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Feb. 19, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:13:27
How to Never Be Bullied!
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All right, welcome to your Sunday morning live stream.
Lots of stuff to chat about today, but, as always, of course, I am beyond thrilled, beyond thrilled to take your questions, comments, thoughts, objections, criticisms, whatever is on your mind.
Let's check. Greetings, Bomega.
Greetings, Joe. We have...
Oh, a UPB question right away.
Isn't that magnificent?
I would like to know how UPB handles the idea of forgiving our enemies, or at least those who choose to do us harm, getting them out of our lives if they don't repent slash apologize slash make amends.
I agree with. But is it best to just let go of anger over things and people that cannot be changed?
Yeah... Okay.
So, UPB is not just a word that you use to substitute with ethics, morality, right behavior, goodness, politeness, appropriateness, diplomacy, whatever.
Like, UPB is a very specific framework.
So, let's test everyone's knowledge of UPB. UPB, easy as A, B, C. All right.
So, with regards to UPB, what is the first question if you have a moral issue and you
want to run it through UPB, what is the first question you need to ask about how UPB handles
something?
What's the first question you need to ask about how UPB handles something?
Oh, it's a little tricky.
Could be considered a smidged tricky-like.
A smidge tricky, tricky like.
Is it universal?
Yeah, that's right. That's right.
Can it be applied to everyone? Can it be universalized?
Right. So, forgiving those...
Who have chosen to do us harm, forgiving our enemies, can that be universalized?
Yeah, can it be universalized?
Let's say the commandment is, you must forgive your enemies.
Can it be universalized?
The coma test is good, for sure, but the coma test comes subsequent.
The coma test comes after it is passed the test of universalization.
Now, the coma test is not a bad mental trick, right?
And it's not a bad first filter, but it's not an absolute.
So, if we say, forgive your enemies is a universal good.
It is forgiving your enemies is UPB. Okay, does forgive your enemies pass the test of universalization?
In other words, can everyone do it at all times, under all circumstances, no matter
what?
Now of course you can do the coma test and say, can someone in a coma fulfill the idea
of forgiving his enemy or her enemy who's done him or her harm?
And, of course, no. Someone in a coma cannot forgive someone who has done him or her harm, right?
So that doesn't really work.
No, because there are people who aren't your enemies.
That's true.
That's true. Can forgiving your enemies be universally preferable behavior?
And the answer, so the first question, is it universalizable?
I'm not even sure how this works.
Can it be universalized? Let's say, can it be universalized?
I want to make sure I put that in the notes.
Can it be universalized?
Does it pass the coma test?
Coma test. The third question you need to ask is, and I'm sorry it's mildly technical, but is it asymmetrical?
So asymmetrical is one person wins, the other person loses, or one person has to do the opposite of the other person in order for The action to be achieved.
So stealing is, I want to keep my property, you want to take my property.
So I want to maintain property rights, you want to violate property rights, therefore we can't both achieve our goals at the same time.
It cannot be universalized.
It cannot be universalized that we both respect and violate property rights at the same time.
It's asymmetrical, right?
So you think of a murderer, well, some guy wants to kill another guy, the other guy doesn't want to be killed, desperately fights to live, therefore it's asymmetrical.
You can think of it as, instead of it being flat, it's like a ramp, right?
Like it's a 45 degree thing.
So the thief violates property rights and his victim wishes...
To maintain property rights.
So if you were to say that stealing is UPB, then you would say that both the violation of and respect for property rights is the universal good.
But it can't be a universal good because it's asymmetrical.
Because one person is violating property rights, the other person is wanting to respect and maintain property rights.
So one person has to do the opposite of the other person and therefore it can't be universalized.
I mean, if you had as your moral good that everyone has to walk north, and then you said, except for those ten people, they have to walk the opposite of north.
They have to walk south, or burrow into the ground, or travel through time, or something like that.
Then clearly, having as your goal that everyone needs to...
Like, the moment you have an asterisk and say other people need to do the opposite, it's not UPB. So, with regards to forgiving our enemies, let's say that forgiving...
Our enemies is universally preferable behavior.
So, now he's also said, forgiving, and this is a great question by the way.
So, forgiving our enemies or at least those who choose to do us harm.
At least those who choose to do us harm.
Okay. So, let's talk about Bob and Jack.
Bob Jack. A new species of giant cat.
So Bob and Jack.
So Bob beats up Jack because he's angry at him about something.
So Bob beats up Jack.
And then someone says to Jack, who was the victim, someone says to Jack, and let's say it's not a reasonable thing, right?
I mean, obviously he just goes and beats him up because he dislikes that he did something or heard a rumor or something that's not moral, right?
So Bob goes and beats up Jack, and then you come and lecture Jack, and you say, forgiving your enemies is UPB, right?
That would be a cowardly and destructive thing to do.
Right? That would be a cowardly and destructive thing to do.
And completely against reason and logic and UPB. Why?
Why would it be cowardly, immoral, negative, destructive, harmful, and a violation of your
own moral principles to lecture the victim and say you need to forgive your enemies?
Why?
Why are we refreshing and forgiving?
Let's see here. Alright, looks like we're a little delayed here, so I'm going to just have to give you the answer.
Sorry about that. You probably have already typed them, but I'm not getting them.
So, the reason why, if...
Bob beats up Jack.
The reason why you would lecture Jack that forgiving your enemies, or at least those who do you harm, is UPB, is that you already have somebody who's violated that moral principle by not forgiving Jack.
So Bob hears some rumor about Jack.
Bob beats up Jack.
then Bob has clearly not forgiven Jack because he beat him up, right?
And this is one of my issues with the whole forgive your enemies thing.
you Is that if you say it is forgiveness is the universal good and someone has harmed you unjustly, they have harmed you unjustly because they haven't forgiven you.
Right? Let's say someone tells Bob that Jack slept with his wife and then Bob goes and beats up Jack.
And it's not true. Somebody just wanted Bob to go and beat up Jack for whatever reason, right?
Now, of course, if forgive your enemies is UPB, then Bob should never beat up Jack.
Because, let's say, even if it was true that Jack slept with his wife, Bob should forgive him.
Bob should forgive Jack.
But what happens is, Bob beats the ever-living crap out of Jack, and then you go to Jack, who's lying, bleeding, and spitting up teeth, and you say, well, it's really, really important to forgive your enemies.
It's universally good to forgive your enemies.
But, of course, what you should do is you should go to Bob, and you should lecture Bob.
About the fact that he beat up Jack because Bob did not forgive Jack.
But you go to the victim and you lecture the victim about forgiveness.
You don't go to the perpetrator, to the person who's violated the non-aggression principle, to the person who has assaulted Jack.
You don't go to Bob and say, you're a bad guy for beating up Jack.
Yeah, it's putting the burden of forgiveness on the person who was wronged.
But that just means that Bob isn't following UPB. I'm sorry you're having trouble with the conceptual aspect of it.
It is a little tricky. No, it means that the idea of forgiving your enemies can't be universalized.
First of all, it's asymmetrical.
Because someone has to choose to do someone else harm, which means it can't be universalized.
It can't be universalized.
Because it's asymmetrical.
Because one person has to be doing somebody else harm, the other person has to be innocent and on the receiving end of harm.
So Bob beats up Jack, which is asymmetrical.
They're not both doing the same thing at the same time.
And Bob is beating up Jack.
Bob wants to beat up Jack.
And Jack desperately doesn't want to be beat up.
So it can't be universalized because it's asymmetrical.
Bob wants to violate Jack's person.
Jack does not want his person to be violated.
So it's asymmetrical, can't be universalized.
They can't both achieve their goals at the same time.
A respect for property rights?
Yes, you can absolutely, everyone can achieve that goal at the same time.
A respect for property rights.
So, forgiving our enemies...
If you were to universalize it, if you were to universalize it, it would vanish and it would also be, so it would erase, right?
Because if everybody forgave our enemies, or at least those who choose to do us harm, then nobody would do anybody harm, theoretically, right?
Nobody would be doing anybody.
Everybody would forgive everyone all the time, no matter what.
And therefore, the moral category would cease to exist.
Jack should just call the cops and have Bob arrested.
No, no. We're talking about the principles, right?
The individual instance is an example of the principles.
So saying what Jack should do is not talking about the principles of the action.
So if UPB says we should forgive our enemies, then our enemies are the ones who violated
that principle first by not forgiving us.
And therefore, you should never preach to the victim.
You should only and forever preach to the aggressor.
But that almost never happens, right?
Everybody goes to the victim and then tells the victim not to be angry at his attacker.
And the reason they do that is for reasons of cowardice, for alignment with the attacker, because they want to feel like a good person, but they don't want to confront Bob, who's clearly violent and dangerous, and they don't want to deal with that.
And so what they do is they go to the victim and they attempt to further disarm the victim so that the victim doesn't seek revenge.
The victim doesn't seek revenge.
The victim's anger is then disabled.
Now, there's a little thing I'm thinking about.
I'll come back to that in a second, right?
But is it best to just let go of anger over things and people that cannot be changed?
Okay, guys.
Do not be a dictator over your own passions.
Do not be a dictator.
Do you have this idea that you can choose your emotions?
Well, just let go of your anger.
Just let go of your anger.
We'll get to mercy, that's a good question.
Mercy, mercy me.
Don't be a dictator with regards to your own passions.
Your passions, if they've been cultivated well, in other words if you have committed
yourself to rationality and empiricism, your passions are the empiricism of moral consequences.
you you
you you
Your passions are the empiricism of moral consequences.
Just let go of anger.
Anger is not something you hold on to.
Anger is not something that you voluntarily gather to your chest and hold on to it like you're hugging a 20-pound bag of flour.
You just got to let go.
That's not how emotions work.
Emotions are the autonomous lizard brain response to pluses or minuses to you and your interests.
So, they're not necessarily objective because they follow your interests.
So, if you are a thief robbing a bank, then you're afraid you're going to get caught.
If you're the bank owner, you're afraid that the thief is not going to get caught.
You're afraid that the thief is going to get away.
So both people have fear but they're based on the opposites.
So if you are a woman and a guy you like and a guy you dislike are both approaching you
at a dance, you are afraid that the guy you like isn't going to ask you out and you're
afraid that the guy you don't like is going to ask you out.
you Right? Anger is an autonomous process that arises from the unconscious that evaluates Whether things are positive or negative for you,
whether people's actions or people's purposes or they...
And remember, the unconscious has been clocked at over 6,000 times faster than the conscious mind.
The unconscious is like the GPU, right?
Without the GPU, you can render one frame every 30 seconds.
with the GPU you can render 60 frames a second.
So the idea that you voluntarily choose to become angry and then you can voluntarily
choose to, quote, let go of your anger is kind of a slave morality.
kind of a slave morality.
It's a slave mentality.
Slaves aren't allowed to get angry, you understand, right?
Those who are weak and subjugated are not allowed to get angry, and of course the great temptation, if you're not allowed to get angry, or you'll be Beaten, tortured, or killed for getting angry, your big temptation is to say, well, not getting angry is a virtue.
If you have no choice to inflict consequences, then you basically have to forgive.
Why do you have to forgive? Because you lost the war, because you've been enslaved, because you're a serf, you're a slave, you're subjugated.
So the idea that you voluntarily, like, anger is something you voluntarily pick up, like a sack of flour, you voluntarily pick it up, you walk around with it, it's a burden, and you just need to put it down or let go of it, is, I don't even know what to say, but it seems to me entirely deranged.
And false. And it could only really be thought of, and I'm not talking about this particular person, but in my sort of theoretical universe, such a mentality could only be thought of By somebody so dissociated, so beaten, broken down, attacked, neglected, abused as a child, that the separation of consciousness from the emotions was such a foundational survival mechanism that the emotions have been utterly distanced from the mind.
Utterly distanced from the mind.
Thank you for the tip.
I appreciate that. And the goal of a lot of morality around the world is to paralyze the victim from responding to abuse.
We know this deep, deep, especially if we were harmed as children, which a lot of us were.
The purpose of, quote, morality is to paralyze the victim from seeking redress,
making choices, or becoming safe.
I mean, I think we've all had a situation where we are worried about something and
then we get the facts, the facts say don't worry and the worry lifts.
What happened?
You understand? If people could will away their emotions, they would not survive.
They would not survive anything but enslavement.
And, really, the only way to survive enslavement is to will away your emotions.
And Aquinas viewed anger as a good response to injustice.
In that case, someone just letting go of anger without resolving the injustice would be immoral.
But of course destructive rage is different.
So anger is...
Thank you for watching.
you Based upon the need or the preference to protect yourself,
rage is based on the preference to destroy a threat.
So anger is self-protection, rage is the destruction of the other.
It is the destruction of the other.
So, if...
Sorry, I just want to make sure I get these comments.
There's a little tangle in my mind about UPB earlier that I have.
And UPB is tricky, man.
UPB is tricky because it goes against all of the ethics we have had ingrained within us.
So, que bono, right?
Who benefits? Who benefits from forgive...
Your enemies. Who benefits from, forgive your enemies, let go of your anger?
Do I have anger?
What do you mean, do I have anger?
You mean me? Do I ever experience the emotion called anger?
I don't even understand what that question means.
I don't, I mean, I'm not a spiritual leper who can't feel anything in his extremities.
I don't know I mean, it's like asking someone, you know, if you put your hand in an open flame, does it hurt?
I don't understand what the question is.
What do you mean, do I have anger? I've literally done shows where I'm angry.
I don't understand.
I don't understand the question.
I'm sorry. Looking at a picture of me and saying, are you bald?
It's kind of funny. Oh, my gosh.
Oh, my gosh. That's funny.
Who benefits, right?
Who benefits from forgive your enemies?
So forgive your enemies means do not inflict negative consequences on those
who do you harm.
See, then the reason that the question do you have anger is confusing to me is
you You've been around for a while.
You've listened to the show for a while.
I have shows while I bellowed in anger.
Right? So, I don't know what to say when the empirical evidence has been very clear and you ask me for, like you're literally like somebody shivering in a walk-in fridge and saying, am I cold?
Or, um, I'm, I'm, you see a video of me sitting in a bucket of ice and you say, did you find that, like, are you, do you experience cold?
I'm like, I'm shivering and, right?
I don't really know what to say about that.
I mean, don't, I don't know why you wouldn't accept the evidence of your own consistent senses.
It's kind of odd to me, but.
Yeah, so forgive your enemies means that those who do you harm, those who do you wrong, should never suffer any negative consequences.
And in fact, love your enemies means that you should have positive consequences.
As I understand, it's funny, eh?
Like, this forgiveness stuff is like a constant topic.
It's been around for 15 years.
So somebody writes, as I understand the forgiveness as a Christian, we forgive our enemies as a mechanism to lay down our anger, release ourselves from said anger, and give over the crime to God for vengeance.
Though practically as those who wronged us committed criminal acts against us, we follow
all the leavened avenues for redress, but not with anger, but cold commitment to justice
without hate.
Right, your enemies and those around you who support them benefit.
Thank you.
You you
you Alright. We forgive our enemies as a mechanism to lay down our anger.
Well, but let's look at how life has changed since the days of the inception or origins of Christianity.
So we'll go back 2,024 years and we will look at what has changed.
So, 2024 years ago, it was very hard to change your social, tribal, communal environment.
Right? So, you lived in a small village or you were a farmer or something and the people who were around you generally wouldn't change.
Now, If you are in a situation where you cannot change your social circle, then there's no point being chronically angry all the time.
So I can understand that.
So the purpose of anger is to protect ourselves.
Now, if for some reason we're in a situation where we can protect ourselves, then being chronically angry is actually dangerous to us.
right? It's harmful to us. It's like the cortisol, the stress, like it's bad for your health, right?
As far as I understand.
So, and the, but this is part of the slave morality.
So the slave can't free himself from being a slave and can't fight back against his master.
So to reconcile yourself to the situation has a certain rationality to it.
But we can change our social environment now.
We can move, we can choose who we see, who we don't see, so...
That's just a basic mindset of liberty that empirically we should process.
Now, to lay down our anger.
So, if you have enemies, the first thing that you should do is protect yourself, right?
So the first thing you should do is protect yourself.
Either work to rid your environment of the enemy, I mean peacefully and reasonably, right?
Or remove yourself from the reach of the destructive person, of the harmful person, right?
I think that's fairly basic and fairly clear, right?
I mean, if you are being followed by a wolf in the woods, if you can drive the wolf off, so much the better.
Or you want to run to get to a house or whatever it is, so that the wolf can't harm you anymore, right?
The idea of forgiving the wolf and just acting as if the wolf wasn't there and having no emotions about the wolf, that's just going to get you killed.
That's the suicide to detach yourself from your sense of danger.
And anger is an emotional marker for danger.
And removing yourself from any sense of danger is suicide.
I mean, we see this, right?
You can see this with women traveling all over the world and putting themselves in incredibly risky situations.
It's like, I don't know what to say if somebody has lost all sense of danger.
Other than, well, you should reactivate that, you should stop being ideological and stop being empirical.
And social stereotypes is one of the most replicated findings in the social sciences.
So, When you are in a sense of danger, you want to get to a place of safety, but that's what the purpose of danger is.
And, I mean, there's only three ways, right?
You can either talk to your enemy and turn him into a friend or at least someone neutral, or you can drive the threat away, or you can remove yourself from the threat.
Reconciliation, Or removal.
These are the two ways that you can deal with threat, reconciliation or removal.
I'm not taking any questions on violence, just so you know.
Don't be violent. Accept an immediate extremity of self-defense and know the laws in your
vicinity and don't do anything illegal and don't initiate the use of force.
Well, the way you get rid of resentment is you do not validate your actions, sorry,
you do not validate your emotions by failing to act upon them and denigrating them as immoral.
you What's wrong with being angry?
What's wrong with being angry?
Now, so, of course, what some Christians do is they say, well, peace and forgiveness and love come from Jesus.
Anger comes from the devil.
But then, of course, they have to reconcile themselves with the fact that Jesus flipped tables and beat money, changes with whips.
And it's also saying that you can arbitrarily put a line down the center of your being and say, this comes from God, this comes from Satan.
Now, of course, if anger comes from Satan, then it should never do you any good.
It should always be evil, but it's not.
Could you flip a table without anger?
Can you beat people without anger and cry out how much they're ripping off the penitents
who need to deposit money into a holy place?
Now of course those who want to prey on you don't want you to be angry.
you And those who want to pray on you don't want you to be angry because anger interferes.
Your anger interferes with their exploitation.
That's not proper doctrine.
Satan isn't the source of anger.
Sometimes he is. Sometimes he is.
Let me just check this.
Let me just check this, because I want to be right about this.
But I think if I go back to my days in Christian education...
Yes!
Oh, Dave, how can you mislead us to this degree?
My gosh, man. I'm so uncertain about this, but I wanted to...
I wanted to check.
Satan isn't the source of anger.
Well, let me tell you about a deadly sin called wrath.
Oh, you know what? No, you could be right.
Let me just read through this.
I want to be accurate about this.
Wrath in Roman Catholic theology is one of the seven deadly sins.
Wrath is defined as a strong feeling of hatred or resentment with a desire for vengeance.
This overwhelming feeling and desire for revenge distinguishes wrath from anger that is balanced with reason, which is not a sin.
Christian teaching also differentiates between God's wrath and human wrath, in that the wrath of God is regarded as a manifestation of divine righteousness and justice.
As a deadly sin, wrath is believed to generate other sins and further immoral behavior.
All right, so let me just get here a little bit more detail.
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, anger is distinct from the sin of wrath and is discussed as one of the, quote, passions or feelings that incline humans to act or not act in response to something that is perceived as good or evil.
Along with anger, the perceived passions are love and hatred, desire and fear, and joy and sadness.
Okay, this is great. I mean, just tacking the word reason onto anger to differentiate it from wrath is not at all rank good.
Thus, passions are morally good when they lead to a good action and morally evil when they contribute to an evil action.
Let's see here. I'm just, okay, there's a history of...
Okay, there's nothing here.
They just tack on the word reason to anger.
They tack on the word reason to anger to make it just and they remove it.
So, let's see here.
What is wrath? According to the Bible, wrath is synonymous with anger, as stated in Proverbs 15.1.
Quote, A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Alright, why is wrath not the same as anger?
Nave's topical Bible lists anger, judgment, and punishment as synonyms for wrath.
See, I was not raised a Catholic, I was raised a Protestant, so I didn't get the wrath-anger distinction.
But obviously it's there in Catholicism.
Wrath can be summarized as strong vengeful hatred or resentment.
The warnings of wrath in Christianity arise from the consequences of vengeance in human relations.
We can become consumed by rage and revenge to the point of acting irrationally and immorally.
This is the wickedness of wrath and why it is included as a deadly sin.
In the Summer Theologica Theologiae, medieval scholar Thomas Aquinas declared anger is, quote, the name of a passion.
A passion of the sensitive appetite is good insofar as it is regulated by reason, whereas it is evil if it sets the order of reason aside.
Again, the magical word reason explains nothing.
Because humans are flawed creatures, there will be times that we are mistreated by others in our life.
While it is a natural reaction to be angered by this, we must stay vigilant, do not become a slave to our emotions, and instead respond in a rational manner, as God commands.
Let us recognize that God will judge all and serve justice upon those who trespass against us.
Let the wrath of God serve retribution, as Romans 12, 19 states, Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath.
For it is written, It is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the law.
Alright, so that is not clear.
I'm trying to find anything to do.
Okay, wrath when used of man is the exhibition of an enraged sinful nature and is therefore always inexcusable.
It is for this reason that man is forbidden to allow anger to display itself in his life.
He is not to give place unto wrath, nor must he allow the sun to go down upon his wrath.
He must not be angry with his brother, but seek agreement with him, lest the judgment that will necessarily fall upon the wrath will be meted out to him.
Okay, so you're not allowed to be angry.
You're not allowed for anger to be part of your life or to inform your actions or decisions.
So that is interesting All right
So Satan isn't the source of anger but in my Christian tradition anger was wrapped up in
irredeemably in the sin of wrath you
So, it was a sin.
It is good to be slow to anger, unless you are an all-powerful, all-good being.
It is good to be slow to anger?
I don't know what that means.
So, if you see your daughter being beaten up by a larger boy, do you wait three days to get upset?
I don't quite understand.
Do you get angry at the boy who's beating up your little girl?
It's good to be slow to anger.
Guys, do you not think anything through before you type?
We're trying to do philosophy here, which is if you have the urge to type something, you have the urge to make a public, this is a public forum, a public environment.
If you have the urge to type something, what's the first thing that you should do?
What is the first thing you should do?
I would say, if you have the urge to type something, what's the first thing that you should do?
What is the first thing that you should do?
When you have the urge to type something like, it's good to be slow to anger.
The first thing you should do, and this is Socratic Reasoning 101.
So, the first thing that you should do Is, you should try to think of a counter-example.
You follow?
You should try to think of a counter example.
Now if you can't think of a counter example, maybe you're onto something.
But if you can think of a counter-example, don't type your general rule.
I mean, because then you're like some medieval serf saying, well, everything falls down.
It's like you can't think of a single example that goes against that.
Birds fly up.
Smoke rises. Clouds hang in the sky.
You shoot an arrow, it goes up, right?
So everything falls down.
If you're not thinking of counterexamples, you're not doing philosophy.
I don't know what you're doing and I'm gonna push back against this hard because you are on listening to the show
you are Now a representative of philosophy which don't means don't
type dumb stuff It's good to be slow to anger
No, it's not! If you're facing an immediate violent injustice against an innocent loved one,
anger is very essential and important right then right now.
Jesus, if we are assuming he is the Son of God, could easily flip a table without anger.
Thank you.
you But saying that He would be violent against those preying upon the innocent without experiencing any anger, unfortunately, that is just saying that Jesus is a model for humanity that has no characteristics of humanity.
Seeking vengeance is not allowed.
Yeah, for vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
Righteous anger that moves one to protect others is a good thing.
Okay, define to me what is vengeance.
If someone assaults you and you go to the police and the police arrest him and put him in jail, is that not to some degree vengeance for him assaulting you?
According to the Summa, anger is not inherently wrong just when inordinate.
Yeah, but again, say, moderation and reason doesn't explain anything.
It must be governed by reason.
What does that mean? Well, X is bad unless it's, quote, governed by reason.
What does that mean? My point was, do not conflate modern American soft Protestant doctrine as proper Christian doctrine.
Wrath is rage.
If you guys aren't giving me definitions, I don't know what you're doing.
Anger can be absolutely justified.
It is unending, self-consuming hatred slash wrath that is a problem.
I would say forgiveness is not UPB because it is a requirement of the Bible for Christians.
No, because Christianity has as its morals universalism.
God created all, including our emotions, and this includes Satan.
And Catholic doctrine is about living by reason, not by emotions.
It's the major difference between Catholics and Protestants.
Okay, explain it to me like I'm five years old, because that is where morals are inflicted upon people.
We start to teach our children about morality when they're a couple of years old.
So, if I'm five years old and I'm angry because some kid maliciously broke my toy because I wouldn't let him play with it.
He ripped it out of my hands and smashed it.
So if I'm angry, tell me what it means to be governed by reason
In a way that I can act not just now but on next time The reason I was addressing you was you were saying
Christians believe anger as wrong I
I I
Yes, but I still need a definition of the difference between anger and rage.
Remove the toy.
Wrath would be punch him in the face.
Rage would be destroy all his toys.
Remove the toy.
No, the toy's been destroyed.
Remove yourself. Wrath would be punch him in the face.
Rage would be destroy all.
Wrath and rage, I believe, are the same.
Okay? So, what if you can't remove yourself?
Right? Like, what if a kid is bullying you and you can't remove yourself?
You're cornered in the playground or something like that and the kid is attacking you.
Are you then allowed to punch him in the face as a kid?
Revenge is the difference.
Okay, so revenge is the infliction of negative consequences to evildoers.
So are you saying that evildoers should never experience any negative consequences in the secular world?
Is that the argument?
that evil doers should never experience negative consequences in the secular world.
Then you punch him, yes.
Okay, and can you punch him without being angry?
So, you want to fight or flight action without any fight or flight emotions.
So God has instilled in you fight or flight mechanisms that give you a flood of adrenaline
and often anger and sometimes rage when you are being directly threatened with death,
injury or grievous bodily harm.
you you
So, are you saying that it is important enough for your survival that God gives you a fight-or-flight mechanism that floods your body with emotion, adrenaline, your hands shake, and all of that?
So, it floods your body with passions, emotions, strength, energy in order for you to survive, but you shouldn't feel any of those wild, passionate emotions that fight-or-flight, your amygdala, the adrenaline, cortisol, flood, that you shouldn't experience those things.
So God has programmed your body to flood you with emotions in a time of danger, but it's wrong to feel those emotions.
Is that right? Can vengeance be defined as taking action to harm someone when you aren't in immediate danger in order to satisfy your anger?
That is why imprisonment isn't vengeance if you are not doing it to satisfy anger but instead to uphold standards.
Okay, how do you uphold standards without any emotions?
Do you... let's see here...
Do you think you, that rejecting Jesus had emotions?
I don't know what that means.
Sorry, you're replying to someone else.
Justice is measured and not done with massive emotional motivation.
Hence the judge and jury.
So justice is measured and not done with massive emotional motivation.
Hence the judge and jury.
you So you turn it over to other people to judge.
Is that right? Your emotions are normal.
You are the one saying anger is bad.
I'm not. Well, that's not me. I mean, this is my...
I think anger is good. I've, in fact, got an entire podcast called The Joy of Anger.
You don't uphold standards without emotions.
The idea that your standards are objective and transcend your own emotions.
The idea is that your standards are objective and transcend your own emotions.
Alright. So, let me ask you something.
Let me just ask you guys something as a whole.
Do you think that Emotions have been opposed quite considerably in the modern world.
I don't think fight or flight is anger.
Anger we're talking about is when you had to sit on hold on the phone for too long.
I don't know what that is.
That's just a scrap of passing thought.
That's not an argument. So do you think that children have their emotions opposed, particularly boys, particularly boys?
Do you think that boys' emotions have been criminalized to some degree, medicalized, opposed, undermined, and attacked over the past 60, 70 years?
Yeah, of course, right?
Of course. Let's just read The War Against Boys.
Okay, so do you think that society as a whole has gotten better or worse since boys' and to some degree girls' emotions have been opposed and undermined and attacked?
Has society gotten worse?
Has debt increased?
Has the judicial system deteriorated?
has the sustainability of our civilization increased or decreased
since emotions have been opposed.
So, I mean, this is sort of my fundamental question, right?
So, the idea that we should oppose anger or we should oppose significant anger Has been around for...
So, I mean, basically what society did was after the Second World War, they said, well, male anger leads to this, right?
So male anger is the problem and we need to not have male anger.
Somebody says, worse, we need emotions but we need to evaluate them with reason before acting on them.
Evaluating them with reason, I don't know what that means.
So you've just got something and you're just adding the word reason to it as if that explains anything.
I mean, if I said flibber-de-jibber is bad, but flibber-de-jibber with reason is good, it's like, well, what does that even mean?
I don't know what that means. You can't just add the word reason and think that you've explained something.
You haven't. You've just taken a positive word like reason and Right?
It's like that sting song, without the voice of reason, every faith is its own curse.
It's like, okay, it's a faith that's bad, but you add the voice of reason that it's good.
It's like, well what does that mean? What does that mean in practical, actionable terms?
So, I mean, just so you know, that's the perspective that I'm working from.
That anger is considered bad, right?
So somebody who's mistreated by the justice system, who gets angry about it, is just raging, is raging.
all anger has just become bad.
We need to make sure our actions align with objective, absolutive, oral reality, moral reality.
Okay? What does that mean?
What does that mean? The emotions that serve the powerful are promoted piecemeal as it helps them.
There's no consistency. I would argue that there are no genuine emotions that serve the powerful.
And I realize I just fell into the same trap I'm putting to others.
I can say genuine emotions, right?
right? But that's not an answer, right?
Look, here's the basic reality of things.
Let me get a question here.
I feel like emotions in the modern world fall into two extremes, either completely gushing incontinence or Vulcan-like stoicism.
We need to be at the proper balance between the two extremes.
Again, balance, extremes, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, it doesn't answer anything.
Why, having a proper moral standard to judge yourself by will help you to determine if you are being overly emotional or if, in fact, what is happening is very evil.
Overly emotional. Again, it's not anything actionable or practical.
I mean, I put all your comments through.
Okay, how does this help me next time I'm angry?
It is important to think about the true source of the anger.
you People often misdirect it, thinking it is for someone else.
For instance, leftists who hate men even though the justified anger is towards their parents.
Let's see here.
So, of course, like, anger is an essential part of the human experience.
And either you get comfortable with your anger or the anger of the masses is going to be programmed by your enemies.
Either you get comfortable with your anger, or it's not like the bad people will program the weak people to be full of rage against the good people.
The bad people will program the weak people to be full of rage against the good people.
So the idea, it's like unilateral disarmament.
Well, I'll just lay down all my weapons, and then I'm sure the criminals will do the same.
No, no, that's not how life works.
I see emotions as a gauge, raw data.
One needs to trust that their emotions are there to help them process reality, otherwise they are set against their own emotions.
Jared says, I don't agree with this Christian division.
Christian anger that leads to vigilance is bad.
Anger that has you run to the local system of justice is good.
You may bypass the sophistry of people telling you to stop being angry.
Well, so you just need to look at the media and the programming that goes on with the masses.
Is everyone told to stop being angry?
Is everyone being told to stop seeking any kind of redress for grievances?
Is everyone told that it's bad, you have to forgive?
No. I mean, the media rouses people up.
up, the media provokes a lot of anger and hatred.
Wrath would be having the emotion because of reasons outside the boundaries of the four virtues.
But you're just piling more positive words on.
You're not explaining anything.
If the anger is regulated by the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, then it's considered with...
because it's just more positive adjectives.
It's just more positive words.
Not explained anything.
Nothing, nothing is explained by piling in more positive words.
With regards to me, right?
I mean, was everyone told to forgive me and to understand me and so on?
Or were they just told that I was a bad guy and they should be angry at me?
I mean, you're talking to the wrong person about how everyone is just told to be rational, right?
Everyone is going to say their anger is all those good things.
How will you prove them wrong? I mean, I've come up with a whole bunch of definitions even in this show.
You can argue those definitions, but you can't say I didn't make them.
At least you can't say that and be accurate.
Somebody writes, much of my pain in life has been because I ignored my anger, trained to disconnect by my parents.
Now I choose to listen to my body and my emotions.
the shift of mindset took a lot of effort.
I mean anger in general is weaponized by sophists and turned it into rage.
It's a big deal.
I mean, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing.
you you
Does aligning our anger with objective reality mean that we recognize what the true cause of our suffering is so that we know where to direct our anger?
One example is during COVID how the unvacs were blamed, right?
Some situations are really clear like an attack in the moment
Some situations are unclear, like a perceived slight from an acquaintance or somebody cutting you off in traffic.
A perceived slight from an acquaintance.
Okay, that's...
But you're already categorizing something as a perceived slight, and it's probably not that important that it's not someone we really care about.
Someone cutting you off in traffic?
Like somebody who drives dangerously?
I'm absolutely angry at those people.
I'm absolutely angry at those people because they've got 6,000-pound death machines that they're whipping around all the place, like serial killers with a chainsaw.
No, I'm absolutely angry at people who drive badly and in a risky and dangerous fashion.
Yeah, absolutely.
We feel anger automatically is a natural subjective response.
No, it's not just a subjective response.
It's not just a subjective response.
I mean, if there's a woman who we really care about and she says, for the first time, I love you, we wouldn't feel anger.
It's not just random and subjective.
Anger is the evaluation of a threat in our environment, a threat to us.
A threat to us!
And of course, when there are genuine threats around us, we're all told, oh, there's no threat, you're making things up, you're paranoid, there's a conspiracy theory, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Program our emotion, right?
But we need to reflect on the context and evaluate our next actions to ensure morality.
My dad used to get angry if you looked at him the wrong way.
His reaction was out of proportion.
Come on, man.
You can't paint with that broader brush.
you you
Okay. Do I, you know, I work out a little bit, I look at my little cute little bicep here, right?
Do I every morning say, ooh, hope that's not a tumor.
What if that's a tumor? I mean, there's this growth on my arm.
Is it a tumor? No.
It's a muscle. But a tumor is something that swells too, and a muscle is something that swells.
Therefore, a tumor and the muscle are kind of in the same category.
Right? A woman's belly could swell up because she has a giant cyst or cancer, or it could be because she has a baby in there.
All abdominal swelling is in the same category.
Nope. Nope.
A man can lose his hair because he's ill or deficient in some vitamin or he's going through chemo.
Or, a man can lose his hair because it's a natural process of aging and I think a little
bit of a byproduct of high tea.
So of course anger can be a form of bullying and dominance and destruction.
Of course it can.
It could all be tumors.
It's like, no, I've been working out and doing my protein and all of that, right?
So I would sort of categorize like you got your father's anger, right?
You look at him funny and he just gets angry, he's enraged.
Alright? So, his perceived threat is to the fragility of his status.
So, he is perceiving a threat.
You're looking at him funny or skeptically or whatever, right?
And every parent goes through this process where their child proves them wrong.
If you're raising your children right, you absolutely should go through that process.
Your child is going to prove you wrong.
Now, when my child, when my daughter proves me wrong, which she does, when my daughter proves me wrong, is that a threat to my status?
Nope. That's good.
That means that I've raised her well, and of course, I'm not right all the time.
Far from it. So the fact that she would have the confidence, the intellect, the bond to prove me wrong is a good thing.
I don't view that as a threat to my status.
I would view it as a threat to my status if my daughter never contradicted me.
So if you have Unjust anger tends to be when you're defending a falsehood.
when you're defending a falsehood.
I almost never see people more angry than when they are
defending something which is false.
class.
Because you're not just fighting the other person, you're fighting your own sense of reality.
And when you're fighting your own sense of reality, you tend to have to exaggerate and escalate and
because you're not shouting down the other person you're shouting down your
own doubts.
Yeah if the children too frightened to contradict you yeah that's a serious
problem in one's parenting.
you So your father was defending a falsehood, that he's always right, or you should never be skeptical, or you should never disagree, or never question, right?
That's a falsehood. That's a falsehood.
And it's a falsehood because it's not universalizable.
You can't be universalizing that, right?
So he's defending a falsehood.
Defending a falsehood is where escalation occurs.
occurs.
Especially if the falsehood is foundational to the false self, right?
If the false self is built on a falsehood, then you're going to get really aggressive towards people who question you because you're not a person who has doubts.
You're a person whose entire being is founded on falsehoods.
And this is a lot of the modern left woke mentality or morality.
Happens on the right, too. Happens on the right, too.
Like the Q stuff, trust the plan and all that.
And a number of people, they've got to do shows on Q, trust the plan.
plan is like, I think that's a plan.
Now the reason people get so angry when they're defending a falsehood
is because defending a falsehood requires massive amounts of terror and humiliation.
So, if someone is defending something that is false, The only reason that they would do that is because they've been subject to massive amounts of threat, bribery, pain, humiliation in the past.
So, I mean, take an obvious example, something like the wage gap between men and women, right?
When you control for education, when you control for what people study, is it the social sciences versus, say, petroleum engineering, when you control for the amount of hours worked, when you control for all of these things, the wage gap disappears.
Wage gap disappears. So why would somebody believe in the wage gap when really going through the math takes like half an hour, right?
Why would somebody believe in the wage gap?
Well, they would believe in the wage gap because those around them will punish and attack and humiliate them and reject and ostracize them if they don't mouth the platitudes of believing in the wage gap.
So their beliefs are not a hallmark of reason and curiosity and evidence and an impartial examination of the facts.
their, quote, beliefs are the flags of a conquered nation called Thersaul.
Now they have appeased those who have conquered them through aggression by
mouthing the platitudes of the victorious, but they have told themselves that
it is just an objective fact and they care about women and men are unjust and
patriarchy and blah blah blah.
Right.
you If you start to disprove the beliefs that are not actually
beliefs but just appeasement to aggression, then you are beginning to expose to
themselves the humiliation and aggression and subjugation and conquered status of their mind.
In other words, somebody believes that they're moral, right, virtuous and honest and believe
true things when in fact they've been bribed and or bullied into mouthing the platitudes
of the most aggressive and manipulative.
you you
you you
you So, they're not fighting you.
They're fighting to escape their own humiliation, falsehood, lies, and manipulation.
In other words, they have told themselves that what they believe is true, but what they believe is false.
And when you begin to prove that, they realize, at some level, that they've been faking it, that they're sophists, that they're liars.
And that is why they escalate to aggression.
because they are getting social resources and approval and maybe jobs
and tenure and pluses and they get to stay on their social media platforms
because they're lying.
And so they claim that they're honest, moral, virtuous and true
when they're in fact cocky, subjugated, bribed and bullied into mouthing things
that are false and never examining the other side.
People escalate when you reveal their own corruption,
their own subjugation.
That they're not good, they're just conquered.
They're not virtuous, they're just appeasing.
And they don't have moral courage, they're just afraid.
And I sympathize with that fear.
I mean, there's a lot of bullying that goes on in the realm of ideas, and particularly in the realm of morality.
I sympathize with all of that.
But you gotta be honest about it.
I mean, I don't know if you got to, but it's certainly honest to do so.
you you
I mean, there's a podcast, Jared, if you're around, if you wouldn't mind looking it up, there's a podcast I've been listening to about Mark Stein versus Michael Mann, I think M-A-N-N. Mark Stein, this has been going on for over 12 years, this defamation lawsuit.
And it's really, really fascinating to listen to.
Really fascinating to listen to.
It's two Irish reporters.
Irish reporters. There's two Irish reporters and they are covering the Michael Mann and Mark Stein, S-T-E-Y-N. Mark Stein is representing himself.
He's a journalist and he's Canadian, although he left Canada after running afoul of various...
But he actually got the law changed in Canada about free speech.
But... He's representing himself, and even with representing himself, he's never lost a lawsuit.
It's wild. It's wild.
And he is a very, very good speaker.
So what these Irish reporters are doing is they are getting the transcripts and they're getting professional actors to reenact what's going on in the courtroom.
I was listening to some of this yesterday.
Now, I wouldn't say that I'm overly cynical, but I try to be fairly realistic about the corruption in the world.
Holy crap. Holy crap.
I mean, honestly, I'm not a big one for recommending the competition, but this one is the one to do.
This one is the one to do.
You've got to listen to this.
It absolutely is mind-blowing what's been going on.
Absolutely mind-blowing what goes on.
We'll get to the name of that podcast, but it really, really is.
So with people who are really keen and concerned, this has been a constant pattern that I have
This is not absolute proof, of course.
It's a constant pattern that I've seen.
This is why I'm skeptical of the everyone should forgive.
everyone should forgive I've constantly seen
that the bully aggressors against the innocent victim
and then everyone swarms the victim and says to forgive that is a
I honestly cannot think of a single exception I can't think of a single exception to this this pattern in
my life in in what I've seen everywhere
right? It's a constant pattern.
The bully aggresses against the victim.
Everyone swarms the victim to demand that the only moral thing to do is to forgive and forget and be the bigger person, take the high road, move on.
Don't look back. Don't take...
Don't get angry.
Don't take revenge. I mean, tell me if there's been situations where that has not happened.
I'd love to hear about it.
It's just keeping the peace through appeasement.
Keeping the pretend peace through appeasement.
Oh, the bully bullied you?
Okay, you got to forgive the bully because otherwise you could get mad at the bully and try to make him suffer
negative consequences for his bullying
After 12 years of delays the defamation lawsuit brought by climate scientist Michael Mann and writer Mark Stein
finally began this week Yes, I think that's the one, but it's two, it's a man and a woman to Irish journalists.
To me, It is part of a keep the peace strategy that is peculiarly female in nature.
And I don't mean by this to be anything negative towards women.
Love women. Women are wonderful.
Men are wonderful.
Love men. We have developed slightly differently.
But this keep the peace thing, this appeasement thing, seems to be a little
bit more female.
I think that passage from Romans is saying that we should try to work it out
with our brother before going to court or seeking a third party which is
consistent with what you were saying Steph.
Thank you.
you you
The purpose of anger is to stop predation upon us.
The purpose of anger is to stop predation upon us.
And we can. We can stop predation upon us.
Yeah. We absolutely can.
I mean, obviously you can try and work things out with people.
I don't think that it is worth getting into perpetual grudge matches with people who do us wrong.
I mean, do you see me doing that?
I mean, I literally had a guy on the show a couple months ago who'd been pretty hostile, kind of a troll.
And we talked for, I guess, over two and a half hours.
And... I had not really thought of the guy.
I was curious to hear what he had to say.
I've done entire conversations with trolls who hated me or have huge issues with me.
And, you know, what does it turn out?
It turns out it's their own psychological stuff, their history, their childhoods.
And I have sympathy with all of that.
But do you see me getting into big grudge matches with people?
Just out of curiosity. Because, you know, people are like, well, you should let go of your anger or you should learn to forgive.
It's like, okay, but do you see me?
Like, why are you lecturing me?
Do you see me getting into big grudge matches with people?"
Alpha says, Aphra says, that being expected to let go of and endure injustice was part
of the spiritual abuse I experienced as a kid, so I definitely recognize that as part
of the kind of appeasement is common.
you So do you see me getting into hostile, prolonged, grudge-match battles with other people?
And I think it's fairly safe and logical and empirical to say that yes, I have suffered some significant injustice
over the years.
So how do I do it?
How do I have anger without rage?
How do I have anger without grudges?
How do I have anger but I'm not perpetually angry even though I've been severely sinned against in the world over the course of my lifetime?
I've been the recipient of some significant injustice and attacks.
Do you experience me as a chronically angry person?
Do you experience me as somebody who's just full of piss and vinegar and looking to pick a fight with everyone and their dog?
I mean, tell me. I mean, maybe I'm that way and don't even know it.
Because you think prior to acting.
What does that explain?
Think what? You have boundaries.
What does that explain? How have I been sinned against and am not consumed by anger, bitterness, vengeance, while at the same time I do have the capacity to be angry?
So, it's funny how people are fighting me constantly.
I mean, I think I hit the Aristotelian mean of anger fairly well.
Think about the consequences and whether carrying the grudge makes sense.
Well, the word makes sense.
What does that mean? Well, you wouldn't want to do things that don't make sense.
You want to be reasonable and rational and temperate.
It's like, what does that mean, though? Is it because you reframe hard situations with empirical evidence and philosophy?
You are assertive.
Again, not what does that mean?
Empirical evidence and philosophy, those are just positive words.
They're not definitions. I mean, you wouldn't accept a doctor waving a Harry Potter wand from Universal Home Studios and saying the word healthy over and over again.
You wouldn't accept, well, that's not a doctor.
But the word healthy is positive.
It's like you use objective standards for judging yourself.
What does that mean? I know, it's kind of tough for me to ask what you mean when you have a typing situation.
I get all of that. But it's kind of funny.
And this is one of the reasons why these conversations can be annoying at times.
I'm not saying you're annoying. I'm just saying I get annoyed at these conversations.
Because you're asking a guy who's You're basically telling a guy who's super fit you don't know anything about fitness.
And if I have hit the Christian and Aristotelian mean of not being a pushover, of being assertive, but without being consumed by chronic and self-destructive rage or hatred, if I've hit that mean, why wouldn't you listen to me?
You understand? It's kind of funny.
It's kind of funny. I'm still going.
I'm still positive. I'm still peppy.
I'm a happy guy. I've suffered massive amounts of injustice.
I have been assertive.
I've fought back where necessary.
You've seen me, you know, confronted live on TV, on Joe Rogan.
You see people who do ambush me, who do the bait and switch.
Think I have myself okay?
Don't think I could consume by rage?
You seem pretty angry to me, if I'm honest.
You're getting annoyed at your own customers right now.
Okay, so are you saying that all annoyance is dysfunctional?
Right? So if I'm annoyed, and I'm aware that I'm annoyed, and I didn't say it was because of what other people were doing, I was just telling people my own experience of being annoyed, are you saying that that is dysfunctional?
So, when people tell me that I'm wrong about anger, when I think I have modeled a pretty healthy relationship with anger in my public life for close to 20 years, despite being provoked by massive amounts of injustice, being treated royally badly, I think I've modeled a healthy amount of...
I haven't backed down.
Have you seen me retract anything that I know to be true?
Have you ever seen me do that?
Have you ever seen me retract anything that I know to be true?
Have you seen me appease and betray the truth in them?
So if I experience any annoyance, that is dysfunctional anger.
you And also, I've got to tell you something else that annoys me.
You say, you seem pretty angry to me, if I'm honest.
So, you have an option to not be honest.
And you have to tell people when you are being honest.
Which means, I don't know what to believe in anything that you say.
TBH, to be honest, Is kind of a programming technique.
But she says, well, you're too fragile to know the truth.
I have to kind of manipulate you.
I have to kind of skirt around things because you're too volatile.
You're too much of a volcano. You're too much of a landmine.
So finally, okay, to be honest, right?
So you've withheld the truth from me because whatever, I'm fragile or can't handle it or whatever.
It's an LLP programming thing to make people feel fragile.
It doesn't work on me because I know that I'm not fragile that way.
You're getting annoyed at your own customers right now.
So what you're saying is that to have integrity, I should be bribed into lying.
So you're getting angry at your own customers right now.
But I assume, at least I'm going to go on the assumption, and if you're not here, if you're not supporting this show because you want me to tell the truth, please stop supporting the show.
Like, go right ahead. And I'm not being facetious about this.
I'm genuine. Like, if you are...
Well, I want Steph to lie to me.
I want Steph to defer to me.
I want Steph to bow and scrape before me and abandon truth, reason, evidence, and principles because I'm paying him $5 a month or $10 a month or $20 a month.
So I'm bribing him to lie and abandon his own principles.
You're getting annoyed at your own customers right now.
You're saying that if my own, quote, customers who are paying me to tell the truth, I should lie to them about being annoyed.
So the price of my integrity is a couple of bucks a month.
Do you understand even what you're saying?
I don't... Do you have any clue about what you're saying?
I mean, you know, I'm not trying to be full of hate here.
I'm just... I don't understand what you're saying.
You're getting annoyed at your own customers right now.
So, you're all here to tell you the truth, at least as far as I see it.
I'm not saying it's an objective truth, right?
My feelings, right? You listen to your feelings wholeheartedly, then act on them when you feel it is right.
Again, what does that explain? Act on them when you feel it is right.
Act how? Act to what degree?
What does it mean when you feel it is right?
Using objective standards for judging yourself means that you don't take seriously the negative stimuli of others because...
Sorry, just got...
Because their standards are contradictory and not universal.
So.
I've seen you utilize your core enemies to improve your life.
The conversation about why it was great that you exited politics and continued concentrated on philosophy.
You can't tell the truth without getting annoyed.
You can't tell the truth without getting annoyed.
What are you talking about?
You can't tell the truth without getting annoyed.
If I say I'm annoyed, I'm telling the truth.
What are you talking about?
You can't tell the truth without getting annoyed.
I'm annoyed. I'm telling you that I'm annoyed.
I'm telling you it's not necessarily your fault or anything.
I'm just telling you my genuine experience of the conversation.
You can't tell the truth without getting annoyed.
What if the truth is that I'm annoyed?
Do you want me to lie about that?
Which way is up? I don't know, man.
You must have had some really complicated parenting.
I don't know how you keep yourself so composed after everything.
It's motivational. I'm glad to hear that.
You're steadfast in your truth in the face of intimidation.
I value Steph's annoyance.
I want service with a smile.
To be honest, I am a pathological liar?
What does one make of this? Oh yeah, to be honest, to me, just discredits everything that the person is saying.
Because either they are using it as a manipulative way to make me feel fragile while I've had to withhold all this honesty, or everything they say when they don't say to be honest is just a lie.
Like, why would I? I already have 9 billion people who lie to me.
I need truth! Annoyance is a good tool.
If you're annoyed, then saying you aren't isn't the truth.
Yeah. I think you're a solid example of measured directness and a man who pays attention to his emotions but doesn't let his whims control his actions.
I appreciate it. There aren't many men out there like that anymore.
I appreciate that. Thank you, Dave.
That's very kind. Yeah, so my emotions are to process threats and to deal with them In a way that satisfies my conscience.
And I know satisfies my conscience isn't an argument, right?
I've obviously got to accept the same rules that I'm encouraging others to follow.
The truth people are here for isn't whether or not you're annoyed.
We're here for philosophical truths.
Boy, there's a false, but you really are.
Sorry, man. Everything you say is manipulative.
The truth people are here for isn't whether or not you're annoyed.
We're here for philosophical truths.
So when the philosophical truths are about emotions, you're saying that my emotions have nothing to do with a philosophical examination of emotions.
Physics is about the examination of the nature and properties of matter and energy, but you can't talk about matter and energy.
That's crazy. We have a physics, not matter and energy.
It's like physics is matter and energy.
We're talking about philosophical examinations of the emotions, saying that the emotions have nothing to do with it.
I don't understand. Everything you say, again, I have this with great sympathy.
I have great sympathy for what you're going through, but you went through a cheese-grade childhood where you got fragmented and you can't be direct.
You can't be direct, which means you're being manipulative, which means everything you say is self-contradictory for anybody who takes a moment to check it, right?
And again, I have sympathy with the amount of fear and bullying that produce that kind of mindset.
I really have a great deal of sympathy for it.
So the truth people are here for isn't whether or not you're annoyed.
We're here for philosophical truths.
So you have a false dichotomy.
So my annoyance can't have anything to do with philosophical truths.
But my annoyance has something to do with the philosophical truths.
That if I have for 20 public years, despite massive amounts of provocation, modeled healthy levels of productive anger...
Then I think that under great provocation, under great attack and sometimes stress, I have modeled grace under pressure, a management of the emotions.
I haven't bound out. I haven't been broken.
I haven't lied. And I also haven't raged against people and haven't gotten involved in self-destructive crusades.
I think that's pretty healthy modeling of emotions.
Now, if people are then saying, basically, Steph, you're wrong about anger, you're wrong about emotions, when I have publicly modeled a very healthy approach to emotions, it's okay to be annoyed when people don't pay you what you deserve, when people don't give you what you deserve.
So, if you're at a job and you come up with some great idea and your boss steals it and pretends that your boss came up with it yourself, you would be annoyed.
And that would be a healthy and productive and positive and good emotion.
Now, that doesn't mean you would go and push your boss down the stairs.
Of course not, right? But the annoyance would be healthy because you are being denied what you are owed, which is credit for your idea.
Now, if I, for 20 years, have publicly modeled A healthy relationship to anger and then people are like, well, Steph, you don't really understand anger.
You don't get it. You don't, right?
It's like, there's a reason to be annoyed because people aren't giving me credit where credit is due.
I've earned credit and if people don't pay what they've earned, it's okay to be annoyed.
If a friend borrows $500 from you and promises to pay it back in a week and then dodges your phone calls for six months, that's annoying.
Of course it is. It should be because...
He's not paying you what he owes.
So if I have earned a certain amount, it doesn't mean I'm right.
It doesn't mean I'm right, but it also means that my perspective, if you're just going to dismiss my perspectives on anger without acknowledging that I have publicly modeled under great duress a healthy relationship to anger for 20 years.
And live, too.
This is like live. I've been confronted by people with malevolent intentions who've bait and switched me and done ambushes and so on.
Right? So that's happened live.
Right? For hours sometimes.
I think I've handled it fairly well.
I don't know what it means to handle it perfectly, but I think I handled it fairly well.
So, I mean, I stood my ground, didn't fight back, haven't been consumed by rage, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So, I mean, if people then say, well, Steph, you're just wrong about anger.
It's like, well, you're not acknowledging the empirical evidence that I'm fairly good with anger.
I'm fairly good with handling anger.
So, I'm getting to the philosophical truth that you're not paying.
I mean, this is funny because we're talking about anger being something that protects you.
Now, if people aren't willing to acknowledge that I have for 20 years, give or take, I have publicly handled anger in a productive and positive way, if people aren't willing to acknowledge that, then they are falsifying evidence and they are not paying me the respect that I have earned and the respect that I deserve.
So, my anger here has led me to an important philosophical truth.
The people are uncomfortable with my assertiveness.
They're uncomfortable with my healthy relationship to anger, which again, not perfect, whatever that would mean, but pretty good.
Pretty good. So, my annoyance led me to a philosophical truth that I have earned, not obviously, oh, everything Steph says is right, but if I have a perfect physique and then people tell me you know nothing about diet and exercise.
You're totally wrong.
And if they themselves are not healthy, right?
They're overweight, they're anemic, they're right.
So if the pear-shaped pudgy people are telling me with the perfect physique you know nothing about diet and exercise, I would...
Try to reason with them, but if they kept doing it, it would be annoying.
Now, of course, I am perfectly...
I can block people, ban people, I can stop the live stream, so I can disengage from this at any time, but I don't want to.
I don't want to, because I think it's healthy for people to be confronted in this way.
And look, if there's any consolation, I confront myself in this way all the time.
Am I right? Am I true? You've heard me do it a couple of times.
It's something I'm not quite getting about, the UPB thing, and I've been self-critical even in this.
When I put forward a rule that says, don't just...
Tack on positive words to a particular situation and then I just did that.
I have to confront myself about integrity and this, that and the other.
So I'm not doing to you anything I don't do to myself.
Sometimes I'm annoyed at myself, like everyone is, I think, who's honest with themselves.
It feels like socially I've been conditioned to react to people's emotions rather than their actions.
Here's the threat, it's the emotions, right?
Sorry, let me just get back here...
you You're welcome, and I think you have the correct way of seeing anger and acting on it.
It's what Christ taught. You do a dang good job of it.
Thanks, Dave. I appreciate that. You can't tell the truth without laughing.
I don't know what that means. Maybe that's to someone else.
Which is why people try to police others' emotions and we can only display nice ones.
And people who can't control their own emotions end up controlling everyone else.
Somebody says, I realized yesterday that the pool of people who I speak with openly and honestly shrunk around the time I started telling them, yeah, the COVID thing was pretty revealing that way.
I just remembered that I have seen you retract.
Ah.
I don't remember that.
Okay, that and dishwashers.
No, of course I will retract.
When I'm wrong, I mean, that's basic integrity, right?
So, yes, my wife told me to rinse stuff before putting it in the dishwasher.
I had a rant mocking it, and I was informed by some very knowledgeable people that it is important to rinse things before you put them in the dishwasher because the detroit just accumulates in the filter, and it's bad, and all of that, right?
So, yeah, I mean, of course.
I mean, but you're not listening.
What did I say? I said, have you ever seen me retract anything I know to be true?
Have you ever seen me retract anything that I know to be true?
Now, when I was wrong about rinsing stuff to do with the dishwashers or when I was wrong about the movie Joker, I retracted because I was wrong.
Right? So, you have now expanded it to...
So, when I say, have you ever seen me retract...
Things that I know to be true.
You're like, hey man, I've seen you retract something you know to be false.
Like, what?
You must listen, people.
Because we're mortal and misunderstandings are a waste of life.
Seems like he wants to recreate annoyance in me that he feels from one of the earlier topics in the stream.
Most people with a big audience on the web are playing some angle and are different versions of narcissistic.
Right now, the only other ones I see who are not playing their audience are people I don't really know.
Being honest about your opinions without regard for the outcome is a key component of virtue, basically being
honest.
I think you are correct about anger.
I disagree that Christian doctrine considers anger a sin.
I think your take on anger is in line with Christ.
He trusted his feelings and outrage.
This was a lot of his lessons.
The Gospels are full of examples of Christ being annoyed and angry and also measured.
So generally the pattern that occurs is we are raised by people and we are
And here's the other thing too. I mean, I think another reason why I... I deserve credibility in the realm of anger.
Now, credibility doesn't mean that I'm right.
Credibility means that I'm worth listening to, and to immediately oppose me is unjust.
So if I, for 20 years, I've publicly modeled a healthy relationship to anger, despite massive amounts of provocation, then I have credibility in the realm of anger.
That doesn't mean I'm right about everything, but it means that opposing me without listening is It's irrational.
And it's unjust.
It's unjust. Like, if I'm pudgy, and there's some guy with a fantastic physique who's maintained that physique in public for 20 years, and he starts telling me about diet and exercise, and I say, you're wrong!
You understand? That's petty.
That's reactive. That's not rational.
Like, 20 years, the guy's modeled having a great physique.
Right? He's got a fantastic physique.
For 20 years, he's kept it up publicly.
So if he starts telling me something about diet and exercise, and I just tell him, I'm wrong when I don't have a great physique.
You're wrong. You're wrong.
What do you know? You understand why, if he's trying to help me, because he says, look, you don't have particularly health.
You've got a double chin. You've got man boobs.
You've got no veins on your fingers.
Isn't that sort of a bit of a mark of health?
You've got no veins.
So if he's trying to help me, and I'm kind of pudgy, and he's lean and healthy, and he's trying to help me, and he's been a health expert, public health expert, who's done absolutely fantastic work in public for 20 years, and he's trying to help me, and I'm like, no, you're wrong!
You understand that the annoyance of that person is the best response you can hope for.
Right? I mean, obviously he'll try and reason with you, right?
And I've been doing that for like an hour and a half.
And then I got annoyed. Now, annoyance is actually better than the alternative, right?
Somebody says, thank you for the tip.
I'm feeling uncomfortable during this exchange.
And feel my fight or flight and want the exchange to end.
Where would this aversion to conflict come from?
It makes me think back to my dad and his inability to stand up for himself.
Thank you for the honesty. You're welcome.
And I understand the fight or flight thing.
I understand the fight or flight thing.
Being assertive is dangerous because it draws attack.
And it's a great conversation.
So, if the guy with super great physique and super healthy...
It's trying to teach you something about diet and exercise, and you just say that he's wrong, he doesn't understand anything, and you, who's pudgy, I'm sorry to make you the pudgy person in this analogy, but you, who's pudgy and unhealthy, bad blood pressure, chest pains, whatever, right?
You're like, oh, he's totally wrong, he's wrong, he's wrong, he's wrong, he's wrong, he's wrong.
So you understand that annoyance is the best outcome from that, because what's the alternative to annoyance?
Because annoyance keeps the person engaged with you.
So what's the other alternative?
What can happen if it's not annoyance?
What happens is the person just gives up completely.
If someone is annoyed with you, and let's say that person is an expert and you're not, and that person is annoyed with you, It means that they're annoyed because you can do better.
Yeah. I mean, if you just give up, right?
Like if somebody...
If you're a tennis coach and you have a player who's just got a lot of talent and if they just worked, they could just be fantastic.
And they say, I want to be fantastic.
I want to be a fantastic tennis player.
But they just eat crap.
They don't stretch. They don't exercise.
They don't practice their backhand or serve.
Then you get annoyed with them because they have so much potential.
Whereas if some guy says he wants to play tennis and he has no arms, you won't be annoyed with that person for failing to live up to his potential.
You just won't engage with them. Be like, I'm sorry, you can't play tennis without any arms.
Or at least get to the top of the natural leagues or whatever, right?
So when people get annoyed with you, When experts get annoyed with you, it's a compliment.
Do you see what I mean? When experts get annoyed with you, it's a compliment because it means you're worth engaging with and you're worth shaking out of your lethargy and you're worth hearing the truth.
Annoyance is a mark of respect in many ways.
Jared says, I made the choice this week to suggest to my manager how to better use my skills.
It felt so freeing to break the silence.
Right, right, right, right.
So when people...
So, the general pattern goes something like this.
Because, of course, the fact that I have a healthy relationship with anger despite being raised by people full of rage, like violent, destructive, child-abusing, child-beating, concussion-inducing, potentially rage.
The fact that I have a healthy relationship with anger despite being beaten both in school and at home...
By abusive authority figures, the fact that I haven't gone to one extreme and become total pacifist, the fact that I'm not full of rage.
So the fact that after such intense provocation and abuse as a child, I've ended up with a healthy relationship to anger, isn't that also worthy of some level of respect that I've managed to find my way through to have a healthy relationship with anger?
Because, of course, a lot of what happens is And this is how abuse tends to replicate.
It goes from abuse to self-abuse, is that people who are bullies, parents and teachers and whoever, if they're bullies, they'll rage at you, they'll humiliate you, they'll bully you, and then you're like, well, anger is bad, anger is unhealthy, anger is toxic, and then you make a virtue out of never being angry.
Because everyone who gets angry is abusive.
It's like, no. No.
That's like saying I can't be a surgeon because there are people who who stab people
I can't advocate for property rights because there are people who steal
Realization of the Uncertainty of the Uncertainty of the Uncertainty of the Uncertainty of the
Reacting To evildoers and letting their evil dominate and dictate your thoughts and actions is to never ever be free of their abuse.
Right, so if I'd have said, well, the people who raised me and the people who educated me were often violent, incoherent and irrational, so I'm going to have nothing to do with anger or any emotions, because all emotions are abuse and blah blah blah, I'd never be free.
I'd never be free. Because everything I would be doing would be in reaction to.
That it would be a recoil.
You know when somebody pushes you on a cliff edge and you almost fall and you're
windmilling your arms and trying to not fall off the cliff, you're just reacting to their push.
You have no free will in that moment.
Because you're reacting.
to a provocation, to a danger.
Everyone's off on a side quest about someone's job.
I just wait for people to return.
So the question then is why would you want to detach yourself from your emotions?
So, if somebody bullies you and they're angry and volatile and destructive, and then you say all anger is abusive, then you put yourself forward as somebody who has no anger and someone who...
We'll always forgive. And somebody who will not push back.
And somebody who will appease.
Right? So you say, well, somebody was a bully to me.
So I'm going to detach myself from the self-protection of anger.
So then what happens?
Then what happens is...
The bullies are always sniffing for victims.
You understand? That's the predator and the prey.
The hungry wolf is always sniffing for prey.
The hungry lion is always sniffing and hunting for prey.
Now, the bullies will always go after the people with no access to their anger because
they're unprotected.
If you leave your door open and the mail is piled up and you're clearly not at home, then
You are open for business for the thieves.
you Do you see what I'm saying?
The reason why you have to, I think, get comfortable with your anger and be willing to be assertive
and let it protect you is because otherwise you have a solution that doubles down on the
problem.
Because you say, well, everyone who was angry was abusive so I'm never going to get angry,
I'm never going to be upset, I'm going to just forgive and forget and be the bigger
person, take the higher road, move on, and you put now this scent that draws in the predators.
I'm going to be the bigger person.
I'm going to be the bigger person.
It's how the bullying replicates.
It's how you're never free of the bullies, because you keep inviting them in, to some
degree or another, by saying, I'm absolutely unprotected.
I will never make you suffer any negative consequences for your bullying.
I will never get angry.
I will tamp down my anger.
I will always seek to understand, to forgive, to take the high road, to be the bigger person.
And then you're like, well, I seem to have a lot of bullies in my life.
Of course you do. You understand?
I'm trying to free you of bullying.
Is B the better person just a tactic of bullies to disarm your anger?
Um, generally it's a third party.
There's the enabler of the bullies.
Bullies are often just kind of dumb, aggressive, sadistic brutes.
It's the sophists who are continually disarming your anger because they enjoy watching you get bullied.
They are bully, cuck, observer people.
They love watching people get bullied, so they will continually tell people to take the high road, to not get angry, to forgive, to all of that, because they get off.
And it is actually, to some degree, for some people, a perverse sexual pleasure.
They get off on watching you get bullied.
so they're continually disarming you.
They are second-hand sadists.
So the first-hand sadist enjoys torturing you.
The second-hand sadists love watching you get tortured because it's safer.
Sadism plus bullying is sophistry.
Sorry. Sadism plus cowardice is sophistry.
Because they don't want to be the guy who's actually bullying you because you might fight back and punch them out or get free or take some action against them.
They just want to disarm you so they can watch the bully Attack you, and then should you want to fight back, they'll just rail against you and try and destroy your reputation for being just full of rage.
So no, no, no. There's three parties to the bullying that continues.
The victim, the bully, and the disarmer.
And the disarmer and the bully are two sides of the same coin.
But it's the fundamental question.
It's the fundamental question.
Can you be bullied if you don't bully yourself?
Which is why I said at the very beginning of this conversation, don't be a tyrant with your own emotions.
Can you be bullied if you don't bully yourself first?
Now, the sophist, the manipulator, he's going to try to get you to bully yourself.
Oh, anger is bad.
It's a sin. It all comes from the devil.
You should forgive and forget and move on and be the bigger person and it's all in the past and let it go and don't hold on to your anger, right?
They're just disarming you all the time, turning you against yourself.
You bully yourself. Oh, these emotions are from the devil.
These emotions are bad. I should be the bigger person.
I should be the better person. I should take the high road.
I should forgive. I should forget.
I shouldn't hold on again. I should move on.
You're bullying yourself.
Bullying yourself. You've been convinced to bully yourself by sophists who say that self-attack is virtue.
Jared says, ah, sophistry is the second stage my parents took, constantly encouraging my environment to be full of bullies.
I mean, I'm obviously self-critical.
I evaluate myself and try to stay on the hard and narrow path of virtue and truth, honesty, integrity, but I don't bully myself.
This is why people are like, anger is bad or forgiveness is good.
It's like you're bullying yourself. You're setting yourself against your own necessary instincts for survival and strength.
Is another way of describing this that you're much less likely to be bullied if your insecurities aren't obvious?
No. Insecurities is just another word for self-attack.
Insecurity, anxiety, these are all cloaking devices for self-attack.
For the fantastical Mac masochism that believes that if you punch yourself bullies won't punch you as hard
Now I'm not insecure about my abilities to be a backup dancer for a rap group
I'm not insecure about that because I don't want to do it.
I have no particular talent or skill in that area, so I'm not insecure about it.
Insecurities Our self-attacks on your potential so you don't threaten the fragile egos of liars and sophists and bullies around you.
Insecurities are just where you've been convinced to beat yourself up.
I don't like the word insecurity.
I just reframe it, I think accurately, as self-abuse.
Because all the people who are trying to convince you to be insecure have far worse vices themselves.
One of them, of course, is that trying to convince other people to self-attack is deeply immoral.
It's a form of verbal abuse.
It's a precondition to mental enslavement.
And I'm telling you to respect yourself.
I'm telling you to not self-attack.
I'm telling you that your anger is not your enemy.
And to say that, you know, where it's legal in your country, right, to say I can't own a gun because there are criminals who have guns is exactly the same mindset of saying I can't get angry because I was abused by rageful people.
I can't have any self-protection because people violated my boundaries in the past is deeply irrational.
It's anti-rational really.
You know there are people who poison others in the world therefore I have to eat poison.
The focus on forgiveness serves those who eternally forgive themselves even when they
shouldn't.
you you
It is a form of moral disarmament that makes you endless and pathetically easy prey for bullies.
And I say this with great sympathy, with deep sympathy, and with no superiority whatsoever.
No superiority. I let all of this crap go on far too long in my life with far fewer excuses.
So I say this with all the humility you can imagine and with absolutely zero sense of superiority.
Just so you understand.
This is not me being.
Oh, how could you?
No, no, no. Deep sympathy.
deep understanding, deep empathy, and deep humility about what I did for far too long.
So, please, understand, this is not a guru tossing down instructions from a high mountaintop.
Well, I can't believe you ever, hey man, I did it probably, and I'm not trying to reverse status myself, but I did it with fewer excuses, probably longer than you did.
And that was my own issue.
And I'm trying to give you the view from the other side.
So tell me this is helpful?
I know we've hit forgiveness a bunch of times, but it is a core edifice and core methodology of subjugation in the world that is.
So, if you do find this valuable, you can tip on the app.
You can tip at freedomain.com slash donate.
You can tip everywhere.
Thank you, I appreciate that tip.
It's very helpful.
You know, every younger brother with a dysfunctional older brother
has the older brother grab your hand and use it to punch yourself.
Is your solution then to cut your arm off as an adult?
No, it's not. It's really not.
Anger will protect you from bullies.
Disarming yourself because there are criminals is something that only a criminal would suggest.
Thank you for the tip.
I appreciate that.
Disarming yourself because there are criminals is something only the criminal wants.
Thank you.
Boa Mega.
I appreciate that, too. I want to find a church, but one of the things holding me back is the forgiveness thing in Christianity.
Right. Well, that's a very, very deep question.
If you look at the religions that don't have forgiveness as a central commandment versus those that do, which are spreading and expanding and which are contracting and decaying?
I'm still really curious about how you would define mercy and whether you think it is a good.
So, mercy is refusing to attack someone who has been disarmed and no longer poses a threat to you.
Mercy is the barrier which prevents us from responding to abuse by becoming abusers.
So, When you have, if somebody attacks you, and you disarm them, and you thump them, and they fall down, and they're unconscious, right?
Mercy is to stop attacking them because you then go from victim to abuser.
So mercy is the line which says, when the threat has been eliminated, I don't keep Because self-defense requires the presence of a threat.
When that threat has been eliminated, then you don't continue to attack because you have pursued your course of eliminating the threat.
Does that make sense? Mercy is good.
Mercy is good. Mercy is good.
Now, of course, mercy is tricky because a lot of times criminals know about this, so a lot of times they will feign, and we've seen this about a bazillion times in movies, it's one of the biggest clichés that there is, that the good guy beats up the bad guy, but then the bad guy rolls over, grabs a gun, because he's only been pretending to be disabled, and shoots at the good guy.
And then the good guy shoots him, and now the threat is eliminated through the forehead, dead, dead, dead, right?
So the bad guy begs for mercy, but it's just a ploy so that he can lower the defenses of the good guy and attack him back, right?
So it's really, really tough. Mercy is really tricky.
You have to be very careful about it because mercy as a principle is exploited by bad guys to lower your guard so that they can successfully counterattack.
Does that make sense? That's a great question.
Does that make sense?
People will pretend that they're no longer a threat to you in order to get you to lower
your guard.
Yeah, it's also, I mean, I talked about this with Jordan Peterson many years ago about
sadly, quite sadly, the ideologies that treat women the least well tend to expand the greatest.
you It's a very interesting and tragic situation.
I just discovered the word perfidy.
It's a great word.
It's a great word. We like that.
A deliberate breach of faith.
An act or instance of treachery.
base treachery, baselessness.
Yeah, it is.
There's an old saying that says he made a desert and called it peace.
So you can get less obvious social conflict by disarming the victims of brutality.
And then there aren't any shootouts because the victims are all disarmed.
But there's way more predation.
So, it's kind of a low IQ, I'm not calling anyone here low IQ, but it's kind of a low IQ thing to say, well, if we disarm the victims, there'll be fewer shootouts.
It's like, yes, but there'll be much more predation, and it will be less obvious.
Right, so people who just want to cover the surface of things.
Not good.
Ah, Steph.
Speaking about women, I was debating someone and my argument was that the sexual market has been distorted by
the government.
He agreed with my reasoning, but he still insisted that if women are given the freedom of mate selection, the issues we have will remain.
I strongly disagree with him. Your thoughts?
Whatever the question is, the answer is more freedom.
I don't care what the question is, the answer is more freedom.
More freedom. So, not having forced redistribution of wealth, not having automatic alimony, right?
Not having a welfare state, not having free healthcare, dental care, education, quote, free, right?
Not having any of this stuff is the solution.
Respect for property rights.
I mean, will people make bad decisions in a free society?
Yes, they will. Will they make fewer bad decisions than when we pay people?
The equivalent of historical king's ransom in order to make bad decisions.
Like, you understand, the average single mother with two children who's on welfare gets more wealth than the wealthiest people throughout 99.9999% of human history.
Right? So we are promoting them to super queens.
People do terrible things for power and the power to extract resources from
others using force is a terrible power. It's a great power and it corrupts people.
I'm saying, well, people will make bad decisions even if we don't pay them a king's ransom
to do so, right?
If you were to go through any woman, to any woman in history, and you were to say, if
you have two children out of wedlock, I will make you wealthier than the king, how many
women would do that.
Just have two children out of wedlock and I'll make you wealthier than the king.
How many people would stand on principle?
I mean, if you won a million dollar lottery ticket, Would you say, well, you know, but it's government, it's kind of a monopoly, and I'm just guaranteeing inflation or debt or tax increases.
Would you not cash it? Like, you understand, once the incentives become that great, a free will is largely meaningless.
Now, is it true that if you were to go to some women throughout history and say, I will...
Make you wealthier than the wealthiest king and emperor combined, if you just have two children out of wedlock, will there be some women who say, yeah, I'm not going to do that.
Because... Marriage is a sacrament and I'd rather my children die of smallpox and starvation and diphtheria and cholera rather than having them grow up super healthy and safe and fantastically wealthy.
There'll be a few people who wouldn't cash in a million dollar winning lottery ticket.
But very few. Too few to be statistically meaningful because we are programmed for survival and resource acquisition, not for morality.
So if he says, well, the fact that we make single mothers wealthier than all of the emperors combined throughout history, which we do, in terms of quality of life, I mean, all of the wealthiest emperors throughout history didn't have air conditioning, didn't have ice in their fridge, didn't have microwave ovens, didn't have antibiotics, right?
So the fact that we provide all these things to women for, quote, free, they have children out of wedlock.
So, if he says, well, we do say to women now that if you have children out of wedlock, you will be wealthier than all the kings, emperors, and lords, and royalty throughout history combined, but they'll still make bad decisions even if we don't offer them all that stuff for free, well, then I don't know what he's talking about.
I don't know. The idea that someone's going to behave exactly the same whether or not you give them a $5 million winning lottery ticket, Well, okay, so this guy did spend all of this money and he did buy this giant house and he did invest in all these businesses and he did quit his job because we gave him $5 million winning lottery ticket.
Yeah, but if we didn't give him that money, things would be about the same.
It's like, what are you talking about?
Again, I don't know what people are talking about.
The idea that this massive amount of subsidy is not going to make any foundational difference in behavior.
If it's not provided, I don't understand what that means.
Well, I mean, gosh, it's true that this guy does show up to his job because we pay him $80,000 a year.
But, you know, if instead of paying him $80,000 a year, we charge him $80,000 a year to come to work, it's pretty much the same.
I mean, what's going to change?
The fact that we've gone from a massive bribe called pay to a massive deficit called debt.
The fact that instead, like it's $160,000 spread, instead of paying him $80,000 to come and do his job, but now charging him $80,000 to come and do his job, it's pretty much going to be the same.
I wouldn't even know what to say.
So instead of giving women all of this free stuff, they would have to pay for it.
And the idea that that wouldn't change their behavior is It's so anti-reality that I wouldn't even know what to say to someone like that.
Right? So you understand, and this is from some years ago, I did a whole show on this.
The average woman in America who has two children Gets the equivalent of about $100,000 worth of income from those two children.
In other words, she would have to make $100,000 to get all the benefits she gets for free from being on welfare and not having a father in the home.
$100,000 was more than just about everyone in history ever made.
It's called the welfare gap.
And what that means is that And it was $85,000 10 years ago.
It's probably way more than $100,000 now.
Probably $125,000, $130,000 now that she gets, right?
What that means, of course, is that if she gets a job, until she makes more than $100,000, $125,000, she's taxed at 100%.
And then, after she starts to make more than that, if she's making $200,000 a year, she really is only making an effective net of $75,000 a year, except she's got to work really hard and she doesn't get to spend time with her kids.
So the idea that people won't change if you stop giving them $125,000 worth of free stuff a year, that that wouldn't change their behavior?
This is somebody who just simply doesn't understand that human beings respond to incentives.
I mean, he literally would be like a car dealer and he says...
He would be in charge of a car dealership where they'd sell a car for $50,000, right?
And then they say, well...
We're not going to have any change in our number of customers or how many cars we move.
If instead of charging people $50,000 for a car, we pay them $50,000 to take a car and then pay all of the expenses, gas, insurance, repairs, right?
So we're going to pay people $50,000 to take our cars rather than charging them $50,000 for a car.
And he says, well, that doesn't really make any difference.
That's somebody who's so far out of reality that they have so little life experience and they have so little rationality, I honestly would have no idea what to say to someone like that.
I would not focus.
Are we out?
I think we're out of questions.
My gosh, did I actually get to all of them?
Did I actually get to all of them?
Yes. Thanks, Steph.
Must run. Some great insight and personal perspective gained from this.
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