nickelback is a great, it's a great band.
It's a great band.
You know how hard it is?
Do you know how hard it is to be a great band?
Like unbelievably hard.
I think about this from time to time, right?
I think about this, you know, yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away.
You think that song is like a two and a half minute song, right?
It's now been recorded
By 8,000 different artists or something like that, right?
Just a little ding-da-ding-dee-dee-dee, like a little tune, little ditty.
Or, you know, hit the road, Jack, you know what, you come back no more, no more, no more, no more, hit the road.
Simple song, dee-dee-dee-dee, right?
You know how hard those jams are to create?
Sitting in the morning sun, you know, it's so hard to make those songs.
I mean, I've written songs when I was younger, I was in a garage band or two here and there, and man, it's hard work.
From high up on my lonely cloud far down can I see the barren plains my heart to search for one to comfort me.
I mean that's cheesy bad stuff and it's really hard to make good songs man.
Creed had a resurgence out of nowhere from annoying to beloved.
Well Creed had a resurgence because people looked at their Super Bowl show from years ago as the height of Americana because you could actually have Pride and all of this rotten cancerous anti-western anti-christian stuff hadn't seeped into the
Very fabric of the universe at that point, so people look back on that with some significant nostalgia.
But... Oh, no... Rantus Ticulus already?
No... No... We need some foreplay, don't we?
I mean, we can't just jump into it, right?
No lube, no nothing?
Not even a hi, how you doing?
Bias dinner?
Hey man, absolutely.
It's a paid service, it's fine to get to action.
Hit me with a why if you're ready for a rant.
It's been a while, feels like it's been a while.
I almost forgot I did them.
Alright, just in time.
Okay, so here we go.
Hey, do you remember all of those rebels?
Remember all those rebels in the music world?
F you!
I won't do what you tell me!
You gotta fight for your right to party!
Rebel F the man, F the po-po!
F the system!
Think for yourself!
Wait, what?
Wait, Fize is handing out money?
How absolutely atrocious it was for a lot of people who believed in the tinfoil rebels with the axe guitars, how quickly they all folded like pathetic watercolor origami when the tiniest bit of social pressure came along.
Oh, we're done.
We've folded.
You've got to fu-
Oh, wait, there's a social narrative?
Okay, yeah, fine.
Fold.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, F your freedoms.
F rebellion.
F thinking for yourself.
To hell with all of that.
Nope!
Folded.
Folded like a cheap suit in a laundromat.
Just absolutely terrible.
Give me some examples.
Give me some examples of the people who just crashed and folded in the most pathetic, embarrassing, spineless, conceivable manner.
Rage in support of the machine.
Rage against the machine became annoyance against the Tinker Toys.
Oh man, wasn't it sad?
Rage for the, rage for the machine.
Oh man.
Oh my gosh.
You know, like I think about, I don't know.
So way back, the Rolling Stones, were they on Ed Sullivan?
And it was too risque for them to sing, let's spend the night together.
So they apparently just sang, let's spend some time together.
And Elvis Costello, they wanted him to play the new song, but he played the old song on Letterman.
He's so angry.
Oh my god, it's just absolutely sad.
F you, you do what they tell you!
Jello Baffer from the Dead Kennedys.
Didn't the Dead Kennedys have a song after Elvis died called The Big Fat Jerk Is Dead?
I think they did.
I think they did.
I think a lot of that rebel sentiment was only popular because Bush was president.
Well, it wasn't just Bush.
I mean, the world was much more conservative back then, much more Christian and so on, because, you know, the old guard was sort of there and running the show.
So, yeah.
Oh, Howard Stern.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, don't even get me started on Howard Stern.
Who else?
Hall of Shame.
Well, the Terminator, of course, Schwarzenegger and so on.
Perfect Circle, Counting Bodies to the Rhythm of the War Drums, they folded.
Bruce Springsteen, yep.
Eric Clapton, yeah.
He actually did, he bucked the trend, man.
Michael Moore, yeah.
Mick Jagger, yeah.
Was it Eminem, yeah.
Eminem, just Metallica, at least in Napster days, yeah.
Nick Cannon.
Yeah, it's just... John Cena plays a tough guy on TV, but heaven forbid he offends the Chinese.
Neil Young totally folded.
Oh, did South Park fold?
They'd be the last to fold, wouldn't they?
But yeah, these plastic rebel dolls that you play with only when it's not controversial is really, really sad.
Wasn't that... That was really the ultimate test of independent thinking, right?
South Park was kind of provax, yeah.
Family Guy was an eternal fold from the beginning, yeah.
Yeah.
South Park called the unvaccinated selfish.
Well, I guess they can go back to making fun of really tough opponents like Barbara Streisand and Meghan and Harry and the head of Disney.
Oh, did Jay-Z fold as well?
Yes, that's right.
Oh, my God.
That was sad.
The Rock apologized for claiming he spoke Chinese.
Chinese is not a language.
It's a country.
You mean Mandarin?
Sichuan or something?
I don't know.
Whatever it is.
Yeah, somebody should absolutely do a parody.
Weird Al never would, right?
John Cena.
Yeah, somebody should absolutely just do a parody of all of these rebel bands that just totally faulted.
Oh, I will fight for the, I will fight the power.
I will fight imperialism.
I will fight the patriarchy.
I will fight capital.
Oh, it's an airborne virus.
Okay.
Govern me harder, baby.
Yeah, soccer players and tennis players were more rebellious, although not many, right?
A lot of big music acts and most of Hollywood types are PSYOP divisions of the state.
Yeah, I'm not going to disagree with that.
You know, did you ever have a dream like when you were younger?
Man, wouldn't it be great to have musical talent and play stadiums and growl your songs?
Wouldn't that be fantastic?
Boy, go and watch the documentary on Alanis Morissette, who was one of the biggest turnaround acts in the history of music.
You would not believe, you would not believe what happened.
You would not believe what happened to Alanis Morissette as a teenager, as a very young girl, as a very young girl.
Um, the, uh, music industry is, uh, well, it's, uh, not super spicy virtuous, I think you could say.
All we want to do is get the young girls, separate them from their parents.
Anyway, it's just monstrous.
Professional hockey players don't play around with leftist crap.
Oh, did they fight the mandates and stuff like that?
Tupac was convicted of rape, was he?
1994.
Everyone sees him as a sensitive poet.
E. Michael Jones parodied Neil Young.
I didn't see that.
Yeah.
Now did you see that hockey player who like half beheaded the other hockey player with the kick to the throat with his blade?
I mean, it's just unbelievable.
Never seen or heard anything like that in my life.
Yeah, it's hard to unsee that.
Yeah, I really, really try and avoid seeing, like, direct murder, obviously.
I just, I don't want to see people getting shot.
Like, I just almost, it's almost like you're inviting demons into your brain almost, like, right?
Seemed on purpose kicked.
I think that guy was a black guy, right?
Had a real history of affair aggression as far as I understand it, but...
All right, let's get your questions to your comments.
But yeah, all these people, they play rebels, right?
They play rebels and, you know, this is one of the things I said many, many, many years ago about how art tends to bleed you of your capacity for heroism by constantly portraying heroism in situations you'll never face.
Well, you know, if I land from Krypton and I have superpowers and I face Gene Hackman, man, I'm thinking, I guess, like, things that will never happen.
All these ethics of emergency stuff.
All this ethics of emergency stuff.
And it gives you heroism so far removed from your life.
That it is bleeding any capacity for strength and virtue out of your life.
This is, you know, when I talk about, you know, all my call-in shows is sort of fundamentally, I mean, almost all my shows, but all my call-in shows is fundamentally about ethics, right?
And it's about the ethics that you can have in your real life.
Will you tell the truth to your parents?
Will you tell the truth to your siblings?
Will you tell the truth to your spouse?
Will you tell the truth to those around you?
That stuff you can actually do, as opposed to the Marvel movies where it's like, well, you know,
When I face a giggling Joker head with wild spandex and nunchuck toys, man, I'm gonna be well trained for that!
It's like, no, no you won't.
All this just bleeding out your virtue from your daily life into the nothing-verse, right?
Across the nothing-verse.
That's just appalling.
When I'm underwater and look like
Someone from Game of Thrones.
Man, then I'll be really virtuous.
And it's like, oh, it's terrible.
Just bleeds you right off.
It's like your sexual energy going into sensual movies.
Yeah.
Speaking of which.
All right.
So, all right.
Questions, comments, issues, challenges.
What's on your brain, my beauties?
What is on your brain?
I had a, just while I'm waiting for the comments to come in, I did a couple of hours on the French Revolution today, and then I did a call-in show.
Do you have in any way the windblowers kind of guy or gal in your life?
We should do this.
Yes.
We should do the opposite.
Yes.
We should do neither.
Yes.
We should do all at the same time, of course.
Do you have one of those amoeba, squid, spineless, adapt-itself-to-any-fashionable-container kind of person?
What do you think about Jordan B. Peterson's Alliance for Responsible Citizens initiative?
Would you consider being a contributor if invited, and if not, why not?
I'm sorry, I've just been talking about moral situations you're never going to face.
I'm never going to get invited to have anything to do with that.
I'm never going to be invited to have anything to do with that.
Oh my gosh, that's funny.
That is funny.
That is very funny.
Yeah, right.
Let's see here, that's just, I mean, sorry, that's funny.
I mean, I have such an eye to the future, like I'm, in terms of the work that I do, I don't know if anybody cares to see the, like, lift the lid behind the work that I do.
The work that I do, I have such an eye to the future that these sort of hiccups, bumps and little valleys and this and that and the other,
Like if you're climbing Mount Everest and there's a, you know, a little gully and like the gully doesn't matter because you're going up thousands and thousands of feet, right?
You've got this.
So I have such an eye from the future and I feel such a responsibility from the future to try and lay the foundations of a better world that the idea I would join some highly compromised initiative that
Nobody's gonna be able to tell the truth anyway.
Yeah, it's a 500 year game plan.
So yeah, it's really something.
All right.
Can there be a revolution without bloodshed?
Is it possible to disengage with society?
You abstaining with politics and Twitter while still maintaining geographical presence.
Well yeah, there's revolutions without bloodshed.
The most important revolutions in my life have all been peaceful.
Yeah, there can be revolutions.
I mean, most countries, all countries ended slavery without violence except for America where it really wasn't about slavery.
The scientific revolution?
Well, I suppose there were some attacks from very reactionary forces, but for the most part it was relatively bloodless.
The expansion of the free market was relatively bloodless.
The most important revolutions don't involve violence.
And in my life, my most important revolutions have been about rejecting.
Violence.
Rejecting exploitation.
Rejecting cold people.
Rejecting disloyal people.
Rejecting abusive people.
Rejecting trash talkers.
Rejecting negative people.
Rejecting losers and failures and, you know.
Because, you know, we all start out, at least I did with my friends, we all started out as failures.
We all started out like single moms and bad households and, you know, smart but, you know.
So we all started out as kind of losers and failures and you use that as the propulsion to get you somewhere.
And then other people, you know, they don't make progress.
What do they make?
You know, you know what happens when you don't make progress or why you don't make progress?
You make progress or you make excuses.
That's it.
That's it.
You make progress or you make excuses.
And the people who made excuses, they don't like you making progress.
So then they'll start to undermine you because they're addicted to excuses.
And excuses are low time preference, right?
Low time preference, which means you'd rather feel better in the here and now than you would feeling better in the long run.
You'd rather feel better, oh, something didn't go right, well I'll just make an excuse.
It's somebody else's fault, it wasn't me, bad people, blah.
And rather than
Make progress.
That's high time preference.
I thought high time preference was, oh, high time preference, sorry, deferral of gratification.
High time preference is when you want stuff now rather than later.
Yeah, sorry, I got that backwards.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Totally, totally right.
In an earlier show, you said that you're courageous, not suicidal with some of the topics you can talk about.
How would you go about finding such topics for someone like me trying to look for them?
That's very funny.
So Steph, those things you're not going to talk about, can you talk about them?
I'm sorry, don't mean to laugh.
I don't know.
I don't know what goes through people's minds sometimes.
I'm sorry.
Hey, that thing you said you were never going to tell me, can you tell me?
Not today, CIA!
That's pretty funny.
That's pretty funny.
Bitcoin?
Well, yeah, Bitcoin, as far as a peaceful revolution goes, yeah.
Was it yesterday?
It was the 15 year anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto's reading of, well, his first posting of the Bitcoin protocols and all of that.
James, can you do me a favour?
Can you just look up when I read... I read Satoshi Nakamoto's entire paper as a show way back in the day.
Can you do me a favour and just find out what the price of Bitcoin was when I first... Stare for my Satoshi?
That would be pretty cool.
That'd be pretty cool.
Yeah, look, what was the price?
I mean, on what was the price when I first talked about it?
I think in 2011 or 2012 or something like that.
I've really been trying to help everyone low these many years.
But of course, I can't tell you what to do.
I can't go and say, buy this, buy that.
I still take Bitcoin for donations.
Absolutely.
Freedomain.com slash donate.
Stuff right there.
Right there.
You know, I gave lots of speeches at Bitcoin conferences.
I interviewed Bitcoin people.
I read the white paper.
I talked about it on many, many, many shows.
I heard about Bitcoin from you in 2016, if only I had bought back then.
Yeah.
Well, look, I mean, I put money into gold at one point, which, you know, hasn't done quite as well.
That's fine.
That's fine.
As long as you've got enough to eat, right?
Yeah, I mean, I would have loved to shake everyone by the neck and tell them to buy, but I can't.
I can't do that.
I mean, that's not appropriate, right?
Yeah, gold sucks.
Are Bitcoin and peaceful parenting related?
They seem to be, but I can't quite figure it out.
Yeah, so...
Bitcoin is not subject to human wills or manipulation.
Peaceful parenting isn't either.
The life of virtue is when you're not subject to each particular whim, but you have a standard of principles, right?
Too late to buy more Satoshis.
Well, you're gonna have to make that choice for yourself, right?
I can't tell you what to buy or what not to buy.
I can't do that.
First Bitcoin... First podcast with Bitcoin in it is 1932.
I thought that was the year.
I'm like, well, I really was ahead of the curve.
June, 2011.
Yeah.
June, 2011.
Yeah.
And I, I, yeah.
Looking up the price.
Yeah.
June, 2011.
It's going to make, going to make people cry, right?
I'm not, I'm not familiar with Kim Jong-Pain's parenting books.
It was 30 bucks.
It was 30 bucks.
Back then.
Honestly, the other night, just to help myself get to sleep, I was thinking about all the stuff I've been right about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Adam versus the man?
Yeah, the debate's on that.
Yeah, and I think I talked about it on the message board even before that.
So.
30 bucks.
And what percentage of the current price is that?
One two thousandth?
On June 11th, Bitcoin opened at $18.55. $18.
Yeah, it went down to two bucks again after the show.
And so after I talked about Bitcoin, it was down at two bucks at some point, right?
Right.
So let's see.
What's it at?
I think I last time checked 48,000.
So let's see.
Let's say three divided by 48,000.
Yeah.
So, it's gone up a lot.
Let's do it the other way, sorry.
Let's do 48,000 divided by 3.
Yeah, so since I first started talking about Bitcoin at its lowest point to now, it's gone up 16,000 times.
That's wild, right?
Thank you for everything since 2015.
I love you.
Thank you.
I just bought 500 coins.
How do I transfer it here?
I don't know, but I mean, you can just transfer coins, right?
Steph, I recently saw a woman on social media complaining that it's not okay to compliment a woman on her womanly hobbies, such as cooking or knitting, that women should not be given value based on how useful she is to a man slash potential husband.
Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, like, I'll listen more to women's complaints about men when women stop taking men's taxes at a rate massively higher than men do.
Like, women are net takers of taxes, men are net contributors to taxes, so...
You know, maybe stop taking half my money and then we can talk about how I shouldn't talk about you being a good cook.
You know, that's kind of funny, right?
Like if I were to say, if I were to say, if I were to say to women, well, the price of me not complimenting your cooking is that you stopped taking tax money.
I wonder what they'd choose.
I wonder what they'd choose.
Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh.
I wonder what other investments... Oh, thank you for the tip.
I appreciate that.
I wonder what other investments even came close to that return in 12 years.
Well, hard to say.
Imagine thinking you would be a great wife.
It's insulting.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, you just have to look up the ratio of men to women in, like, the actual essential stuff that keeps society running.
Like, you know, the construction, the sewage treatment, sewage handling, sewage processing, the roads, the provision of food, the trucking, the actual stuff that keeps society running.
Not sure that OnlyFans is an absolute necessity for human survival?
Reminds me of an ex when I asked her whether she'd take a jab due to the fertility risks and she responded, do you only value women for their fertility?
Until then she was super conservative, but that brought the feminist down.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, so you only value women for their fertility.
You know, do you guys remember how much women spend on their faces over the course of their life?
Do you know how much money women spend on their faces over the course of their life?
Do you remember that?
Yeah, 300,000.
Now, somebody said, that's kind of high, and I thought, well, you know, 15 to 85, yeah, 70 years, every day, it's about 11 bucks a day, and yeah.
And that doesn't even count if you took that money and invested it.
If you took that money and invested it, it'd be millions and millions and millions of dollars.
So, yeah, if women say, well, you only value us for our fertility and our attractiveness, it's like, you know, I've been to the fucking mall, lady.
I've been to the mall.
It's not men buying all that shit.
And frankly, we don't even care that much.
It's not men who are valuing women's attractiveness.
It's women who are obsessed with female attractiveness.
And, you know, it's just a test, right?
You all know it's just a nonsense test for the most part.
And the response to most of this stuff is just an eye roll.
Like, oh yeah, you said I asked her if she'd prefer a guy who makes more.
She said yes, so I said, you only value men for our wages?
Yeah.
It's just an eye roll.
Like, honestly, I've known a lot of
Particularly these days, a lot of really hard-working women who've got like five kids, six kids, they've got mid-teens, new babies, like they are hard-working and they do charity work, they do homeschooling work, they are parents, they are wives, they're upstanding members of their community and
How much time do you think they spend worrying about whether somebody compliments them for their cooking?
Like, just out of curiosity, a lot of this stuff is just unbelievable levels of boredom.
They're just bored people who complain.
Do you understand?
Like, you know how this works, right?
Most people who are complaining are just complaining of being bored.
While I'm bored, let me just poke and see if I can stimulate something and see if I can rouse my torpid emotional system.
Like, do you know you get bored and irritated?
Don't you get irritated when you're bored?
I mean, you're just bored.
You know, go do some good in your community, right?
The people who complain, oh, I can't believe you complimented my cooking or my knitting, and I'm like, okay, how much time a week do you spend on charity work?
How much time a week do you spend on contributing to your community, or doing something good in the world, or helping people out, or reading to the blind, or whatever it is, right?
You all know it's zero, right?
You all know it's zero.
It's really boring.
I mean, just bored, right?
Just bored.
Just bored.
And bored people get miserable because they know that they're sacrificing any kind of good that they can do in the world just for the sake of being self-indulgent, right?
Yeah, idle hands are the devil's work, yeah, for sure.
Like, human beings, like, here's the funny thing, right?
It's been a while since I've mentioned this, so if you haven't been around for a while, hit me with a Y if you don't mind your mind getting blown out of your ear.
Hit me with a Y. You okay?
You ready?
Right.
There's no such thing as less conflict.
There's no such thing as less conflict.
The level of conflict, stress, and tension in your life is pretty much going to be the same.
Because if you're too peaceful, you'll just start trouble.
We are friction-based life forms.
We are energetic movers and shakers, apex predators.
We are sharks.
We can't stop.
We don't have a bladder.
We just sink and die.
The level of stress and tension and conflict in your life is going to be the same pretty much, no matter what you do.
So... You can either be productive...
Or you can be avoidant, you can be social, you can be isolationist, you can go out there and do things in the world, or you can stay home and do nothing.
Your level of stress and tension, pretty much gonna be the same.
I mean, it'll spike up and down a little bit here and there, but it's pretty much the same.
Haven't you ever had this?
You're battling through something really tough and difficult and you get to the end and like three hours later, you're just like, I gotta do something else.
Or you get annoyed, right?
I mean, there was a phase in my life where I was either
I was either tense or irritable.
I'd rather be tense because that's more exciting, right?
So yeah, you're going to be stressed either way.
You're going to be wound up either way.
You might as well put it to some good use because there's no way to avoid it.
Men love women's licks.
Women only care about men's wallets.
The war between the sexes, so-called argument summed up.
What and who and how does that help anyone other than lining pockets of troublemakers?
No, the war between the sexes is a form of mating strategy to get the unearned.
You know that, right?
Do we know this?
It's a way of getting the unearned.
So, I'll just give you a real brief example.
We can talk about it more if it's helpful or of value to you, but the real brief example is the man who doesn't make much money, who complains vociferously that women only want men for money in the hopes... What is he hoping for?
He's hoping he'll find a woman who will accept a man with less money.
Boom!
Mating strategy achieved.
A woman who's overweight, who says that any man who prefers a woman who's not overweight is fatphobic, and that way she can get a man
To commit to her without losing the weight.
It's just a way of trying to get something that's unearned, right?
A real man!
A real man knows to step up and take care of a single mother because they're brave and noble and heroic, blah blah blah blah blah, right?
So the normal natural human impulse is to take care of your own kids.
But if you can convince people to take care of someone else's kids, then you can get what you wouldn't have otherwise earned, right?
Does this make sense?
It's just a way of getting what you haven't earned, right?
In the same way, like guilt trips are a way of getting what you haven't earned.
If you don't like your mom, she was mean to you, or distant, or doesn't add really any value to your life, is kind of petty and boring, or whatever it is, right?
So you don't really want to spend time with her.
She guilts you.
Oh, Aurel, you're my mother.
I gave up everything for you.
And then you just trudge your way over and blah, blah, blah.
I mean, I remember this.
My mother would go to these dances.
She loved to dance and she had, you know, she had a very slender figure and she was very attractive, right?
And she wanted me to come and dance with her, and I was in my 20s or whatever, and I really didn't want to go, but just, you know, really push the issue and, you know, all that I sacrificed and stuff.
And I was like, eh, okay, fine.
And I went and it was okay, but, you know, manipulation is just, I'm too lazy to earn it, so I'm just going to manipulate it.
Too lazy to earn it.
Is it easier to go out, raise pigs, feed pigs, clean up after pigs, slaughter pigs, bleed them out, carve them up, cook them, or is it just easier to say, hey man, can I have some of your bacon?
No, but I'm talking about manipulation, right?
I was talking to this woman today whose father was manipulative, and she said, you know, I just think of him as weak.
I'm like, weak?
Manipulation is not weak.
Manipulation is incredibly powerful.
Manipulation is magic.
Manipulation is how the world runs these days.
There's a small minority, it's like an inverted pyramid of a few people, like us and 12 other guys, working to produce stuff, and then everyone else is just this inverted pyramid, guilting everyone and everything into passing it along.
Manipulation is the physics of the modern world!
It's everything, it's the entire predatory cobweb bullshit, spine-robbing nonsense that you've got to dodge through and run through every day.
I mean, especially if you spend any time on social media.
I have to have an opinion about this, and I have to have an opinion about that, and manipulate this, and... I mean, all of the lies coming out these days about conflicts, I mean, it's just, ugh, anyway.
That's good.
I don't have to care about any of it.
It's lovely.
All right.
Thank you for your tip.
You had a previous question?
Did you, my friend?
Did you have a previous question?
Could you retype it?
I'd appreciate it.
Or just copy paste it if you don't mind.
After the painful conflicts of defooing, I found myself talking to friends about childhood and confronting bad parenting in public.
So I can confirm, conflict is constant and it can be endlessly unproductive if you get complacent.
Oh yeah, no, and the avoidance of conflict in general raises more conflict, right?
Like if you avoid some weird lump in your body, it's probably going to get worse, right?
Have you ever seen John Cleese's program on how to irritate people?
Mother using guilt trips to keep her grown son at home watching TV rather than going out, because an actual ball and chain would be too obvious, yeah.
He actually, John Cleese, did a lot of pretty good work.
He did a lot of therapy himself, and he wrote a book with his therapist, if I remember rightly, which was very good.
And one of the things I got out of that book was either you control your own emotions or you end up having to control other people, so.
Let's see here.
He did a lot of corporate training programs about how to be productive in meetings and so on.
So yeah, he did a lot of a lot of cool stuff.
A brilliant teen stick insect was how his wife described him in Fawlty Towers, which I thought was actually pretty funny.
And the man's got some hamstrings!
You see those funny walks, man?
The man's got some Kramer-style hamstrings.
Let's see here.
Steph, you're an idiot when it comes to people's lives that had under-involved slash abusive tics.
I just say that because I notice how you focus on the mom a lot more when people mention their childhood.
Is tics dads?
Let me see here.
Is tics dads?
I don't understand.
Boy, there's something kind of Freudian about that.
When you mistype the word dad, you're trying to type the word dad and you type tick.
When it comes to people's lives that had under-involved or abusive dads, I just say that because I notice how you focus on the mom a lot more when people mention their childhood.
That is very interesting.
And what do you guys think?
I'm perfectly happy to hear that as critical feedback.
Do I focus too much on moms in call-in chats?
Moms raise babies?
No.
That could be.
I mean, I certainly can tell you, I try to follow the lead of the caller.
Like if the caller says, I really want to talk about my dad.
I don't say, no, we have to talk about your mom.
I mean, I generally follow the lead.
And generally, generally when you have a bad dad, the dad breaks orbit.
Do you know what that means?
Breaks orbit.
Yeah, he's gone, right?
He just breaks orbit.
Whereas moms boomerang, right?
Dads break orbit, moms boomerang over the course of people's lives.
Does that make any sense?
So the moms tend to be more immediate to people because the moms are trying to borrow back in or are messing them up or something like that.
So that tends to be more approximate, but
Is there a plague of government-sponsored single father families?
I think to ask the question is to answer it.
I don't believe so.
In long ago call-ins we've done, you've not driven the convert to my mother when I was talking about my father.
No, and it's funny too because I just, I mean, obviously this is anecdotal and all that, but I just did a call-in show with, it was very interesting.
Well, I did two that were, one was, I don't know if you heard this, but one was a father who was very angry that I had talked to his daughter.
So we had a discussion about that.
Always happy to hear.
Honestly, I know that sounds bizarre, but I'm happy to hear.
Because, you know, if there's things I'm doing wrong, things I could do better, always happy to hear.
So, yeah, I had a conversation with a guy.
He was pretty mad.
The Dad Show is not released yet, no.
Somebody says, in my call-in we talked a lot more about my father.
It's your conversation.
I always say that to people.
So you always express great sympathy with people who had uninvolved fathers.
So and the other interesting show that I did today, which is very interesting, was it was a woman who's been listening to me for a long time and she brought her husband in who didn't know who I was at all.
That's a very interesting conversation to have because it's like one person's very experienced, the other person doesn't know what's going on at all.
And it was very, very interesting.
And the reason I'm saying that is that the husband had what I viewed as a pretty distant father.
So we did a role play where the husband was playing his father and I was playing him.
And so that was a very father-centric on his side.
It was more maternal-centric on her side, but it was more father-centric on his side.
So, yeah, listen, I mean, I'll keep it in my mind.
I mean, I've heard certainly the people who are like, oh, Steph, you simp with the women and you're more harsh with the men and so on, right?
Somebody says, I think focus tends to be appropriate because I find there's not enough emphasis on toxic femininity.
Lots about toxic masculinity out there, though.
Yes.
Fathers tend to be, I mean certainly more involved than they used to be, but in dysfunctional families fathers tend to be a little less involved.
Now that still has issues, but they're usually not as immediate and pressing.
And the other thing too, of course, as people have pointed out, my audience skews a little bit more on the sausage fest side of things.
So, is it worse for a man to have a bad relationship with his father or a bad relationship with his mother?
What do you think?
Yeah, because he's, if he's straight, right, he's going to get romantically involved with a woman.
So it's the maternal side of things that's probably going to have more impact on his dating life.
And when he's a father, it's the father absence that's probably going to have more effect on his parenting, but in terms of dating, and it's more important to pick the right person to have children with.
Because then your parenting job becomes that much easier, right?
But if you choose the wrong person to have children with, it's often fairly unrecoverable, so... Alright.
Why do you explain perfectly why women voting doesn't work but still believe women should vote?
I don't know that I've addressed those arguments in any detail in particular, I could be wrong, but...
I'll let you have a chat with yourself there.
Enjoy your hand puppet.
All right.
Pardon me.
I was looking for the mute button.
I'm like, too many buttons.
Couldn't find it.
Sorry about that.
Don't mean to give you ear cancer there.
I think your point of view is based on a generation that's actually used to masculine men and feminine women.
I don't think it's simping to talk to women like women and to push hard on men.
I'm a generation that's used to masculine men and feminine women.
Not when I was growing up, man.
When I was growing up, there was all single moms around and there was almost no dads around.
And the dads that were around were complete trash heaps in wife beaters.
So, I mean, maybe a little bit more in the media, but there was Kramer versus Kramer, which I went to pay to literally go and see that movie three times in the theaters because I found it very interesting and well done.
Lots to think about, lots to talk about in that.
All right, let's see here.
Now, what's interesting though, it's interesting that when you say, Steph, you're an idiot, when it comes to people's lives that had under-involved or abusive dads, I notice how you focus on the moms a lot more when people mention their childhood.
So that's interesting.
Let me ask you this.
I'm going to paste this back in, because I'm half and half on this.
Not sure why the parent balance question included an insult.
Well you're an idiot obviously is no it's never an insult right it's never really an insult because you wouldn't say that to somebody who had a genuine cognitive limitation right.
If you go to somebody who's got some physical cognitive limitation and you say you're an idiot that's just me right so the only person you'd say you're an idiot to is someone you don't think is an idiot.
So I never really I mean honestly don't take it.
I don't take that personally because it's literally like saying to someone, I hate your center part.
It's like, huh?
I've got a big wide center part, like a Moses center part.
So when you say, Steph, you're an idiot when it comes to people's lives, blah, blah, blah.
I just say that because I notice how you focus on the mom a lot more when people mention their childhood.
So is that more male or female to start off with an insult?
Is that more male?
It could be both.
I'm not entirely sure.
Is it more male?
Let me just paste this in again.
Is it more male or female to start off with an insult?
Yeah, I think it's 50-50.
I think it's 50-50 because it was a direct... So, starting off with an insult that's undermining and passive-aggressive may be more female, but a direct insult, you're an idiot, is probably more male, so... I mean, it's cocky either way, but...
And this is someone who is Simon.
He's Simon the Boxer-ing.
He's repetition compulsion of not being listened to, right?
Because most people, when you say, you're an idiot, they'll just say, oh, F you, and all that kind of stuff, right?
Because they take it personally, which doesn't make any sense.
But this is somebody who
had a rejecting parent and he's attacking me as a way of reproducing that rejection because he's just used to handling rejection and feeling self-pity and nobody listens and you know I just tried my best and bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
Seeing that you aren't prepared to go back onto social media.
What does that mean?
When did I say I wasn't prepared to go back on social media?
freedomain.com forward slash connect and you can see all the places on social media.
I'm on at least a dozen platforms.
So I'm not quite sure what that means.
Seeing that you aren't prepared to go back on social media and potentially getting more of an audience, the responsibility of support falls onto the few who contribute here to keep your business afloat.
Is that good?
Eek!
That's an interesting... He means Twitter.
Yeah, we're on social media right now.
Yes, yes indeed.
So seeing that you, this is interesting, seeing that you are prepared to go back onto social media, we can just say Twitter, seeing that you are prepared to go back onto Twitter and potentially getting more of an audience, the responsibility of support falls onto the few who contribute here to keep your business afloat.
Is that good?
Eek!
Well, whether I was on Twitter or not, people who consume my content have some honor obligation to pay back for the time and energy and money that I'm spending to produce content.
Does that make sense?
Like, I'm not sure... Like, if people listen to and find value in what I'm doing,
It would be honor-bound for them to contribute, to pay back, right?
Because I spend time, I spend money, I spend energy, I've burned an entire reputation and a career to get the truth out.
So, I think people are honor-bound to pay back for what it is they consume, right?
I mean, to pay back for what it is that you consume.
I'm not sure how me going back on Twitter would fundamentally change that.
Now, there may be more people, there may be more people who would contribute after a while if I went back on Twitter, right?
So, if I went back on Twitter and, I don't know, my listenership went up considerably over time, then there would be more donations.
But that wouldn't change the obligation of any individual who's consuming my content.
Does that make sense?
I mean, that would be more people who would be honor-bound to support what I do, or pay back for the value that they have received.
There would be more people honor-bound, but I don't know how that would change any individual, unless I'm missing something.
So, I'm happy to hear another argument, but... I mean, it's my choice, obviously, to forgo the fame, prominence, and extra income that might come from going on Twitter.
That's my choice.
And I don't know, is it, I can have more integrity here, and I'm not sure, maybe I have given some different impressions, you guys let me know, but I'm not sure I've given much of an impression that I would sell my principles for money.
Have I given that impression as a whole?
That I would be like, oh, is there more money over there?
Well... Chat with my principals, I'll take the cash.
I mean, good lord.
I mean, the whole basis of the show is taking a massive pay cut out of my entrepreneurial career to do philosophy.
So...
Yeah, I don't know that I've given the impression that I've got a big for sale sign on my eight head.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, honestly, I'd rather live under a bridge.
I would rather live under a bridge.
And what would it profit a man if he gained the whole world but lose his soul?
It's not tempting.
I mean, you know, maybe I have some virtues here and there, but resisting money is not one of them.
I'm just not even tempted.
Like, it's not even like, oh, but I could.
It's like, now it's like, ew.
Like, no, thanks.
No, thank you.
All right.
Steph, maybe if you returned to Twitter, you could eventually be on Dancing with the Stars.
Orion, I think, would be my footsteps.
All right.
No, that's why we love you.
You cannot be bought.
Well, I think I did take my shirt off for money on more than one occasion, but I give money partly because of the principles.
It's amazing how people can listen and think you're going to sell out.
Well, you know, there's an investment scenario here, right?
Which is, if I have resisted selling out when the pressure was far greater, and the rewards were far greater, the pressure to sell out and the rewards were far greater, if you've passed the big temptation, I'm not sure that the little temptations are that compelling.
Like, you just have to go through that one firewall, and after that, everything is fairly easy.
Is that fair to say?
And so for me, it's like, well, I mean, yes, I've been offered a lot of money and there's been a lot of potential for things.
And here I am chatting with you all on a Wednesday night.
Couldn't be happier.
This is exactly where I want to be.
This is exactly what builds the best value for the future.
And if I resisted all the temptations in the past, it would be completely bizarre.
It's like succumbing to peer pressure when you're 62.
It's like, maybe when you're 14, but if you've spent your whole life resisting peer pressure, you're not going to cave at 62, or whatever, right?
All right.
How can you do Family of Origin stuff and forward-looking morals if you've been sidetracked by Twitter?
So Twitter is... how can I put this?
I have a good deal of affection for Twitter.
I really do.
And particularly Elon Musk and so on, right?
I think he really did put his money where his mouth is, obviously, a lot.
He sort of explained recently why he bought Twitter, because he was afraid of the whole world turning into San Francisco.
Plus, also, I think one of his daughters got woke-ified and ended up hating him or whatever.
So, you know, that's gonna ruffle your feathers more than a little.
I like Twitter a lot.
I had a lot of fun on Twitter.
Twitter was a very interesting place to be.
And obviously, it was a little addictive.
I'm fine with that.
You know, I mean, we can call addiction passion.
It's six of one, half a dozen of the other.
I don't know.
But Twitter is, to a fairly significant degree, populated by reactive retards.
People who can't think, people who just react, and their feelings are all they know.
If they feel something, it's true.
If you make them feel bad, you're bad.
If you make them feel good, they approve of you, they don't think.
And the signal-to-noise ratio on Twitter is appalling, in terms of actual value that you get.
from people giving you response.
I mean, the quality of feedback that I get here, I don't mean to blow smoke up your armpits, but the quality of feedback that I get here is fantastic.
I mean, I don't know if you remember a couple of shows ago, somebody asked me a question, I just, I couldn't answer it for like 20 minutes, kind of unusual for me, but you know, I like those kinds of challenges, I really do.
So the elevation, the elegance of conversation here is really great.
With Twitter, you're just spending your whole time reminding people that two and two make four, while they tell you that math is a Nazi invention.
I like this postgraduate work with the intelligentsia.
I really do.
I, you know, I don't know that Einstein should be teaching arithmetic to people who hate math, kids who hate math.
I don't know.
It just doesn't seem like a very good use of time and all of that stuff.
The one thing I don't understand is why would someone want him on Twitter?
We get one-on-one live streams here.
If he was on Twitter, he'd have less time for this and his novels and call-in shows and everything else.
Yeah, for sure.
I love how you handled the change.
Feels like those of us who want to hear what you have to offer us now have the cream of the crop you have to offer.
I think so.
Yeah, I think so.
Somebody says, I know a lot of people who took the 2019 poke to keep their jobs so for the money.
And regret it.
Ah, you know, that was tough though, man.
I feel, I feel for that.
I know it's easy.
No, you know what?
Let me, I don't want to be rude that way.
That's unfair.
I'll say just my particular perspective is, I mean, obviously I work from home.
I'm, you know, basically got, it became too dangerous for me and for the audience to travel and speak in person.
So, I didn't have to do anything to keep my job.
I mean, obviously, lost some money and all of that, but I didn't have to do anything to keep my job.
Man, if you have, you know, this is your career, and you're into it, and you've got to take that to keep it, that's a rough, that's a rough thing, man.
Shirtless death is still great, though.
I agree.
All right.
Plato became a philosopher and was sold into slavery.
Socrates put on trial.
Any true philosopher can't be hugely commercially successful by definition.
Yes, listen, I am perfectly comfortable with a good fight, a fair fight, a reasonable fight.
I don't think I've ever turned down a debate with a topic I found important or that I felt I could contribute to.
You know, I faced down mobs of very aggressive and violent people while giving speeches.
I got tear gassed in Hong Kong.
I'm fine with, like, reasonable levels of risk in combat and fight.
But we're not in a debate world anymore.
I grew up in a debate world.
You know, my friends and I would debate all the time.
We'd fight all the time.
We'd raise voices about just about everything you could think of.
I got polished in the barbarian Conan fight club basements of constant teenage conflict.
But the idea, like, honestly, it would never, and it's unthinkable in my upbringing, and I think for most of us, the idea that you'd get into a debate with someone and if
You weren't happy with the outcome of the debate that you would try to get him fired from his job.
Like, that's just... just incomprehensible to me, you know?
Like, yeah, sometimes I won debates, sometimes I lost debates.
And the idea that, you know, like I lost a debate on evolution with a guy who worked at Pizza Hut with me.
And the idea that I would then go to the boss and say, this guy beat me in a debate, you need to fire him.
I mean, the boss would just laugh at me and it would be embarrassing and ridiculous that you would go after someone's occupation or job because they debated something that you didn't agree with or that you couldn't win or whatever it was.
Like, honestly, it's completely incomprehensible.
I mean, that's what we'd call a stalker.
Like, that would be like, some girl wouldn't go out with you, so you'd try and get her fired from her job and kicked out of her.
So, but the place where it's like, you know, we're gonna, like, what is it Tim Pool was saying?
He got, did he got, he got swatted, was it 15 times last year?
So the idea that somebody would make an argument or have data or facts that you disagreed with to the point where you would try and get them seriously harmed or killed by calling the cops on them, that's not a world that I'm part of.
That's not a world that I'm part of.
Steph, what about those streamers who get a steak sponsor promoting gambling?
Can you see that?
Can you see that?
I get it that you don't want to be a sellout, hence why I said the devil's offer, but it puts the responsibility onto the few who are here.
No, Jimmy, the responsibility is whether or not I have other audience members.
If you're consuming the content, you're honor bound to contribute, in my view.
I think it's a reasonable exchange of values, right?
I mean, if you're consuming content, and listen, if you're broke and poor and you can't afford it,
I welcome you here, don't feel bad, don't even think about it, and enjoy and consume and, you know, you can catch me down the road and get my books, download everything you want, enjoy.
Fantastic.
If you can't afford it, I never want anyone to feel bad.
Because, I mean, Lord knows I've been in situations in my life where I couldn't afford things.
I don't want anyone to feel bad about that.
But your responsibility, Jimmy, is not collective.
It doesn't get diluted by other people.
It doesn't get diluted by other people.
If you're consuming resources here, they cost money, you should contribute back.
What other people are doing is not your concern.
You don't get to take your own personal responsibility and dilute it in others and say, well, if Steph had more of an audience, there'd be less of a pressure on us.
No, first of all, I don't want you to feel... Donation things, it's not about pressure.
I don't want people to donate because they feel bad or guilted or anything like that.
I mean, the benefits that accrue to you for supporting the show are enormous, deep, and prodigious.
It's an exchange of value.
It means that you're less likely to be exploited because you're not exploiting others.
You are taking ownership, self-responsibility, moral accountability, and also,
So if you say, well, I really want to work out, but you never go to the gym, you don't get any muscles.
And if you say, I really want to live with honor, but you don't do things that are honorable, you don't get the happiness of honor.
In fact, you get the unhappiness of hypocrisy.
So I'm actually trying to bribe you with happiness to say support the show.
I'm trying to bribe you with happiness and I wouldn't want people doing it out of some sort of negative thing.
All right.
Let's see here.
Twitter equals a perfect showcase of the death of reason from bombing the brain.
Yeah, I was reading this thing.
Thank you for the tip.
I appreciate that.
I was reading this thing where somebody said, my favorite moment on the internet is when someone said that people change their minds according to reason and evidence.
And I posted to him two studies that proved the exact opposite.
And he said, yeah, well, I still believe it.
It's almost like the internet, right?
Oh my gosh.
Even in the more technical topics, tons of emotionally reactive people on Twitter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know what the most exhausting thing in the world is?
Do you know what the most exhausting thing in the world is?
I heard you can charge five people a month for people to comment on your tweets, so it eliminates the trolls.
Is that right?
You can just reserve your tweets for subscribers.
Is that right?
Your responses, replies.
Let's see here.
Yeah, Twitter and X still host.
Do you think a fast or slow collapse of society is more likely?
Feeling worried lately, hoping it isn't just too much Twitter and love to hear your thoughts.
Well, it's very slow, then it's very fast.
The escalation of war in a time of great debt is probably a sign that people are just pillaging the treasury before the walls come down.
So, sooner rather than later is what I would imagine.
You being from Canada, do you have any thoughts on the recent hockey death incident?
Yeah, I talked about those.
You can listen to that earlier.
Somebody says, I guess it pisses me off when you say that only 10% contribute currently.
Well, that's very interesting.
And do you think that people who don't contribute are getting away with something?
Do you think that people who don't contribute are getting away with something?
Do you think they are?
Oh, that's fair.
I understand where you're coming from.
I mean, they are in a way, right?
They're saving a couple of bucks, right?
They're saving a couple of bucks.
Now, and this is a big question, Jimmy, and I don't know the answer to this.
I'm just spitballing here, right?
It's a big question.
Okay, so you would like people to contribute to the show more, right?
Is that right?
You would like to have people contribute to the show more.
Yes.
Okay.
So how could you achieve that goal?
Right?
Nothing.
And it doesn't matter whether it's me or anyone.
I don't want to make this about me, but how could you get people to contribute more?
Right?
That's a big question.
You want people to do something.
You want people to contribute more, right?
So there's outside of pure reason, right?
There's two ways to get people to do things, right?
What are the two ways to get people to do things outside of pure reason?
You don't have to contribute to be on Locals, no.
How do you get people to do things?
Yeah, well, a positive consequence and a negative consequence.
It's not threaten or bribe, it's a positive consequence and a negative consequence.
So you want people to do something, and the question is,
How do you get them to do something you want them to do?
You know that it's the mindset of whether you offer them a positive or inflict a negative has to do with whether you think they're getting away with something.
Do you see what I mean?
If you think people are getting away with something, you will be very tempted to inflict a negative, right?
To shame, to punish, to be aggressive, to, right?
F'n freeloaders, whatever it is, right?
Because they're getting away with something, right?
You see it as a theft.
I hear you.
I get where you're coming from.
It's not a theft.
To not donate to the show is not a theft.
Why?
Why is it not a theft to not donate to Free Domain?
It's not a theft at all, right?
Why is it not a theft?
Oh, because it's perfectly allowed.
No, not because I invited people here.
I mean, you can be invited, you can get a flyer saying, come to my restaurant.
That doesn't mean the deal is free.
Because I don't require donations for people to consume the show.
It's not theft.
I mean, I think if you're, it's a little bit of sort of minor exploitation, but the question is, I mean, and it's a big question.
It's one I've asked myself off and on for like close to two decades now.
Why is it that people donate or don't donate?
Now, I can tell you the general pattern.
And this, honestly, this has nothing to do with donating to me.
This is just a general, really interesting thing about how to get people to do what you want them to do, or what you think the right thing to do is.
So why is it that people don't donate?
And I can tell you why, I think.
I have a unique view on this.
Doesn't mean I'm right.
I'm just saying that I have a unique view on this.
So why do people not donate?
Because they view me as a father figure.
To some degree.
Does that make sense?
And you don't pay debt, right?
Or they have been exploited in the past and they have suspicion or concern or hostility to giving money to people, right?
They've been exploited in the past and so on, right?
So what happens is they reach this oasis, right?
They reach this place which is voluntary.
And that's very unusual to people.
I don't know if you get that sense about this, that it's, there's no ads, it's all voluntary.
And I'm not a big, like, I didn't do any donation pitches directly, like solo shows.
I didn't do any donation pitches over the whole pandemic.
And so they, they get here and it's bewildering.
Now, if you've been lost at sea for a long time and you make it to shore and you kind of collapse and you're in a place where you can rest, you don't start working right away.
Do you?
So there's an evolution.
When people come, they're kind of shocked that I'm a moralist, but I don't moralize.
I know that's a bit sort of a tricky, wordy thing, right?
So I'm a moralist, I don't shame people.
I'm a moralist and I don't attack people, right?
Because when you hear that someone's, when you're a kid, right?
Oh, some teachers, you know, super moral, they're moralists and you're just like, Oh God, right?
It's, it's, it's scary, right?
Now,
I'm not perfect in this, I'm sure people can come up with clips of me being annoyed at donors and so on.
Non-donors, I mean.
So, again, I say this with humility that, I'm sorry, somebody says, I came from a very exploitive culture.
There's a suspicion that something afoul is going on behind the scenes, always in the back of my head.
Took me a long time to get over it.
Yeah, I mean, and you'd be right to have that approach, right?
Is that fair to say?
You'd be right to have that approach.
I mean, it's not like the internet is scam-free or anything like that.
So what happens is, people come to a new place, they come to a place where they've been exhausted and worn out.
Right?
Because I was asking, what is it that tires you out the most?
People who think that they can think, and are wrong.
People who think that they can think tire you out the most.
Am I wrong about that?
They're the most exhausting people.
People who think they can think.
You can help someone who knows they're lost.
You can't help someone who's confident they're going in the right direction.
People who think that they can think, when all they're doing is reacting.
So, people come here exhausted, worn out, debilitated sometimes.
Because, you know, culture is tough and there are a lot of ignorant people out there and all of that.
So I want them to rest, right?
I want them... Somebody, you know, has just swum to shore from like eight miles out at sea, dodging sharks and jellyfish and all of that, and they just finally come and collapse and their muscles are twitching and they can hardly breathe and you don't sit there and say, hey, hey, hey, get up and get me a coconut, right?
That's not... The people who complete sentences are also irritating, yeah.
Well, that means that they've been around NPCs too much, right?
So...
Yeah, the midwits, you know, the people who were the smartest people in their small town and can't adjust to being around really smart people.
So what happens is, I think, I think, I don't know obviously, but I think people have a certain younger mindset when they first find the show.
And then they grow into equality, right?
I mean, Amy with a Y.
Do you feel, and I'm happy to take feedback on this because again I can always improve, I can always tweak, do you feel that I talk down to you?
Do you feel that I condescend to you?
Do you feel that, I mean I'm trying to impart some knowledge and all of that, but do you feel diminished by the way that I communicate information?
I don't think so, and honestly, if you find times that I do, never, even when you critique me.
Yeah, I mean, how many times have I said, we're all in the same trenches, we're all dealing with the same issues, I might be a little bit further ahead, but we're all in the same challenges.
And of course, I also say to people, you know, I'm talking to some guy who's 25, who's gone through some personal revolution of self-knowledge, I'm like, you're way ahead of when I was your age, right?
People aren't used to information being shared out of a genuine excitement and desire to help.
They're used to information being shared to be judged, to be critiqued, to have some exam, to pass a grade, to feel dumb because the teacher wants to feel smart, and all that kind of stuff, right?
It takes a while, I think, for people to recover from their general lives, their general histories, their general culture in this oasis, this peaceful glade, this Rivendell or Bombadil's Land or whatever you want to call it, right?
This Shangri-La.
People get here like gold scotch and they're just worn out, tired.
And, you know, depending on the timing, then they're like, you know, I'd really like you to support the show.
And they're like, ooh, ah, you know, ooh.
It's tough, and you know, I'm aware of all of that, and I sympathize with that, I understand that, I mean, I'm skeptical of stuff as well.
And I think what happens is, over time, there's a certain trust that develops, and there's a certain maturity that develops, and there's a reciprocity that develops.
Mitch says, took me two years of almost daily listening to start donating.
Right, right.
Right, and I would say that that is, if you grew up in a situation where, quote, authority figures exploited you, there's a real readjustment to what's going on here.
I mean, I honestly don't view myself as an authority figure.
I think I get to hear my thoughts first and I'm happy to share them, but I don't think of myself as an authority figure.
So I think there's just an evolution that people are like, oh, he's a teacher, or he's an authority figure, or he's like a dad, or something like that.
And they're like, well, I'm not gonna pay a dad.
I'm not gonna pay, you know, this, you know.
But then there's a certain, so they start with a hierarchical relationship, and then over time, patiently and slowly, what I want to do is I want to bring people to
To equilibrium.
Not with me, with themselves.
To have a relationship of equality is really tough for people, right?
Is that fair to say?
Oh, thank you, I'm glad this is helpful to you.
So, if I have some authority, because of experience and knowledge and all of that, and I'm older,
I want people to just get to a situation of equality.
I don't want them to be superior.
I don't want to be superior to get to a position of equality.
Right?
Because we shouldn't be dominating each other in relationships.
You shouldn't be in a relationship where you're dominated.
You shouldn't be in a relationship where you dominate others.
You should be in a relationship of equality because we meet in the Cathedral of Reason, right?
Where the God is available to everyone.
So, I think people, they don't want to feel that they are giving money from a place of subjection, or inferiority, or loss, or lower, or a child mentality, or something like that.
And I just, I have to kind of wait, and be patient, and just kind of
Wait for them to buoy up.
Because I don't want anyone giving money to feel less, less, less, like, to feel less negative or less like, but I do want when people are like, oh, you know what?
He's providing value.
I can provide value back.
That's when we get to adult-adult equality.
Steph's providing value.
I should provide value back.
Ah!
That's the click moment.
And that's... So the people who stay in resentful or suspicious or... And again, it's somewhat exploitive after a certain amount of time.
I mean, it's fine to be skeptical of people when you first meet them.
You know, can you imagine being married to some woman for 60 years, she raised your kids, your grandkids, your great-grandkids, she stood by you when you were sick and then you're like, on your deathbed, you're like, I think I've decided to trust you.
There's a certain amount of withholding that just becomes kind of crazy after a while, right?
So yeah, I want people to just kind of ratchet themselves up.
Into a situation of equality, and then what happens is the donation aspect is tiny, right?
Ten bucks a month, whatever.
The donation aspect is relatively tiny, but when you say, I'm an equal to Steph, he does something, I can do something.
It's not even just help.
Like, he provides value, I can provide value.
Do you know
Do you know that translates to your life as a whole?
The skills that you would have here where you say, because you're going to be in my role with someone, right?
You're going to be in my role where you have much more value to add initially, right?
So, if you say two people in a relationship should both be adding value.
Now, again, when you first come across, yeah, be suspicious, be skeptical, and consume, and that's fine.
Obviously, I have no problem with that.
It's important.
It's helpful, right?
But when you get to the place where you say two people in a relationship should both be providing value, that revolutionizes your life.
I mean, I honestly remember this.
This is years before FDR.
I was dating this woman and it was fine.
Nice, nice woman.
Engineer and, and very smart, but it wasn't quite clicking for me.
And, but she was really, really keen on the relationship.
I just remember sitting there looking across from her and like, I should be getting more value out of this.
It's unfair to her that I'm not getting as much value, but just not clicking in that kind of special way that you want to click in.
But it really struck me as like, I shouldn't just be there because the woman wants to date me, and she was attractive, and she was smart, and I should be here because it's really a value to me.
No, it wasn't the same girl.
It wasn't the same girl.
It wasn't that girl either, the Beckham girl, no.
So back to Jimmy's question, are they getting away with anything?
Well, if somebody is like in a relationship with me, and look, this is personal enough and this is conversational enough that I'm not like some guy speaking to 20,000 people or a million people on the live stream.
There's a bit of a relationship here, right?
I mean, we're talking back and forth, right?
So if you're in a relationship with me and you're like, I'm going to take value but not provide value, that's a mindset that is going to be in all your relationships.
Because it's not personal to me.
It's just your mindset, right?
That one person doesn't have to provide value.
One person can consume without reciprocating.
One person can exploit the other.
Now,
Do you think anybody's getting away with that when they go out into the big, wide, dangerous world full of emotionally immature, reactive, NPC predator people?
And if they have the mindset that relationships don't need to be win-win, one person can just take, take, take, do you think they're getting away with anything?
Right?
If you knew how much I have spent on self-help books, says someone.
It's okay, now I have philosophy to help me change my life.
They're not getting away with anything.
It doesn't have to be win-win.
And so, you know, when I ask people to donate, you know, does my life revolve around $10 a month?
I don't think so.
Maybe if it was the last $10 a month, but it doesn't revolve around $10 a month.
But it is helpful for people to be in a reciprocal relationship where both people are providing value.
Does that make sense?
Now, if you have the belief that someone is just getting away with something, and you gotta get it back, and you're gonna be aggressive, and you freeloader, you whatever, right?
And you're gonna be angry, angry, right?
Because you think people are getting away with something.
And some people will give you money if you aggress against them, right?
Like you freeloading, whatever, right?
Okay.
What paradigm have you set up?
I've told people they can have stuff for free.
I prefer donate.
But if it's like... You're getting away with something.
You're stealing.
I'm angry.
As opposed to...
I would really like you to understand that a reciprocal relationship where both people add value is pretty essential for your life.
And you can test drive it for ten bucks a month.
I mean, it's even free!
I give people twelve months for the price of ten, I give them a free coupon in case they want to try out all of the subscriber benefits, the StaffBot AI, the History of Philosophers series, the Peaceful Parenting book.
Honestly, yeah, all caps, UPB 2022.
I can't make it any easier or anything better, right?
So what does it mean, and this is again nothing to do with donations, forget the donations, nothing to do with me, what does it mean in your life if you say all my relationships must be reciprocal, all my relationships must be based on mutual values and value to each other?
I won't take without giving.
I won't give without taking.
What does it mean?
How would that change your relationships?
At work?
Friendships?
Dating?
Marriage?
Love?
Kids?
Parents?
What does it mean when you say all my relationships have to provide reciprocal value?
Win-win.
Adult.
Because win-lose relationships are fundamentally parent-child, authority-underling, master-slave, teacher-
Coerced student.
Does that make sense?
It's the adult voluntary free market relationships where both people have to provide value.
And you must show up in some non-manipulative way.
Yeah, that's right Dave, absolutely right.
You've got to show up in a non-manipulative way.
Because you don't need to manipulate, because you just say to yourself,
Am I receiving value from this relationship?
Am I providing value to this relationship?
This is a 1200 coin speech.
Steph, kudos.
Thank you.
Could the guy who made the comment about donating be echoing how his parents felt about him as a baby?
So, the reason we get angry is we have a scarcity mindset and if someone takes something, we have less.
So if you have five loaves of bread and you've got all week and somebody steals a loaf of bread, you're gonna go hungry.
So you get angry at them because they're taking something that's yours that really costs you.
Does that make sense?
I don't like seeing good people being exploited.
Now, I don't like it either, but the question is, why don't you like it?
Do you not like it because they're stealing and robbing and they're getting away with something and they're bad people?
Or do you not like it because, boy, if you got this principle of win-win, your life would be so much better and so much happier.
Are you trying to remind them of the gift of reciprocity and mutual value exchange?
Are you really trying to provide a positive to people?
I try to encourage people to donate.
I mean, obviously I have bills to pay and all of that, but I try to encourage people to donate because it's a basic principle.
They're going to be so much happier if they break through that take mentality that comes from a more primitive or earlier or more childlike or more subjective, subjected mindset and exchange value like adults do.
Like adults do, right?
Equals.
I provide value, you provide value.
If I don't provide value, you don't have to provide value.
Right?
If I charged, people wouldn't gain the value of choice.
Do you see what I mean?
Let's say that I could put some magic wall and it's like a buck a podcast, five bucks a podcast, whatever it is, right?
I have this, right?
Then people would be like, fine, I'll pay.
But they don't get to choose it then.
They don't choose it.
I need them to gain the value of philosophy by choosing to donate.
Choosing.
It's everything.
It's everything to choose.
You don't get the value if you feel compelled.
Do you see what I mean?
You don't get the value.
And also what I'm doing is so radical that you can't put a price on it because the price is invisible.
Because the content is invisible because it's unprecedented, not just in the world.
Come on, there's nothing else like this out there.
Do you follow?
There's nothing else, nothing close, nothing else out there like this.
And I've scanned and I've looked.
There's nothing else out there like this.
That I know.
I know that now.
I've known that for, well, since the beginning.
So how am I supposed to charge for something when people don't even know what it is?
I can't charge people for a good that is completely unprecedented, right?
I'm going to charge you $100 for a flibbertigibbet.
I don't know, what does that mean?
If it's $100 for a Lamborghini, you'll take it.
If it's $100 for a ping pong ball, you won't.
Right?
I have to lift the kimono because nobody knows how big my nose is.
I have to give it away for free because people have no way of evaluating it ahead of time.
Honestly, somebody says to you, uh, oh, I've heard about this Free Domain show with that Steph guy.
Hey, what's it like?
What show is it closest to?
What would you say?
What would you say?
What would you say?
Well, I guess he does some economics and he does some politics and he does some self-knowledge.
I guess that's his listener call in shows.
He does some science.
He interviews a bunch of people.
He's like, he does philosophy.
Well, what kind of philosophy?
I don't know how to describe it.
Right?
I mean, what would you say?
I tell people it's like the best shows on numerous topics combined.
Well, let me ask you this, right?
This is show five billion or whatever the hell it is.
I mean, is this new information for you?
Is this helpful?
Is this unprecedented?
Is this right?
You didn't know what we were... I didn't know what we were going to talk about tonight.
I think we're doing a great job of unpacking a bunch of really important stuff.
You bring the heat every time in my opinion.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate that.
Somebody says, I subscribed in spring this year.
In less than a year, I figured out answers to issues that two years of therapy couldn't help me figure out.
Primary ones being why I didn't want marriage and kids and being overweight, etc.
These are issues people can get to old age without ever figuring out.
Still in therapy, but going much better thanks to Steph.
It's literally saved me money because I would have likely needed lots more sessions.
Yeah.
I still remember the guy who got arrested while on call with you and his girlfriend.
Oh yeah.
I've got a call, I'll put it out at some point, with a woman whose brother was caught by one of these predator sting operations on social media.
Those relationship calls have helped me so much.
Well, I think so.
I mean, and, you know, have you avoided bad relationships?
Have you avoided being exploited?
Have you avoided lending money to people who won't give it back?
Have you avoided going through divorce?
Have you avoided alienation from people?
Have you started a business?
Have you got a raise?
I mean, the 10 bucks or 20 bucks a month is nothing compared to the value of the benefits.
I get that, right?
I get that.
But other people have to see it.
I can make the case.
Other people have to get it.
They have to get the why.
What it means when you say, I'm going to give back.
I'm not going to take.
Taking is a child position.
Taking is a slave position.
Taking is a subject position.
I'm going to reciprocate.
I'm going to provide value back.
I'm an equal.
Demanding value and providing value is a statement of equality.
Dave says, nobody's modeling good relationships or solid interactions with both conflict and honesty.
I never want you guys to feel anything less than elevated by what I say.
Hopefully inspired, hopefully ennobled, hopefully, but definitely elevated.
I never want you to be like, oh, I never thought of that, I'm such an id, like I never want you to feel less.
Whenever I open my mouth, I want you to feel more deeper, greater, more empowered.
Wiser.
Dude, you are raising us up.
I want to, because I want you.
If you guys have kids or you're going to have kids, I want your kids to look up to you and admire you.
And I don't, I mean, the idea that I could gain anything by making you feel less.
Right.
And this is why I'm sure I've had frustration with donations at times, particularly when, well, I won't get into any of that, but yeah, there've been times.
So obviously I'm not perfect, but this is my aim.
This is my aim.
Sometimes it feels like a shell-shocked type of wisery.
Yeah, I hear you.
I hear you.
Yeah.
You're a Morpheus and we're all Neo.
Yeah, because Neo ends up ruling the roost, right?
Ruling the roost.
So, it's kind of like, the way that I view it is something like this.
I'm going to take a sort of silly example here.
You got an uncle, you care about him very much, and he's a heavy smoker, you don't want him to get sick, and you're like, for ten bucks a month you can get a patch on your arm and you won't want to smoke.
You won't want to smoke.
I mean, it'll be a little tough to cut, but you get a patch on your arm.
Patch doesn't do you any harm at all.
It's totally neutral to your chemistry or biology.
Patch doesn't do you any harm.
It's ten bucks a month.
Oh, thank you, Anthony.
This is memorable beyond words.
I appreciate that.
So, 10 bucks a month, you can... You won't smoke.
And you think of all the money and he's like, I don't want to pay 10 bucks a month.
I don't want to pay 20 bucks a month for this patch that has me quit smoking.
I don't want to... But how much money are you spending on cigarettes?
How much money are you spending on relationships which aren't equal?
I mean, seriously, you can quantify this.
I mean, it could be...
On dates, it could be giving money, lending money, buying stuff for friends, it could be not getting the raise you deserve, it could be not starting the business.
How much money are you spending on relationships which aren't equal?
Where you aren't respected, where you aren't empowered?
How much money are you spending on those relationships?
So, if you go to your uncle and you say, look, you spend $200 a month on cigarettes, it's $20.
20 bucks, 10 bucks.
Put it on your arm, you'll be fine.
Now, if he says, if he says, no, I'm gonna keep smoking.
Is he getting away with anything?
Nope.
It's sad.
It's sad that he can't see the value proposition.
So you're not, like, are you angry at him?
Or, are you just going to be patient and persistent and try and break through?
I would assume the animal was suicidal.
Well, you don't want him to be that way, right?
Well, he's suspicious, he's skeptical, maybe he's tried a bunch of patches before or something like that.
There could be any number of reasons, but you've just got to be patient.
And you've just got to keep reminding people, which is why I, you know, every show I try to remind people, freedomain.com slash donate.
And yes, of course, it pays bills and that's important, but I want to get people to a level of equality.
I want to get people, and I want them to choose it.
I don't want to bully them, I don't want to shame them, I don't want to aggress against them.
I mean, when I say to people, you know, it's the right thing to do, it is the right thing to do.
I mean, to be reciprocal, but it's not about the 20 bucks to me.
It's about, right?
Somebody says, I'm a walking cautionary tale.
You make me want to do better.
Thank you for all you do here.
Everything I invest in you keeps you helping someone else.
It's so important, right?
You understand, the longer we can do shows, this is why I take care of my health too, the longer we can do shows, the more good we can do in the future.
Somebody says, you give me great journaling material because you hit the sore spots.
I didn't know I was sore.
I'm so sick of being numb.
I want reality.
Yeah, sick of being numb is really important.
At some point, the emptiness becomes an echo that rips your eardrums apart, right?
The silence, the numbness, the absence, you gotta rip through that, tear through it.
Good for you.
You gotta punch through that ice, right?
Good for you.
I wish you great strength.
What are other good questions to ask your subconscious?
You mentioned asking, what are we doing wrong?
Why don't you like me?
What can I do to gain your respect?
What am I listening to you the least about?
Comfortably numb.
It's only good for a guitar solo.
Or, another great question to ask your unconscious is, tell me my regrets before it's too late.
Tell the truth and shame the devil.
Tell me my regrets before it's too late.
Don't wait till it's too late, man.
Ouchies.
You want these good questions, would you like another one?
If I was aiming for immortal love, what would I do?
If I was aiming for immortal love, to be loved throughout time, across the universe, if I was aiming for immortal love, what would I do?
If that doesn't dredge up your deepest and most powerful self, I don't know what will.
And I'm not talking about being a philosopher.
The reason that you'd say, how do I
develop immortal love, how can I inspire immortal love, is so that you make sure you don't settle for mere convenience or kind regard, but you aim for a deeper love from those around you.
Would you like another question for your unconscious?
What is the price of my smallest self, my most petty self?
What is the price of my smallest self and why do we pay it?
What is the price of my smallest self and why do we pay it?
And you have to beg, not demand, beg to know.
And you'll get the answer.
You'll get the answer.
It'll hurt.
But you'll get the answer.
Another one?
Who wins by limiting us?
Who the fuck wins by limiting us?
Who profits from our smallness?
Who gets bigger and stronger when we stay smaller and weaker?
Who hates our greatest virtues the most?
Who is the most threatened by our greatest powers, our greatest virtues?
Who hates us that we don't know?
Who hates us and we don't know it?
What is the greatest danger that we can't see?
What is the greatest danger that you've tried to tell me about that I keep rejecting and running away from?
If I turn and embrace you, my potential, what parts of me feel like they're gonna die?
What gets burned away in the purity of that ambitious flame?
Would I rather have a mediocre child
Or the possibility of a great love?
Oh, here's another great question to ask your unconscious.
How frustrated are you with me?
You give me dreams every night.
You give me emotions every day.
You give me inspiration.
You keep floating up these balloons to tell me what's going on and how to be and how to be grand and how to be powerful and how to be deep, how to be magnificent, how to be inspiring.
How frustrating is it to rely on me to say yes to everything you want to do that would make me happier?
How annoying am I to you?
Yeah, these are going to be brutal.
I don't want to be too brutal.
It's all stuff I've asked, right?
I don't want to be too brutal.
Ah, who wants me to be alone?
Who wants me to be alone?
Highlight them for me, put a glow around them.
Who is fucking me up and wants me to be alone?
Come on, baby, you can tell me.
Who wants me to live and fade and die alone?
You know your unconscious goes so deep it goes back to the beginning of life itself.
You know that, right?
Unconscious has evolved over four billion years.
It goes so deep beyond your mere mortal life, your transitory flickering existence.
It goes so deep it goes back to the very origins of life.
Deep down in there are some DNA from the first fucking single-celled organisms.
that smash fucked their way into dominance over the planet.
How annoying is it for four billion years of wisdom to have to go through the tiny aperture of one transitory ego that can say no all the time?
You know
That a lot of times to your unconscious, it is the free market and you're the fucking rubber stamp bureaucrat who gets to say yes or no to the glory of four billion years of development.
You are the rubber stamp bureaucratic bullshit, narrow aperture that says, no, no, no, too scary, too difficult, too dangerous, too problematic.
I'm going to have to revise that.
I'm sorry.
It's going to have to get rubber stamped.
I'm sorry.
It's got to go through three more layers of bureaucratic.
Oh my God.
You ever had that?
You stand in front of a bureaucrat and it's like, oh please, can you meet me?
Please sir, can I have some more?
Says Oliver Twist to the poor house.
That's your unconscious.
That's a new fear.
You know, like the French government saying to the merchants, well, what can we do to help you?
And they're like, get out of the way!
Just get out of the way.
Let us do our thing.
I'm afraid I'm going to need 15 forms filled out with triplicate to even begin to bring this to the appropriations committee for the possible review of the budgetary.
Oh my God.
I just want to build something.
No, we're going to need environmental assessments and we're going to need a review of this in the DEI.
Oh my God.
Fine.
Fine.
I give up.
I give up.
I give up.
You win.
We do nothing.
Oh, by the way, here's some slow spreading depression and anxiety.
Which is the smoke from our burnt corpses on the endless flaming paper cuts of your hyper-care-feminized-anxious-mom bullshit.
I'm afraid I'm gonna need those TPS forms.
Listen, don't get me wrong, the ego and the unconscious, it's a great team.
And we live in a world of politeness and bureaucracy and laws and care, and we need to not just be passionate animals.
It's the tension.
I talk about this in the truth about the French Revolution, right?
We need to have that tension.
It's good.
You know, like that old meme, you got a license for that?
You know, the British meme?
I don't know what accent that was, but you know the British meme, you got a license for that?
Passion!
I'm sorry, I'm gonna need to see your permit.
And you ever see that meme from Parks and Recreation, Ron Swanson?
You have a permit for that?
I do what I want.
I am angry at the world our fathers gave us.
Why do I feel obligated to fix it?
It can't be fixed.
It can be rebuilt.
It can be changed.
It can't be fixed.
I mean, honestly, do you, do you, do you strongly feel that Western nations are about to get a handle on their spending?
Do you feel that's imminent?
Oh my gosh.
Madness.
Oh, did you want to catch some fish?
You want to build a shed in your backyard?
Or a fence?
Oh my god.
We're like that Robert De Niro character in Brazil just slowly getting eaten up by papers, right?
Now, you can't do anything really about the bureaucracy in the world, but can't you do something about the bureaucracy in your mind?
Yeah, praying silently.
Got arrested.
So again, what can we do about that?
Not much, but we can do something about the bureaucracy, and smallness, and hide, and littleness, and self-suppression.
And it's a balance.
This is an Aristotelian balance.
You don't let the unconscious rule, and you don't let the ego rule.
It's the Minko system.
Everybody gets a seat at the table.
Brothers and sisters, everyone gets a seat at the table.
I'm just going from the pendulum of hyper-rationality to hyper-emotionalism.
You need the passion, and you need to negotiate with the passion, and you need to give the passion scope, and room to run, and permission, and encouragement.
Just get out of the way.
But you don't let the passion just run your life.
That's called acting out, and that's also not human.
Human is the tension between the passion and the reason.
The inspiration and the objectivity, the courage and the danger.
It's a balance.
It's not a great answer, it's not a certain answer, it's a moving target.
But you gotta negotiate.
Greatness comes not from the uncorking of personal passions, but from the negotiation between passion and reason.
And that's the goal for me.
I mean, that's why post-politics I got into reading my novels.
Because the novels are very passionate.
And show the reasons behind the reason.
This helpful?
I want to make sure I don't ramble off on some tension.
Well, hedonism breeds regret for action.
And intellectualism breeds regret for inaction.
With hedonism you regret what you do, with intellectualism you regret what you don't do.
Hedonism says, oh I wish I hadn't.
Intellectualism says, oh I wish I had.
It's like anger.
Any asshole can get angry.
And every coward can pretend that a lack of anger is a virtue.
But to get angry in the right way, at the right level, for the right effect... You love the questions for yourself?
You want the toughest one?
Should we end on the toughest one?
This is like Arizona crater time.
Yeah, you all say that.
You can disconnect.
Why am I unloved?
Why am I not arousing great passion?
Why will no one sacrifice for me?
Why is nobody chasing me?
Why does nobody want me?
Why is nobody beating on my door?
Why is nobody after me?
Why does nobody want me?
Why is nobody of value hounding me?
You know those scenes, saw as a cheesy scene in a sitcom or a movie where the guy's leaving and they're chasing, the man's, or the woman's running through the airport, oh, jumping over, oh, right?
Where are the people devoted to me?
And where are the people I can be devoted to?
Why am I unloved?
Now that's one way of asking the question.
Do you know another way to ask the question?
What do I have to do and who do I have to be to be loved?
Who benefits from my isolation?
Which gene sets hate me to the point of castrating me?
Why am I alone?
Now, you can be in a relationship and still feel alone.
You can be in a marriage and still feel alone.
You can be in a crowd and still feel alone.
Why am I not a firework show that bring the greatest and the deepest irrevocably into my orbit?
Who is at war with me that I remain alone?
Who am I unwilling to piss off and so stay alone?
Who am I unwilling to prove wrong and so stay alone?
Who am I appeasing?
Who am I losing to?
No, it's not your own genes that are trying to kill you and your bloodline.
You know philosophy is epigenetic, right?
I think it changes our genes.
I really do.
I was R-selected.
Now I'm not.
She was blind, but now I see.
I would have had a different kid prior to philosophy.
You change the bloodline.
In my view.
I don't have any proof.
In my view.
It's my experience for sure.
If you're alone, the fundamental question is, who's killing you off?
Who is killing you off?
Who's killing off your bloodline?
Who's killing off your genes?
Who's killing off your balls?
Who's killing off your ovaries?
Who's killing off your four billion year march from the primordial soup to nothing?
Why do I act like a troll with this community?
I don't mean to.
I feel sad.
You act like a troll because you feel sad.
You don't want to face that sadness.
So you provoke a reaction so that you avoid your sadness.
I sympathize with that.
I sympathize with that.
If you're a man, you don't get to say, I'd have loved to have had a kid.
You don't get to say that if you're a man.
And even if you're a woman, you can adopt.
It's not ideal, but it's possible.
Man, you can have your kids into your 80s.
Not ideal, but it's possible.
All right, another question to ask your unconscious.
Who's talking right now?
You say, I'm too old.
Who's talking?
Is that you?
Is that your balls, your jeans, your lineage?
Your happiness?
Your contentment?
You're old?
I'm too old!
Unless you're typing from your deathbed, in which case I appreciate the attention at the end.
Who's saying, oh I'm too old?
I'm not enough?
I'm unlovable?
I'm too weird?
I'm too unusual?
I'm too introspective?
I'm too shy?
Who's saying that?
Who's saying that?
It's not you!
Big question to ask your unconscious.
Who the fuck is talking right now?
Who's talking?
Is it you?
Is it your enemies?
Is it your brutalizers?
Is it your culture?
Is it those who want you dead?
Is it the... Who is it?
Who's even talking?
You don't know.
Half the time.
I don't.
Still.
Who's talking?
Oh, I get... this... good... bad... I don't know.
Ask!
Debate!
Argue!
Just let it roll over, I'm too old.
Roll over.
No!
Argue.
Who are you to say I'm too old?
Who are you to say I'm too old?
Do you know how many people have said to me over the course of my life, shut the hell up?
It's more than one.
Spoiler, it's more than one.
Who's talking?
The trashy people who don't want the truth out there because illumination!
And it's not even the trashy people, it's the trashy sides of them that won't let them grow, that don't want them to grow.
Do you believe in self-ownership?
Do you believe we own ourselves in the effects of our actions?
Do you believe in self-ownership?
Do you accept self-ownership?
Yes.
So how about you start owning your actual self?
Which means don't let your enemies dominate your discourse.
Self-ownership means don't let your enemies dominate your discourse.
Don't let those who want your destruction dictate the depth and breadth of your thoughts.
Challenge them.
Fight them.
Incorporate them.
Listen to them.
Don't bow down.
Don't bow down.
Reason.
Cross-examine.
Negotiate.
Okay, but I can't have a kid.
I'm too old.
Oh, so if you're a woman, then yeah, okay.
So there are no kids around.
You can't volunteer.
You can't do Big Brother or Big Sister.
You can't have any access to any children that you could improve.
You can't pseudo-parent.
No nieces.
No nephews.
No kids in the neighborhood that you could help out.
No volunteer programs that you could do.
No after-school programs.
Oh, you do that?
Okay, good.
Okay.
That's good.
Well, I appreciate that.
I appreciate that.
And I hope that you tell people about the regret of not having children so that you can bring more life into the world.
Yes, it's true, I could only have one child, but I think this show has helped a lot of children into the world.
Somebody says, quite literally, a war inside my head.
I've often wondered, is my negativity paranoia or is my hope unwarranted optimism?
Literal question I have asked.
Right.
Right.
The only way to resolve the war inside your head.
Hmm.
No, that could be misinterpreted.
It could be significantly misinterpreted.
Now I have a war inside my head.
Look, it's spreading.
I have a war inside my head.
If you have imaginary fears, act in defiance of them to test them.
If you're afraid of talking to people, talk to people and find out if your fear is right or real.
Give it some time, let yourself get good at it.
Why do most women never blah blah blah blah blah?
Boy, you are really avoiding self-confrontation here, aren't you, my spherical knight?
We're talking about self-confrontation and you're like, but let me criticize women in high school.
Because I have no questions to ask my unconscious, I've completely encapsulated and empowered every single part of my being.
So let me get focused on women!
Good job, self-avoiding.
I'm going to leap or any possible things I could do to make myself deeper, more powerful and nag on women.
Yeah, good luck with that, my friend.
Now you got to ask yourself, what do you have to ask yourself?
What do you ask yourself when you do something like that?
Which part of me wants to focus on women rather than my own potential?
Which part of me wants to criticize abstract women rather than focus on my actual potential?
Who benefits from me distracting myself by criticizing people who aren't even in the room with me?
You know who's in the room with you?
You, and every part of you, and all of you, and every bit of you.
You know who's not in the room?
In the room?
Abstract women!
I'm going to focus on what doesn't exist rather than
What could exist for real?
Best line tonight, Steph.
I don't know what drone it was, but I'm glad you found something.
Is this helpful?
I mean, I could come up with a whole list of these.
Maybe I'll do a show on questions to ask your unconscious.
Should I make a note of that?
That would be donor only.
I'll tell you that though.
It's pretty, pretty wild stuff.
All right.
Anybody seen the Five Nights at Freddy movie?
Anybody seen that?
Just out of curiosity.
No?
Looks bad?
Of course it looks bad!
That doesn't mean it shouldn't be reviewed, right?
Why can't I find more mature, high-quality women than the ones you find around you?
Maybe you were in the wrong place.
You ask your unconscious.
Why am I unwilling to do what it takes to find high quality women?
That's a confusing transition.
I asked my daughter if she should make this joke.
I said, I want to see Five Nights at Freddy's, but it feels like a big time commitment for a movie.
And she's like, don't make that joke.
I'm like, I might.
Anyway, I guess I made my decision.
Is sympathy slash compassion for these abstract women a subconscious response seeking compassion?
I don't know.
It's your brain.
But it wasn't sympathy, compassion.
That was an insult to women.
You're saying, why is it that women don't mature past high school, blah, blah, blah.
No.
You're trying to distract people from self-analysis and self-empowerment and self-exploration to, oh, over there there's some people we can criticize.
It's just a way of avoiding.
And it's also a way, of course, of keeping women at distance from you.
Because if you're in a situation where you can confront petty aspects of yourself and you start criticizing women as a whole, it's just a way of you staying single, you staying alone, you being unloved.
So are we done then?
I thought we were onto something.
I'm not sure what that means.
But yes, any last tips for, I think, what's been quite a rip-roaring show, if you would like to help out?
Thank you, Jimmy.
I really, really appreciate it.
These unconscious questions are great.
Yes, I will do more.
I can maybe dig out my old therapy journal, which is like 5,000 pages or something, see what I was asking myself.
Great show tonight.
Thank you.
Thank you, my friend.
I really appreciate it.
Don't be afraid of your own size and power.
It's really a shame.
Yeah, and anybody, call in at freedomain.com if you would like to do a call in.
That would be great.
The money I donated was overdue, Steph.
You've been tremendously helpful.
Thank you.
Thank you, Anthony.
I appreciate that.
That's very kind.
Very kind.
Very sweet.
Powerful.
And remember, check out this French Revolution stuff.
It's seriously smoking stuff.
All right, let me just check one or two things here as we close off the show.
What did I miss here?
I missed something.
I know I did.
There we go.
Wish it was longer, it goes by so fast.
Hey man, we did two and a quarter hours, that's pretty good.
Alright, if you're listening later, of course, freedomain.com slash donate, and I really appreciate your support.
Don't forget to check out the
LocalsCommunity, freedomain.locals.com, promo code all caps UPB2022 and freedomain.com slash books for all of the free books you can.
