Jan. 29, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:13:49
5385 Surviving Gaslighting! Freedomain Livestream
14 January 2024 Sunday Morning LivestreamHi Stef! How does one handle the scenario where parents (divorced) refuse to even acknowledge the abusive (yelling, threats, insults, beatings, etc.) things they've done while raising me and my brother? Whenever I bring up the subject or a specific episode they follow this process: "I never did that!" -> "Oh you're remembering it wrong" -> "It only happened once, don't be a baby." -> "You must've done something" and on and on.Why do they want women to be weak and disempowered?Why is it so common for women to have sex on the same day as meeting a man and then acting baffled that they ghosted? It's such a common thing whenever the topic of dating comes up.Refuge in video games has been something I've been doing since I was a very young kid. What steps would you recommend Stef to break free from this? I hardly even like playing them a lot of the time.Why can't I tell people "No."Hi Stef, how do we gain knowledge about the causes of human evil if nothing is causal and free will is the answer?Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!Get my new series on the Truth About the French Revolution, access to the audiobook for my new book 'Peaceful Parenting,' StefBOT-AI, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
But, uh, the camera, from what I understand, it tries to do, uh, I turned off stabilization, but it zooms in so it can stabilize.
Even though I told it to not stabilize.
But, hey.
It's funny, you know, for many years, camera settings have been largely a mystery to me.
And I've been like, oh, I should just take a, you know, a weekend and learn all about camera settings.
Yet, yet I have not.
Yet I have not.
It just, it just always feels like there are infinitely better things to do than that.
And I've had people who are good with cameras and
You can come and work and it doesn't really, doesn't really help.
Alright, so good morning!
You just got back from church, how nice!
And let's get your comments.
Yeah, I don't know why they dropped all of that stuff when Microsoft, maybe it was Microsoft bought it out or whatever, right?
On my local radio station there's a straight hour of Pink Floyd, it's called Floydian Slip.
Nice.
I remember, was there some movie, was it Dennis Quaid or something?
There was some movie where this woman was wearing a negligee with a picture of Freud in it or something that was a Freudian Slip.
Anything to get naked.
Alright, so I'm a little low on rumble, but we'll figure it out.
We'll just have to live with it.
It won't be the final one that I use anyway.
Alright, questions, comments, issues, challenges?
I'm gonna do something exciting here and try a refresh just because I don't want to have to sit here clicking to get the comments.
Uh, right.
Uh, yes.
Looks like we can continue.
And we continue, and it looks better.
Alright, so it looks better.
Good, good.
Looks great.
Uh, I don't, uh, good children's TV shows?
Um, let's see here.
I'm trying to remember what Izzy watched.
She wasn't a big TV person.
What did she watch?
We did do a little bit of My Little Pony.
Uh, we did, there was a How to Train Your Dragon TV series, which was a lot of fun.
She, of course, like most, most kids was into dragons.
Yeah, sorry, I did.
I refreshed it just because the comments weren't working.
And so, we're back.
Alright.
So, I'm trying to think, what else did she watch?
As far as TV shows go, I don't think we watched any.
We didn't have any live TV that I can recall back when she was younger.
We don't have any now.
I mean, who watches TV?
Who has cable?
Hit me with a why if you have cable.
Do you have cable?
I mean, I can't even remember the last time I've had cable.
Or would like turn on TV and watch, watch TV.
This is not an endorsement.
It's not a good or bad thing.
I just, um, I can't, I can't imagine.
Where was it?
I, I think I was in some hotel room sometime back and I had to, I was watching something and there were commercials and I was like, Oh my God, this is horrible.
This is horrible.
Whoa.
All right.
So let's see if we can fix something went on with that camera.
Well, that's all right.
There we go.
Oh, look at that.
I can't believe I changed something and it got better.
No cable for 15 years?
Yeah, boy, you want to see something pretty grim, economically speaking.
You have a look at...
You have a look at the revenue collapse for mainstream media.
It's down like 70 to 80 percent over 10 years, like mainstream media revenue.
And that's rough.
That's rough.
Because it means that the higher IQ people leave, because they can do better elsewhere, which means you're just left with propagandists, so.
All right, you have two streaming services.
Yeah, no cable, mostly YouTube.
Ha!
All right, no cable for 15 years.
Yeah, I haven't gotten around to getting my hair cut.
It's just gotten even more ridiculous.
I'll get to it though.
I truly, I truly feel that I will.
Classic Mr. Dress-up, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
I didn't like Mr. Rogers.
I never, I mean I was too old for him.
I did not like Mr. Rogers.
I found him kind of hypnotic and eerily too calm.
I thought he was programming in this sort of Brahman detachment, this otherworldly, well, you know, dum-dee-dum, la-dee-dee, just very mild, overly mild mannered.
I think he was kind of like a slow rinse narcolepsy for kids, and especially for boys.
You know, how do you deal with the wild nature of boys?
I mean, that's sort of a big question for society as a whole.
How do you deal with the wild nature of boys?
How do you capture and focus that?
Well, I mean, the wild nature of boys, of course, has only increased with the massive prevalence of single motherhood.
And I think that Mr. Rogers was just a way of trying to hypnotize boys into being
Not boys.
Something else.
Not quite boys.
So I was not a fan.
I thought he was way too mild-mannered.
And those cardigans, that slow way of talking, that hypnotic.
Oh, yeah, it was just not good.
It was not.
It was not good.
He was like the original ADHD meds or something, you know?
It's like, well, we'll just try and hypnotize you into being calm.
Yeah, I didn't, uh... I didn't.
Was he covered in tattoos?
I don't think so.
I don't know.
What do I know about Mr. Rogers?
I just, uh, I always found him, uh...
Manipulatively even-tempered, if that makes sense.
Not even even-tempered, just overly mild.
And overly mild was a way of programming boys to not be wild.
And it's not good.
It's not good.
Boys need to find ways to harness that energy.
And if you can't find a way to harness that energy, things get really chaotic really quickly, and we can sort of see that going on in society.
All right.
People say a good morning.
King of built on.
Thank you, Steph, for all you've tried to do to save us.
Well, I really appreciate that, but I don't as well.
I appreciate that, but I don't as well.
I appreciate the support.
Thank you for the tip.
I can't save you.
What are you talking about?
What are you talking about?
Things I've done to try and save you.
I can't save you.
What am I, doing CPR here?
I can't save anybody.
That provides some argument, some energy, some focus, some liberation, some challenging of stereotypes.
But, I can't save you!
I can't save you.
So, and also that, for all you've tried to do to save us, that's an interesting way to phrase it.
And again, I'm not trying to overly nitpick, but I'm gonna anyway.
I've tried to do to save us.
Again, my goal is not to save you.
Just to get you to think.
Philosophy is not a salvation metric, it's just to learn to think.
And sometimes you learn to think by getting really good arguments, and sometimes you learn to think by watching someone think, which is why I think it's kinda cool that in the livestreams you can see me try to puzzle out questions and problems.
Well, live, obviously, so you can see that sort of process of thinking.
And, um... Frankly, I haven't tried to do anything.
I haven't tried to do anything.
I don't know if this makes any sense or if you follow this at all, but I have not tried to do anything.
I don't try to do anything.
I don't know.
So, many years ago, gosh, a long time ago, when I was in theater school, there was an acting exercise.
And people had scenes that they were supposed to be sad in, and they were worried about whether they would actually cry, whether they could actually cry or not.
And the acting teacher had us do an interesting exercise.
And he said, sit on the chair, now try to get up from the chair.
So people would strain like we were glued, right?
Try to get up from the chair.
And then he would say, okay, so now the exercise is get up from the chair, and we just got up from the chair.
And it's kind of a deep thing in a lot of ways.
So what have I tried to do?
I have done, but I don't know what I have tried to do.
And again, I'm not trying to be overly semantic, but I think it's a really, really important distinction.
It's a really important distinction.
What have I tried to do?
I can't think of anything that I've tried to do.
Some stuff I've decided not to do.
I have taken shows and I used to do these sort of five minute philosophy bites.
I mean to get back into the social media thing where I do sort of social media reviews.
But what have I tried to do?
I try to do, I find a little bit insulting.
This is not to say you're being insulting, I'm saying I experience it that way, which is nothing objective with regards to you.
But, you know, good effort!
Good effort!
That was one of my Scottish soccer coaches when I was like, good effort!
But, what have I tried to do?
It's like, you know, children try to walk, you know, it's kind of paternal in a way, so.
Yeah, do or do not, there is no try.
I mean, there is that kind of cheesy stuff from George Lucas, but yeah.
Somebody says, I was in an acting class once with a girl who was crying constantly and somehow, even though it was constant, it added to the emotional fortitude of her performance.
It was like fake boobs for acting.
Well, acting was originally a very disreputable profession.
And this is what Marlon Brando, the greatest actor in history, said.
He said acting is an empty and useless profession.
And the reason why acting comes out of conning people and manipulating people.
Yeah, acting...
Acting comes out of conning people and manipulating people.
Faking, right?
Being a spy.
Putting up a false front.
Pretending, you know, for women maybe pretending to be saner than you are or for men pretending to be wealthier than you are.
It comes out of camouflaging negative aspects
Of your personality, and so acting, people say, oh actors is such a great performance, it just means that they come from a long line of con men in general, or at least that's the kind of, why would we develop this talent for faking and lying?
And of course you can see this all the time, like when some young guy who's not particularly excellent for society gets killed, like the whole community comes out, he was the best guy ever, he was just so wonderful and blah blah blah blah blah.
Because they get sympathy, they might get money, they might get whatever, authority, power, or maybe there's a lawsuit or something.
So, you know, the cry on cue tears are just a form of, to me, very creepy manipulation.
And I've spent a lot of time around actors, of course.
The best among them have no personalities whatsoever.
Alright, are there any subjects that kids should not be required to learn?
For example, literature, algebra, biology, chemistry, or should kids only have to learn things that parents can explain why it will definitely be useful in their life?
Are there any subjects that kids would not be required to learn?
Are we talking about in a free society?
I assume we're talking about in a free society.
Required by who?
Who in a free society would have requirements for children's education?
I mean, there would be a constant series of experiments about
How children could learn best, and what would be best for them in the future, and what would give them knowledge that they could act on now, versus the ability to gain and gather and research knowledge in the future.
So, I don't know.
What do you mean, required?
Oh, you're talking in homeschool today?
Well, I mean, in a lot of homeschooling places, there are requirements.
You have to follow a curriculum, and so on.
And how, I'm curious about this, and I'm not trying to be obtuse here, you say, should kids only have to learn things that parents can explain why will definitely be useful in their life?
How on earth is a parent supposed to know which knowledge will be particularly useful for a child in the future?
How would I know, how on earth am I supposed to know what my daughter will be doing when she's 30?
I mean, the example for me is that a lot of my life has revolved around computers.
For 15 years I was a massive computer programmer, head of research and development, and all of that kind of stuff, and product design.
Interface design and all of that.
Do you think there was anyone who said, well, you know, you should really learn computers and computer programming because that's going to be really helpful for you in 20 years.
Right?
Or 15 years or whatever, right?
Because I first started learning computers when I was, I don't know, 11 or 12 years old.
And I finally got a job in computers when I was in my mid twenties or something like that.
So,
Who was going to say to me, you know, you got to learn this computer stuff.
I had to figure that out myself.
So.
I don't know.
Have you seen the movie The Invention of Lying?
Starts with the world in which no one lies, not even fiction exists.
TV is someone reading to the camera about real events from history when someone figuring out, figures out lying.
Yeah, that's Ricky Gervais and Jennifer... Alias.
Jennifer something something.
Anyway, yeah, I did, I did watch it.
I thought it started off well and it just got very silly after that.
All right.
So if you've got questions, comments, issues, challenges, I am thrilled, of course, to hear them.
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You know, in the entrepreneurial world, as I learned very early on, and quite brutally, cash flow is king.
Cash flow is king.
Your income will oscillate, but your expenses are constant.
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All right.
Let's get to your questions and comments.
What do you think about the recent layoffs in tech?
Alright.
How harsh do we want to start our Sunday?
How harsh do you want
To go first thing, well, not quite first thing on a Sunday, but at this point on a Sunday.
Recent layoffs in tech?
Yeah, harsh.
What was that line from The God of Atheists, one of my novels?
Lawyer's circle powering up ungreased dildos.
I love this, by a guy who's really harsh in his language.
And somebody says, you're harsh, and he's like, no, Don Rickles passing a gallstone is harsh.
No, Don Rickles passing a kidney stone is harsh.
I'm not harsh.
It's a great book.
You've got to check it out.
Freedomain.com slash books.
Totally free.
It's a great comedy.
All right.
So here's the cycle called the economy.
Here's the cycle called the economy.
We don't have a productivity based economy anymore.
We have a wine and complain based economy.
That's what we laughingly refer to as our economic system at the moment.
Wine, complain, I'm underrepresented, these good jobs aren't coming to me, there's too many people I don't like in this field and I'm going to run around and threaten and this and that and the other.
So yeah, wine threats and all of that.
So what happens is
A tech firm has productivity from existing employees and they say, gee, if we add more employees, we'll just get more productivity.
Right?
Like if you have a salesman who produces 10 times his salary in sales and you say, well, I'll just hire 10 more salesmen and then I'll get, you know, a thousand times, whatever, a thousand times more.
That's not the case.
It's not the case.
It's not the case.
It's like saying, you know, Matt Damon is, is the most profitable actor in human history in terms of like the revenue he generates versus his expenses, even though he gave up what a quarter of a billion dollars by not starring in Avatar.
But, uh, some say, wow, Matt Damon is a really profitable actor.
You know, he's, he's going to make us a hundred million dollars on this movie.
So an actor.
Makes a hundred million dollars profit in a movie.
So if we hire 10 actors, we'll get a billion dollars.
And if we hire a hundred actors, we'll get 10 billion, like whatever.
So it's just this idea that quality scales with more bodies.
So, you know, a tech company starts kind of small and lean and people are incredibly productive and that's why they're there and that's why the company grows.
And then there's this fantasy, well, if we add more people,
We'll keep that productivity curve going.
Oh my gosh.
I mean, it's as insane as me saying, well, you know, there's income when I talk to a camera.
So man talking to camera, there's income.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get 20 guys in the room with me and we're all going to talk to the camera at the same time.
So that's what we're going to do, and then we get 20 times the income.
There's this bizarre belief that everyone is scalable and more people is more profit, and it's completely false.
It's completely false.
Queen at Live Aid is considered just about the best live performance in history.
And so it's like, wow, you know, having that guy up on stage was really fantastic.
Imagine if we'd had a thousand guys up on that stage singing, it would be a thousand times better.
I mean, so much of productivity is just keeping the dunces away from the productive people and just so much of productivity is not hiring.
But people want their empires, they want their headcount, they want their whatever reports, their quotas, all this sort of stuff, right?
I mean, I have, and this comes out of my business career, I have resolutely avoided and rejected scaling this show.
I mean, look, some people do it and whatever, plus minus, who cares?
This is not my business model.
You know, it's kind of like me typing.
Me typing makes good books.
So me at a keyboard typing makes good books.
So what I need to do is get someone next to me typing on the same keyboard and we'll get double the great books.
But you see, we don't have the Pareto Principle that's not baked into our minds.
The Pareto Principle is oppositional to people's vanity.
The Pareto Principle that the square root of, in a meritocracy, the square root of any group produces half the value.
So 10,000 people in a company, 100 people are producing half the value, and 10 of those are producing half of that value.
So 10 out of 10,000 people are producing 25% of the entire value.
That's it.
And so, those people do very well.
They make a lot of money.
They're the reason the economy exists.
They're the reasons that human beings advance.
We all ride on the backs of these giants, these Atlas-shrugged people, these 10x people, these 100x people.
We all just ride on the back of them.
And we're all there to pass water to the guy who's solving the equations.
Like, that's all we're there for.
We're all there to set up the network so the 100x programmer can do his genius.
You know, they're literally, I've read about guys in tech, they barely work.
All that happens is when some incredibly insolvable problem comes along, the manager just calls them up, ships them the problem, they solve it in ten minutes, and then go back to whatever they were doing before, and they're worth their weight in gold.
People who work hard think that hard work is economically valuable, and this is the complete opposite of the truth.
Hard work is what you do when you're not economically valuable.
That's all.
I mean, this is Jack Nicholson when he was playing the Joker in the Michael Keaton Batman from back in the day.
He got paid five million dollars for ten days work.
And he barely worked.
He didn't work out, he didn't exercise, he didn't diet.
He just showed up, they put some funny stuff on his face and, you know, he was sitting there playing cards with the lighting crew and they cancelled the afternoon because something was wrong with the camera.
He's like, well, that's it.
Another five hundred dollars.
Sorry, another $500,000 for an afternoon's work.
I mean, the entire purpose is to not work.
It's to not work as hard as humanly possible.
Work smarter, not harder.
Well, but saying to people, work smarter, is like saying to people, be taller.
I mean, the entire purpose of what I do in terms of facilitating productivity is to get repetitive, boring, hard work stuff out of the way.
You know, I timed it.
I'm an obsessive timer of my own work.
I'm very much focused on that.
As I remember,
It was supposed to be some big, uh, some big critical thing of capitalism, but it's like, you know, this guy, he timed everything that workers did and was obsessive about reducing the amount of time it took for workers to do things.
And it was dehumanizing, you know, how much time does it take you to pick up the pair of scissors?
How much time does it take you to cut that sheet?
How much time does it?
And so he would record everything and it was so dehumanizing.
And I remember reading about all of this and I was like, damn,
That's brilliant!
So I literally, I mean, I have a shortcut where I bring up the stopwatch.
I mean, just so you know, what I'm, like, how is it I'm able to be so, so productive, right?
If someone can't work smarter, then it is the only choice to work harder.
No!
No!
If you can't work smarter, you help those who can work smarter.
You support them, you work for them, you take away distractions from them.
Do you see what I mean?
Our job is to help those who drag us forward through the sheer brilliance of their productivity.
That's it.
Right?
Oh, does this 100x programmer need coffee?
I'll go get him a cup.
You can't compete with them.
You can't compete with that.
All you can do is help them, right?
All you can do is help them and support them and, you know, Freddie Mercury needs a new pack of smokes.
That's going to help him finish this song.
I'll go get Freddie Mercury a new pack of smokes.
You know, it's just, we're just here to like the inverted pyramid of the people who move us forward.
We're just there to clear things out of the way to make sure that products get out to, yeah, I don't know.
It's just, um,
There's everywhere.
I mean, and you want to find some place where your talents are multiplied beyond comprehension, right?
So I literally, I have, do I still have this up?
I think I still have this up.
Yeah.
So, uh, yes.
So it took me two minutes and 41 seconds to process a two and a half hour call-in show.
So what that means is to open up the... I do three sets of recordings for every call-in show.
I have a local dual-channel recorder, I record just my side, and I also record on Skype.
So I have lots of backups and options because usually something goes wrong with... well, occasionally something goes wrong and I never want to lose a call-in show.
And so, if something goes wrong with my local dual channel recording, I still have my side and I have the Skype, and then it's a bit of a hassle because I've got to merge my side in with Skype, which is mono.
But anyway, so it all worked out well.
So, I had my recording, I had the dual channel recording,
And I had a couple of things to clean up here and there, you know, at one point, you know, it's just something that I try not to get too enraged, but I really, really hate about the call-in shows, is that people are just like strolling around, they're thumping things, they go and check something, there's a bink, and I just, I just, I hate that background noise.
I mean, I'm aware that this stuff is going to be listened to for a thousand plus years, so I just want to, so there's a couple of things I needed to, to fix up, or, you know, if I did something like, I don't know, pulled a cable, or
I had the mute on when it shouldn't have been.
I sort of cleaned that up.
So I went through all of that, and then I have to export the WAV in two files, me and the other, and then I get it processed.
So I got it under three minutes, and I'm constantly doing that.
It's like, can I get the time down?
Can I automate this?
Can I do something faster?
What's the cost-benefit of buying a faster computer so that this stuff gets done
Faster, right?
So, and Jared finding the service has been great for post-processing.
It's cut it down.
It used to be 10 to 15 minutes to process a show.
Now it's 2.41 and then a little bit after, right?
Just to get the files from the processor.
So, I'm just constantly like, what can I do to reduce all of this stuff?
What can I do to reduce all of this stuff?
So,
You find something where you have a multiplication effect, and you just, stuff happens, stuff works for you, right?
So, in the tap field, it's this constant thing where
You, you have a small core group of incredibly productive people who produce something great.
And then you go to a bunch of investors, right?
And the investors then want you to hire people and increase your headcount and the, you know, you get, uh, you need your HR department and now you need your compliance metrics.
And now you need this, that, and the other.
And so you grow your company to the point where the bureaucracy and the conformity with various government initiatives becomes ridiculous.
And then you have to fire a bunch of people and one of the goals of firing people is to get under the number that you need for various HR requirements and so on.
It's really sad and it gives entirely the wrong signals to people as a whole.
Let's see here.
Advice I heard about hiring.
If you pay above market you'll pay 30% more and get 10 times the output.
Well, this is something my wife's parents once said, is that, you know, we were too poor to be cheap.
We had to buy stuff that lasted.
We have to buy stuff that works, like, lasts forever, right?
So, yeah, I mean, this is constant, well, we're going to expand, and then they find that the expansion... See, here's the thing.
Companies hollow themselves out.
Because when you're an entrepreneur, you want to make fast decisions, and if you're a 10x person, like, if you are an incredibly productive person,
Other people's lack of productivity will drive you insane.
I'm sure you guys are smart and productive, and so I don't know if you've experienced this, but it's like, oh my gosh, when you are a very efficient and productive person, working with other people who aren't at your level, it's like trying to compete in a running race with 20-pound weights strapped to your ankles.
And so what happens is you get this incredibly smart group of people who produce these lean and incredible companies.
And then you just get this piling on of hiring and bureaucracy and standards and requirements.
And then you get all the social engineering stuff and the quota stuff.
And then you're just like, Oh, I can't, I can't.
And you leave, you just bail.
Like you'll even leave stock options behind just to get out.
Just to get, you, you imagine, see, here's what I want you to imagine.
I want you to imagine.
If you had to go through the day moving and talking at a quarter speed.
Like if you had to do that all day.
You would go slowly insane.
And that's what it's like being a highly productive person around the average.
There's no hatred.
There's no frustration, but it's like, just, just do it.
Like, why, why is this taking so long?
Just do it.
Just make it.
Oh, well, I don't know.
I'll have to check with so-and-so or so-and-so hasn't gotten back to me, or I tried leaving a message or, and it's just like, oh my God, just make it happen.
Or like you, it's crazy making.
It's absolutely crazy-making.
So when the company slows down to accommodate the average, the sprinters leave.
So then the sprinters leave, and then there's no center of productivity with which to pay the new hires.
And so the new hires have to go.
Now, of course, the company has just eviscerated itself.
And it's the slow decline and then they start to run to politics and then they start to run to PR and you know all of that.
I mean come on, didn't Elon Musk fire like 80% of Twitter staff?
Elon Musk, he gets this obviously, I mean he's one of the prime examples in the history of man of this.
So he hires, he buys Twitter, he fires like 75 to 80% of the staff.
And what's happened?
Massive improvements.
Massive improvements.
Now they've got their paying creators, they've got great live stream technology, they're working on a peer-to-peer payment system.
It's incredible.
So, most of human progress is just clearing the rubble away from the endless caterpillar tracks of the productive.
All right, let's get to your questions and comments.
Hi Steph, how do we gain knowledge about the causes of human evil if nothing is causal and free will is the answer?
Well, we know that a lot of people
A lot of people respond to incentives.
There's no such thing as economics if people don't respond to incentives, right?
So if you want to sell something, you lower the price of it.
Sorry, I lost a little weight, and I'm just noticing a little bit, a little tiny bit less jowly.
Look at that.
I lost about five pounds.
Down to 189.
Yeah, it's all right.
All right.
We know that people respond to incentives.
Now, if Maseratis go on sale for half price, a bunch of people will buy Maseratis because they're on sale.
That doesn't mean everyone will buy a Maserati, or whatever it is, but a bunch of people, not even everyone who can afford one will buy a Maserati.
What will happen is that people will buy more, right?
So you can see this all the time, right?
I mean, you see this in the grocery store, like there's a whole bunch of products, one of them is two for one and it's empty, right?
So people, you can't predict a hundred percent, but people do respond to incentives.
And of course, as people become more and more philosophical, things will become less and less causal.
So right now, when there's a lot of trauma, there's a lot of programming, there's a lot of propaganda people are kind of responsible about, and you can sort of zoom out large enough for you, you can predict the behavior of people based upon propaganda because they're not taught how to think or given any resistance to propaganda.
The causes of human evil?
Fundamentally, the causes of human evil are child abuse.
And people get traumatized.
They don't know how to undo that trauma, and therefore that trauma tends to run them.
And they're not taught how to think, and they're not given a way out of that.
So you can predict the causes of human evil with some degree of accuracy.
But nothing is absolute.
So, did I ever say nothing is causal?
I would say that nothing is 100% causal.
Right?
Nothing is 100% causal.
That doesn't mean that nothing in human life or human nature is causal.
If you cut the price of something by half, and demand remains equal, sales will tend to increase.
So, but it's not causal like, I bought it because it was half off.
Right?
You can't say, I bought it because it was half off.
That's not causal.
Right?
So, um, don't go from nothing is causal in that nothing causes someone to do something because you were abused as a child that doesn't cause you to become a child abuser.
Right?
Don't give people that causality, but that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as cause and effect in human life or human nature.
So we're not inanimate objects that are acted on by external forces to the point where we have no free will.
But that doesn't mean we don't respond to incentives or this, right?
So, um, I don't know.
I don't know why people want to boil things down to like just one thing.
I'm going to reduce things to one giant switch, one giant factor.
If you want to see genius in action, give your problem to the laziest person in the room.
They will find the most efficient means to fix it.
The sooner they... The sooner they can go back to slacking off.
Alright, ask me how I know you've never actually been a manager.
That is... false.
That is false.
Sorry, let me just see here.
Oh, did the camera move again?
Sorry, it slipped again.
Alright, I'll get this sorted.
Now that's too low.
Alright, I don't know why it slipped, but it did.
But you know, that's fine.
Thank you for that note, I appreciate that.
Let me just get some
For the homeschooler question, John Prescott's Kids Don't Need School is excellent.
We homeschool, and we do not follow any curriculum, found that the kids learn very easily on their own.
If allowed to look at educational programs, they show interest.
We encourage other programs as well.
Alright.
Alright.
Uh, so, yep.
Uh, so no.
Uh, give your problem to the laziest person in the room?
God no!
If you've ever had a lazy employee, you know that that's not how it works.
The laziest person in the room will simply do inertia and friction to the point where somebody else ends up having to do it.
So, this is one of these things that sounds vaguely intelligent when you first hear it, and then doesn't.
Because lazy people are very good at getting other people to do their work.
Labor is not required to be economically valuable, but there is still a huge need for laborers, especially nowadays in America.
There's a reason why Americans are being replaced by Mexicans.
I think we undervalue labor as a culture at the moment.
What do you mean there's a huge need for laborers in America?
I don't understand.
Have you not understood what's happening with AI and robots?
Like, there's a whole, um, what's it, um, well, Jared would know more about this, but, you know, blackjack dealers and casino workers and so on, they're all terrified of being replaced by computers and AI.
I mean, do you know that there's a robot barista now?
The robot barista can make any coffee you want and even is programmed to do latte art.
Right?
So it can pour the things to make flowers and cats and just cool latte art and so on.
So, yeah.
I'm not sure.
Physical labor is absolutely on its way out.
Physical labor is beyond absolutely on its way out.
And so I don't quite... I mean, I'm happy to be schooled and all of that, but I don't understand what you mean when you say labor is not required to... There's still a huge need for laborers.
I mean,
All that's happening is that because there is cheap and often illegal labor in the agricultural sector, all it's doing is delaying automation.
And that's all it's doing.
In the same way that, like, for almost all of human history, slavery delayed the Industrial Revolution.
Right?
So, access to cheap labor, subsidized labor, simply delays automation, which cripples the economy.
When I started in yoga I worked at studios at the front desk and teaching.
I eventually started managing all the while being relatively underpaid compared to the profits I generated.
After some years I had the courage to be independent and I'm able to do so much more with my skills now because I control the dollars I generate.
Right, so you could say that I was underpaid compared to the profit I generated, but you understand, you understand, we all understand, there's no such damn thing as underpaid.
There's no such thing as underpaid.
Underpaid is a term of empty, futile, and kind of pathetic resentment.
Honestly, what do you mean underpaid?
Did you ask for more?
Right?
Did you make the case?
I don't know what you mean by underpaid.
It's like saying that my wife is lower quality than the wife I should have.
Or my husband is lower quality than the husband I should have.
I mean, in what alternate dimension did you make better choices?
And if you didn't make those better choices, accept the choices that you made.
Again, maybe I'm being obtuse, maybe I'm not understanding something, but were you underpaid?
You were willing to accept.
I mean, I'm an empiricist.
What are you worth?
You're worth what you accept.
I mean, nothing more, you're worth what you accept.
And this idea that
This concept of I deserve more and it's unfair that I'm not getting it, which is embedded in the concept of underpaid.
I deserve more and it's unfair I'm not getting it.
I don't understand.
It's just a way of channeling your resentment at those who crippled your ability to negotiate onto those who won't voluntarily negotiate on your behalf, right?
So your parents crippled your ability to negotiate
And you should be mad at them, I guess, right?
I mean, you're teachers too, maybe you're priests, I don't know, right?
But they all crippled your ability to negotiate.
And you should be mad at them for harming you in that way, but instead you get mad at the people who aren't voluntarily walking up to negotiate on your behalf.
Like, it would be incredibly insulting for me if somebody stepped up to negotiate on my behalf.
Like, no, I got it.
I got it.
I can handle it.
I can do my negotiations.
Thank you very much.
So, you weren't, I mean, underpaid relative to the profit I generated?
There's no such thing as underpaid.
There's no such thing as underpaid.
I mean, let me ask you this.
So let's say there's a house, you want to buy a house in your neighborhood, and the average price of the house in that neighborhood
Is $400,000 and then some guys, for whatever reason, is selling his house for $300,000 and you get it evaluated and it's fine or whatever, right?
And you buy the house for $300,000 that, you know, other people might pay $400,000 or whatever.
I mean, does that mean that you underpaid?
Did you rip him off?
Or are you supposed to negotiate with him and say, no, no, no, this should be $400,000.
I don't understand.
It makes no sense to me.
If you want more... No, the other thing you can say is that you weren't underpaid because you were getting a free education on how to run a yoga studio, right?
You got a free education on how to run a yoga studio, therefore you got a business degree while getting paid, which is great.
So again, I'm happy to be schooled, happy to be schooled, but I don't understand what this underpaid thing means.
Alright.
Do you have any thoughts about what Bitcoin has been doing this week?
Not, not particularly.
Um, honestly, like I'll, I'll, what's it at now?
I checked the price, uh, and it's Canadian now, 57,601.
It did get up higher, right?
Got to 65 or something like that, but I don't know.
It's going to take a while.
I talked about this
On Friday.
It's going to take a while for the financial institutions to start really being able to offer Bitcoin in a productive and powerful way to their customers.
One hurdle has been passed and it's now part of the general financial system and there's positives in that.
So it's going to take a while.
It's going to take a while.
All right.
Skilled labor is hard to find in the USA.
A barista or cart dealer are not skilled labor.
Skilled labor.
Well, of course, I mean, there's a lot of propaganda.
Like, you don't learn communism at plumbing school, right?
You don't learn how to be a communist in plumbing school.
So, of course, the people in charge of the media want to push everyone towards university where you can pay for your own propaganda and the destruction of your own soul.
So, yeah, there's that for sure.
Of course, the trades limit people coming in and people want to keep their prices high and so on.
But
Certain trades may not be replaced yet.
Oh.
I mean, yeah, I just, sorry, I get mildly annoyed when people talk about a business as if it's just the part that faces the customer.
Say, well, you know, plumbers aren't going to be replaced by AI.
It's like, what are you?
The plumber who meets you is just a small percentage of the plumbing industry.
Plumbing is a whole infrastructure of the creation of plumbing parts, the delivery of plumbing parts, the advertising of the plumbing industry, the websites that are built for the plumbing industry, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So yes, I completely accept that the guy who comes to change the washers on your toilet isn't going to be a robot next week.
But if you look at the entire generation of marketing, the websites, the production of tools, the delivery, the processing of everything, the shifting of everything, the moving of everything, the loading on the boats, like all of that's going robot.
So, like, the plumbing industry isn't just the guy twiddling bolts on your toilet.
Come on, I mean, yeah, you don't need to, right, so... AI can't build houses.
Walmart tried replacing all their cashiers with automation, and they had to dial it back because everyone was just stealing.
Plenty of jobs can't be automated.
No, the jobs can be automated.
It's just that the police don't do their jobs, right?
Oh, I've talked about the border stuff many years ago.
There's nothing new about that.
Ah, let's see here.
When it comes to newest advances in automating agriculture, last I heard was kits you could install into existing tractors to make them drive the fields on their own via your phone and some GPS mapping.
Yeah.
Yes.
Starbucks workers being replaced by AI isn't a great argument.
Oh, wow, gosh, that's great.
That's great.
Well done.
Well done, my friend.
Well done.
So I, I mean, I feel, I feel actually a bit of an idiot now.
So I wrote this whole book called The Art of the Argument.
You can get it at artoftheargument.com.
Yeah.
I mean, I wrote this whole book about how to argue, how to debate, how to break it all down.
And, uh,
I could have just said that, just tell your opponent that it's not a great argument.
I should just get people to say, your position is not a great argument.
Victory!
I don't know, it's so funny.
All right, I have a close friend who's a plumber.
Quote, retired, keeps getting called every freaking day for a job.
Contemplating writing a book on developing trusted friendships.
Any general advice?
Oh, this is something that I read about in my early 20s.
If you want to write a book, it probably will never happen.
If you absolutely need to write a book, like you can't stop thinking about it, it's like a balloon blowing up in your head and you've got to pop it by doing it.
Maybe if you absolutely have to write a book, then, you know, 50-50.
But if you just want to write it, I'm contemplating writing a book, probably never going to happen.
So just wait until that inspiration hits, right?
Union laborers always bitch about being underpaid, then maybe not be union.
Well, of course they bitch about- I mean, we're on a bitch-based economy, right?
BBE Bitch-Based Economy.
If you complain, you get money.
I think you need to have another job lined up if you want to ask for more.
Uh, no.
You don't.
No, you don't.
And that's actually kind of disrespectful.
To waste someone else's time saying you're interested in a job when you're only going to use it for leverage to get a raise at your existing job is a pretty shitty way to treat people.
Right?
Other corporations don't exist to shore up your own resolution with regards to negotiation.
So, to go through a whole interview process and hiring process to the point where you have a job offer and then just use it as leverage is a terrible way to treat other people.
We're pretty close to AI playing a big part in building the walls of houses, at least.
It's probably just a matter of time before structures get assembled by robots and factories, shipped on location, assembled by a different set of robots, I assume you mean.
Yeah.
Yeah, saying that's not an argument is not an argument.
Alright.
Yeah, robots can build houses.
Yeah, robots can build houses, for sure.
Can AI replace your doctor?
Well, Japan is on it.
They have robots called MU to help patients communicate with their docs.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, AI is sometimes better at figuring out where cancers could be in radiology samples and so on.
You need to be able to be grateful and know the market and understand how the company earns.
You can ask if you understand the landscape.
I've seen many people be shown the door because they threatened to leave.
I've heard of a company who would only give raises if their employees could get an offer, and they'd match it.
But that's also a form of sort of very soft and subtle, though obviously not illegal, corporate sabotage, because then their employees are going around wasting their competitors' resources getting offers.
Hello Steph, how does a proper human being react to people sending their 10 year old children to beg in restaurants?
Every choice feels wrong.
Yeah, of course you can negotiate without threatening to leave.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, uh, and I, I'll tell you the story because I've actually, you know, everyone who's like, Oh, you've got to care about the poor.
You've got to care about people getting paid more and so on.
So, uh, when I was hired at a company,
I was in charge of about 30 employees.
I was director of technology.
It was a good company and a very interesting product.
Maybe talk about it another time, but shortly after I got there, people like the programmers and the testers and all of that, they nominated two guys to come and talk to me.
A man and a woman came to talk to me and they said, we feel underpaid.
You know, I'm talking to my friends and they're paid like much more, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So, um, we need, you know, we'd like, you know, I wasn't responsible for the previous pay structure and so on.
And so, um, you know, I listened to their concerns.
Now they didn't say we're going to leave.
They just said, look, we're, we really feel that we're underpaid relative to sort of industry standards and so on.
Right.
Now, what I did was, I paid for a salary report.
I paid for a salary report, said, you know, here's the neighborhood, here's the level of experience, here's the skill set, and so on.
And I got reports on standard pay.
And yeah, they were low.
They were low.
They were low.
So,
I then put together a whole presentation and presented it to the board on, you know, here's the average salary, here's where we're paying people, here's the level of dissatisfaction, and here's the cost of replacement should they decide to leave, right?
So if you've got a million lines of code, it's going to take someone four to six months to even start to become productive within the bounds of that million lines of code.
You make the case.
They didn't threaten to quit, they just said, we feel, and I'm talking to my friends, everyone's making more, and blah blah blah.
And of course there's a vulnerability of leaving, right?
And it tends to be, like, so this is one thing that happens, and I've seen this happen before in companies, that if one
If a technical person leaves, sometimes other people will be pulled out of that hole in the space-time vortex, and go with that person to the new place, or to some other place.
It's an avalanche effect.
One person leaves, and they're still in touch with everyone, and they talk to them.
They say, oh man, I got a job offer for like 20% more, and it's great, and so I'm taking that job offer.
They put in a notice, and other people are like, wow, 20% more, and they start talking.
Right, so it tends to be a... all right, so...
So I said, okay, here's like, let's say that 20% of people leave, right?
So here's the costs of replacement.
Here's the productivity losses.
We won't be able to deliver systems for a certain amount of time.
And you know, here's how long it's going to take.
Plus we're going to have to spend this much amount of time.
I put my own time in for hiring people.
Uh, you know, what percentage of people don't work out, uh, and end up, you end up not, uh, keeping them past the, um, sort of pilot program.
And it was pretty clear.
So I got everyone, uh, 20 to 30% pay raises.
So, it was like I think I got the company to add over a million dollars in payroll.
Everyone stayed and it was a great work environment and everybody's productivity went through the roof and, you know, I said I predict, you know, if we deal with this, people won't be coming to work feeling like they're underpaid, their motivation won't be low, they'll be enthusiastic, they'll be happy, they'll be positive, we'll prevent people from leaving and it's like
It's gonna be great, and it did.
I mean, it took us 25% less time to produce systems after we dealt with the salary issue, which more than made up for the cost of the salary, right?
So, there's a million dollars extra in payroll a year, and you look at that and say, wow, that's a net loss.
It's like, no, because now they're happy, they're productive, they're positive, they're enthusiastic, they're thrilled, you know?
And so, they were listened to, and I just, you know that!
You know that their productivity's gonna go.
Through the roof.
And so we saved much more just in terms of producing.
I mean, outside of just not losing people, we saved a lot more in producing systems faster.
And of course, you got to track and measure all of this and report back to the board so that they know that you spent a million dollars, but I think we gained over three million dollars in productivity by spending a million dollars.
I mean, three X return in a year is pretty good.
So you just, you know, you track all this stuff and you report back on it and all of that.
So.
I'm encouraging my kids to be entrepreneurs instead of employees.
Yeah, I mean, it's the same thing that happened in South Africa when quotas kicked in, particularly white people had to go straight into entrepreneurship and all that.
Uh, I wasn't happy with pay for a job I had, I was lied about the pay's percentage, and so I decided to become the employer's compassion, competition, by going independent.
Yeah.
You just gotta, you watch out for those non-competes, right?
A lot of bosses with no self-knowledge who just bully and gaslight their employees, of course, good employees will always leave that situation.
Well, isn't, wouldn't a good employee know ahead of time that, like, you would, just wouldn't get into that situation?
All right, let me get to your questions, comments, and if you could also...
Help out the show?
A wee smidge-o-rama?
I would really appreciate that.
Freedomain.com slash donate or you can donate right in the apps here.
Rumble.
Locals.
You name it.
You can donate right in the apps.
And I have a topic.
Yes.
I've had this topic for a while.
And, uh, I'm completely, unless you give me something real juicy right now.
Oh yeah.
Sorry.
How do you react to people sending their 10 year old children to beg in restaurants?
Every choice feels wrong.
So, the best way to avoid being manipulated by other people's use of their children is to have your own children.
Right?
You have your own children.
I've never been in a situation where ten-year-old children beg in restaurants, but you have your own children.
I won't care for other people's children more than they care for them themselves, because otherwise I'm just going to be manipulated.
Like, I just, I won't do it.
I mean, I won't care for people more than they care for themselves.
The bullying gaslighting thing?
Oh yeah, I mean, so you just end up with broken employees who just drag themselves along and are reproducing their own abused childhoods and there's not much productivity.
Alright, I'm just going to do a quick review here and make sure that I am not about to jump over someone's deep and amazing question.
But let's get straight to it.
Voice is a little rough today.
Sultry, a little sexy.
Although the sore throat is largely gone.
All right.
So yeah, I mean, so I've really been kind of fascinated by the increasing, it seems to me, fragility of young women these days.
It's really, really something.
I've been mulling this over quite a bit, this sort of fragility.
So I grew up with these sort of two poles in my life.
One of them was named Zelinsky.
So I've been, I grew up at these two poles.
So of course on my mother's side was this sort of hysterical Blanche DuBois, neurostatic kind of person who, you know, she milked her looks and was very hysterical and fragile and all that kind of stuff.
So there was that sort of cliche of femininity.
And on the other side, well, my aunts.
My aunts were sort of very solid, sensible, Christian, hair in a bun, aprons, took care of their families, took care of their communities, worked hard, never complained, and raised a whack load of kids, and just, you know, very solid, sensible, and
Pillars of the community and you know rock-solid and not prone to any emotional outbursts or anything like that and I mean that could be harsh and all of that but you know that's sort of very solid salt-of-the-earth sensible kind of a female so I kind of had these these two poles.
Now
Many years ago, when my daughter was maybe six, this is like nine years ago, right?
So she's like six, maybe seven.
I was at a country fair with her and we were just walking around and I remember we bought this, we called it the fuzzy ball.
We played with it forever and ever because you could throw it inside.
It was basically just a yarn ball that was all sort of knitted and it was just a ball.
We got it for like a buck, which is all kind of funny, right?
Because
We would talk about this for many times that this thing we got at a country fair for a buck we played with for years like through it and played a variety of games, tossed a basketball in it, you know, because you could throw it and it wouldn't break anything, right?
So, and indoors, right?
So in Canada, indoor toys are pretty important.
But at that fair, there was a girls empowerment website or book, you know, I think they even had little video shorts and all of that, and there was this guy, he came up and he wanted to put this bracelet on my daughter, like girl power, and I literally had to, it was very much a gut instinct of mine, this guy came sort of barreling forward towards my daughter, holding out this pink bracelet with girl power on it, and so on.
And I actually had to physically step between my daughter and this man.
And he's like, free bracelet!
She's empowered!
Go power!
Right?
And I'm like, back off man.
Back off.
Back off.
And he's like, genuinely confused.
Like, you don't want your daughter to be empowered?
And I'm like, no, and said, you know, Izzy, just just take a step back and talk to the man for a second.
And he's like, you know, it's a free bracelet, you know, go power, be empowered, blah, blah, blah.
Right.
I'm like.
Every time, so every time she's going to look at that bracelet, she's going to think that she's not empowered because she has to be reminded.
Like that's disempowering, like you're empowered, you're empowered, you're empowered.
You understand that's because you're communicating that someone's disempowered or thinks that they're disempowered.
If somebody says to you, you're strong, you're strong, you're strong, right?
That's because they think that you have a problem with weakness and need to be reminded of the opposite.
They're actually implanting the opposite of what they're saying.
It's a really, really widespread, deep and incredibly powerful form of harming people.
Unbelievably dangerous.
Unbelievably dangerous.
I mean, do you think that people, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was like in his weightlifting prime, do you think that people were like, Arnold, you need this bracelet that says I have muscles?
Do you think that when I was sort of at the height of my social media influence some years ago, do you think I needed to have a bracelet that says, you have influence, you matter?
Oh my gosh.
So constantly reminding people that they have power, they're empowered, they have strength.
It's like all you're doing is communicating to them that you don't think they would believe that otherwise, that they don't have that otherwise.
I mean, do you think that Christie Brinkley or Chrissy Teigen or Cindy Crawford or, like, they all had the affirmations, you know, like, you're attractive.
These little post-its on their mirrors.
Can you imagine that they show up for what Linda Evangelista said she didn't get out of bed for less than $11,000 an hour or $1,000 an hour or something like that.
And do you think that if they're getting a $20,000 photo shoot and they've got three makeup artists and a hair guy running around them, they've got these affirmations saying, you're actually attractive, you're not ugly.
Because they are.
Because they are.
They know they are, right?
I don't have any t-shirts with reverse printing that I see in the mirror.
You're verbose.
It's constantly reminding people that they're strong is the most subversive way of weakening them that I can imagine.
You're strong!
Right?
It's the Stuart Smalley thing, which was a comedian
From back in the day, Stuart Smalley, you know, you're strong enough, you're smart enough, and gosh darn it, people just like you.
Well, why would you need to constantly remind yourself that people like you?
It's because people have a negative reaction to you all the time.
I mean, it's wild.
So as far as this, like, women's power, women's empowerment, women's authority, women's, like, you're strong, you're sassy, you queen, you this, like, it hollows people out.
It hollows people out.
And telling, like, I don't know, like, telling my six-year-old daughter, you're powerful, it's like,
Well, first of all, you're indicating that she doesn't think she has any power or strength or authority and needs to be reminded from the outside, which is kind of creepy.
And secondly, uh, no, she's not.
She's six.
She's not, she's not powerful.
What are you talking about?
I mean, would you, would you give, uh, could you imagine, could you imagine giving a diaper, like, or a onesie to a little baby saying, I can bench press a locomotive?
It's like, no, you can't, you're a baby.
I mean, I don't think Superman can do that.
And that's about it.
Yeah, slay queen and power and girl power.
And it's like, um, why would you need to call someone a queen?
Like you're not a queen.
You're not a queen.
I mean, even Freddie Mercury wore a King's crown and he was kind of a queen.
So yeah, it's, it's just funny.
Like, and, and giving people power.
Without them earning it prevents them from earning it, or it's a great devilish seduction to prevent people from earning it.
I mean, of course my daughter mattered to me, and she mattered to her mom, and our friends, and so on.
Yeah, of course she mattered, and I love her to death, and all of that.
But the idea that she's just, I don't know, some power slay queen, like at six or fifteen.
Your value and your worth and your authority is to come, right?
And there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, it's totally fine.
It's totally fine.
You've got to earn it, right?
But the idea that you're just all-powerful, mother of slay, queen, goddess empowerment thing prior to, like, what have you done?
What have you done to earn authority?
What have you done to earn respect?
What have you done to provide value in the world?
It is
It is a drug.
It is a verbally administered, hollowing out, soul-eating drug.
Ah, that's the great devilish thing, isn't it?
You provide the effect without the cause, then people get addicted to the effect and never generate the cause.
I want to be healthy.
Well, if I redefine morbidly obese as healthy, I guess I'm there!
But then you never lose weight.
And you never actually get healthy.
Or healthier, right?
Because it's wild to me that my aunts grew up, I mean, in terrible times, of course, wars and so on, right?
And they were very strong, robust, you know, hip on each kid, doing gardening, like, kid on each hip, sorry, hip on each kid, I sound a little too, but kid on each hip doing gardening, running church charities and helping the elderly and the sick in their community and all of that.
Incredibly robust women didn't have neuroses didn't need antidepressants they like just very robust loved and treasured and and valued and and it was all taken for granted right and I've always had this war within me between.
Uh, you know, people who excessively say they love you and so on.
It's like, you know, it's nice to hear, but if it's present, the words are less needed.
And sometimes the word are used as a substitute for the presence of active love, if that makes sense.
I mean, I've never seen Bill Gates with a bracelet that says, you're wealthy.
It's seriously creepy.
Yeah, Christie Brinkley doesn't have to get in front of an audience and announce that she is beautiful.
That's right.
An experiment, they told kids, you're so smart, they chose to take fewer challenges.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, this girl boss and all of this kind of stuff.
It's crazy.
So, give me some examples, if you wouldn't mind.
Give me some examples from your life where you are given praise without actually having to achieve something.
Is this the dark side of compliments?
Yeah.
Yeah, okay, so compliments are fine if they're an acknowledgement of something that is existing, right?
Something, some value that has been achieved that exists.
There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that, and it can be a nice thing to do, right?
But a lot of compliments are presented these days in the hopes of generating behavior.
Like there's this weird thing where if you tell kids they're smart, they'll become smart.
I don't know, it's a completely bizarre thing to me.
As an empiricist, this is a complete reversal of cause and effect.
If you tell someone they're beautiful, they'll just feel beautiful and somehow that will translate into beauty.
And I
I think it's people who live in a world of language rather than in a world of reality.
It tends to be a little bit more female than male.
Women live much more in relationships with people, which is language-based, rather than relationships with... So, women have their relationships with reality through their husbands, right?
In general.
Empirical reality.
But women who are single tend to be in the realm of language manipulation because, or if they're single mothers or whatever, if they're not married, not with a sort of
Reality check.
And women provide reality checks for men as well in the realm of relationships, so that's good too, but the sort of cross-pollination of enhanced relationships and enhanced relationship to reality is sort of the male-female cross-pollination.
So women end up in these relationships which are defined almost entirely by language, and this is why we've got this magical thinking about change the definition and change reality.
It's completely bizarre.
Oh, this one says, oh if I would have gone nuts if that dude did that to my kid too.
Yeah, don't tell my daughter that she's got power.
I mean, first of all, she's seven or six or whatever, so she shouldn't really be thinking in terms of power as yet.
I mean, she's just enjoying her childhood, right?
And it's just horrendous.
I'm surprised they didn't get a woman to put the bracelet on girls.
There was a woman there, but I guess they were taking turns or whatever, right?
Yeah, if you go through a hard breakup, it's their loss, man, instead of being told where you might need to improve.
Why do they want women to be weak and disempowered?
Sorry, what do you mean?
Why did they want women to be weak and disempowered?
I mean, you know there's this whole population reduction thing going on, right?
This is not any big mystery, this is all right out there, right?
I mean, Prince Charles, and everyone's talking about it.
So, they want women to be weak and disempowered so that
They're not worth chasing, so that men take refuge in video games and pornography, and they don't develop families, so they don't think about the future, they don't push back against the powers that be to try and create and preserve a better life for their children, and yeah, it's just standard takeover stuff, right?
Standard, right?
Again, unless I'm missing something, but it seems pretty obvious.
Nowadays you can't criticize a woman's actions without being called an incel.
Yeah, like half of women who are 30 will never have children.
Which is the ultimate incel, right?
Not having children is the ultimate incel.
Remember all that girl power stuff throughout elementary school?
Yeah, I mean, you provoke vanity.
Right, it's a great line from an old Jim Kerr song from Simple Minds, you know, don't you forget about me.
Vanity, insecurity.
Yeah, vanity and insecurity, two sides of the same coin.
So you pump up women's, girls' egos by telling them they're all great and powerful and slay and queen and blah blah blah, and they pretty, they become insufferable.
They don't feel they need to earn a man's love, they feel that they have value just for existing.
Therefore, you provoke vanity, which provokes revulsion from boys as a whole, and it's just bad.
It's just bad.
Gates might have a bracelet telling him he is moral and virtuous, though.
I'm concerned that that bracelet would just smoke into vapor on his skin.
Imagine Elon with a bracelet that said, Boy Boss.
Right, right.
I'm empowered.
I have money.
I have influence.
I'm a boy boss.
Well, I mean, how do you take down a society?
You appeal to the lust of boys and you appeal to the vanity of women, right?
Lust and vanity are generally the male and female vices, right?
Uh, James says, oh heck, when I was 30 pounds heavier and complained about weight, I'd get comments about how I look good.
I didn't look like I was that heavy.
Yeah, it's absolutely, uh, so the way that you eliminate competition is you inflate their vanity, right?
You inflate their vanity.
It's a standard way that men, uh, so men who care about other men will nag them to lose weight.
There was a guy in England who lost a massive amount of money, money, um,
Sorry, he lost a massive amount of weight in a short amount of time because every morning one of his best mates texted him, you're a fat F. You're still a fat F. Right?
And I mean, I guess I, what was I, 225?
Now I'm 189.
So, you know, 30 plus pounds or whatever.
And, you know, I've got pictures and it's like, yeah, that was UPB putting the universal in
In peanut butter.
Compliments always make me nervous.
I go right to, oh, F, what do you want now?
Right?
Could be, right?
Could be.
Could be.
Well, and of course, women are susceptible to, you know, tits up and out and tight skirts and all of that.
And guys saying, oh, you're wonderful, you're delightful, you're great.
You know, you just thrill me and I can't stop thinking about you.
And, oh, that means I'm special.
It's like, no, it just means he's horny.
And all that, so.
Women compliment each other's outfits and hair and nails.
Seems like it can be passive-aggressive sometimes even though they're saying a compliment on the surface.
Well, but they're not complementing, they're complementing fundamental alterations to the look, right?
They're complementing vanity.
And the reason why women complement other women's hair, makeup, nails, and all that kind of crap is so that if a woman is denied those things, what does she have to do, right?
So if a woman says, you know what, I'm not going to just artificially enhance my look anymore.
I'm not going to do that anymore.
So what, what happens?
What happens?
She has to eat better.
She has to lose weight.
She has to exercise to get the natural glow and this, that, and the other, right?
I mean, honestly, um, oh, and she has to be like more personally appealing.
She has to read.
She has to be a good conversationalist.
She has to, you know, she actually has to be someone who provides value other than, other than being a walking prop for the biochemical cosmetics industry.
So when women are praising other women's artificiality, they're saying, don't take a natural route because that would be much more work for me.
Like the fox who tells the crow it has a beautiful singing voice so it'll open its mouth and drop its cheese.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
And listen, I mean, we all know as men that a lot of our excellence comes out of the fact that nobody will praise us for shit.
Nobody will praise us for shit.
I mean, a lot of the hard work and risks that I've taken and great stuff that I've produced is because I always thought that the stuff that I was making was completely fantastic and the world just wouldn't agree with me.
I'm like, I'll just keep getting better.
I'll keep doing better.
So the withholding of praise is a little bit like a carrot you just keep running after.
Because everyone's all about, like, wow, when you really achieve something great and someone praises for you, it feels fantastic.
So the important ingredient in that is being praised.
So if I really praise people, they'll feel fantastic.
And it's like... Girlboss is an infantilization of being a responsible adult.
It's like this cutesy, sarcastic, adulting crap.
And then productive people are shamed for not supporting this childish attitude.
Question Steph, do you think praising children for just existing is bad parenting?
I see it as a recipe for narcissism.
I don't care what you say to your kids, just be honest.
I just... just be honest.
You know?
I mean...
If I'm looking at my daughter and I think, geez, I really enjoy this person's company.
I mean, I may say, I'm just looking at you thinking how much I enjoy your company.
And then she'll be embarrassed.
She's a teenager.
Right.
But, uh, you just be honest.
Right.
So you, you don't want to like, you don't want to praise.
I love you so much just for being here.
I mean, why are you saying that?
Why?
What do you, if there's something that you're trying to achieve other than honesty, it's bad.
Right.
If there's something you want to achieve other than honesty, it's bad.
If you have a goal other than what you're saying in the moment, in a personal relationship, right?
If you have a goal other than what you're saying in the moment, other than the honesty and openness of your immediate communication, right?
If you're saying something in order to, uh, Oh, my, my wife might be in a bad mood.
I'm going to tell her I love her so that she, okay, that's reactive.
And it's manipulative because you're not being honest.
You're not saying I'm concerned that you're in a bad mood.
So I have an impulse to tell you, I love you.
It's kind of manipulative.
Sorry about that.
But you know, I just want to be honest, right?
So the moment you are trying to manage people through language, you're trying to control other people's moods, you're trying to be defensive or get something, right?
That's no good, right?
I'm not one about, you know, should I murder this guy or that guy?
It's like, no, murder is wrong, right?
You've got to have universal principles rather than individual instances.
Individual instances are crazy.
Like, I'll give you a silly example from computer programming, right?
So with computer programming, you know, one of the first programs that you write when you're learning how to program computers back in the day is, you know, input one number, five, input another number, six,
Ah, 5 times 6 is 30, right?
So, you input a number, you input another number, and you multiply it.
And then you say, input one number, input another number, what do you want to do?
Plus, divide, minus, right?
And then you do that operation, right?
Now, of course, you could, I guess theoretically, you could program
A computer, if the input is 5, and the input is 6, and they want to multiply, return 30.
Right?
If the input is 5, and the other input is 5, and they want to add, the output is 10.
Right?
So, but you don't do that, right?
You don't have some, because the code would be infinite.
Obviously, if you want to do all numbers, right?
Code would be infinite.
Um, what you do is you just have a, you know, first number times second number, return it to the screen, print or whatever it is, message box.
So you have a, you have a principle called multiplication.
You don't have an individual instance.
So when you say, praising children for just existing is that bad parenting?
I see it as a recipe for narcissism.
You're trying to do an individual instance.
And I understand that.
And that from that individual instance, though, you must draw a general principle.
Right?
You must draw a general principle.
What's a general principle?
Just be honest, be direct, be, you know, be clear and don't manipulate.
Or if you do have the impulse to manipulate, be honest about your impulse to manipulate because it happens to all of us, right?
Lee says, acting like my ex is the worst thing ever and never questioning my behavior during the relationship and enabling me to be a worse partner.
Every single one of the girls that I dated where it didn't work out, the signs were right there at the beginning.
And I was even aware that the signs were right there at the beginning.
I was just on a... I allowed myself to be on a kind of train track run by the sabotage-y expectations and preferences of everyone around me.
No, I, um...
I'll only really start listening to feminists when they boycott government money.
Because men pay the vast majority of taxes.
I mean, especially if you count, like, the not-made-up HR jobs.
So men pay the vast majority of taxes.
So when women say,
We are rejecting the patriarchy because the government is largely run by men and men pay the vast majority of taxes and therefore we will reject all of this patriarchy tainted money.
We will not take any of this testicular testosterone fiat money.
My God!
I mean even the printing presses are largely run by men.
The central banks are largely run by men, the government is largely run by men, and the enforcement of taxes is largely a job of male patriarchal police officers.
So we reject taking a penny of government money because it's 90% tainted by patriarchy.
Like, no, we love this patriarchy money.
Yeah, yeah, shut up about the patriarchy.
I don't care.
It's all just a bunch of posig and... We reject all infrastructure maintained by men.
Oh, electricity?
We reject electricity!
Plumbing?
No plumbing!
Well, I literally live in a patriarchy because 95% of construction workers are men?
I reject all fruits of the patriarchy!
Infrastructure!
Roads!
Gasoline!
Cars!
Fiat currency!
Welfare!
My God.
Hang on a second.
Are you saying that the child support is largely judged upon and enforced by the male patriarchy?
I, you know... If, uh... If you get your money from what you call the Mafia, don't talk to me about your opposition to the Mafia.
It's just funny.
It's just funny.
Alright, let me see here.
I don't like it when anyone evaluates me even when it's positive.
Good job, you're smart, etc.
I prefer they stick to more concrete descriptions of what I've done.
Well, I mean, when people say to me, you're smart, like, that's just, like, it's like somebody saying to me, you have blue eyes.
It's like, I didn't earn that.
I didn't earn my intelligence.
The one thing that, you know, studies of the development of intelligence does is it gives you great humility with regards to the gifts you've been given.
Freddie Mercury consciously never took a singing lesson.
He wanted his singing raw and natural.
Why is it so common for women to have sex on the same day as meeting a man and then acting baffled when they get ghosted?
It's such a common thing whenever the topic of dating comes up.
I mean, why would you listen to the majority of people about anything?
I mean, the majority of people have no particular moral or philosophical or religious commitment to honesty.
Lying has become endemic, right?
I mean, a woman who has sex soon after meeting a man is terrified that he's going to accidentally discover her actual personality, so she distracts him with sexuality.
Somebody says, Refuge in video games has been something I've been doing since I was a very young kid.
What steps do you recommend Steph to break free from this?
I hardly even like playing them a lot of the time.
The best way to get rid of fantasy risk is to take on real risk.
Right?
Take on some real risk.
Learn how to manage real risk in your life.
You know, whether it's rock climbing or you want to learn how to ride a dirt bike or, you know, just take on some actual go talk to girls.
Whatever you do to actually take on some real risk in your life, real risk will tend to displace fantasy risk.
Sorry, I'm a little bit behind here in terms of the old comments.
Where is Steph reading the comments from?
Please.
I am here.
Yes, so if you have a question, you can say it on Rumble here too.
I thought I had a place that put all of these things together, but... Oh, it did show up there.
Oh no, that was from D-Life.
Anyway, it's showing up somewhere, so... I thought they had an aggregator here, but it doesn't seem to be getting everything reading.
If you get this reading here... Is it me, or are females way more territorial than males when they see potential competition?
Well, this is why you date a virtuous, confident woman who's good at life.
Women are territorial when they don't have virtue to offer.
I mean, I remember a guy who was living with a woman, and it was really just physical.
I mean, it was really just physical.
She would actually hide the Victoria's Secret catalogs that would come.
I think she'd gained some weight or something like that, and so she'd hide these Victoria's Secret catalogs that would come to the house so that he wouldn't have a better female form to compare to, because then
Alright, so the amount of effort and insecurity that happens in relationships because people aren't dedicated to virtue is colossal.
Massive.
It's just easier to be virtuous than to worry about, you know, somebody better coming along for your boyfriend, right?
Alright, so let me get back to your comments here.
And also, I mean, if you're playing video games to avoid depression, it's going to increase your depression.
Right?
Whatever you avoid, you tend to escalate, right?
Women do withhold praise, especially for praiseworthy moments.
Well, so some women are very enthusiastic about your potential and will encourage you to improve and do better and be great.
But there are a lot of women who are afraid that if you manifest your potential, you'll leave their dumpy asses in the dirt, right?
So they will not praise you, they'll manage you and prevent you from becoming better.
So they won't grow with you, so they keep you back, they hold you back.
Hello Steph, hope all is well.
I'm an aspiring author.
My writing is going well, but I still want to improve my characters a bit.
How do I make my cadre of heroes and villains more engaging and relatable?
Well, I mean, if you're writing fiction, just build from life.
I mean, you know people, just build from life.
It's a whole lot easier.
If you don't know, if you've never known any bad people, I don't know where you've grown up, and if you have known bad people, use them as the basis for building a character.
And don't be afraid to put in those, the details, the details matter, the details count.
If there's a detail that you can relate, that the reader can relate to, or it echoes something that they've experienced before, then
You will get some absolutely fantastic stuff out of that.
The moment that the readers can relate to a detail about the character, then you just get this completely, that they will then start to accept all of that.
And you have to have fidelity to the characters, you have to let the characters be their own people, and have their own preferences, and surprise you, and challenge you, and don't ever impose your will on them, right?
Your characters are like your children, you work with them, you let them surprise you, you let them grow in their own direction.
So, okay, we want to start with the book, right?
So this is the beginning of the present, chapter one.
Rachel had always loved the sensation of power and desirability when sweeping through public places.
This is the introduction, not just to a character, but to an entire theme of the book, right?
So, Rachel had always loved.
So, the idea, of course, is that the love is going to move into the past tense for her.
Had always loved the sensation, right?
Now, not power and desirability, the sensation of power and desirability, right?
Just to unpack the first sentence here, first sentence of the whole book, right?
Rachel had always loved the sensation of power and desirability when sweeping through public places, right?
So, she doesn't actually have power and desirability, she just has that sensation of it.
And she loves the passing attention of strangers rather than virtue, her boyfriend, her health, the good she's doing in the world.
She doesn't admire virtuous people.
She loves the sensation of power and desirability when sweeping through public places.
Right?
So no inner life, no private life, no self-reflection.
She loves the sensation of being wanted by strangers.
So that's a hollow person, right?
So that is, you've got to have the themes, you've got to have what it is that you want to write about, what matters, right?
She says, and I go on to say, she considered herself a feminist but nothing beat that zippy feeling of striding in a tight skirt with high heels through a restaurant of well-dressed people feeling the hunger of endless eyes stalking her from behind.
So she considered herself a feminist,
So, massive contradiction.
She just says stuff.
She doesn't particularly believe in ideals or ideology and so on.
So, she likes calling herself a feminist, but the zippy feeling of striding in a tight skirt with high heels through a restaurant of well-dressed people, feeling the hunger of endless eyes stalking her from behind, right?
So, people look at her leaving, people look at her butt, people look at her figure from behind.
She's just pulling eyeballs in her wake.
Like a ship pulls sharks after it if it's throwing stuff overboard, right?
So I'm trying to give a really vivid sense of, is this kind of hypocrisy?
Yes.
Now, but she, is she a villain, right?
Is she a villain?
Um, it's nice to not know right ahead of time.
Is she a good person?
Is she a villain?
But it has to be someone that people understand.
So then I wrote, I write, Rachel was 20 years old and a journalist that was in italics, not quotes.
This was a word she used eagerly, but not too earnestly when describing her life.
Right?
So, it's outside in.
She describes her life.
It's not the same as living her life.
It's outside in.
She had graduated with a degree in journalism taught by staunch, leather-faced, creaky professors who cornered her for four long years to teach her iron integrity and golden ethics with the apparent goal of describing every principle she would have to utterly abandon in order to succeed in her slippery field.
So this is giving some sympathy.
She was instructed by hypocrites.
Right?
She was instructed by hypocrites, and she'd always loved the sensation of power and desirability when sweeping through public places, which means she has from birth.
In a sense, being forced to live or trained to live or modeling to live of the outside in.
I have value because people want me.
I have value because people desire me.
I have power because people want me and they don't have to know me.
Right?
Now, if I had said Rachel had always loved the warm glow of approval from the most moral people around.
That's a whole different kind of character, right?
Rachel chose journalism because she wanted to be a change agent in the world, which was a term she had never been asked to define objectively, much to her hidden relief.
Right?
So she just says stuff to sound good.
She has a figure to look good.
She strolls through restaurants so that people desire her.
And she wants to be a change agent.
Can you blame her entirely if all of this nonsense works on everyone around her?
Can you blame a woman's vanity if she's surrounded by empty physical lust?
Can you blame someone for getting away with nonsense terms like change agent if everybody just swallows and nods and approves?
Much to her hidden relief, right?
So, last thing, so... Then I say, Rachel enjoyed watching the sliding squares of her own reflection in the mirrors over the bar.
Rachel enjoyed watching the sliding squares of her own reflection in the mirrors over the bar.
I love that image myself because it means that she's disassembling and reassembling herself mentally.
She parts and then comes back together, if you've ever seen that effect, right?
So it's really neat.
She enjoys watching the sliding squares of her own reflection in the mirrors over the bar.
You know, the backsplash mirrors, right?
You're walking and you're kind of disassembling and reassembling, you're warping and all of that.
She's never been asked to define change agent objectively.
And then she's seeing herself subjectively, not just in terms of looking at herself in a mirror, but even the mirror is breaking her up and reassembling her.
She doesn't even have an objective definition of her physical form.
I don't know.
To me, I'm not trying to praise my own writing too much, but I just sort of wanted to point that out.
So yeah, I mean, and people, look, we all have this within us, right?
We all have this within us.
So these are kind of things that, uh, try and try and have a real, something you really, really want to communicate and be willing to be vulnerable.
There's no way I could describe these things if I've never experienced them, right?
There's a video of a woman having a call with HR where she's getting fired, circulating on social media.
She closed no sales in a few months.
Her argument was, I work hard, we live in a complaint economy.
Right?
Right.
So, what she's doing, of course, is she's saying, I have the subjective perception of working hard, and it doesn't matter the objective fact that I haven't sold anything.
The only thing that matters is my subjective experience of working hard.
That's really sad.
It's really sad.
Why can't I tell people no?
Because you were violently aggressed against for saying no when you were a kid.
Why can't I tell people no?
Because you were violently aggressed against by teachers, priests, parents for saying no as a child.
So you have aversive training and it's scary for you to do it, and I sympathize with that.
But don't let them keep winning, right?
I mean, they had to win when you were a kid, right?
You understand that, right?
They had to win.
Your parents had to win, your teachers had to win when you were a kid.
Becoming an adult means don't let them win anymore.
That's how you know you've outgrown your childhood, is the bad guys don't win anymore.
If your parents were bad guys, right?
If you let them keep winning, that's on you.
The fact that they won as a kid, yeah, you had to survive, you had to get by.
The fact that they won when you were a child, I understand and I sympathize with.
It's not your fault, not your issue.
But
Letting them keep winning is really tragic.
Even listening to this live stream, I'm playing a video game lol.
Right, that's because full attention would be painful to you, right?
Paying something or someone full attention.
Steph, I had a question with a donation above.
Should I repost?
No, I thank you for the donation.
Let me see here.
Ah, yes, I'm so sorry about that.
I actually copied and pasted it.
I was going to get to it.
But I hadn't and I appreciate you reminding me of it.
All right.
And donations, of course, massively welcome.
freedomain.com slash donate.
If you're listening to this later, you can donate right here in the app for the live stream as it stands.
Hi Steph, how does one handle a scenario where parents divorced refuse to even acknowledge the abusive yelling, threats, insults, beatings, etc.
things they've done while raising me and my brother?
Whenever I bring up the subject or a specific episode, they follow this process.
I never did that.
Oh, you're remembering it wrong.
It only happened once.
Don't be a baby.
You must have done something.
And on and on.
Well, I can tell you, but you won't like it.
The chapter at the start of the present, where Oliver's family had a meal and celebrated, brought me to tears.
It was like seeing a glimpse into a different world, distant but not so far away.
Right?
Yeah, I can tell you how to handle this, but it'll just be very painful.
I mean, and you know how to handle this, right?
But I'll tell you, I'll make it conscious.
Keep bringing it up until they face it or stop talking to you?
That's certainly possible.
But I'm not sure why you'd want to put yourself in that... Um... Thank you Mario, love you back.
Uh, I don't know why you'd want to put yourself in that self-harm position.
Alright.
Hit me with a Y, I need to check, right?
Hit me with a Y, you're ready to hear how to handle this in a way that's gonna rip your heart in two.
But, you know, it'll heal stronger.
All right.
All right.
Isn't that what you did with your mom?
What did I do?
Until they face it or stop talking to you.
No, that's not what happened with my mom.
I chose to stop talking to my mother.
Now, she wanted to talk to me as long as I wasn't going to talk about that stuff, so I chose to stop talking to her.
Okay, so, let's say that you're at a restaurant and next to you is a table with a mother, a father, and a little boy.
The little boy is eight years old.
Now,
The little boy gets, you see this right under the table, the little boy gets his inside thigh pinched hard by his dad.
Pinched hard, under the table.
And the little boy starts crying in shock and pain.
And says to his dad, why did you do that?
His father says, did what?
You pinched me.
You pinched me.
It hurt.
Oh, I didn't.
I saw you lean forward.
No, I was just adjusting my sock.
I felt a pinch.
No, I didn't pinch you.
I didn't pinch you.
Did you pinch yourself by accident?
I didn't pinch myself.
You pinched me.
No, I didn't.
I didn't pinch you.
Maybe you had some kind of muscle spasm and then the kid, you know, lifts up his shorts and there's a bruise, right?
Bad bruise.
Wow, that's a really bad muscle spasm.
You must have had some kind of muscle spasm.
Maybe you're dehydrated.
Waiter, let's get some water here for my son.
Kid's in tears.
He saw his father lean forward, lean under the table, felt his father's grope, pinch, hurt like hell, tears sprung to his eyes before the pain even hit, and his father's denying that it even happened.
I want you to imagine being in that scenario where you see this boy being physically tortured and then gaslit to eternity.
And the kid's like shocked, tears streaming down his face.
He doesn't, he's bewildered.
His head's spinning.
He doesn't know what up, down, black, white.
Father's like, I did not pinch you.
My hands are above the table.
And then you see the mother lean under it, pinch the other leg.
Mother leans under the table, pinch it.
Mom, you pinched me.
I did not pinch you.
I'm just adjusting my stocking for heaven's sakes.
My gosh.
What is the matter with you?
Are you hallucinating?
Oh, you know what?
Like, to be fair, to be fair, I mean... Oh my gosh, you've got a bruise there, too.
Okay, well, um, I guess we're gonna have to just take you to the doctors.
Gotta go to the doctors.
Gonna have to get a lot of tests, get a lot of injections, a lot of pain.
But, you know, if you're having these muscle spasms... This is what we're gonna have to do.
Can't have any lunch, can't have any dessert, we're just... We're packing up and going, waiter, cancel everything.
We're packing up and the kid's like, I don't want to go to the doctor's.
This is like insane.
I don't want to go to the hospital.
I don't want to get injections.
I don't want to get scans.
I don't want to get poked and prodded by doctors.
I want my lunch.
I want some dessert.
You're looking at this and you see it.
Exactly what these parents are doing.
What are your feelings?
What are your thoughts?
What do you think of these parents?
Get to the point.
Oh, Bruce.
Bruce, Bruce, Bruce.
That's pretty funny.
I got a five minute story to explain the entire gaslighting of childhood to somebody who's going through massive agony.
You're like, get to the point!
Yeah, so Bruce is now identifying with the parents.
And then the parents say, because the kid's crying and, right?
Look, if there's this much pain and we've got to go right now, if there's any way you can control yourself, then maybe we'll see if you're still in pain after lunch, right?
So, what's the purpose of the story?
You all know, right?
You all know what the purpose of the story is?
What is the purpose of the story?
What is the purpose of this scenario?
Why do I tell the story?
So,
Why, I mean, you feel this outrage and anger at the parents for torturing and gaslighting the child, lying to the child.
This is a 360 assault on the child's being.
This is a 360 assault on the child's being.
Physical, mental, emotional, threatening the bond.
There's punishment, taking away lunch and dessert.
There's threats of further punishment, outsourced to institutions through the hospital.
So, you feel outrage about how an imaginary child in an imaginary story on a live stream is being treated.
Why is that child worthy of more outrage and protection than you as an actual physical human being was in an actual physical past with actual physical parents?
It's one of the ultimate acts of surrender to evil, to believe that everybody is worthy of protection except you, even imaginary characters, in a bald guy's livestream.
You've heard me say this in call-in shows.
Somebody says, uh, I was beaten by my parents, uh, but I'm having trouble connecting with it.
And I say, well, you have a son and you have a babysitter and you come home and you find out through the nanny cam that your babysitter was beating your son.
Oh, I'd be outraged.
I'd be throwing out like... Why is fiction more moral than your action?
Why is a lie more worthy of outrage than the actual truth of your existence?
Fiction being a lie, right?
This scenario, I just made it up.
You just made up the scenario.
It's not real.
Yet you get outraged, and rightly so.
Because your outrage is for A.B.Y.
Your outrage, your moral horror, your boundaries, everything, everything that is morally calibrated and finely tuned and willing to defend is for anyone but you.
Who's worthy of protection?
Anyone but you.
Who's worthy of being the recipient of moat-like moral outrage?
Anyone but you.
You hear this, your friend says this is what happened, you've got moral clarity.
That's absolutely appalling that some parents would beat you and then lie to you about it, say you deserved it.
That's outrageous!
Oh, because you see the morals are for anyone but you.
Protection?
Anyone but you.
Integrity?
Anyone but you.
Everyone else gets the law.
All you get is the punishment.
Everyone else gets the bandage, all you get is the wound.
Everyone else gets the meal, all you get is the hunger.
But the great thing about fictional scenarios is that they trigger the awakening of the universal dragon of absolute standards.
Right, so if you feel outrage towards the parents who are torturing a fictional child in my made-up scenario, that is a way of saying, that is not for the fictional scenario, that is not for my made-up child.
That is a principle of outrage at parents who physically, mentally, and emotionally torture their children.
You're angry and outraged at that.
Good.
Good.
That's a warm-up.
That's a play fight for the real battle of reclaiming truth in your life.
Of regaining protection in your life.
Does this make sense?
If you don't deserve protection,
Nobody does.
Now, I'm going to flip the script on you, this is going to be even more horrifying.
I'm going to flip the script on you, it's going to be even more horrifying.
I want you to be imagined at a dinner party.
You're at a dinner party.
Let's say you had really terrible parents and they're gaslighting you and they're saying it's your fault, it didn't happen, you're making things up and won't take any responsibility or whatever, right?
I want you to imagine you're at a dinner party with a couple of friends, a lot of strangers, and there's a woman across from you.
There's a woman across from you.
She's got a black eye.
She's got a black eye.
And she says to you, Yeah, Maya.
Well, I don't know what happened.
I don't know what happened.
Yeah, I mean, it's a funny thing.
So, I mean, this was a couple of nights ago.
Yeah, my boyfriend, he came home, and he'd lost a lot of money gambling, and then he got a ticket on his car, and he was a little drunk, so I guess it was a good thing he didn't get a DUI or whatever, right?
And I got mad at him for spending the money, because we kind of need it for groceries and all of that, and, you know, I mean, I have this weird memory that he punched me in the face, like, repeatedly.
But I don't know.
I don't really remember the punch.
I do remember lying on the ground.
I remember him, like, getting mad and running at me.
And, like, his fist was out.
And then I remember, like, lying on the ground.
I don't obviously remember what happened and, you know, my... I can't see out of my right eye and there's all this bruising and, you know.
And he says that he never rushed at me with
With his fist and, uh, I just, he was out of the room.
He went to the washroom and I must've just walked into a wall or something.
Right?
And you say, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
You should, you should believe him.
Um, well, first of all, listen, first of all, it never happened.
Probably never happened.
I mean, it's almost certain that it never happened, right?
I mean, that's crazy, right?
Of course he didn't hit you, right?
And, you know, if you think he did hit you, you're just remembering it wrong.
Plus, you know, I mean, OK, let's say let's say that he did belt you across the face.
It only happened once.
Don't be a baby.
Also, listen, man, I mean, let's say he he he belted you, gave you the black eye.
I mean, you must have done something.
You must have said something right now.
How would people look at you if you made that statement?
If you joined with the boyfriend's abuse to gaslight the girl, blame her, say she's a baby because it only happened once, like if you did that, how would people look at you?
How would they perceive you?
Yeah.
Like you're effing crazy because you are like a real villain.
They would dissociate you with you or attack you.
Right.
So, but this is what your parents are doing to you.
So, how would you judge someone if you saw them do this?
How would people judge you if you did something monstrous like this?
Universality, right?
There is no category called parent that renders you immune from gravity.
There is no category called parent that renders you immune from radiation, or aging, or the need for nutrition.
And there is no category called parent that excludes you from the universal principles of physics, biology, life, reality, or ethics.
Or ethics.
Or ethics.
If you accept that your parents aren't immune from gravity, you accept that they aren't immune from morality.
In fact, parents have the highest moral standards in the known universe because
The girlfriend with the abusive boyfriend is absolutely being abused.
He should be punished, but she dated him.
She chose him.
She can leave anytime.
She has legal, moral, economic, political independence.
There are shelters, there's families you can go to this, right?
Children have no such freedoms.
Children are not voluntarily entered into any relationships with adults.
It's all involuntary.
They don't choose to be born.
They don't choose their parents.
They have no independence.
So if you'd be outraged at someone gaslighting an abused girlfriend in this way, it's infinitely worse with you and gaslighting and abusive parents.
This is not up to me.
This is not my argument.
These are simply the facts of moral clarity.
You can shoot the messenger if you want, but I'm simply making a rational case based upon universal ethics.
Now if the girlfriend said, yeah, okay, you know, he does, um, he does, he does kind of hit me and, and, and he does lie to me about it.
I think he lies to me about it.
I mean, but you know what?
I'm going back.
I'm going to have another chat with him.
I'm going to, I can fix him.
I can, I can make this better.
I can, I can through the sheer virtue of, of my,
Please understand.
Please, please, please understand.
You can't fix your parents.
And the desire to fix your parents, if they're abusive, the desire to fix your parents is implanted in you by them so that they can continue to abuse you by denying reality.
You can't fix your parents.
They want you to think that you can, so that you keep going back and they can exercise power over you by rejecting reality, gaslighting you.
But you can't fix your parents.
You can't fix your parents.
And you don't even want to.
They want you to.
They want you to have that illusion.
Does this make sense?
I'm really trying to give you some freedom here.
But once you know this, you have responsibility.
I hope that helps.
And I'm sure I will get back to more even higher energy shows but I'm just six days into a cold.
Should be done in a day or two but I still want to keep doing shows.
So it's funny too because like I just noticed this as of Tuesday of last week I couldn't do a show last Wednesday but as of Tuesday of last week
Um, because my energy's a little lower, the donations are lower too.
And I hope, I hope, I hope that I'm allowed to get ill once in a while without y'all withholding donations from me.
I hope that that's okay.
I mean, uh, the last time I had a cold was probably four years ago.
So, I just noticed that and I'm just sort of pointing it out that I've had lower energy and I'm not going to force energy, I'm not going to pump it, that would be inauthentic, right?
I mean, I'm working with the energy that I have and I don't want to, you know, squeeze energy.
That's kind of hysterical and kind of panicked and frantic and inauthentic to squeeze energy out that's not there.
So, I'm still trying to provide value and provide equality and so on, but I'm aware that donations are down like half or more.
More, really.
A quarter, right?
They're down 75% because I'm a little low energy.
Now, I just think y'all should be aware of that.
Don't let my energy be that which dictates your integrity.
In other words, if I'm still providing value without ripping my shirt off and singing at the top of my lungs and so on, then I hope that's okay.
I hope that's okay.
Yeah, amazing how everything feels like a house of cards when you don't have your health.
Oh, I'm, because I'm so used to such buoyant energy, uh, it's just weird to me.
Like I was, I was at a coffee shop with my daughter.
Was it last Tuesday?
We went out to just, just chat.
And I was like, I could feel like powering down.
I could feel it.
Right.
Right.
And, um,
I was like, oh, we gotta go.
Yesterday was the first day I haven't needed a nap over the course of the day, so it's strange.
It's fine, you know, and it's actually healthy to get unwell once in a while, and it reminds your immune system to do things that it needs to do.
But yeah, it is strange.
This is like fast forward to 80.
It's like, oh, this is what it's like.
This must be what it's like having normal human amounts of energy.
Low energy.
This live stream has been amazing.
It's a slow month for me this month and the next, but I will donate more to you when my business picks up in March.
Thank you.
It's just that it did actually coincide that the donations fell by about three quarters for live streams.
The donations fell by about three quarters over the course of live streams when I got ill.
Yeah, that's interesting.
It's interesting.
It's a different kind of energy.
I think there's some pluses and some minuses, but yeah, the kryptonite version of stuff.
Yeah, it's a bit of a nasty cold.
I thought it wasn't that nasty a cold, and then I got the sore throat, and it's like, okay, yeah, that's a little more than kin, a little less than kind.
But the good news is that
My daughter didn't get it.
I don't know why.
I thought this was a great stream too, but it's a slow time for me since the holidays and winter bills are more... Yes, that's right.
Yes, that's right.
No, I get that, but I also noticed that it absolutely coincided with me getting ill, and it was such a steep drop-off that I kind of noticed it, so I just wanted to sort of point that out.
I, you know, I do have to do a little bit of mental voodoo with myself to avoid resentment, right?
Of course, right?
And I think it's important to sort of recognize and remember that.
But have I been around unvaccinated people?
Sorry, vaccinated people?
Well, I mean, yes, in that I'm in society, but, you know, distinct absence of French kissing or nipples.
I've been around.
I mean, I'm in society, but no sharing cups or anything like that.
All right, well, I will try and preserve the remnants of my voice, and thank you guys so much for dropping by today.
What's coming up?
What's coming up?
Oh, I just had a great call in yesterday on how to overcome anxiety.
Had a guy with big...
Part of the special appeal in the YouTube days was the massive number of people in the community.
It felt like I was contributing to something gigantic.
I donated because I've been helped too, but the larger audience added to it for me.
Oh that's interesting.
So because there's a smaller audience, you feel less requirement to support.
How's the history of philosophers going?
I'm not sure what you mean.
I've done 22 and I've got Kent up next, but he's such a big job that I need at least a week of full-time study to do him justice.
They might be shedding spike proteins.
What, like in the air?
It's just a cold, man.
It's just a cold.
It'll be fine.
I've had them before.
It's just a cold.
I hope you don't live in that world.
Maybe you do.
I don't know.
It seems a little scary to me.
I feel like I'm pulling a larger part of the weight for fewer people.
A larger part of the weight for fewer people.
Well, but you get more intimate shows, right?
You don't just watch me do a truth about what's going on in Ukraine.
You get sort of more intimate shows with back and forth about people's real issues, right?
All right.
Wouldn't less of an audience mean staff would need more support?
Yeah, it's kind of like, I'll applaud if it's a stadium show, but I won't applaud if it's a jazz club.
That seems quite the opposite of what would be needed, but, you know, I'm just telling you my particular perspective, so...
All right, well thanks everyone a million fold for your continued support, such as it is, and have yourselves a wonderful Sunday.
I will talk to you all on Wednesday, and I will look forward to your support if you're listening to this later, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show, greatly, greatly appreciated, and this afternoon I'm working on a peaceful parenting book, so no voice, but good edits and reviews and research.
