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June 25, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:50:12

How People Turn Bad...

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	Good morning, everybody!
	Welcome to your 23rd of June, 2024 Sunday morning philosophy chat.
	freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
	We'd really, really appreciate that.
	And let's see here.
	Good morning to everyone, James, Tom, beep, bop, Phyllis Eck.
	All right.
	Good morning.
	Good morning.
	Welcome.
	Looking fine.
	Greetings from Finland.
	Hello.
	Welcome back.
	Slap a like, leave a tip, and get stuck in for philosophy.
	That's right.
	We have some exciting things to talk about today.
	Oh yes.
	But let's start with you.
	How are you?
	How are you?
	How is your life?
	How are things in your neck of the woods?
	And, um, wait, no, that is still, hang on a minute, just a tiny bit there.
	There we go.
	Sorry about that.
	I know.
	I just want to make sure the video is nice.
	All right.
	Quick question for you, Steph.
	Now, spoiler.
	Spoiler.
	Turns out it wasn't a quick question.
	When somebody says, this has been sort of a constant experience, and it's no problem, of course, but it's kind of a constant experience when people say, Steph, just a quick, you know, and then it's just like, yes.
	Well, it's always a deep, meaningful, and you know, I'm not complaining about the deep, meaningful questions.
	I'm just saying.
	And whenever people say, yeah, quick question for, yeah, Steph, do selfish people even realize when they're being selfish?
	Do they see the plain truth when it's pointed out to them?
	Why are people so clueless to their selfish acts and how it causes a cascade of events that otherwise could have been avoided?
	Example, maybe volunteering their time to help elderly parents out when they're doing nothing, but others have to step in because they won't volunteer.
	Right.
	Yeah, quick question for you.
	Quick question.
	Yeah.
	My wife's like, Hey, quick question.
	Why?
	Why can I not print to the wireless printer?
	Because printing is largely an esoteric mystery religion that doesn't exist in the real world.
	Printing, it's actually just easier to hire very small people to sit in a box and write things out quicker, easier, and at least they respond to wireless prompts.
	I mean, I swear to Lord above, even though I've told the router to reserve an IP address, I constantly have to uninstall and reinstall printers just to get some printing.
	It's wild.
	I can't honestly remember the last time that I printed something and it just printed.
	I remember it was Scott Adams had a problem with one of his printers.
	He was going to throw it off his balcony.
	And even if I've even tried having the printer Ethernet wired into the router, it doesn't matter!
	Doesn't matter.
	Windows is just like, no, I'm gonna manage it, and I'm gonna shred it.
	I had to print some medical records, I don't know which sucks more, printing or being sick.
	Yes, that's right.
	That's right.
	Well, greetings from Slovakia.
	Excellent.
	Excellent.
	Alright.
	So tell me, hit me with a number.
	If you could, be so very kind as to indulge me.
	What is the number of selfish people in your life?
	I don't, like, doesn't have to be living with you or whatever, but what is the number of selfish people in your life?
	And, you know, can we just basically go with the definition?
	We know just you know people who don't think of the needs of others who are just constantly angling for their own benefit You know that kind of stuff right we understand that zero excellent The worst is when a printer fails when you're in a hurry you need to always have a backup printer So I'll tell you this is the funny thing about life.
	I had a dot matrix printer that I attached through a A parallel port to my Atari 800.
	And it never failed.
	Dot matrix printer.
	And whenever I would run low on ink, I still remember, you know, like 45 years later, I still remember the key combo.
	I had a word processor.
	Control-Z-O-A-4 was double-spaced and everything bolded, because that's what you do, is you bold everything when you're running low on printer ink.
	And it always worked!
	And now, close to half a century later, I have to sacrifice three chicken goats.
	Three chickens, two goats, and use their blood to scribe things out, because the printer guards don't respond to anything.
	There are no printer gods.
	There are only printer devils.
	That's it.
	That's all we get.
	All right.
	So you got a couple.
	People say zero?
	Hmm.
	Yeah.
	About ten, including me.
	Well, that's, that's blunt.
	That's blunt.
	All right.
	So would you like a journey through the mind of a selfish person?
	I guess some people would say that's every one of my shows.
	So, would you like, would you find it helpful to get a tour through the mind of a selfish
	person?
	Thank you.
	I just want to make sure I am providing maximum value and of course you can donate on the app, you can donate on the website whether it's Locals at Rumble or some other places and you can of course go to freedomain.com slash donate, freedomain.com slash donate to donate there.
	All right, looks like a tour through the mind of a selfish person is helpful.
	So, human beings do not function without justifications.
	Human beings do not function without justifications.
	So I knew someone when I was younger.
	I was actually just talking about that, chatting about that with my wife this morning.
	So I knew somebody, let's just call him Bob, not his real name.
	I knew someone when I was younger.
	Who had a pretty unique perspective on relationships.
	So Bob had the perspective that the purpose of relationships was to be challenged, right?
	So if you're dating someone, they have to challenge you, right?
	They have to attack your defenses, they have to unravel your delusions, they have to get you to the naked, brutal, ugly core of yourself.
	And all couples that smiled and enjoyed each other's company and got along were avoidant.
	They were avoiding conflict.
	Conflict is absolute and necessary and functional and that's the point of an entire relationship.
	There's going to be this combat that somehow polishes you into a fine sheen of godlike perfection.
	And all of the couples who enjoy each other's company don't fight and get along.
	Well, you see, they have this seething conflict deep down, but they're wallpapering it over.
	They're just burying their conflict.
	And they're smiling and getting along.
	And, of course, the general idea then is, you know, it's the bottle-up concept, you know.
	They're just bottling up their conflict.
	Thank you for the tips.
	Just bottling up their conflict.
	And it's going to come out in some horrible way if you don't regularly... What did Bob refer to it as?
	Bleed the venom.
	You have to bleed the venom.
	So the idea is you get backed up with this venom.
	And you get backed up and you just have to bleed it out.
	And it was a whole philosophy.
	It was really quite wild.
	And the idea was that you're really harsh and ugly with people, but that's just being honest and direct.
	And if they have any problem with that, if they push back on that at all, if they don't like that...
	Well, don't you know?
	They're being avoidant and defensive, right?
	So yeah, Bob could really go for people, and if they didn't like that, then they were just being avoidant and defensive.
	So if you refused to submit to various kinds of verbal attacks, you were being immature, avoidant, defensive, and there was something wrong with you.
	You were wimping out, you were backing away, you were a coward if you didn't submit to these sort of Occasional eruptions of verbal lacerations.
	I kind of laugh because, you know, it's funny in hindsight.
	It wasn't super funny at the time, but, you know, this is a long time ago now.
	So, um, what is it?
	Tragedy is comedy.
	Comedy is tragedy plus time.
	So there was this general idea.
	So he was an aggressive, punchy person, always restless, never able to really relax and enjoy his own company.
	So he was always punchy and aggressive.
	And lo and behold, lo and behold, He had a justification for it.
	Life is punchiness and aggression.
	And if you don't indulge in that, you're just not alive.
	You're not being real, authentic, honest.
	It's a sort of combination of the two plays.
	Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
	And look back in anger.
	Look back in anger.
	Just lacerations of verbal abuse that are justified with appeals to brutal honesty and authenticity.
	And anybody who recoils from this aggression is a coward, unwilling to face their own demons.
	You know, just that.
	So human beings cannot exist without justifications.
	We cannot act without justifications.
	All right, let me just check in with you all here.
	Contention is of the devil, yeah.
	Ooh, look, Bob's always right, yeah, yeah.
	Sounds like a New Yorker, yes, to some degree, right?
	I would go out of my way to avoid someone like that.
	You're an introvert.
	Well, I mean, honestly, it wouldn't just be because you're an introvert.
	It would be because you're not self-harm.
	It's a methodology or an idea that is going to result in self-harm.
	So, selfish people do not refer to themselves as selfish, or if they do, they say that that is the default position of mankind, and anybody who claims otherwise is lying.
	That everyone, everyone is selfish, everyone is selfish.
	And anybody who claims to not be selfish is lying.
	Thank you for the tip, Vince.
	I appreciate that.
	All is predation, and anybody who claims to not be a predator is both a predator and a liar as well, right?
	So there's this brutal authenticity paradigm, right?
	Well, everybody just looks out for their own self-interest and everybody's what you would call selfish.
	That's just life.
	That's the nature of the beast.
	And anyone who denies their selfishness or appears to be selfless is just a lying manipulator who's Both selfish, since that's human nature, and a manipulative liar.
	At least I'm honest about my selfishness, these people say, and I'm not pretending to be something I'm not.
	In the same way that people say, that people say, well relationships are conflict, relationships are battles, and anybody who is not fighting is not really in a relationship and is avoiding the necessary conflict by which you get polished.
	All right.
	Let me just check on the messages here.
	Has the e-shaming started yet?
	Oh, and this person who says, has the e-shaming started yet, is actually demonstrating this.
	All humans are selfish.
	Right.
	So the, and that's a beautiful, that's a beautiful, like, thank you so much.
	Thank you.
	Everyone is self-interested, correct?
	Anyone states anything else is evil.
	So this person says, and this is a fantastic, thank you so much, this is from the guy at Runnable, I really appreciate this, it's a wonderful demonstration, absolutely, excuse me, wonderful demonstration.
	Has the e-shaming started yet?
	All humans are selfish.
	So if he believes that all humans are selfish, then clearly I would be selfish by what he calls e-shaming, right?
	So, if everyone is selfish, then he shouldn't have a problem with e-shaming, right?
	But of course he has a problem with e-shaming!
	Which means he doesn't want to pay, and he wants to consume my work and my material.
	You know, this, this, the beautiful camera, I have a separate zoom audio recorder, I have a very expensive amp, a very expensive microphone, and of course I have forty years study, forty-five years study, into the realm of philosophy.
	Now, forty-two, let's be fair, fifty-seven to fifteen.
	He wants all of that and he doesn't want to kick in any, right?
	So he's a taker and he says and he's trying to manage what it is that I do by saying when I ask for donations because things cost money, people cost money, camera equipment, bandwidth, my time, books, study, everything costs money and so when I say I appreciate donations He says, you're shaming me!
	So what he's saying is, I want stuff for free and I don't want to feel bad by taking all of your work and giving nothing.
	Taking all of your effort, all of your work, and giving nothing.
	So he's saying, has the e-shaming started yet?
	Now he's trying to get me to think, oh no, well I don't want to shame people so I guess I won't ask for any support for the show.
	Oh, no.
	Of course.
	And so it's wonderful.
	I mean, I think, thank you.
	You're beautiful.
	You couldn't...
	You couldn't do it any better.
	So he's saying everyone is selfish by which case then I should not at all be shamed for what he would call e-shaming because I'm selfish or whatever, right?
	So he is saying all humans are selfish but he's assuming that I don't want to shame people and therefore I care about my audience and he's using the break in his own philosophy that all humans are selfish to try and control my behavior so he doesn't have to Give up any resources in exchange of value for value, right?
	Value for value, right?
	I mean, we try to treat each other as adults here, right?
	As adults with responsibility.
	I mean I think it's a good thing in life to be an adult with responsibility and so
	it is important to trade value for value in relationships.
	Thank you.
	So he says, I would think he would be providing all his knowledge for the betterment of humanity.
	Oh, so everyone's selfish, my friend, but I should be acting in a selfless In a selfless manner.
	Oh, I love you.
	I love you.
	Thank you so much for demonstrating exactly like you couldn't honestly, I couldn't pay somebody to demonstrate things more perfectly.
	I'm not paying him.
	But he's like, everyone is selfish.
	But I think Steph, you would be providing all of your wisdom and knowledge for the betterment of humanity in a selfless fashion.
	Beautiful man.
	Oh, everyone's selfish.
	Steph, I'm going to appeal to your selflessness.
	Damn it.
	That is glorious and gorgeous and absolutely very, very funny.
	Yeah.
	The employees as well.
	Yeah.
	I mean, uh, this is where we're getting all of these wonderful, wonderful things from.
	So that is, I mean, do you understand?
	Like you see these, these absolutely, absolutely sad and pitiful and obvious Manipulations, right?
	Everyone is self-interested, he says.
	Correct!
	Anyone who states anything else is evil!
	So, anyone who says that a human being can be selfless is evil, and then he says, Steph, you should selflessly provide all of your philosophical wisdom for the betterment of humanity for nothing.
	You know, he doesn't even notice.
	Probably doesn't even notice.
	Probably doesn't even notice.
	So anyone, this guy says, anyone who claims that such a thing as selflessness is evil and then he tries to appeal to my selflessness.
	I'm sorry, I know I'm laughing.
	I know that there's a lot of personal agony in this, right?
	This is somebody, and you know with all seriousness, I mean this is a person who was absolutely tragically and catastrophically exploited as a child.
	And he had to internalize that everyone is selfish in order to survive how terribly he was abused as a child.
	So, I mean, philosophically it's funny.
	Psychologically, I mean, it's absolutely, absolutely tragic.
	Absolutely tragic.
	Funny how he calls out e-shaming and mockingly calls you Steffy.
	Is that?
	Did he call me that?
	I don't particularly care, but maybe I missed that.
	What did he say?
	Oh, yeah, Steffi.
	Yeah, you did.
	You're Steffi.
	Oh, that's such a philosophical argument.
	Steffi, you have no feelings, don't you now?
	You know, the spirit is willing to bank less so.
	Was listening to some of your very early podcasts while I was on a long road trip.
	The content was great, the sound quality was entertaining, your car signals and other noises were keeping me on edge at times.
	Yeah, it's like, uh, Friends of Mr. Cairo by John Evangelos, which starts with a siren and a car crash.
	Don't listen to that, necessarily, in your road!
	Uh... Sounds like my workplace.
	Work extra hours for no additional pay.
	No, it's worse than your workplace.
	This is like... work for me for free.
	Alright.
	Steph, I haven't found a dedicated show on... or a summation on dissociation.
	Was dissociation self-distraction something you have dealt with?
	Is it the same as procrastination?
	Which of course you do have a classic solo show on.
	Thanks.
	So I'm here to solve selfishness and dissociation.
	Is that that's the plan?
	That's fine.
	That's a fine plan.
	That's a fine plan.
	I don't deal too much with dissociation.
	And I'll get back to the selfishness.
	Somebody says, I had friends like this.
	Now that most of my old friend group are in their late 30s and early 40s, I can see that the ones who thought the worst of humanity when we were teens are miserable and or drug addicted now.
	And they have nothing but excuses and even have an edge of malevolence towards people who are doing well.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	That's very rare.
	It's very dangerous.
	It's so rare to come across a troll around this community.
	Somebody says, how do you know when people are lying to you?
	I'm doing a volunteer work for people who are addicts.
	How do I sniff out lies and manipulations from addicts to get the medication they want?
	How do I distinguish between a genuine request and an untruthful one?
	So I'm here to solve selfishness, dissociation, and lying.
	All right.
	Challenge accepted.
	Bonjour, Stéphane!
	Caught you live on my way to church.
	Gonna be honest, your sermons are 300% better than my priest's.
	Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	I appreciate that.
	E-begging, an old favorite, eh?
	Am I selfish to expect to be paid to slap on the uniform and expect to be paid to go to work?
	Landlords, utilities, grocery stores have this weird hang-up about actually being given money.
	Or should money be, in quotes, digital representations of fiat currency?
	But you get the point.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	It is tough when people ask for reciprocity.
	It challenges people's desire and willingness to exploit others, right?
	Thank you, Sol H. I appreciate that.
	Steffi is a term of endearment.
	No, that's just a lie.
	Because if you are fond of me, then you wouldn't say, has the e-shaming started yet?
	So you're just a liar.
	And I really sympathize with that.
	Like, what a terrible childhood and what a terrible life you must have to just automatically and reflexively go to lying your freaking teeth off.
	Like, that's really tough.
	That's really tough.
	So he says, Steffi is a term of endearment, when right after he called me Steffi, he said, has the e-shaming started yet?
	So, like, I'm sorry you're in the place in life where you just lie in the moment to have some petty, retarded victory in the moment.
	It's really sad.
	I'm really sad.
	You know, freedomain.com slash call.
	freedomain.com slash call.
	You could help out.
	Move back in with your mom and do the show for free!
	Yes, I'm afraid that wouldn't be free.
	That wouldn't be free.
	I hear what you're saying, right?
	That's pretty funny.
	All right.
	Runnable sounds kind of like Bob, yeah, maybe?
	Maybe, maybe.
	All right.
	So, let's get back to selfishness.
	So, if you grow up with parents who exploit you, then you have a big problem.
	Are my parents immoral or is everyone like that?
	Are my parents immoral or is everyone like that?
	So how did I escape what my parents did to me?
	Because I did not ascribe their behavior to anything other than their own individual choices.
	Oh, you gotta get the deep drilling of this man.
	I did this in a call in yesterday.
	I'll release it at some point with a fellow who had gone through a terrible divorce.
	So my mother was a violent and mystical and is I'm sure still.
	And why was she that way?
	Why was she that way?
	Now, if I were to say, that's female nature, well, I could never fall in love with a woman, right?
	If I say, well, that's how parents are, then I would be giving myself permission to be an a-hole parent.
	If I say, well, it was capitalism that forced her to try to work, Well, then I turn into a totalitarian socialist and endanger the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and in fact will get tens of millions of people killed, which is what happens under socialism and communism.
	If I were to say, well, she was a single mother and, you know, excuses, or my father betrayed her and she was a victim and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then I'm going to have a soft spot and a sympathetic spot for abusive women because they're victims.
	Right?
	So if I am going to try and ascribe any causality to my mother's immorality, then that shit sticks to me like burrs on an elk and follows me wherever I go and grows in my soul until it eats my soul whole.
	Straight up facts.
	So if you grew up with selfish parents, you have a question.
	Are my parents immoral as individuals?
	Is there some external causality to what they do?
	Now, the whole point of free will is there is no external causality.
	That's the point of free will.
	If it's external causality, it's not free will.
	Right?
	You can choose to push someone off a cliff.
	That's a choice.
	That person cannot choose whether or not to fall.
	They don't sort of scamper in the air Flintstone style.
	So, are my parents immoral as the result of some external category?
	External?
	Well, they were stressed!
	Okay, so if you say people can be immoral when they're stressed, or that's an explanation or an excuse, what happens to you when you're stressed?
	You can be an asshole to people.
	My parents were bad because they were stressed!
	Oh no, I'm stressed!
	Okay, right?
	Permission slips to others are command orders to you.
	Whatever you excuse in others you order for yourself.
	Excuses for others are train tracks for you.
	You lose your free will because you're taking away free will from others by giving them external causes for their decisions and therefore you have destroyed your own free will and you become an easily programmed NPC.
	You learn your ABCs and you learn your NPCs.
	So, if your parents are selfish, can you say, my parents made the choice to be selfish, it's individual to them, it's not in the category of male, female, parent, modern life, capitalism, determinism, external factors, stress, maybe they had medical problems, maybe financial problems, no!
	They made the choice!
	They made the choice.
	They made the choice.
	It's specific to them, and it speaks to nothing wider or deeper or more broad or more general about humanity as a whole.
	It was them as choices.
	So my mother made bad choices.
	My father made bad choices.
	It was specific to them.
	It speaks nothing to humanity, marriage, masculinity, femininity, stress, modern world, capitalism.
	It speaks nothing to any of those things.
	Nothing!
	nothing.
	So if you have selfish parents, what's your choice?
	Do you say my parents made bad choices and they chose to be selfish and it was specific and individual to them?
	Ooh, that's painful.
	If your parents were corrupt, violent, neglectful, abusive, immoral, looking at them and saying you are bad people making bad choices Of course, what's the other external factor that people always claim?
	And you've heard it a million times on these shows and call-in shows and other places.
	What is the other external factor that people, the most common external factor that people claim as to why their parents did bad things?
	Why did mommy and daddy do bad things?
	What is the external factor?
	What is the most common external factor to explain away bad parental behavior?
	Let's, while we're waiting for that, let's check in with our good friend Runnable.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	He says, all my comments are my opinions.
	Nope, they're not.
	You're claiming universal facts about human nature, so that's just another lie, I'm afraid.
	Uh, no one has free will!
	Human brain is structural entity with designed behavior.
	Steph was not loved by his mommy and his spone donor abandoned him and now spends his time on the web seeking universal love.
	Oh, so yeah, cheap psychologizing.
	So he says nobody has free will and yet he says that my behavior is bad because I'm e-shaming.
	It's just nothing but contradictions and there's a lot of rage down here.
	It's very toxic and maybe, in fact, unrecoverable for the person.
	I mean if he's been like this for a long time, there's probably nothing left.
	So as to what is the most common way that children explain their parents' bad
	They had a bad childhood?
	No, because you don't know that usually as a kid.
	They didn't have it easy themselves.
	Their parents, they had it worse.
	They had it worse.
	My parents did it too.
	Right.
	This troll taking away from good meaningful conversations.
	No, no, I don't think so.
	I don't think so.
	This is very, very important.
	Somebody says, I asked my father why he initiated the divorce and it pretty much came down to him being sick of our mother talking down to him and nagging him.
	So it blew up our whole family because he couldn't take it anymore.
	Thanks, Dad.
	Yes.
	We're getting there.
	We're getting there.
	Yes, this person wins the prize.
	This person wins the prize.
	What is it?
	Kali.
	Kali.
	Yes, the most common explanation for immoral parenting is I was a wild kid.
	I was a bad kid.
	I provoked him.
	I didn't listen.
	I fell in with a bad crowd.
	I didn't study at school.
	The most common explanation as to why parents are immoral is that you, the child, were bad.
	Right?
	Now you, the child, were bad.
	I was a difficult child.
	I was a difficult child.
	Doesn't everyone just love me so much?
	Because, you know, I just clearly, I mean, I'm just needing the universal love because I wasn't loved by mommy and daddy.
	So clearly I've been excellent out here trying to get universal love.
	You know, you can just read what people say about me and you can see all the love come pouring in.
	Yeah, people say, I gave my mother such a hard time as a kid, I didn't listen, I was a wild kid, and all of that, right?
	Why was my mother bad?
	Well, my mother was only reacting to my badness which made her good.
	She was trying to control and manage my badness, right?
	And that's the problem, right?
	And that's the problem.
	I was the problem, my mother wasn't the problem.
	So then it's not my mother who was selfish and abusive, it was me who was bad and disobedient.
	If you want to be universally loved, give money away.
	Thank you.
	Well, I understand what you're saying, but it's not real, right?
	It's not real.
	You give money away, you just create dependence and resentment.
	And you break people.
	Yeah, see what happens when you stop.
	Our troll says, most parents do not care about, do not care, most kids are accidents of social conditioning and lack of sexual discipline.
	But if people have no free will, you can't have a lack of sexual discipline.
	I don't consider an amoeba performing mitosis or meiosis to have a lack of sexual discipline.
	It's funny, right?
	It's funny.
	James says, I once commented on my father's rather constant angry tirades and he claimed it was righteous anger.
	Meaning, of course, I was bad.
	Lots of ways to say it.
	Yeah, for sure.
	It was righteous anger.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, my mother refused to admit that she did anything wrong, and when it became absolutely inescapable, it was the fault of her doctors who poisoned her, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Epstein-Barr, chronic fatigue, you know, the whole trotting out of stuff by which she takes no responsibility, and, right?
	people who don't take responsibility are some of the most toxic
	environmental toxins around
	i took my four-month-old to see my husband's relatives says this one
	The first thing they asked me is if she was being good.
	What does that mean for a four-month-old?
	Then they said my husband was a nightmare when he was little.
	Right. Right. Right.
	Yes.
	I'm sorry about that.
	I'm not sure... I personally wouldn't... I personally wouldn't have my child around people who thought that four months old could be immoral and would need to be punished.
	I wouldn't have my child in that environment at all.
	Any more than I'd enjoy somebody blowing cigar smoke up the nose of my baby.
	Like, no thanks.
	No thank you.
	Oh yeah, don't forget PeacefulParenting.com.
	I put it right here.
	PeacefulParenting.com Explanations versus excuses reasons is difficult for me at
	the moment to fully understand I remember you saying you were an absolutist and not accepting excuses and I agree that's the proper approach.
	Yes.
	Stimulus response, right?
	Now I don't particularly mind if people say there's no such thing as better
	behavior, good or bad, right or wrong, unless they're hypocrites.
	So it's if you say well I did the best I could with the knowledge I had as a
	parent then you obviously never punished your children because they're doing the
	best they can with the knowledge they had as children.
	.
	Right?
	So what happens is that the problem is when you inflict brutal absolutes on your children regarding good and bad behavior but then when you get criticized for your bad behavior you have all the excuses in the known universe.
	Right?
	So your children get no excuses but you as a parent get excuses.
	That I can't do.
	that I won't support.
	So...
	Oh, he's very fascinating.
	He's very fascinating.
	The irony of Steffy gets divorced and needs to move in with his mother.
	I will tell you this for absolutely certain.
	I will never get divorced, and I'm never moving back in with my mother.
	I can tell you this for absolutely certain.
	I'd rather live under a bridge.
	So yeah, selfish people, they don't think they're being selfish.
	They say everyone is selfish and anyone who denies it is a hypocrite.
	Everyone is selfish and everyone who denies that is a lying and a hypocrite.
	So I, this is what they say, I know the true depth and core and reality of humanity
	and anybody who claims otherwise is a fool and a liar.
	So it'd be like if you came across someone with a snake oil, right, with some fake cure, and this person said, drink my happy juice and you'll be immortal, right?
	Drink my happy juice and you'll be immortal.
	Now of course you know that human beings are mortal, we die, and you don't get immortality From a little bottle of questionable liquid handed out from the back of a windowless van in a Walmart parking lot.
	Why do people use irritating pet names?
	My brother tries that and drives me up the wall.
	Irritating pet names are there to attempt to provoke your inner child.
	Right?
	So they, the Steffy, you know, is a term that is designed to make me feel young and helpless and they're big and powerful.
	It's like when people come in and say, so kids, you know, like they're just trying to program you to respond in a helpless and infantile manner while they get all the power.
	It's really pathetic and a transparent ploy of power grabbing.
	Right.
	Right.
	So if you If you saw someone or someone came to you and said, oh I'm just about to go and spend a thousand dollars on this little bottle of sparkly liquid that's going to make me immortal, you would say that's a con.
	People are mortal and you don't get immortality by spending a thousand bucks buying some sparkly liquid out the back of a van in a Walmart parking lot.
	Right?
	So you understand.
	For cynics, and selfishness that is justified is just cynicism, so for cynics all claims to virtue, independence, free will, integrity, love, beauty, truth, all claims to a positive state are the offering of immortality for a thousand bucks.
	It's a con.
	The fact is, according to the cynics, human beings are terrible.
	And the most terrible people are the ones claiming otherwise.
	Human beings are mortal and anyone trying to sell you immortality is conning you.
	Right?
	Human beings are terrible and anyone trying to sell you virtue is conning you.
	They reserve their greatest cynical attacks.
	To those who claim that cynicism is a state of mind that is erroneous to human nature.
	It's false.
	It's wrong.
	So, selfish people say, selfishness is like mortality.
	Anyone who tells you they can overcome it is a conman stealing from you by denying reality.
	Does that make sense?
	Kind of like when my older sister would send my brother into an emasculated rage by dressing him as princess when we were kids.
	Yes.
	Yes, that's not very pretty at all.
	Thank you, C2.
	Spark, I appreciate that.
	that's very kind.
	So cynics believe in selfishness as an essential characteristic of humanity in the same way
	that you accept mortality as an essential aspect of humanity.
	It is true.
	Emasculation tests are funny when you're confident in yourself.
	Yeah, they are.
	My mother-in-law uses the term boy and I've had to explain why I don't like that term for me as a man.
	Oh gosh, I'm sorry about that.
	Somebody says, you can claim being a faithful Christian is only something I do because it makes me happy versus not doing it.
	Is that selfless or selfish?
	I know of no other reason to be good.
	But because we want to be good.
	How one should define that sounds like a subject for an essay by psychologists and moral philosophers.
	I don't know if it is practical to talk about.
	She'll say the term boy is a term of endearment.
	Well then just refer to her as chick.
	Hey chick, how's it going?
	Hey chicky-poo!
	How are you, right?
	And she'll bristle at the disrespect.
	Obviously, right?
	It's like, wait, sorry, you call me boy, I call you chick.
	What's wrong with that?
	Oh, it's different.
	Heh.
	.
	All right.
	Oh, you used bitch, actually.
	That might be slightly more aggressive than boy, but all right.
	Okay, so yeah, I hope we've gotten as far as selfishness goes.
	Nope, they're not selfish.
	They don't view themselves as selfish.
	They just view everyone as selfish and anyone who claims otherwise is both selfish and an exploitive liar.
	All right.
	Seth, I haven't found a dedicated show or summation of dissociation.
	Was dissociation or self-distraction something you have dealt with?
	Is it the same as procrastination?
	Which, of course, you do have a classic solo show on.
	Thanks.
	No.
	Procrastination and dissociation are not the same thing.
	Dissociation results from impossibility.
	Dissociation results from you cannot figure out how to give the right answer to avoid being brutalized or attacked or punished or abused or neglected or something like that, right?
	Dissociation is when you are put in impossible situations.
	There's no right outcome, there's no good outcome, there's no correct answer.
	And therefore what is demanded is that you cease to exist.
	it is a form not of abuse in particular but of what Sheingold used to call soul murder.
	You can't win.
	So I've mentioned this before, my mother would give me confusing instructions very rapidly and then she would expect something to be done to perfection.
	Now Giving people, giving, I mean this would happen when I was six, seven, eight years old and onwards, so being given confused instructions.
	I need you to carry the plates from here and wash them here and put them over here and then put the spoons in over there and then do this and then do like all of this stuff, right?
	All these confusing instructions rapidly delivered and I wouldn't know what to do.
	So of course if you don't know what to do, normally the sane sensible thing to do is to go and say I'm sorry, I'm going to write this down or I couldn't figure this out or whatever, right?
	So I would try to do it and she's like, you're doing it wrong.
	I'm sorry, I don't quite remember.
	Well, weren't you listening?
	Just do it, right?
	And if I did ask for clarification, eventually she might grudgingly give it.
	Fine!
	Okay, I'll tell you again.
	And then she'd run through it even faster.
	So you can't win in that situation.
	You can't complete the task.
	You can't ask for help.
	You can't ask for clarification.
	You can't ask for repetition.
	And you can't complete the task.
	It's an impossible situation.
	So what do you do?
	You can't win, right?
	I remember reading this book, and if anybody ever figures out the title, let me know.
	It was a book about a woman, a girl, a teenage girl, she was in high school, and she had an eating disorder.
	And the eating disorder came about because of an impossible situation.
	So she was late going to her math class, she was almost at the math class, and she realized she'd left her math textbook in her locker.
	And so she could not go to the math class without her textbook because she'd be punished.
	But if she went back to get her math textbook from her locker then she would be punished for being late.
	And so she basically just had a mental breakdown and sat slouched against the wall and stopped.
	The object was to fail the task.
	The object was to put me in an impossible situation so that I could have no trust in myself.
	I mean the law is like this right?
	I mean, I write about this with the lawyer in my novel, The Future, which you should really check out at freedomain.com slash books.
	But I write about this, the law is like that.
	I mean, you have hundreds of law books which often contradict each other and you have to obey the law.
	Now, totalitarianism is not strict laws, it's random laws.
	Enforcement for our enemies, avoidance and forgiveness for our friends.
	Yeah, they give instructions that are unclear, get mad when you ask for clarification after you're done, they say you didn't do it right.
	And say, I'll just do it.
	The goal is to make you feel stupid and incompetent.
	So that they can feel better by being, quote, smarter and more efficient than a confused six-year-old.
	Somebody says, my dad would always freak out at me for not knowing something I was never taught and I would tell him that and he would get more mad that I would even ask how, right?
	So the guy I was talking to last night had two very powerful call-in shows yesterday.
	One with a guy who'd gone through a brutal, brutal divorce.
	I mean, to sort of figure out why.
	And the other was a guy who lost millions of dollars in crypto and ended up in debt in his early twenties.
	It was wild.
	What a conversation that was to try and dig into why he did all of that.
	It's not accidental.
	So, for instance, this guy, the Australian guy I was talking to yesterday, I'm not exactly outing him because the accent's right there, but he, his father would say to him, only an idiot makes the same mistake twice.
	Right?
	If he did something wrong or what?
	Only an idiot makes the same mistake twice.
	And yet he also said that his father had endless arguments, tens of thousands of stupid pointless petty fights with his wife.
	Only an idiot makes the same mistake twice!
	Then why do you keep arguing with your wife when it goes nowhere, right?
	It's just all these wild contradictions, right?
	Just wild contradictions.
	So, dissociation occurs when you can't win.
	You cannot, cannot, cannot win.
	There is no good answer.
	It's impossible.
	You can't go into the math class without your textbook, but you can't go back and get your textbook, because then you'll be late and be punished for that.
	There's no winning.
	You can't win.
	So when you can't win, you dissociate.
	Now I mean what was helpful with my mother in particular was that she was such an obvious failure at life that I
	just couldn't take I said, seriously, it's a lot tougher for the kids who have
	high functioning abusers, like you know, their lawyers and doctors and like the high
	functioning lots of social setups, right?
	All right.
	Let me just get your... he's still doing his Steffi, right?
	I think sometimes parents are so focused on taking care of things around the children
	that the children have no concept that the parents are short and non-thinking towards
	the children.
	Thank you.
	Bye-bye.
	I don't quite follow that.
	So yeah, dissociation is when there's no possible way to win.
	So it's a really great actor who plays Maximus in the prime show Fallout and he is dragged in to be interrogated and he is just frozen because he doesn't know the right answer to not get killed or punished or Ostracized or which I guess is being killed and he just is is frozen And he's just frozen because there's no wind you don't know what to say
	There was some Castle Wolfenstein video game where this you know evil German SS Nazi woman is putting these pictures down and tell me what you see and you don't know what the answer is you don't know what she's looking for and of course later on somebody says these pictures are meaningless she's not looking for anything there's no winning there's no right Somebody says, I can attest to that.
	My dad was pretty successful in high intelligence.
	Yeah.
	My dad was successful in many ways in his career.
	Got a PhD and was a geologist.
	An impossible situation is right, or at least it currently feels that way.
	Shit!
	I need to schedule a private call in.
	Thanks, Steph!
	Freedomain.com slash call.
	Happy to help.
	I might have to book a little ways down.
	A lot of people want those, which I appreciate.
	So does that make sense for dissociation?
	When you are dissociating, you're in a situation where you can't win, can't navigate, and we're not designed for that.
	We're designed for action.
	We're designed to solve problems, get things right, get things sorted, and you can't eat.
	In your book The Present, the majority of the people just sit down and wait.
	Is this dissociation?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You know what? I'm going to go to bed.
	You know, you'd be surprised, I think you'd be surprised, at the number of people who don't really want to live.
	They don't really enjoy life.
	Life is a burden.
	Life is pain and more pain.
	They have an undertow of despair, depression, and they're hunted eternally across the bleak landscape of their bad decisions by an un-fucking-relenting conscience.
	They're restless.
	They can't relax.
	They need constant stimulation.
	They need to go out.
	They can't sit home alone.
	They have to watch something, read something, scroll something, play video games, pornography, dating.
	They have to do something, anything, because the questing beast of their own conscience is hunting them forever and ever.
	Amen.
	You'd be absolutely shocked, I think, deep down, if you knew how many people Don't really want to live.
	This is why I don't mess with anyone in traffic.
	Oh yeah, I assume that everyone in traffic is drunken on their phone.
	Yeah.
	Somebody says, yes, since the suicide of my brother confronting my parents truly feels impossible, I think it would kill them.
	They probably dissociate more than me.
	Well, it's probably the dissociation and the lack of bonding that may have led to your brother's suicide.
	Of course I don't know, but it could be something like that.
	Now, how do you know if somebody has Thanatos, if they have a death wish?
	How do you know if somebody kind of wants to die?
	Would you like a quick tip for that?
	Would that be helpful?
	Again, I want to provide maximum value to you all.
	How do you know if somebody has an impulse for unaliving?
	Bye.
	Their health, that can be part of it for sure, but that's a bit of a vicious circle because the more, the poorer someone's health, The more they... Half in love with easeful death.
	Have you ever heard that phrase?
	Half in love with easeful death.
	This was a Sorosaurus Averther thing from Goethe.
	Half in love with easeful death.
	Let me just get the quote here.
	Yeah, Ode to a Nightingale, right?
	right? It's a very famous poem.
	Darling I listen...
	soon.
	you And for many a time I have been half in love with easeful death, called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, to take into the air my quiet breath.
	Now more than ever it seems it rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain, while thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad in such ecstasy.
	Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain, to thy high requiem become a sod, is going to the ground, half in love with easeful death.
	How do you know when people don't really want to live?
	Do you know the Guns N' Roses song, Coma?
	I can't get past the singer, man, sorry.
	Lyric, I kind of like it in a coma.
	I don't think I ever want to go back.
	Quiet whisperer, I never really wanted to live.
	Right.
	If they do crazy things like jump off airplanes, risky behavior, yep, that certainly is it.
	That's my thought too and why I feel I can't bring it up.
	Oh, this is regarding your brother's suicide.
	I also feel like I have this death wish at times.
	Do stupid things all the time.
	Better for a call-in.
	Thanks again.
	Please call in.
	Please call in.
	Pauline says, I wish you and your delightful family a very good Sunday.
	I'll keep you in my prayers since you're a very important part of my life.
	I have embarked on this very difficult quest to find truth and meaning.
	You open my eyes and my heart.
	I owe you so much.
	Merci from the bottom of my heart, mon ami.
	Thank you.
	Pauline, that's lovely.
	I appreciate that.
	The I can't win for dissociation is so simple and useful.
	Thank you.
	Amazingly, the best thing that helped me overcome dissociation was reading about pickup artists using agree and amplify tactic.
	Drugs are drowning out their conscience with lies and delusion.
	That can certainly be it.
	All right.
	Do you guys mind if we do a quick politics flyby?
	Ooh, am I breaking my vow?
	It's so relevant to the converse.
	I don't know if you'd be interested in a quick politics flyby.
	hit me with a why if you'd like just a quick brush past the world of politics
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Well, do you know how close the world is drifting towards a world war?
	Right.
	The provocations are immense.
	The pressures are immense.
	Russia seems to be unlikely to be allowed to survive and we've got subs off Florida, you've got troop and in particular naval movements all over the world, you've got China threatening Taiwan even more intensely, and Ukraine of course is continuing its blood grind of human disassembly.
	So, why do you think people aren't freaking out about this?
	Why do you think people aren't freaking out about this?
	.
	It's a bit of a mystery, right?
	People freak out about just about everything these days except the
	potential for a planetary war.
	Now for all of his faults and Trump has many, The...
	A couple of years of peace under Trump was quite something, right?
	So, people... I mean a lot of them were undone by Covid, for sure.
	Which we'll talk about another time.
	But why aren't people freaking out about this?
	I don't believe there will be a world war with nukes around.
	Are they just associated?
	They feel helpless, so close their mind to it.
	Or else maybe they desire the war.
	I mean, I'm not saying everyone's going to get nukes, right?
	Because the leaders don't want that, but there's lots of ways to wage war.
	outside of nukes.
	You know, the dark truth is a lot of people got excited around COVID
	because their lives were under stimulating.
	.
	Why aren't people freaking out about the potential for significant war?
	Didn't Selective Service just expand to 26 in the US?
	And didn't it also start to include women?
	Why are people not freaking out?
	All the people who sort of cheer on these various regional conflicts and get behind and flags and the bio, like they're cheering on death.
	They're cheering on mass slaughter.
	People don't get social approval and get mocked for taking things seriously, keep the calm
	but a show of sports and work gossip.
	No, absolutely not.
	The amount of moral hysteria that have charged through society has been endless and immense.
	There are racists everywhere, homophobes everywhere, islamophobes everywhere, sexists everywhere, the amount of moral hysteria in society.
	So people, oh, they don't want to deal with this, they don't want to deal with that.
	No, people are constantly charging around with moral hysteria.
	So it's not that they're not interested in deeper things or morality or ethics or virtue.
	It's that they're not interested in the deeper things.
	. . .
	So, you know the stories are that people get more and more corrupt, false, immoral, bullying, vicious, petty, and vain, and then there is a strike from the heavens, right?
	Pillars of salt, airborne diseases, or I guess some places rat-borne diseases.
	there is the rain that falls in the time of Noah that people summon death and destruction
	from the very skies from the very air due to their corruption
	why are people not freaking out I mean, they freak out about, they freaked out about every made up piece of nonsense about Trump and all the various things that I talked about in my shows on the untruths about Donald Trump.
	You know, it's a big question.
	I don't know the answer because I don't know that people, if people had that degree of self-knowledge they probably wouldn't be in this state.
	Half in love with easeful death.
	I mean, they were very pro-Hillary and Hillary wanted a war with Russia and she wanted a war with Iraq and she wanted more escalation, I think it was, in Syria.
	And people were very pro-Hillary.
	Biden was pretty clear about the aggression that they wanted.
	They wouldn't negotiate and they wanted to escalate.
	I mean, there's no, there's no, in my view, there's no way the Ukraine war happens under someone like Trump because they would have continued to talk about expanding eastward and Trump would have said, if you expand eastward, I'm stopping funding NATO.
	I mean, in my view, right?
	I don't know for sure but that would be the appeal wouldn't happen
	immorality creates a mind half in love with easeful death Thanks.
	.
	You know, we've all done wrong things in our life and bad things in our life.
	I'm sorry, I shouldn't say.
	I know I have, right?
	But the question is, how do people live with a bad conscience?
	And if you've ever known people...
	.
	With a really bad conscience.
	The half in love with easeful death.
	Especially when... I think deep down people know whether they can fix their bad conscience.
	I think they know that deep down.
	In If you've got another 40 years to go and you can't hate yourself, what is your perspective on disaster?
	You know, to not be at peace within your own mind is It's an absolute kind of torture that for those of us who have, you know, I enjoy my own company.
	If, you know, my wife and I go out, I get the day or afternoon to myself.
	I enjoy myself and I'm happy to sit and think or listen to music or do nothing and it's really nice.
	My mind is a fun house.
	I get a lot of fun.
	I have a good conscience about what I've done in the world.
	And I enjoy my mind, my life.
	But if you've ever known people who just are never at peace, never at comfort, they're
	just tense and justifying and vain and aggressive and...
	Whew.
	Don't underestimate the undertow of half in love with easeful death in the world and maybe
	in your world too.
	Yeah, like the end of the world stuff.
	It's very common, right?
	It's common in cults.
	It's common in fundamentalist religions.
	The end-of-the-world stuff is very common.
	Why would people be so keen on the end of the world or so excited and interested about that topic.
	Mike Cernovich talks about this, about how he was raised with this sort of apocalyptic stuff, right?
	I mean I saw this absolutely brutal video about, you know, the rich guys who fled Ukraine and
	at the end of it, you know, one guy was moaning because he was getting a blowjob and another guy
	was dying in the battlefield and moaning because he was bleeding out.
	It's just like, oh my God, it's just horrifying.
	It's just absolutely horrifying.
	Yes, Sir James says in my childhood I knew more than a few abusive parents who were quite invested in Rapture and Apocalypse expecting it to come every day.
	And of course I did all of the shows on Ukraine back in 2014, 2015 and all of this stuff was predicted.
	Most People live lives of quiet desperation.
	They're lonely.
	They're unloved.
	They've given up on virtue.
	They're surrounded by bad, lazy, trashy, dissociated people.
	They consume garbage food.
	They consume garbage media.
	They're programmed.
	And COVID broke people.
	COVID broke people in ways that will still be being calculated a century from now if we're around to calculate
	it.
	COVID showed so many people just how little a bond they have with
	their fellow citizens and how willing and eager they were to join with totalitarian forces against
	their fellow citizens.
	That just has broken people and I don't think they're coming back because nobody's talking about it.
	I mean for people who are hypochondriacs, and I say this with sympathy, it's a tough condition, people who are hypochondriacs,
	people who tend more towards introversion or who have elements of agoraphobia,
	being locked up for a couple of years, they're not coming back.
	Yeah, they're not coming back.
	Most drug their conscience away with alcohol and weed, crack television.
	there is a war in their hearts they externalize via politics.
	Somebody says, I think a work acquaintance has a death impulse.
	One time he talked about if he was going to go out, it would be through pills.
	He constantly has to involve himself in petty conflicts in his personal life to distract himself.
	He's an older guy, no kids, a family, still takes COVID boosters.
	And of course, a lot of people, a lot of people Bye.
	have known children in their social circle, their environment, within their extended family, or maybe even closer.
	They've known children who are being abused.
	They have all the signs.
	It's all very, very clear.
	They've absolutely known children who are being abused.
	And oof man, if you don't do anything about that, oh my gosh.
	I cannot get over the glee people had to have power over their fellow citizens.
	When people are unable to correct their course and their course continually leads to disaster, they're half in love with disaster.
	In other words, disaster is relief.
	See, people often like an extremity of an external stimuli because it takes them away from their own conscience, right?
	Your conscience is a quiet and insistent voice that generally operates in silence.
	Conscience needs to be optional, because conscience throughout a lot of human history would just get you killed, right?
	So conscience needs to be silenced for the sake of survival, but it is insistent and returns, because conscience is the universalization of the ethics we inflict.
	And we can't destroy the conscience without destroying our capacity for concepts and universalization
	and abstraction, which is our essence of humanity and how we survive.
	So conscience is the shadow cast by our greatest power as humanity to universalize and conceptualize.
	So we can't eliminate conscience, it's wound into our UPB brain.
	We can't destroy conscience without destroying all of our concepts, because conscience is part of that bound together, right?
	We can't destroy our conscience, but we do have to be able to quiet our conscience in order to survive a brutal and often hypocritical society.
	Do most people even have a conscience?
	Looking at current normal behavior, I have my doubts.
	There are some people who don't have consciousness of their conscience, but conscience is inescapable.
	Because it is wound into and bound into our universalization and conceptualization as a whole.
	I say human beings can't live without justifications.
	They can't act morally without justifications.
	Even the people who say, well, I'm just going to take what I want into hell with everyone else and do what they wilt and blah blah blah.
	Well, that's immoral.
	They're saying everyone's like that.
	I'm just not hypocritical about it.
	So they're still doing what they do.
	And I think that COVID and people's response to COVID has broken a lot of people's identity.
	And it's very tough, because nobody's talking about it.
	So if there's some external drama, Then, this is why people pick fights with each other, why husbands and wives nag at each other, why people crap on their kids, why people argue online, like this guy.
	Like, why do they do all of that?
	To quiet their conscience.
	That's what trolls do.
	trials are trying to quiet their conscience so yeah it's I mean rather than admit that they've been
	lied to about men women will choose solitude
	How many families do you think are having honest and direct conversations if they were divided over the vaccine, let's say, or divided over the danger of COVID?
	How many families do you think are sitting down and saying, okay, we got to talk about this, we got to deal with this, I don't want this being a barrier between us going forward, things got kind of crazy, things got kind of ugly.
	You know, you accused me of killing grandma versus, well, you just wanted everyone to die because you were too selfish to listen to science.
	Like, how many families were, and a lot of families were split, man.
	Just axed right down the middle and split in two.
	And how many families In how many families are people sitting down and saying, okay, listen, things got really, really bad.
	And now we have more facts, we have more information, we have more data.
	And we got to work this out.
	We got to sort this out.
	Let's not get out from this table until we've come to some kind of resolution.
	How many people are processing, and I talked about this the other day, how many people are processing that they hated and feared and wish to strip the rights from the unvaccinated and now the vast majority of people are functionally unvaccinated because they're not taking the boosters and the facts of the vaccines as far as my amateur understanding goes wear off four to six months or whatever so they're functionally have become the people that they claimed to hate and fear and loathe.
	How many people are processing that they have become what they hated?
	and that's quite complex and needs to be talked about how many people are pro- how many reporters how many like
	how many people in the media are like you know we kinda
	we kinda got in line there and it turns out that some skeptics had some points
	I I've not seen a story where there was reconciliation post-COVID.
	I wonder if that kind of story would get traction?
	Well, it would.
	But people don't want to look in the mirror and say, the last four years was kind of like a test.
	And how did I do?
	Somebody says, my family split on it, but now it's a hidden topic that is never discussed.
	the vaccine enjoys to spend significantly more time in the hospital.
	Yeah, it's rough, man.
	Amen.
	Thank you.
	It's rough.
	And the parents, if the parents were this way inclined, right?
	If the parents who constantly told their kids, you've got to fess up if you did something wrong, I won't be mad at you unless you don't tell me the truth.
	I won't be mad if you tell me you lied to me.
	I'd just be mad if you continue lying to me.
	You've got to tell me the truth.
	You've got to do the right thing.
	You've got to confess when you did something wrong.
	how many of those people who inflicted these standards on their children are
	following it themselves?
	how many people are saying to the skeptics you might have had a point?
	what?
	.
	So somebody says, how much of it has to do with years of programming through parental abuse, television and public school?
	Have people always been like this?
	I don't care.
	Listen, it's really, really important.
	Stop trying to figure out causality from liars.
	Stop it.
	I'm begging you.
	It is a giant fucking waste of time.
	Right?
	Stop trying to figure out causality from people who will never tell you the truth.
	If I were to go to my mother and say, why did you do what you did?
	She will never tell me the truth.
	Because if she was capable of processing the truth, she wouldn't have done what she did.
	So, I'm going to go ahead and close this out.
	So, oh well, maybe people are doing it because of propaganda, or maybe people are doing it because of this, or maybe people are doing it because of the government.
	Everybody gets responsibility.
	Everybody.
	Everybody.
	Do you know why?
	Because they demand the right to vote.
	They demand the right to vote, and so they get full responsibility.
	That's just basic.
	It's a basic fact.
	It's a basic fact.
	If you say, I absolutely demand the right to cast my vote and determine the future morals, ethics, and distribution of power and coercion within society, but then you say, well, but you know, I was just a helpless victim of propaganda!
	Well, you can't have both!
	You can't!
	You want independence?
	You want responsibility?
	You want the right to vote?
	You want all of this, that, and the other?
	Then you can't say, well, but I'm a helpless pawn of the media!
	Because if you're a helpless pawn of the media, logically, then the voting makes no sense.
	But no!
	I want to vote!
	Okay, then you're saying, I think for myself and I'm not just a helpless pawn of the media, so yeah.
	And don't try and figure out causality from people who won't tell you the truth.
	Recently been doing that, stopping the wondering of why abused people in my life did what they did.
	It doesn't matter and I'll never get a straight answer.
	Yep.
	See here's the other thing too.
	It's sort of like saying to somebody dying of lung cancer who was a smoker, which cigarette killed you?
	I mean, there was a cigarette.
	There is a cigarette that kills you.
	You don't know which one it is.
	Right?
	But there is a cigarette.
	And saying to the smoker, well, which cigarette?
	Which one?
	If you hadn't smoked that cigarette, right?
	You'd have lived.
	You smoked that cigarette.
	Now you're dying.
	Which cigarette was that?
	How can I answer that?
	You can't answer that.
	See, immorality is very rarely one big, giant, terrible, awful, wretched decision.
	Like, movies will give you that stuff, you know?
	Movies will give you that stuff.
	Oh, this is one big, giant, terrible moral decision.
	Do I go with Obi-Wan Kenobi or not?
	Can I trust Han Solo or not?
	But that's not the case.
	It's not the case.
	How do people get fat?
	Bit by bit, bite by bite, right?
	How do people end up with muscle softness?
	bit by bit, day by day.
	So, how do people end up corrupt?
	May God bless you.
	Everybody thinks there's a big fiery devil that comes and offers you something and takes your soul.
	That's not how it happens.
	How do people become corrupt?
	and click the link in the description to download the free version of the book.
	Bit by bit, little by little, step by step.
	I wrote a whole poem about this, about the Holocaust, when I was in my teens.
	How did they get you to become a torturer in a concentration camp?
	How do they do it?
	Well, they assign you to the concentration camp and you're out of earshot.
	And then they move you within earshot.
	And then they move you to the front of the building, and then they move you to the inside of the front of the building, and then they move you down the hall, and then they put you outside the cell door, then they put you inside the cell door, then they ask you to hand the implements to the torturer, and then they ask you to hold the prisoner down, and BOOM!
	You become a torturer.
	How does it happen?
	Well, if they dragged you from nowhere and said, go torture this guy, you'd be like, whoa, no!
	Step by step, incremental, bit by bit.
	Yeah, this is the... this is... it's not... it's not a big fiery,
	ah, you have a fork in the path and this way leads to petition and this way leads to paradise and this way...
	Oh no.
	No, it's not like that.
	It's little decisions and the decisions are usually around a little petty things like
	the avoidance of instincts and I'm just not going to tell the truth and I'm just going
	to ha ha ha, right?
	Little decisions, little decisions, little avoidances, little compromises, little bending
	the truth, little this, little that, bah!
	And I'm just going to let you guys have a little bit of a break.
	I'm going to let you guys have a little bit of a break.
	Because each little increment is not damning.
	Just like each cigarette doesn't kill you, but the accumulation, you're fucked.
	You know, Tom Cruise has a story about, I think it was maybe in Eyes Wide Shut or something like that, that the director made him eat ten pieces of chocolate cake.
	He got dizzy, he got sick, he threw up, and he's like, loved it!
	At the beginning, right?
	Because he had to retake the scene.
	He kept eating this chocolate cake.
	Now, Tom Cruise He's a lean guy, right?
	He's a lean guy.
	So yeah, he had ten pieces of cake in one sitting, so he's fine.
	He's not fat.
	He's not fat.
	You know, I'm 98% off sugar, but the other day I was out with my daughter.
	We did a river walk, which is where we walk up and down in a river and look for fish and crayfish, and it's really fun.
	And we got out of that and I was dying from heat and I had, uh, it's called a tot ice cream.
	It's like tiny, tiny ice cream.
	Oh no, I'm back on sugar.
	It's all like, no, I I'm fine.
	I'm fine.
	You can take little badnesses.
	You can, you know, I mean, if you've tried a couple of cigarettes in your life, you're not going to die.
	You have a piece of cheesecake.
	You're not going to get obese.
	But it's a whole series of bad decisions, any one of which you can stop, that leads to the terminal rot in the soul.
	And we all know how bad decisions justify bad decisions.
	Well, I'm already falling off the wagon, I might as well get drunk.
	Well, I've already had a bite of cheesecake.
	What the hell? I might as well just have the whole like slippery slope, right?
	Somebody says I'm having a hard time with how people are all that different after COVID.
	It's probably just me.
	It just seems like people are just like before, but with a lot less money.
	Well, they're not like before because there's a massive topic that consumed everyone's life for close to half a decade that they simply won't talk about.
	No, that's a big change.
	That's a big change.
	You know, I think about this occasionally, right?
	That I think of the tens of thousands of hours I spend exercising.
	I mean, I combine it sometimes with listening or work or whatever, but yeah, I'm like eight hours of exercise a week.
	It's like a half a part-time job, right?
	And that doesn't even count the fact as a walk around doing the show sometimes and call-ins and so on, right?
	But yeah, I'm in motion.
	And of course I think about the people who don't move, who sit around, slouch, bad posture, you know, they've got back problems, knee problems, hip problems, they can't run anywhere, they're short of breath, and it's like, but that's because of every single, and you know, right now I'm in the payoff or payback, right?
	Mid late fifties, man, I'm in the payoff or pay, I'm sending you this message back, man.
	Massage in a brothel.
	So I'm telling you, I'm in the payoff or payback.
	So the people who didn't exercise, the people who let themselves get overweight, the people with bad drinking habits, people who smoked, you're getting the payback now.
	Boom!
	Payback time or payoff if you've been healthy and exercised and strong and all of that, right?
	I just, right before the show, I realized I didn't have my glasses and I literally had to race up the stairs.
	And it's like, I'm 57, I can race up the stairs, no problem.
	No problem.
	I went to the pretty fun place, Activate.
	It's like one of these, it's really fun, it's one of these Play areas with lit up floors and you've got to run from floor to floor and you've got, you can crawl through lasers and like it's really fun.
	I would actually kind of recommend it myself.
	It's a lot of fun.
	And I went there and I'm like spending two hours racing and running and rolling and diving and I'm like, I'm fine.
	Okay, a little tender on the old hip because you know, some of the lunge muscles are not exactly, it's been too rainy up here to do much racket sports.
	But so it's the payoff or the payback.
	Right?
	When I got fat it was a slow creep one day you step on the scale and you're like, holy crap.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and a friend of mine's wife had gained some weight and we'd mentioned it once or twice and then we were going go-karting and they had to weigh her to figure out what kind of go-kart and she was horrified and she lost the weight.
	Bit by bit by bit.
	bit by bit by bit.
	Yeah, everybody who wants to wield and benefit from the slippery slope tells you that slippery slope is a fallacy.
	Slippery slope is not a fallacy.
	Slippery slope is an inevitability because once you break principle things accelerate very quickly after that, right?
	This is one of my favorite shows yet.
	Had to reload on Cpins here soon.
	I don't know what that means, but if it is your favorite show and you're enjoying it, freedomain.com slash donate.
	I really would appreciate that.
	How does one find oneself out in the storm of sin without shelter?
	storm of sin without shelter.
	The parable of the camel who puts his nose in the tent slowly but surely the camel enters the tent and eventually kicks you out into the storm, yeah?
	Is reconciliation even feasible for the majority?
	That would require them to admit they wanted to use coercion and violence on others solely because they enjoyed the exercise of power.
	Admitting that would drive most people to insanity or irresolvable guilt.
	Well, I mean, how much of this was a violation of the Nuremberg Laws, which was one of the great benefits to come out of the horrors of Nazism in World War II.
	I always find it strange people want some sort of lightning moment to quit something.
	Yeah.
	make a better decision and find a way.
	One of the few times I can catch a live stream now I get to tip.
	Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	That's very kind. Everybody knows.
	I saw this, I mentioned I saw this play with this woman who would have these various health scares over the course of her life and she said and I would make a resolution, drink more water, eat more vegetables, exercise and I would for a while.
	For a while.
	Everybody knows exactly what you need to do.
	Everybody knows the right thing to do.
	and the reason people get so volatile towards moralists is not because we're
	surprising but because we've been ignored the lightning moment is a heart attack or some sort of
	culmination of consequence You
	Yeah, but that's not true for everyone because the people half in love with easeful death will come back from a heart attack with vague regret and resume their former terrible habits.
	Because they're not super keen on continuing the aliving.
	Why did someone become fat?
	Because they made a whole series of bad decisions approximately 20 times a day.
	To eat badly and not eat well.
	And we want some big answer, some big explanation.
	Oh yeah, everybody knows.
	I used to go to the gym regularly.
	And for years, decades.
	And you know, yeah, first week or two in January it's really busy and then everybody just goes back to being, putting plop fat butt on the couch person.
	Look at me, I'm a pear.
	Bro, I know like...
	five fat people and you're four of them.
	Heh heh.
	I'm a pear.
	Thank you.
	So, I hope, I hope that helps.
	What was the last question?
	There was a last question.
	We did selfishness?
	Oh yeah, how do you know when people are lying to you?
	Well, how do you know when addicts are lying to you?
	Their lips are moving.
	How do you know when addicts are lying to you?
	Their lips are moving.
	Now why say I'm doing a volunteer work for people who are addicts?
	Why?
	Why would you do that?
	Why would you do that?
	.
	How do I sniff out lies and manipulations from addicts to get the medication they want?
	How do I distinguish between a genuine request or an untruthful one?
	So You understand that addicts have almost infinitely more experience telling lies than you have at uncovering them.
	So what you're doing is you're saying, Steph, I am playing a game of tennis against a top-seeded, top-ranked tennis player.
	I've been playing for a couple of weeks.
	How do I win?
	The answer is, you don't!
	You don't win.
	You can't win.
	How do I out-manipulate my own mother, who has, by this point, 70 years experience or 80 years experience in manipulating, and I don't?
	Well, you can't win.
	You know, I'm playing a grandmaster in chess, and I've been playing for a month or two.
	How do I win?
	You can't!
	You know, a friend of mine has four sons sorry three sons and a daughter and his middle boy is really really keen on chess plays fantastic chess and I'm not a bad chess player the kid was 10 and you know kicked my butt all up and down the board right and it partly because it was my overconfidence is my weakness
	But he'd memorized all the moves and the possibilities and he just had a real genius for this.
	How do I win the game of chess?
	I can't!
	Isn't, you know, at least half of morality is humility.
	At least half of morality is humility.
	Because how often do we get sucked into bad things because we are ridiculously confident of our ability to reshape people's neurons with the silky syllables of our speech?
	My God.
	I mean, you've heard the callers.
	Yes, I've been listening to your show for 350 years and here's the whole series of bad decisions that I made.
	You know, you've heard the people, whenever I give them a big insight about their life, they're like, well, what do I do about it now?
	And it's like, everybody does the same thing.
	And they're like, Oh, I knew it.
	It drives me nuts when people do that.
	And here I just did it.
	it right?
	So addicts are professional liars and you want to win against them?
	Are you kidding me?
	Do you know how shameful it would be if you could win at lying with an addict?
	It would mean you are a completely pathological liar who lied even more than an addict.
	Why would you want to be around pathological compulsive liars and trying to figure out what the truth is?
	You can't!
	You can't win!
	Sigh.
	And why?
	Now this is a childhood thing.
	Come on, we know that, right?
	this is a childhood thing.
	You have a desperate need to catch the liars that you grew up with and you're transferring that to the
	addicts.
	Thanks for watching.
	Once I have established that someone is a liar I don't make it my job to catch them out until the end of time.
	Because I'm not a very good liar.
	I'm not fantastic at figuring out who's lying.
	I mean obvious contradictions are pretty clear to me.
	And I don't want to develop that skill.
	Why would I want to develop that skill?
	Why would I want to develop the skill to figure out who's a good liar when I don't want liars in my life?
	Right that would be like trying to figure out how I can develop an immunity to a certain poison
	Well, how about you just don't take the poison?
	Is that a possibility?
	You know, I found a woman who's great fun to live with and to love rather than trying to manage somebody who was really difficult and aggressive and manipulative, right?
	I tried that!
	You think you're gonna be better at corruption than corrupt people?
	Are you crazy?
	Vote harder!
	You can't do that.
	You can't win against them.
	They are 150% committed, with decades of experience, and you're new to the game, and you're gonna get eaten alive.
	How do I out-vampire the vampire who's lived for a thousand years?
	You can't!
	A, you haven't lived for a thousand years.
	B, you're not a vampire.
	Can't win.
	The guy who lost millions in crypto had been listening for quite a long time
	and he would rather lose millions of dollars in crypto than call me up for any advice.
	.
	Yes, please do try to catch me in my lies.
	You totally should invest lots and lots of time into this pursuit.
	Fix me.
	Yes.
	Trust in me.
	Just in me.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's right, James.
	It's the car.
	Snaky snake guy, right?
	Come on brothers and sisters, tell me this hasn't been a great show.
	Give me a tip or two.
	Alright, I know someone who I distanced myself from, a smart guy running his own business in his mid-twenties, but he spends his time trying to convince addicts to stop.
	I told him to look into his childhood history and he was disinterested.
	him.
	You see, somebody trying to fix Addicts?
	You think that there's an addict and a non-addict in the room?
	Nope!
	Two addicts in the room!
	One's addicted to a substance, the other one is addicted to addicts.
	That's why they generally can't help each other and that's why generally addiction is solved usually by consequences.
	If it's solved at all.
	Because the addict, when he's done enough bad things with his addiction, he's lied to enough people, he's stole to enough people, then what crypto coin did the crypto guy buy?
	Dogecoin?
	Joe, I will hold that in abeyance until the show goes out.
	I think it's easier to see the problems in other people's lives than to look at your own.
	Self-improvement is unbelievably hard and painful.
	Correcting others is quite rewarding.
	But you're not correcting them, right?
	You're just making noises and feeling like a good person.
	You're just making noises and feeling like a good person.
	This is something I read from Jung, Carl Gustav Jung.
	A little crazy, but some good insights.
	He said, thinking is hard.
	That's why most people judge.
	Somebody says, had a family member who was addicted to opioids for years and every word out of their mouth was just manipulation and angling to get resources, free rent and drug money.
	They were only ever truthful if it helped them exploit others.
	My parents enabled them.
	The only solution for me was to totally disassociate from them.
	Yeah.
	Can't do it.
	Because the addict has the pain of withdrawal and the pain of withdrawal comes with the attack of the suppressed conscience.
	Thank you Jared, I appreciate that.
	The pain of withdrawal from a drug comes also with the attack of a bad conscience.
	If you've lied to and stolen from your elderly parents or siblings or friends or you stole from strangers for your drugs or you know if you're a woman to do prostitution or for a man for that matter.
	So what happens when you take yourself off the drug is not only do you get the physical withdrawal but you also get the holy crap I was a really terrible person for years.
	Yeah, good luck with that.
	Good luck with that.
	It's really important to know when you can help people and when people are beyond help.
	And maybe I'll maybe I'll do a wee show on that at some point when when you when you stop.
	In general, I will confront people and If they say, yes, I didn't tell you the truth, I'm really sorry about that.
	And if during that conversation they lie again, peace out, baby!
	Peace out.
	I mean, if they can't even hold integrity for an hour, then, you know, peace out.
	I am dun-da-dun-dun, dun-da-dun-dun-dun!
	Alright, any other last comments, questions, tips, helps?
	freedomain.com slash donate.
	If you could help out the show.
	Of course, if you're listening later.
	Come on, this has been a banger and a half.
	This has been a bangerous beans and mash.
	Franks and beans.
	Got into a discussion with someone about giving money to the homeless in the street.
	I said they were most likely buy drugs and alcohol with that money.
	They got emotional saying, you don't know what they're going through.
	I just wondering if you've ever considered streaming on kick?
	Great album.
	Apparently you get 95% of your earnings.
	Oh, I'll look into that.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	And I appreciate the fact that you're not suggesting that I go on a platform I was banned from years ago.
	All right.
	Well, thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, my friends.
	I really, really do appreciate your time, effort, attention.
	Don't forget peacefulparenting.com.
	You get the whole book.
	I'm about 40% of the way through shrinking this thing down.
	We're getting it down from about 180,000 words to 50-55,000 words.
	So there is a shortened version of Peaceful Parenting coming for those who have the attention span.
	What?
	Squirrel!
	All right.
	Instead of money, give them a sandwich.
	Yeah, some people just don't make it.
	And you can circle back and then all that means is you don't make it either.
	All right.
	Thank you, thank you, thank you for your help and support.
	It was a lovely conversation today.
	I really do appreciate it.
	We've got some great call-in shows coming out.
	If you want the private call-in shows, freedomain.com slash call.
	And just choose the private and we'll set it up.
	And I would appreciate that.
	Do it sooner rather than later because, man, it's filling up.
	So, freedomain.com slash call to help out.
	Lots of love from up here, my friends of friendliness.
	Take care.
	Have yourself a wonderful Sunday and I will talk to you soon.
	Take care, everyone.

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