Sunday Morning Live 4 August 2024In this podcast episode, we delve into philosophical discussions with a focus on financial independence and integrity. The conversation covers personal finance, skepticism towards economic assessments, and the implications of accepting large donations. We explore reflections on mortality, legacy, and material possessions, emphasizing the importance of upholding autonomy and ethics. The dialogue extends to societal expectations, psychological aspects of collecting behavior, and societal issues like debt and family structures. This dynamic and introspective episode blends economic analyses, philosophical musings, and practical advice, inviting listeners to contemplate human interactions, personal values, and societal influences.Catch the second hour for DONORS ONLY at https://premium.freedomain.com/66b02b0885b5173af00509bc/how-to-have-a-sexy-love-donorJoin the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!NOW AVAILABLE FOR SUBSCRIBERS: MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING' - AND THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI AND AUDIOBOOK!Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
It is the 4th of August 2024 and we are doing our philosophy.
I have topics.
I appreciate your tips to start.
You can also go to freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
I appreciate that enormously and let's dig straight in.
We are going to
Do our first hour open season, second hour donor only.
Yes, I know there are questions about the UK riots and so on, and we can get into all of that, but we'll do that second hour.
All right, so let's get to your questions.
I have a good topic as well.
And let's get into it.
All right.
Steph, if Taylor Swift decided to donate $10 million to Free Domain, how would you use the money?
That is a very fine question.
That is a fine question, for which I will give you a simple answer.
You may or may not believe my answer, but I actually have passed this test already.
I would not take the money.
I would not take the money.
I would not take the money.
Now, let me ask you guys why I would not take the money.
Why would I not take the money?
I must know what your thoughts are as to why I would not take the money.
Did you see the job reports?
Why would I consume propaganda voluntarily?
Steph, you've inspired me to open up my own consulting business instead of taking the deputy COO job in the accounting industry.
Wow.
Congratulations.
That is very exciting.
Fantastic.
Good for you.
You are about to embark on the entrepreneurial life, which is wonderful.
Wonderful.
Because she would expect you to change the show?
Because it's not in Bitcoin.
Because she's trying to buy you, right?
Nothing is free, especially your soul.
So we get, not talking about you guys, but people as a whole get greedy because they look at the visible benefits and they fail to process the hidden costs, right?
So I've studied enough economics, both at the undergraduate, postgraduate, and just on my own research level, to know that if somebody's offering you ten million dollars,
What they're trying to do is to get you to adjust your spending to the point where you can't live without that money.
So, let's say somebody gave me 10 million dollars, free and clear, for the show.
Well, I mean, I suppose I could build a big studio, I could hire, you know, more researchers, professional camera people.
I could go do more documentaries.
And what I would do is I would increase, what they call in the business world, my burn rate.
I would increase my burn rate and I'd probably end up spending, I don't know, maybe a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars a month because I would, I guess, invest that money and get some proceeds and use it as seed capital for building stuff and so on.
So I would build all of that and I would increase my burn rate.
Now increasing one's burn rate is a fantastic way, thank you Tony, is a great way to stay enslaved as a whole.
Now there's some businesses you need to increase your burn rate, I get all of that and there's no hate about capital spending, but what is essential about what I do is I got three chords and the truth, right?
I got a hat, a camera, a microphone, and the truth!
And I'm not sure how
Having a whole bunch more stuff around me would benefit philosophy.
I mean, I've actually considered this over the years.
I have a pretty bare-bones studio.
I mean, I pour a lot of effort into audio and video quality, but as far as, like, how would philosophy be better served if I had a bigger backdrop?
I'm not sure.
Now, if I had the bigger backdrop, right, I'd have to set it up, I'd have to maintain it, I'd have to light it properly, I'd have to dust it, you know, whatever I would happen to do.
But I'm not sure how that would actually improve philosophy, improve communication.
I kind of like the bare-bones thing.
You know, when it comes to songs, I generally prefer the live acoustic versions to the heavily fill-spectral, wall-of-sound, over-processed studio stuff.
So I would increase my burn rate, and then what would happen is, after I increased my burn rate, then I would need to replenish the 10 million dollars, right?
So, you know, if I upped my spend to 200k a month, which is not that unusual in, you know, top-tier alt-tech spaces, so I'm burning through a lot of money, right?
I'm burning through 2.4 million
A year, which means in four years, you know, obviously this is all other variables being equal, if I up my spend to 200k a month, right, then I'm 2.4 mil a year, and that 10 mil is gone in four years, and then what I need to do is I need to get more money.
And then to get more money, I'm either going to collapse back down, which is probably going to feel bad.
And then you, of course, you know, you care about the people you work with and you want to make sure their paychecks continue and so on.
And so, and even if I kept my spend to a hundred K a month, that's still 1.2, right?
Which just means the money's gone in eight or nine years.
Again, if you invest other things and so on, right?
You can, you can sketch that out, but.
Then what would happen is... and also, of course, if I took 10 million from someone, then donations would drop off, right?
Because people would say, well, I don't need to donate because you got 10 million, right?
So there would be a high, which is like all drugs, right?
And money is one of the most potent drugs around.
Money, sugar, and screens.
I would up my spend and then I would find myself running low on money and then I would have to start making compromises in order to get more money, right?
So it's kind of like drug dealers will sometimes give you a free sample, right, and then you get hooked, right?
So my fundamental question with regards to income and spending and donations and all of that is, what best and most serves philosophy?
Would a bigger studio, better production values, more research, you know, obviously doing politics, would, if I went straight back into politics with 10 million dollars, then I would have a big impact, but would that, did we just lose our color back here?
Yes we did, alright, that's a little too bland for me, hang on.
I didn't fart, but something happened, right?
So it would just be, and I've seen this before in business, right?
I've seen this before a million times in business.
So when I first started making some coin in the business world, I did not increase my spending.
Of course not.
And the people I knew who made some money and increased their spending to match their income ended up kind of enslaved.
And I never really liked that as an idea.
The whole point, I think, of an income is to try and buy you some liberty or some choice or some freedom so that you can make decisions that are not economically productive in the short run that bring greater either wealth or happiness or something down the road.
But if you go from, you know, $2,000 to $5,000 a month and then you immediately up your spend to match, then you're still kind of broke.
And I've never really liked that idea.
And I used to, you know, I have a bunch of people who work for me who I helped make some good money and I would just give them the same speech, right?
I mean, enjoy the money.
I'm not saying you've got to live in poverty.
Enjoy the money.
But the temptation to up your spend to match your income is very tempting.
It's very tempting and it arises out of a kind of insecurity and a desire to flash
And show your resources, which, you know, again, I'm not saying that's the worst strategy if you want to meet a girl or whatever, but it's not ideal.
So the 10 million, uh, and I obviously haven't had offers for 10 million, but I've had offers in the past.
And I just, I mean, I do mull it over carefully and it's a very nice thing to receive those offers, but it doesn't tempt me in particular.
It doesn't tempt me in particular.
The background looks good.
You don't look like you're videoing from inside an egg.
Like, yeah, yeah, my older setup was, yeah.
I mostly just listen rather than watch your show.
Absolutely, yeah.
I understand that.
I mean, most people do, right?
Missed a couple shows.
Glad to be here this Sunday morning.
Alright.
I appreciate that.
I love the people who say no sound without checking with anyone else.
I know the sound is good.
Job reports are just propaganda.
They just keep revising them.
Job reports are just political jacantery, right?
I mean, I really don't believe any of it.
So, the problem is, I mean, there's so many problems with job reports.
One of the most foundational ones is they count, often they will count two part-time jobs as equivalent to one.
They don't necessarily say, well, jobs were lost during the pandemic, we're just gaining them back.
They say job pluses because people are just idiots and don't know these things and they're basically easy to think about.
And also, of course,
They don't count anti-productive employment as a drag on the economy.
So if the government goes and hires 10,000 people, they say the economy is 10,000 paychecks better, which it's not.
I mean, not only is that money being taken from productive people, but those government employees are often acting to interfere with the free flow of goods and services in the free market.
So they're actually...
I tune in for the hat.
That's totally fair.
You know, you can never get... Tom Cruise has these, like, perfect platonic hat placements in his movies.
It's like laser Bioshock Big Daddy helmet work.
It's fantastic.
Alright.
Makes sense.
The philosophy is pretty good.
But that hat... That's right.
The only thing I can think of is film discussion with people in person.
Yeah, for sure, that would be interesting.
But politics has turned quite aggressive and sometimes violent, so I'm not going to disrespect philosophy by saying that I can reason in a state of coercion.
Steph, can you please touch on how to break the people-pleasing cycle?
Your insight is powerful.
You are like the oracle on the top of the mountain.
We crave your wisdom.
She craves my wisdom to the tune of five dollars.
Very interesting.
Government spending being included in GDP?
Yeah, of course.
So, what I would say is that
You would have to take out debt from jobs created, right?
Alright.
Let's see here.
I will get to your question, though.
I just, just from my perspective, no questions, just love the live shows.
Thank you.
From my perspective, and this is because, I mean, I've been working for tips.
I mean, outside of sort of my business career, I've been working for tips most of my life.
And if you're broke, that's totally fine.
Honestly, I have no issue.
If you're broke, that's totally fine with me.
I, I, I've certainly been broke in my life and like really broke and I understand it and I sympathize.
But generally it's a good thing to say.
And it's funny because if someone said to, like when I was a waiter, if someone said to me, it was great service, I'm so sorry, I just, I didn't realize how expensive the appetizer was, I can't tip.
I'd be like, hey, that's no problem, right?
So, all right.
So we will get to that question.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
So, somebody says, what if someone donated a million dollars anonymously?
I get the being tempted to spend more, but with this scenario, compromise your principles by accepting it.
But you can also stay silent about the donation amount.
Well, alright.
So, let's say that somebody donated a million dollars anonymously.
What would the challenge be for that?
What would the challenge be if somebody donated a million dollars anonymously in remembering nothing is free?
If you remember nothing is free.
Steph, this is great.
I recently got a raise and I was already thinking on what to buy with the new cash.
Right.
Hey, have a celebratory dinner, buy a knick-knack, buy a claw, whatever you want.
You know, I'm not saying, you know, you got to get Howard Hughes shuffling around with long fingernails and your feet in Kleenex boxes, but I am saying that don't just up your spend to match your income because then you're just as broke as you were before.
So, what would that be?
No, no.
I mean, somebody donated a million dollars anonymously.
I mean, I would still declare it.
It would still be right with income and all of that, right?
So, the problem with taking a million dollars anonymously would be that somebody could at any time step forward and say, I donated the money.
I would like a meeting.
Now, of course, you could say no to that meeting.
That would seem a bit churlish, to put it a little rude.
So you could say no to that meeting, but... And then somebody would say, hey, I did donate a million dollars to you.
Can I get a meeting?
And then they may have an agenda.
So it just might happen down the road.
It just might happen down the road.
You know, generosity that is large and concentrated often comes with strings attached, which is why I kind of like the decentralized aspect of donations, right?
That people donate a small amount of money, but there's a lot of people who donate a small amount of money and that's decentralized.
So nobody ends up with any particular control over my agenda, if that makes sense.
So it would be tough to maintain independence.
And what would the money do for me?
Because here's a funny thing, you know, obviously I've been thinking a lot about death lately and I just went to a funeral this last weekend and
You know, my daughter likes to go to these occasional Renaissance festivals, and I enjoy them too.
So, you know, you buy things, right?
So, what do we get?
We got this little, I guess, is it reversed?
Yeah, that's reversed, right?
It's a little coaster there that says, what doesn't kill you gives you XP.
That's kind of true, right?
But when I buy stuff now, in the past I just thought, oh, this is kind of cool.
And again, I'm not a big knick-knack buyer because I moved 18 times in my 20s, so I'm not a big knick-knack buyer.
But now I'm just like, OK, well, if I buy this little cool little thing, it's going to sit on a shelf.
I'm going to look at it every once in a while.
And then when I die... Then what?
What happens, right?
What happens then?
I was talking to a friend of mine some time ago and he's a guy who buys, in his past life he bought distressed properties and he bought one property and he went in and there was just wall-to-wall this unbelievably incredible epoch, decade, genre-spanning vinyl record collection.
Vinyl record collection.
And the guy died in the house.
The headphones were dusty.
The turntables were dusty.
You couldn't possibly listen to all of these records.
And the guy obviously had spent decades of his life and hundreds of thousands of dollars gathering together this record collection.
Which was worth, I don't know, theoretically sort of X amount of dollars.
But the problem is, of course...
You're trying to sell the individual records and ship them out in a safe way is really time consuming.
And so what happened to this record collection that this guy spent his life gathering and putting together?
And I'm sure occasionally listening to bits and bobs here and there, although because it was a collection, maybe he didn't want to take them out of the wrapper.
They're sealed and you got to have them in mint condition like the comic book things, right?
Or I guess first edition books.
I actually had a first edition of The Fountainhead many years ago, and I left it at a gym, rather foolishly.
But, what happened to this record collection?
Got tossed out.
I mean, my friend is a very good entrepreneur, and he was interested, back in the day, of like, can I monetize this?
You know, that the house, there were no relatives, no, right?
So, what happened?
Well, this guy spent probably tens of thousands of hours, hundreds of thousands of dollars and built the shelves and kept everything lovingly and carefully and didn't touch anything and kept it and it just got all thrown out.
That's life, man.
Think of all the people who die who are single.
I mean, often single, right?
Or people, couples who die even, right?
Hey, I took this video of fireworks on vacation in 2007.
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares.
Your computer gets reformatted or tossed out.
And if you've ever seen, there's a video I remember, it was quite powerful.
It was a cleaning woman coming into this old woman's house, pictures on the wall, photo albums, books, notes, letters stored in a trunk that nobody cares about and they just get thrown out.
Lost like tears in the rain.
You're going to gather a whole bunch of stuff over the course of your life and it's mostly going to get thrown out when you're dead.
So you'll want to buy stuff.
You'll want to buy stuff.
And again, I mean, I have a nice microphone.
I have two nice microphones here.
I got a good camera.
A nice, uh, a good computer here because I was really getting tired of computers stalling when I was live streaming.
Collections.
Collectors generally are driven by a rabid and hollow incompleteness in their life.
So this guy who died with all the records, and I've told Ted this story before that another friend of mine had an uncle who went all around the world collecting butterflies from every country, every continent, collected butterflies.
And the uncle died and willed the butterfly.
He was a single guy, no kids, willed all the butterflies.
And this guy had the butterflies in his basement.
And he was trying to find a museum to offload them to.
Nobody really wanted them.
You know, they were getting kind of moldy in his basement because, you know, it wasn't exactly a climate controlled environment and it was just all rotting apart.
Say, ah, yes, but, but you see, he had pleasure in collecting the butterflies.
Yeah, maybe.
Sure.
But would he have had the same pleasure in collecting his butterflies if he'd known they were going to get moldy and tossed out after his death?
Thousands and thousands of butterflies, all lovingly preserved and pinned and boxed, and he put millions of dollars into this, I assume, at travel and storage and all taxidermy and so on, right?
Now, I mean, it's a little different for me, I mean, if I end up being as well-recognized as justice would require over time, and it may take quite some time, but I think people will be, I mean, even when I was very young, when I was writing my novels and so on, I'd keep stuff, because I'm like, you know, people are going to want to know the history of this, right?
But yeah, these women, here's 5,000 pictures of my cat, right?
It's just going to get thrown out.
So yeah, people want to complete their collections when they have a wildly incomplete life.
And collections are mostly busy work.
They're mostly busy work, and it gives you a sense of purpose that's useless, and it gives you a sense of completion that's actually hollowing out your life.
Like my friend who used to go to records, there used to be these, I don't think they're really around anymore, but there used to be these
Giant warehouses where you'd get these record shows and you'd be able to go and find bootlegs and live versions and this, that and the other.
And he just had this whole wall full of collections of movies and CDs, DVDs and live this and live that and it's like, eh.
Not in the case of books.
I'm not sure what you mean, Tom.
I hardly care.
I have all these old photos and I rarely look at them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All the stuff you collect will be junked when you die.
All the stuff you collect will be junked when you die.
Shouldn't that give you a sense of what you should hold on to and what you should let go?
Records made their way to Japan, but definitely still around.
Oh yeah, no, I know.
I know there's a vinyl fetish group.
That, uh, as they age... This vinyl has better, it's a warmer sound than...
Music nerds drive me crazy.
And listen, I have a fair knowledge of music and a fair knowledge of genres, but the audio files and it's got to sound like this and this high is perfect.
And I remember a friend of mine got so excited when CDs came out because he said, you pause the CD, it restarts exactly where you stopped it.
Not like tape, which slows down and then speeds up again.
Oh, I know why.
Sorry, I keep losing the background.
So, when I had the studio built, it was actually a friend of mine's wife who built the studio, she put in fans, but they were a little bit loud for my prior setup, and I've tried them now, and because we got this audio cleanup thing, you don't hear the fans anymore, but I think the fans are blowing the backdrop.
Here, let me try one more time.
Well, that's why.
I really like family photos.
Seeing the old pictures from my ancestors' time brings a smile to my face.
Absolutely!
Like, there's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah, we're just gonna have to leave that.
I'll have to figure that one out at some point.
But, um, yeah, family photos.
Yeah, nothing wrong with people.
It's great taking photos.
I get that.
You know, here's your great uncle so-and-so.
But you understand that all the stories behind the photos will go, unless you sort of write them on the back, which, you know, you can't really do digitally very easily, right?
I guess you could make the file name that or whatever, right?
Yeah, I actually have a whole bunch of different gels for the color back here.
I can make it.
Yeah, there is a little breeze there.
Where the heck's that coming from?
Oh, well.
It's been a while.
It's been a while.
Since I've used the fan.
But it's good, because if I'm bellowing away, I keep the door closed.
And if I've got the door closed, I'll add a little bit of air circulation.
Alright, let's get to other questions.
So, uh, my aunt who never married had a huge collection of books.
We tried to give them away when she died, but nobody wanted them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I remember, um...
A friend of mine who was a real estate agent once sold a couple's house.
They were both professors of English literature, and their house was strangely free of books.
And what they said was, they said, we are going to buy a few books for our courses, but they made a pact at the beginning of their marriage saying, we are not going to become insane book people.
It's in the University of Toronto or something like that.
They have a whole library where they can't use the top couple of floors because the architect forgot to take into account the weight of the books.
Just about every odd collection I've seen, I've gone, oh that's neat, might look into it a bit, but I'll forget about it in a week.
Yeah.
Yes.
Alright.
So in general are completionists avoiding life or important things or is it a type of OCD?
So OCD is a way, in my obviously completely amateur nonsense view, I have no ability to talk about this in any professional context, but in my amateur idiot view, OCD is a way of deflecting anxiety about the larger issues in your life and transferring them to smaller inconsequential issues so you don't trigger actual change.
Because most people have big, giant messes right in the center of their lives.
And OCD for me is a way of saying, well, what matters is how the pictures line on the wall, or how many times I've washed my hands today, and so on.
And it's a way of repurposing or channeling your anxiety about larger issues into smaller, inconsequential issues, which is why you go through these rituals and feel better, but it doesn't solve any of the bigger issues in your life.
Somebody says, I know a young Hispanic woman with a strong preference for white men.
She wonders why even attractive white men rarely, if ever, attempt a cold approach, whereas non-white men do this to her on a regular basis.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes, it's very, very sad.
Very, very sad.
I, because I'm generally very friendly in public, I'm always chatting with people.
I just love to chat with people, trade a couple of jokes, ask them, you know, if I see somebody with a, like, in the early cast, hey, what happened?
You know, like, I mean, I'm just curious, and I love to learn about people's lives, and I'm very interested in that.
So for me, the cold approach with women when I was younger, and I've always been doing this, so the cold approach for women when I was younger was pretty easy.
Oh, what you're reading?
Oh, but it's just because I'm doing this with everyone.
It's not like squeezed like some laser into focusing on a woman, right?
So I just do this with everyone as a whole.
And so you just get used to chatting with people.
But I don't know if it's just white men and so on, but a lot of men have just been browbeaten into this story that you see because something like this.
Women are just out there.
To have fun.
They're out there with their girlfriends.
They're not looking to get hit on.
They're not looking for some creepy guy to come and eye them.
They're not looking for any of this.
They're just looking to be out in the world and please leave them alone.
And they're not.
They don't want to be bothered.
They don't want to manage guys.
They don't want to deal with guys.
They're just out there enjoying the sun, feeding some ducks, walking around, having a coffee, reading a book.
Stop!
BUGGIN' WOMEN!
Right?
This is what... This whole... I mean, it's a complete psy-op, right?
It's just a way to reduce the birth rate.
It's all that, right?
So... Oh, this is the wisdom of the Tenth Commandment.
Don't buy stuff just to impress or outdo your neighbor.
Yeah.
Hmm.
I have dabbled in Excel spreadsheets for comic checklists.
Right.
Part 2.
I told her that the cold approach isn't typical for us as we usually need to build a rapport with a woman before approaching her for a relationship slash dating.
Do you have any further input?
Or is it just an R versus K selection dynamic?
No, it's propaganda.
It's propaganda.
It's propaganda.
The propaganda is, and I think it is probably directed a little bit more at white males, like, you know, whenever you see the propaganda about a man who's inappropriate, you know, there's that famous meme of the black guy stopping the white guy from approaching a woman.
Hey man, she's just out there.
She just wants to get some groceries.
Leave her be.
Don't interfere.
Don't interrupt.
Don't intrude.
Don't blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
And of course, you know, women want love in many ways, even more than men, and so on, so... And of course, it is a form of flexing for women to say,
Every time I go out, there's like so many men, they're like bothering me and they're like constantly in my face and they're asking for my number and they're following me around and they're trying to strike up conversation and it's so boring because it's just so intrusive and I just want to go out there and feel up some mangoes and go home and have a salad but I just can't do it because these men are just on me like flies on flypaper and I can't go anywhere and I can't, right?
You know how that kind of is.
It's just a flex, right?
It's just a flex.
I'm so attractive vibe, right?
But of course, the problem is then, in general, only sociopaths approach women, right?
Because they don't read the social cues, they don't care about what's considered right or wrong, they don't follow politeness and so on, so by saying to men, don't approach us!
Don't approach us!
Even if I'm not wearing a ring!
Right?
Even if I'm kind of dressed up, don't approach us!
Don't talk to us!
It's like, okay, so then the men who actually respect boundaries and are trying to follow social norms won't talk to you, therefore the only men that will talk to you are sociopaths who don't read social cues and follow their own pleasures regardless of any kind of convention, in which case you're going to get your heart shredded like a toaster in a bathtub, so... Does that translate to detailed artistic work?
Not sure if that's OCD or different.
I guess it could be both.
I mean, this is one of the questions I've always had, is the 13-year odyssey of Atlas Shrugged with two years writing John Galt's speech, was that OCD?
Yeah, probably.
And I think, I mean, it completely burned out Ayn Rand, so.
And did it change the world?
Nope.
Nope, nope, nope.
Detail and depth and precision, I mean obviously it's very important when you're building motors and airplanes and buses and trucks and computers, you need to get the detail, it needs to be perfect.
Artistic stuff though, a lot of it is... I mean I could probably use a bit more editing in some of my work and a bit more rewrites in some of my work, but I don't feel that's the difference between people reading and not reading.
And I hate rewriting as a whole.
It should have changed the world.
You know, you can't change the world when the government controls education.
Or you can, but you can only change it for the worst.
Right?
I thought it was R versus K. I had this problem as well.
Yeah.
You know, you've seen that meme of the guy and the girl, how women shoot their shot, and they're just standing there, just standing there, just standing there, and then she leaves and says, well, his loss.
If people don't reciprocate, it's normal to feel negative emotions after being so thoughtful and helpful.
I think the resentment would go away when we express how we feel when the resentment comes, and don't continue once people reveal if they will reciprocate or not.
Yeah.
We are very well-primed and we have so... They've been studies where people can't solve abstract math problems, but you put it in a social fairness situation, they get the answer like that.
So we're very good at knowing where there is reciprocation.
It's a very deep gut sense thing, right?
I love Seth's Valley Girl accent.
I don't know what accent that is.
Something to do with finance and the guy who's 6'4".
All right.
Let's see here.
Um, what if having their hearts shredded is what women actually want?
Or is this just a sign of them being trashy and low quality due to them being abused as children?
Women don't want their hearts shredded.
What are you talking about?
I mean, even masochists want to not be masochists, right?
I mean, because if you said to someone you can get, you know, healthy romantic and sexual pleasure from, you know, positive interactions and being loved and cared for, people would say, well, yeah, I'd rather have that, right?
No, they don't want that.
My husband told me about one girl who told him in the pub, pre-me, who told him how everyone was always hitting on her and it was so tiresome, so he didn't hit on her.
He has no idea.
She was trying to tell him how desirable she was and probably flirting with him.
Apparently she was quite cold afterwards.
No, good for him though.
Don't, I mean, I just, I really, really hate people who just can't tell the truth.
Like, just, hey, I'm interested in you.
Let's, let's go on a date.
Or whatever, right?
All right.
I heard something about Rome's birthrate dropping off towards the end of the empire.
I haven't verified that yet, but if that's true, what was happening that they basically gave up?
Too hedonistic perhaps?
Blows my mind if the similarity to the modern West is accurate.
Well, I mean, I've got a whole presentation called The Truth About the Fall of Rome.
You should check that out.
Yeah, the birthrate did drop off towards the end of the empire.
Sure.
Sure.
A debt is birth control.
Debt is birth control.
Because with debt, the government just hands out money to women, particularly single mothers, so they don't need men.
So men don't have to work as hard to get women, because the women don't really need the men.
And divorce becomes more dangerous, because women can just take men to the cleaners, because they have an option called government money.
So when men don't want to get married, or are frightened of getting married, or don't particularly focus on having families, then men turn to hedonism.
Why not?
Why not play video games and have porn if you can't get married and have children?
I mean, you've got to do something with your life, and so when men take their productive energies out of the economy and do them on frivolous hedonistic activities because they don't have to fund a wife and kids, or rather they're funding it involuntarily through taxation and debt,
Then the economy, the productivity within the economy collapses and the relationships between men and women collapse and women then end up in a situation where they end up endlessly flirting and dating rather than settling down and having children.
Dating becomes a drug, it's not a gateway drug to marriage, it just becomes, this is why I saw this
It's a kind of funny meme.
Oh, it's an interaction.
Some guy in a dating app.
And the woman, he's like, hi.
And she says, hi.
And then she says, so why should I be spending my time with you?
You'll have to sell yourself on me.
And he's like, oh, please don't even bother trying to play hard to get.
You're 38 years old.
What's with the horny nonsense, right?
Most women I interact with seem to want kindness, yeah.
Is it creepy to ask her out when she is at work?
Didn't they invite barbarians in?
Um, no, not exactly.
Tax policy and debt policy, so very, very briefly, what happened towards the end of Rome
It was taxes increased, but they only had the manpower to collect taxes in the cities, so all the young men moved out of the cities and got works on farms in the country.
And so you couldn't really collect taxes, and you also couldn't conscript, because it's one thing to conscript in a city, it's another thing to conscript men who were scattered throughout the countryside where the guy can go missing and nobody will ever find him, the conscriptor guy.
So, what happened was, as their manpower went down, they had to hire mercenaries.
Right?
And so, because they had to hire mercenaries, they had to raise taxes on the cities, which drove more young men out of the cities, and then they had to pay more because they could draft fewer men, so their costs of enforcing the Empire's boundaries were going up, and their tax base was shrinking, and then eventually the barbarians weren't getting paid, and they came and sacked Rome because they weren't getting paid.
So, they didn't invite the men, it was just
We never escape the cycle of gruesome disaster currently playing out in the West, of course.
We never escape this cycle, as long as we have the state.
The beauty of having children is that everything else pretty much falls away.
Yeah.
Love of pets, collections of stuff, even politics just seem unimportant when your two-year-old is counted to 20 in Spanish, English, and Chinese.
Good for you!
Yeah, this morning I was going to do... I bought
I bought my notes.
I was going to do some Q&As.
My daughter got up a little early and so she came down and she said, would you like to sit with the ducks?
Which is where we get towels and we sit with the ducks and we chat and pet the ducks.
And of course I love doing philosophy, but it's like, yes, I would absolutely love to come and sit with the ducks.
It just simplifies your life a whole lot, right?
All right.
Let's get to your... Let's get to your question about people pleasing.
I wish there was a search function on the chat, but there is not.
But that's because it's not my code.
All right, did I write this down?
Did I?
Yes, I did.
Oh, glorious, magnificent.
All right.
This is for Pauline.
This is for Rosanna, sweet girl of mine.
Steph, can you please, please, please, please, me, touch on how to break the people-pleasing cycle.
Your insight is powerful.
Okay.
I appreciate that.
So the people-pleasing cycle.
So, uh, unfortunately it's in the language.
The problem with that is in the language.
You're not people-pleasing.
It's fear-based manipulation.
It's not people-pleasing.
You're not trying to please people.
Right?
Like, if there's a lion I think is going to charge at me and I throw a piece of meat to one side, am I lion-pleasing?
Nope!
I'm hoping the lion will be appeased by the meat and not attack me.
So, it's not people-pleasing.
I mean, who wouldn't want to please the people they love in their life?
I mean, I'm trying to please you, the audience.
I'm trying to please philosophy.
I'm, you know, hopefully going to enjoy things myself as well.
But, you know, if you've got people in your life you care about, you want to please them.
Of course you do.
I mean, I want to please you by going higher and higher, apparently.
Apparently.
So, it's not people-pleasing, it's fear-based manipulation.
So you fear attack and so you appease.
It's the appeasement to preempt attack.
It's people appeasing.
Yes, but the important thing is it's a way to... it's not people pleasing, it's fear-based manipulation and the problem with fear-based manipulation is it doesn't get the bad people out of your life.
It's a tactic to get predators off your back.
Well, not really, though.
I mean, it's very momentary, right?
So let's say I have to walk in the Serengeti every day for some reason, and I keep bringing meat with me so that I can appease the lions that might want to eat me.
And so, every time a lion shows up, I throw some meat.
Oh look!
I've appeased the lions!
What's the secondary effect?
Lions seek me out.
It doesn't get them off your back, it keeps them in your orbit.
Because if you appease, bow down for, and provide resources to people because they threaten you, they will come back and continue to threaten you because they get resources.
Right?
If you give the bully money every day, the bully doesn't stop bullying you.
So it is a very short-term strategy to deal with aggressive people, which guarantees that more and more aggressive people are going to be in your life or stay in your life.
Thank you, David.
It doesn't work.
Now, it's a perfectly acceptable strategy as children.
It's a perfectly acceptable strategy as children.
Because you can't get, if you have abusive parents, you can't get the predators out of your life.
Right?
You can't.
You can't get the predators out of your life.
Because they're your parents and your teachers or the kids you're locked up with at school.
Closest thing to prison most people ever experience.
So it's a perfectly valid strategy when you're a kid, because you can't get the predators out of your life.
The problem is when you continue in it as an adult, then you then are voluntarily choosing to reward predation.
Right?
You're voluntarily choosing to reward predation.
And that means the predators will stick around.
You are the oasis to which they return to get their drink.
Yeah, boarding school is prison.
Yeah, very much so.
So, you're not pleasing people.
As an adult,
You are managing your own anxiety regarding predation by appeasing people and buying them off.
So how do we train ourselves out of that behavior?
You know the answer to that.
You know the answer to that.
Come on!
How do you... How do you stop doing this?
Let's go back to the African analogy.
How do you stop getting half ambushed and stalked and preyed upon by lions?
Do you keep throwing the meat?
Nope.
That's just going to get more and more lions.
Hey, free meat!
All you have to do is growl.
By stop doing it?
No, that's not training yourself out of it.
Deal with the anxiety?
That's tautology.
How do you deal?
How do you stop the anxiety?
You deal with it.
What does that mean?
Choose to not continue enabling evil people, that's not enough.
Because if the lions are all gathered around because you keep throwing the meat, you've got ten lions around, you're like, I'm not throwing you any more meat!
Well then what happens?
Your arse is grass.
You're now, your next view is your eyeball staring out the arse of a lion as he poops you on the... Weltschuhn.
Yeah, you stop walking the paths with lions.
You stop walking the paths with lions.
You stop engaging with people who frighten you.
I mean, your fear is there for a reason.
Staff, uh, you know, I gotta tell you, man, every time I stick my hand in that fire, I get burned.
How do I, how do I deal with that?
How do I, how do I deal with the pain?
How do I deal with the horror and, and the burn and the smell?
How, how do you, how do you shoot the lion who attacks you?
Well, um, you still have nine other lions, right?
So that's not great.
But, uh, obviously you're not talking about violence in your personal life, but, uh, no, that doesn't work.
That doesn't work.
I, I will, I as a person who's not naturally aggressive, will take on 10 aggressive people and win.
It's like, no, you won't.
No, you won't.
Because you have a conscience, which means there's a limit to how much your aggression is going to escalate and you're dealing with people who don't have a conscience and who are willing to do whatever it takes.
And the people who are willing to do whatever it takes will generally win against the people who have a conscience limiter.
I do it with nice people, too, though, Steph.
So?
What are you talking about?
I, I'm terrified of lions.
I feed them.
I also feed kittens.
It's like, so?
I don't know what, I don't know what that means.
I'm not saying don't feed kittens.
I'm saying don't be around where the lions are.
Rick and Crambit means that even if you manage to get all of these people out of your life, they can still use the power of the state to extract resources for you from you via taxation.
Well, aren't you an anvil around my balls?
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, my friend.
What an absolutely craptastic response.
You know, I'm very vulnerable to abusers in my life.
But taxation!
So there's no escape, you see.
There's no, don't try, you can't win.
Here's a solution that could really help people, but there is law and taxation, so... Yeah, okay.
Okay, you just keep focusing on the taxation and we'll just be happy in our marriages and have great friendships and relationships and you just keep getting depressed by taxation.
Okay.
Hi Steph, I have cut out all abusive people in my life, but like you said in a recent call, removing abusive habits is another thing.
For example, treating people like abusers.
What are your biggest pieces of advice to remove abusive habits?
I don't know what you mean.
Treating people like abusers?
Cut out all abusive people in my life?
Yeah, that sounds like a call in.
I don't know what you mean.
Yeah, I don't know what you mean.
How do you stop treating people as abusers when they're not abusers?
First of all, how do you know that they're not abusers?
Second of all, if you've got the people out of your life who are abusive, but you haven't morally condemned them in your heart, the behavior is just going to replicate.
Moral condemnation is your defense line against the intrusive thoughts, right?
What is your best advice to stop treating virtuous people like abusers?
Well, it means that the abusers are still running your mind, which means you haven't drawn that fiery moral moat between you and the abusers.
Good morning, and welcome.
No, I know what he's talking about.
He's talking about, like, the people who, when I'm talking with them in call-in shows, they treat me with outrageous levels of manipulation and deference because they're treating me as they would treat their abusive parents, right?
Or whoever else might have been abusive in their life, so how do you stop doing that?
Well, it's one thing to get the people out of your physical life, it's another thing to get them out of your head, and the way that you get them out of your head is you unreservedly condemn them as evil.
Evil, monstrous, you're a hero for surviving, they are unredeemable, unrecoverable, committed to evil, committed to destruction, committed to harm, and so on, right?
You draw that fiery moral moat between you and the bad guys.
No hesitation, no issues, no, well, but they had bad childhoods.
Like I was reading the other day about the number of German women who were brutally gang-raped by the Russian soldiers.
And, again, it's World War II, there's a lot of propaganda, but my mother was
8, 7 or 8 years old at the end of World War II and they said that the soldiers were raping the women from 8 to 80, 10,000 of them were killed, hundreds of thousands of them were raped multiple times and it was just brutal, right?
And I assume it was somewhat payback for what the German soldiers did in Russia in the Operation Barbarossa, right?
It was a 42 invasion of Russia.
And, of course, that was my mother's childhood, and was she, you know, assaulted in this kind of way by soldiers?
I would not doubt it at all.
I don't have proof.
I would not doubt it at all.
She did talk about having to flirt with a Russian tank commander so he wouldn't destroy the village, and I don't know what she means by flirt, but who knows, right?
There are no origin stories that excuse evil doing.
Otherwise, we can't have moral standards.
Yeah, the taxation argument.
Yeah, yeah, there's taxation.
I get all of that.
It's still pretty much the best time to be alive.
We're having this conversation, aren't we?
And to me, the taxation argument is like, well, I mean, what's the point of working out?
It's not going to make you immortal.
You're going to die anyway.
Quality of life is important and self-respect is important and your body keeps you alive.
How about you repair with some movement and exercise and decent food?
All right, we're almost at our hour.
If you want to get in, if you're not a donor, and you want to get in any other questions or comments, I'm certainly happy to hear them, but we're going to switch to donor only in a couple of minutes, and we can spice it up as much as you like.
I will do my best to answer this, your questions, and we will get to that in a second, but I'm certainly happy to hear your comments now.
Don't forget your donations at freedomain.com slash donate.
It's funny, Trump talks about the US government getting involved in Bitcoin and Bitcoin crashes.
Probably coincidental.
All right.
He says paying taxes is still a form of appeasement.
It's appeasement when you don't have to, but you go to jail if you don't pay taxes.
So it's not appeasement.
Somebody says, Oh, I had a friend who was a German female teenager at the end of World War II.
I didn't get to say goodbye to her when she passed, but my God, what an amazing person.
Yeah, you can easily turn suffering into virtue.
Ability to walk to the washroom is something to be welcomed.
Maybe that is an answer to why exercise.
I mean, honestly, you exercise out of deep gratitude to the amazing machinery that keeps you alive.
I mean, you tell me anything that works for 80 or 90 years without you having to open it up and repair.
It's incredible.
It's incredible.
And the body is the foundation on
It's the foundation in which all your thoughts rest is the functionality of the body and if you take the body for granted then it will get back at you and it's a lack of gratitude.
I'm fundamentally incredibly grateful for my body for keeping me alive and being functional and being healthy and all of that.
When I receive a gift I like to reciprocate and receiving the gift of life from my body makes me want to reciprocate because I'm not selfish that way.
I may be selfish in other ways but I'm not selfish that way.
All right.
Good, okay, so we will go to supporters in a minute and then the next part will just be for donors only.
You're not donor only yet in 50 seconds or so, give or take.
I'll tell you when it is.
And if you have questions, great.
I'll tell you a sentence.
This is what I'm going to deal with at some point.
Somebody wrote, thanks for answering my question and apologies for upsetting you, but I assure you that that was not my intention.
My question was based on genuine curiosity and I don't find your answer particularly satisfying because you basically just insulted me and completely ignored the core of my argument.
So, that's a really meaty and deep interaction, which I really appreciate.
I know you open the floor for anything.
Yeah, if you don't have any burning questions regarding politics, that's totally fine.
