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Aug. 9, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:25:35
STOP SELF PITY!
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Time Text
Good evening, good evening.
Welcome to your Wednesday Night Live, 7th of August, 2024.
Let's get straight into your questions.
You can go to fdrurl.com slash live call.
fdrurl.com slash live call.
If you would like to have a chitty chatty bing bang with me, with moi.
Song quiz.
You did miss it, but it was a pretty easy one.
In other words, please be true.
In other words, I love you.
All right.
Easy peasy, nice and easy.
Thank you, Anthony.
Very nice to start with a tip.
And we did Frank Sinatra do it first.
I know a bunch of people have done it, but he does the definitive version.
Tony Bennett did an album of Frank Sinatra covers called Perfectly Frank, which I think was really good.
But I'm not a huge fan of Tony Bennett outside of I Left My Heart in San Francisco, which is about as close to an angel crying in your ear as you're ever going to get on this life or any other or so.
All right, let me move this over here just in case.
But let's get me to your questions.
Hi Steph, things appear to be deteriorating quickly here in the UK.
How will I know if or when it's time to leave the country?
Many thanks.
Are you talking about the riots, the unrest, the cultural, religious and racial animosity?
That's going to be put down.
I mean, they'll use it to crack down more on free speech and it'll all fade away.
It's sad but true.
It's sad but true.
I mean, I, you know, obviously can't philosophically answer whether you should stay in a country or not, but it's all just pressure and coercion now.
It's not about any sort of reason, arguments, or data, or facts.
So this is why I bailed out of politics, because it just wasn't Will the IRA get fired up?
No.
No.
The IRA was only against British capitalism.
They're not against what's going on now.
No.
Greetings from Prague!
Ah!
Beautiful, beautiful city.
I have often wished to toodle over to see more of Eastern Europe.
Of course, my name is Stefan, which is very Polish.
And of course I did a great documentary in Poland.
You can get that at freedomain.com slash documentaries.
You should check it out.
It'd be free.
But I absolutely adore Eastern Europe.
I just love Eastern Europe.
So hopefully I'll get a chance to go out there.
And it's the kind of place where I could actually have meetups without too much violence.
All right.
you So, um, that was a question there.
there to see if we've got any others.
What to do about people who talk at you rather than with you?
Let's say you tell someone your life story and they simply step all over what you said and they never ask you any questions.
Well, make your excuses and get out.
Make your excuses and get out.
You know, I have a three-minute rule.
I'm happy to ask people questions.
If they don't ask me anything back in three minutes, give or take, peace out.
You know, good luck with your narcissistic, solipsistic life, but I'm going to spend some time with people who have ears as well as mouths.
So, yeah, just don't... I wouldn't have anything... You can't fix that in someone.
You know, you just have to really Look at politeness and basic civility, right?
Somebody who was raised with that level of narcissism, that level of selfishness, they're just never going to be interesting or interested in other people.
It's all about them and that goes all the way back to the roots of childhood.
What if they're your co-worker?
Oh, I just say, I'm sorry, I'm waiting for an emergency broadcast and put your headphones in.
Or, you know, just say, if we're going to chat, like I'm really busy today, if we're going to chat, let's do it at lunch and then just avoid them.
Like, you don't have to be polite to rude people.
It's a foundational thing in life.
Don't feel helpless in the face of rude people.
Rude people have earned no social consideration whatsoever.
Rude people rely on polite people being weak.
Just be rude.
They've not earned any politeness from you.
I mean, you see me in interviews.
If somebody really starts to get shirty or crappy with me, rude, I'll send it right back.
Don't extend courtesy to the uncourteous.
Courtesy, politeness, niceness, that's something you earn by being a courteous and respectful person yourself.
That's what you get.
That's why we are polite.
So that we can reasonably expect politeness in return.
If somebody is just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah Morality is a relationship.
It is not an absolute.
Morality is a relationship.
certainly aesthetically preferable actions uh...
you only owe being on time to people who are on time You only owe politeness to people who are polite.
You only owe consideration to people who are considerate.
Otherwise, you know, everybody's worried about counterfeit money, fiat currency, The bad printing goes to the money printer, right?
It's like, well, but most people fear, they counterfeit rewards for virtue.
They just print it up.
Oh, I'll treat you as great even if you're not great.
So, if you're polite, I'll be polite to you, and if you're rude, I'll be polite to you.
Nope.
I don't think that's right.
That's just not right.
You know, if you pay for your iPad, I'll ship it to you.
If you don't pay for your iPad, I'll just ship it to you.
Like, the entire functional economy could not work on the basis of that kind of subsidy.
Rude people are relying upon you thinking that politeness is a weakness you have to extend to bullies.
No.
Politeness is a reward you extend to polite people.
Reasonableness is a reward you extend to the reasonable.
It is not a blank check you hand over like your balls to all and sundry.
Don't reward selfish, rude, mean, inconsiderate people.
Don't reward them.
Avoid them.
If you gotta lie to them, if you gotta make excuses, you owe them nothing.
Nothing!
Well, justice!
You owe them justice.
Just pay people what they deserve.
Steph, any tips on how to deal with non-technical people who act like they know it all, even though they have no technical qualifications?
You mean at work?
At work?
Well...
The best way to deal with know-it-alls is humiliation.
And I don't mean that you humiliate them.
You just allow them to humiliate themselves.
You just allow them to humiliate themselves.
So, if you're in a public...
public.
A meeting and somebody says something false, just say, oh, that's interesting, tell me more.
Oh, what does that mean?
Oh, where does that come from?
Oh, what's the source of that?
What operating systems does that run on?
Is that 32-bit or 64-bit?
Is that an integer or a floating point or a decimal?
Is it long?
Oh, that's interesting.
Would you put that in a varchar or would you put that in a more defined variable?
Oh, what kind of array?
Would you bubble sort that array or how would you do that?
Just keep asking questions until their ignorance is exposed.
And then they'll stop doing it.
Like, you understand?
Most people you have to train.
Most people will just do whatever they can get away with and you have to build little fences around them of emotional just a little emotional you know those little dog collars just a little emotional negative experiences so they stop screwing around with your life.
That's what you got to do with people for the most part not all not all and you don't want that as much as you can not have that in your life don't have it in your life but you know if you're stuck with people.
You got a salesman who's like, I remember when I worked in my first job as a programmer, there was a trader, and this is back when having two screens was like having a space shuttle, and he was like, so I built this neural net in Excel.
It's a neural net.
I'm like, oh, tell me, what is a neural net?
Well, it's these cells, they communicate to each other.
And I'm like, so like Excel, but how is it a neural net?
Well, the data flows from one place to another and it balances.
And I'm like, is that based on the equations you typed into the cells?
Yes.
So that's Excel.
I'm still not sure how that's different from a neural net.
And I'm not sure what the definition is.
Well, it's complicated.
Oh, so it's a lot of cells.
What number of cells do you need for it to become a neural net?
Is it a thousand?
Five hundred?
Ten thousand?
I read the phrase neural net and therefore I'm going to use it.
Most people are faking knowledge.
They are.
They're just going through life faking knowledge.
They're faking knowledge about politics, economics, virtue, truth, honesty, integrity, courage, relationships, love, honor, decency.
They're just faking it all.
This is all the way back to Socrates, right?
Just faking it all!
Faking it all.
I can't let the five seconds my eyes rested on that nerd magazine go to waste.
Yeah, they're just making it up.
And you can see the puffed up pompery of people, right?
It's just, it's wretched.
Absolutely wretched.
Alright.
Any other questions, comments, issues?
Challenges?
Disagreements?
And I've got obviously some stuff to chitty chat about.
So one of this is from August 2nd on X. On X. This was probably one of the biggest tweets, around 42 million views, 20,000 comments.
I think it even outstripped my Taylor Swift dino egg hunt.
And it's from Nick Huber.
Huber?
And it's a picture of a sad looking boy?
I think it's a boy.
It's a sad looking boy.
And he says, this kid saved up all week for an ice cream.
Spent five dollars.
Dropped it after the fifth lick.
I didn't buy him another one.
Life is hard.
He took it well.
Life is hard.
He took it well.
What do you guys think?
Let me give you the post here so you can see it.
You can eyeball it for yourself.
While you're doing that... Oh, let me put it in one other place as well.
Let me put it in one other place as well.
We are with the stream of liveliness.
But you can have a look at that.
How do you deal with the fear that rude people might retaliate when you expose their incompetence publicly?
Well, if you're not willing to escalate, don't get involved in conflicts.
Bye.
So you document, you just document.
People genuinely and generally underestimate the value of documenting things, right?
So if someone retaliates, then you document it, right?
And if somebody, I don't know, does something kind of mean, you document it and you go and talk to them about it.
And you talk to them about it in a public place or you talk about it with them loudly.
I didn't understand why this happened.
Can you help me understand this?
Do it loudly around their cubicle.
And they might, and they might get you fired.
They might get you fired.
What can I tell you?
All conflict has risk.
But all appeasement has risk.
So if you, if somebody is incompetent and they're, and first of all who cares, right?
I mean if it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, right?
Who cares, right?
But if it matters and if it's important to you as a person and as a company, if it matters, Then, you know, you would want to expose that person.
Do it mildly.
Like, you just, you don't grind them all the way to Adams.
Just, you know, a little bit of shot across their bowels.
Oh, I didn't know that.
It's a neural net?
What do you mean by neural net?
I don't understand.
Well, it's, how's that different?
And then you just let it go.
And what you've done is you put, just put a shot across their bowels.
You don't have to take someone all the way to the woodshed the first time there's a conflict, right?
Just a little bit more, right?
And if they then start retaliating for you, against you, well then, You have a fight on your hands and what's wrong with that?
Because you either fight with people who are jerks or you fight with yourself and not fighting with people who are jerks!
There's no escape from the conflict.
None!
You either end up in combat with jerks or you end up with combat with yourself for being cowardly regarding jerks.
There's no good answer when you've got a jerk around.
That's why I tend not to have jerks around as a whole, right?
It's no good answer.
You either get into a conflict with them Or you get mad at yourself for not getting into conflict with them.
I prefer to not get down on myself, but rather get in conflict with others.
I mean, obviously I'm critical of myself and want to make sure I'm doing the right thing.
Appeasement is the belief that there is a non-conflict resolution to a conflict situation.
I mean, how did that work out with Chamberlain in Czechoslovakia?
Check out my free novel, Almost, available at freedomain.com slash books.
Please check it out.
It's a great, great book and the audiobook is pretty spectacular.
When you have a conflict with someone, you either deal with that conflict, hopefully
you can deal with it positively, hopefully you can deal with it nicely, hopefully you
can whatever, right?
you You have a conflict with someone, you either deal with that conflict directly, or you avoid and then you're just set against yourself.
Right?
All right.
Seems like a slow show tonight.
No, it doesn't seem like it is.
I've had, like, two questions.
No tips.
Well, that's alright.
Hey, that's totally fine.
If people aren't too into it tonight, we can just have a short show.
Uh, so... Yes, with regards to the guy... I don't particularly believe the story.
The kid saved all week for an ice cream, spent five dollars, dropped it after the fifth lick.
Now this kid looks to be about four.
Now, four is a little too young for you dropped your ice cream.
Therefore, you're out of ice cream.
Now, I don't particularly believe this story.
Because they're still in the ice cream store, it looks like.
Are they?
Maybe.
But after the fifth lick.
So when little kids get ice creams, they lick it right away.
And so, if this kid is still in the ice cream store, if he's just on his fifth lick and he drops it, what is the ice cream store going to do?
They're going to say, oh, here's another ice cream.
That's fine.
Don't worry about it.
We'll clean it up.
Because they want the kid to be happy, right?
I mean, anybody who's worked customer service knows that if the kid drops the ice cream, you give him another ice cream.
Maybe it's not quite as large or whatever it is, right?
So, he's on his fifth lick, he drops the ice cream, which means that the store is noticing and says, oh, that's too... because they've got to clean up the ice cream.
Fifth lick means he's still in the store, right?
Because kids get the ice cream, they immediately dive in.
As the father, as I guess the kid's paying or whatever, right?
So, five licks, he's still in the store, so they have to clean up the ice cream, they see him drop the ice cream and they say, have a new ice cream.
that happens, have a new ice cream, right?
So Nick Huber says they offered him a freebie and I declined it.
Community notes now says Nick Huber later claimed that no freebie was offered and implied the statement was made for
engagement So
He saved up all week is multiple opportunities to earn dollars at the age of four
I mean, that's terrible.
Only four-year-olds earning money and so on, right?
That's crazy.
So this is... I mean, to me, I don't know this guy, but this to me would just be engagement farming to say something outrageous so people get all riled up.
We'll miss the education live, but we'll hear it tomorrow.
Thank you.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Bye.
All right, have you heard of this thing called gentle parenting?
Boy, gentle parenting.
Because Dr. Camilo Ortiz, I don't know who that is, this got almost 550,000 views again from August 2nd says my career can basically be summed up as trying to fix the damage caused by gentle parenting.
My field has foisted this abomination on the general public and it's awful!
So that's uh... That's interesting.
So Jessica Vaughn writes, I don't know why it's so hard for people to find a balance between not traumatizing their kids and permitting them to grow up and be absolutely unlikable to their peers.
And Dr. Camilo Ortiz writes back, in part because my fields have been giving well-meaning parents terrible parenting advice.
Parents think we're experts, so they listen.
And someone else writes, I once babysat for a mom who told me I wasn't allowed to use the word no with her daughter.
Her daughter was very violent.
When she hit me or pulled my hair, I had to give her other options to express her anger, not tell her to stop.
The mom was a child psychologist.
Ahhhh.
And she says immigrant parents generally have not lost their sanity.
I count myself among them.
So gentle parenting, what, it's never correcting your kids, never saying no, never give them any standards of behavior, never having any requirements.
I don't know, gentle parenting?
It just seems lazy parenting.
It just seems very, very lazy.
Lazy parenting.
But it's kind of like way back in the day we got into a bunch of conflict on the show about nonviolent communication.
and uh... i i had my shoes with it to put it mildly i was talking with a fellow today
who he was forty and already wealthy by the time he got together with his wife
He was almost 40 and had made it.
And his wife was complaining that he was not emotionally available.
He's just not sensitive.
He's just not emotionally available.
He just doesn't have the kind of conversations that she wants to have.
Have you heard this, uh, emotionally unavailable stuff?
Um...
Uh, yeah, James, I won't- I won't do that now.
Um, I'll just see if there are any, if there, let me see, if there are any calls.
But if you ever had this, emotionally available, wanna be emotionally available, you gotta be emotionally available.
As a man.
As a man.
You ever hear these complaints?
I find them very funny.
I find them very funny.
You've heard this trope before, right?
I just listened to three episodes on NVC.
Do you have any ideas on why this topic often leads to passive aggression?
Yes, I do.
I do.
We'll get to that in a sec.
So, why is it that men are not, let's say that this complaint is true, let's just say, for the sake of argument, men are not emotionally available.
Why do you think men are not emotionally available?
Why do you think men are not emotionally available in the way that women want or like?
Or at least some women, right?
Why?
Why do you think?
Why do you think men are emotionally unavailable?
It also seems to be the case that the men who are the most successful are often complained,
the women often complained, that the men are emotionally unavailable and the more successful
the man, the more emotionally unavailable the woman will often complain that he is.
I find it funny.
Men get it used against them?
No, I mean, I hear what you're saying, and I don't think that's it fundamentally.
All right.
Have you ever played poker?
Have you ever played a really hard, challenging, sometimes one-on-one sport or been heavily involved in negotiations and so on?
So, you understand, for a man, for a man, you cannot be, in general, both successful and emotionally available at the same time.
You cannot be Both emotionally available and successful.
So there's an old story of two tennis players, Andre Agassi and Bjorn Borg or something like that.
And Bjorn Borg had a tell, like if he was going to serve to the left, his tongue would go to the left.
If he was going to serve to the right, his tongue would go to the right a little bit.
And Andre Agassi, I think it was him, figured this out and then obviously didn't want to always return perfectly because Because Bjorn Borg's serve was like clocked at like near light speed.
It was a near C serve.
And so you had no time to react.
you had to basically guess where the ball was going to be before he served it or before he really started blasting it
because you didn't have enough time to react. So he let some go by but he gave him just
enough of an edge that he was able to win some matches against the famously wild,
famously powerful serve, Bjorn Borg.
Arthur Ashe also had one. Jimmy Connors had a good serve as well. But Andre Agassi figured
So Bjorn Borg had a tell, right?
And you always look for this in negotiations, right?
In The Man in Full, the Tom Wolfe novel, the guy who's getting ground down by his bank, he gets saddlebags where he's sweating so much that, you know, he's got big armpit stains.
That's his tell.
He's got a tell.
So as a man, You cannot be successful in negotiations, successful in combat with other men, and be emotionally available at the same time.
So it's always kind of funny to me that men want women, you know, the sexy librarian, she takes off the glasses, shakes down her hair, and suddenly she's like Scarlett Johansson or something like that.
The men want this absolute hottie who has no idea that she's a hottie, and the women want a successful man who's completely emotionally available.
It's like, you can't have these things.
I'm sorry.
If you want a man with money, he's not going to be wearing his heart on a sleeve because you can't make money if you're wearing your heart on your sleeve.
You follow, right?
Yes, and women of previous generations chose them to be this way.
So if you want a man who's strong and successful, you get a man who's not emotionally available.
Whatever.
I'm not even sure what that means.
But a man has to go out there and win against other men!
We have to win against other men and sometimes women.
So if you want a man who's really, really, really, really, really empathetic,
you're gonna get a man who loses a whole lot.
You're gonna get a man who loses a lot if he's very empathetic.
I mean, can you imagine a man trains for 10 years to run sprints in the Olympics and then he's about to win and he feels bad for the guy behind him and he's like, no, no, no, off to you, please.
And then the other guy's like, no, no, no, after you, I don't want to take your victory.
And then the third guy's like, now I feel bad about taking it.
And no, everybody just stands around three inches from the finish line until they're all dead.
No!
Screw the guy behind me!
I'm winning!
I mean, I didn't get to the top of my profession by being overly sensitive to other people wanting listeners.
I'm like, I'm taking all the listeners!
I'm gonna take them all!
By the... hair.
So, in order for men to win against other men, we have to have very tight control over our empathy.
over our empathy.
The child of an enemy dies.
And the women are sad that a child died, and the men are happy that the child didn't grow up to be a future enemy.
So it's just different.
And there's nothing wrong with both perspectives.
I think they're very interesting, and it's fine, and you need the yin-yang balance, and vive la différence, and all these kinds of wonderful things.
But you've got to be emotionally available, okay?
What percentage of her income are you willing to give up so that I can be emotionally available?
Oh my gosh.
What percentage of income, honey, do you want to give up so that I can be emotionally available?
Well, no, no, no!
I don't want you to... I don't want to give up any income.
Okay?
So, you can afford to be emotionally available because you're designed to deal with babies and toddlers.
I have to be a little cold-hearted because I have to compete with other men who don't have a lot of empathy.
Somebody says, I feel like you're talking about me.
I always feel bad about the other guy and then I end up losing.
Right.
Yeah, stop it.
That's... I'm not calling you a parasite.
That mindset is parasitical.
that mindset is parasitical because we rely on excellence
in everything we do in our daily life You require excellence in the gasoline you put in your car, otherwise it's going to clog up your car, it's got a bunch of sugar in it, it's going to kill your car.
You want excellence in the quality of the food that you get, you don't want there to be salmonella or botulism or anything like that.
You want excellence in the provision of your internet service and your cell phone service.
You want excellence in the reliability of your electricity.
You want excellence in all these things.
And excellence means excluding the losers from control of the means of production.
Keeping the incompetent and the losers away from the handles of the levers of the means of production.
I want this camera to work, I want this microphone to work, I want this keyboard, computer, monitor, amp, recorder, everything.
I want it to work, and I want it to work flawlessly.
And in return, I will try to do a good job myself in what I do.
So, if you're like, oh no, let the loser win.
That's the end of civilization.
I'm not kidding about that.
Do you like things to work?
Then the losers can't win.
Do you get annoyed when things don't work?
Then the losers can't win.
Right?
Do you get annoyed when politicians give juicy contracts to their friends and relatives?
No!
You want the best person to win!
All of our evolution, all of our progress has been the result of a commitment to excellence and tough titties to the losers.
Sorry, tough titties to the losers.
I know, yeah, the losers are sad.
So what?
So what?
Can you power your house with loser sadness?
Can you heat your home with loser sadness?
Can you shake loser sadness like Spice over your cell phone and have the screen repair itself.
You cannot.
And people who are doing the wrong thing, who are in the wrong field,
should experience loser sadness so they can get to the right field where they will be happy and successful.
Thank you.
in your gums you gotta...
Cavity to fix or something.
Do you want that to just be kind of okay?
Or, you know, do you want to get tooth drill agony?
Or, like, you want it to work.
You want it to be successful.
Which means you don't want the guy who's bad at anesthetic to deliver the anesthetic.
You don't want to have too much and you don't want to have too little.
Too little's got to be just right.
Bye.
When you decisively win against them losing.
You know, when I was in my mid-teens, I started a garage band and screeched away with my vocals into the microphone.
It was not my thing.
I like to sing a little, but I'm not much of a singer, so it's not really my thing.
So they should have better people out there doing that.
Absolutely.
So it helped shove and I didn't mind acting.
I thought it was okay at acting.
I mean, obviously it was top tier in so far as I got into the National Theatre School, which takes like 1% of the applicants.
I was pretty good at it.
But I have too many of my own words to spend the rest of my life mouthing the platitudes written by socialist others.
It's not my thing.
Not my thing.
I prefer live streaming to recording, because it feels more connected and communicative with... Yeah, I had a friend of mine wrote an entire rock opera.
It sat in his drawer, and it will never get produced.
And it shouldn't be, because it wasn't that good.
Have you tried not sucking?
Right.
So all of the people who said those magical words, you suck!
The three words that just help you the most in your life.
You suck, Molyneux!
They helped guide me to what I'm doing now!
Wonderful!
I was a solid good coder with a great deal of creativity but there are other genius coders who were way better than me at coding.
Now I had a good combo of sales and marketing and business smarts and economics and all of that but Actually, no, I was pretty good on coding.
I was pretty good at coding.
But there's certainly better people, right?
I think I'm sort of top tier when it comes to doing this kind of stuff.
Because if I had a realm I was better at or in, I would move to that realm.
I think I've kind of hit my peak.
Here we go, right?
Here we go, hit my peak.
Am I a weightlifting guy?
No, look at those anemic little British muscles.
Well, no steroids, what can I tell you?
So you're not helping people by feeling bad for them when they fail.
That indicates that you did not receive comfort and you're dragging around a saltwater Soaked, broken heart inside you like a deep bell tumbling in the inky depths.
You have a deep sadness inside of you because you weren't comforted as a child.
And because you have a deep sadness within you because you weren't comforted as a child, you want to go around comforting everyone.
Because you think that by comforting other people, you'll feel better about not being comforted as a child.
This will not happen.
All you will do is keep people in fields they are ill-suited for.
Now, you also probably are not close to your father because women are supposed to be blindly encouraging.
Yay!
Good job!
Yay!
Well done!
Yes, women are supposed to be blindly encouraging because they're babies and toddlers.
They're raising babies and toddlers.
And you want to be blindly encouraging so that the kid has a basic sense of competence because all the stuff that babies and toddlers are learning is not differentiated.
Right?
He learned how to roll over.
Well, everyone's gotta do that, especially Beethoven, right?
Oh, he learned how to sit up.
Well, everyone's gotta do that.
Oh, learned how to crawl.
Gotta do that.
Learned how to scooch.
Gotta do that.
Learned how to crawl on his hands and knees.
Go walk like a horse.
Learned how to stand.
Walk.
Right?
Learned how to run.
Learned basic language.
Everyone's gotta do that, so you can't differentiate.
Well, you know, you're better at...
I'm crawling, so you don't crawl.
No crawling for you, but you're really good at it, so I'm going to get behind you, right?
Because women are encouraging all of the basic skills that everyone needs, so they have to be enthusiastic about everyone, and they can't differentiate.
However, when the kids drift over to the asshole land of skeptical boys, men, right?
Girls are all, yay, good job!
Men are like, you suck!
That pose!
That was terrible!
Oh my god, how awful!
Right?
No, no, no, that's no good.
That's no good, no.
Whatever you're doing, don't do that.
Right?
Right?
I mean, and I've gone through, because I've had this rare opportunity to... Oh, don't ask me.
Don't get me started on what the Daily Wire monetizes.
It's all yay-yay positivity from the moms, and then after the basic skills of walking and talking and running, and some basic morals of sharing and don't grab, and like, after all of those basic skills are done and implanted, around the age of six or seven, the boys in particular go to the men.
And the men are, good job, you suck, well done, that blows, good job, Yay, thumbs up, thumbs down, right?
Thumbs up, thumbs down.
We are not amused!
Right?
So that's what the men are supposed to do.
Now we've got this gynocentric estrogen-vagina quagmire of a society which means everyone gets, yay, good job!
And then they get out there into reality and they know it's bullshit and they're absolutely terrified of any objective feedback because they feel like they're going to fucking die and mentally collapse if they get criticized because they haven't hardened at all.
They don't have any realistic assessment of their own capabilities.
Because they've never had their weaknesses pointed out, they have no idea what their
strengths are.
So if you are, oh I don't want the people who've lost to lose, okay then just live like
Don't be a hypocrite.
Live like that.
Pay the same amount for the fifth best product.
Right?
So let's say you've got the iPhone Max, you've got the iPhone, you've got the iPhone SE,
you've got like all these, like all the...
So just pay iPhone Max prices, the one that's half a freaking iMacs, right?
Pay iMacs prices for the iPhone 6.
Because you know, the guys who made the iPhone 6 are going to feel sad if you just buy...
Or the guys who made the smaller iPhone are going to feel bad if you...
So just give... oh, I don't want to do that, that's not fair.
You know, go to the slowest internet provider you can find and pay them top dollar for their
services.
you Pay T1 prices for a 56k modem speed or a 9600 board modem speed.
Well, you don't want to do that, right?
Well, but the guys with the slow internet are going to feel bad if you go with the T1.
They're going to feel bad!
When your child is sick, go to the worst doctor you can find.
Because, you know, he feels sad if you don't come to see him.
He can't, you know, buy his drugs or whatever.
He doesn't want to get into the cabinet, right?
But you don't want to live like that, do you?
You want excellence from everyone around you, so you're requiring everyone else to enforce
excellence while you encourage incompetence.
You are offloading the challenge of giving people the truth to everyone else.
You're requiring everyone else to do the difficult task of telling people that they suck at stuff, because you want to be encouraging.
And you're offloading it to everyone else, and you're making their job tougher.
Because if everyone says, hey Steph, you're not a great singer, it's like, you know, I can hear myself.
I know I'm not a great singer, right?
But if you and ten other people are saying, oh man, you're Ben Heppner and Freddie Mercury all combined in one flavorful puppy dog Josh Groban soupy pile of herstoot goodness, that's going to confuse the shit out of me, isn't it?
And it's gonna get me wasting my time on singing lessons.
You know, go online and find the worst deal you can find.
The worst deal!
And then buy it.
You know, some diarrhea-soaked Pokemon card for $5,000.
Well, you've got to pay that because the guy with the diarrhea-soaked Pokemon card is going to feel sad if nobody buys it.
Go buy it!
Oh, I don't want to do that.
Do you want people to be wasting their time?
Be like me threatening James, I'm going to stop doing this and I'm going to become a coder again.
And James is like, nooooo.
Oh, he's like slowly launching himself through the ether.
I'm dedicated to becoming both the before and after picture of a hair model.
one.
you So you want excellence and you're not willing to contribute to the somewhat tough job of ensuring excellence in the world.
Right?
So you're just lazy and it's parasitical!
I want excellence!
So you aren't going to be the next Michael Buble?
I'm really not.
I'm really, really not.
Or is it that guy... Why do I have this vague feeling that he was a wedding singer and Brian Mulroney was involved?
Like the guy who, um... Conrad Black up the guy started on, um...
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.
From glen to glen and down the mountain side.
He heard some guy singing that at a company party and funded the whole record.
I think it was a one-hit wonder or whatever, right?
James has offered to trade.
I'll code and he'll do the show.
It'll be fine.
At my first job, the manager told me this job ain't for me.
And maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong.
But we all require on those bumpers of approval and disapproval to bing bing bing, right?
I quit my job because it wasn't excellent and found one with a 22% raise.
That's right.
What can I tell you?
So...
The only reason you'd feel bad for the losers is because you want to cripple their potential.
Like, you think you're being nice and benevolent.
You're not.
You're not.
Encouraging people to pursue things they're bad at is sabotaging and it's an asshole move.
Not calling you an asshole.
Just saying this little bit of things is an asshole move.
It's an asshole move.
If somebody writes a song, and the song is bad, and you say, that's gonna be a hit, then they're gonna spend six months trying to make it a hit, and it sucks!
Maybe you shouldn't get beaten up like Tina Turner criticizing Ike, but... you just wasted six months of that guy's life.
No thank you.
No, and then you end up with songs like Mother on the gem called Synchronicity.
Is that my mother on the phone?
Although, I will say, I think it was a Stuart Copeland penned, uh... I change my clothes ten times before I take you on a date.
I get the heebie-jeebies and my panic makes me late.
I break into a cold sweat just reaching for the phone.
I let it ring twice before I chicken out.
Decide you're not at home.
Does everyone stare the way I do?
I only look this way at you.
And it always bugged me because they said all songs by the police and then there's this opera voice comes up in the back and then Sting starts singing.
It's like, that opera voice is not yours.
All music, all sounds by the police.
But apparently it was just a tuning thing that came in while he was recording that little bit at home.
No, no, no.
If you've got no flexibility or giant boobs, probably shouldn't be a dancer, or at least not the classical kind.
right and I remember I got, I mean in my teens I got scouted by a
modeling agency went through a couple of things and finally the guy
was like you know I got a little bit of an overbite maybe if you can
you know do something about that we could talk and you know and I was like good I didn't waste my time
Michael Jackson looking in horror at some of the other singers during the We Are The World rehearsals.
Oh yeah, that was Huey Lewis who tragically lost one ear in the 80s and lost the other ear recently and I think got suicidal about it because no more music, no more sound.
It's one of these annoying broken ear things where it's half better, half worse from time to time.
King of Suede here.
I'll be mellow when I'm dead.
But, uh, you know, I mean, I thought that Huey Lewis, I think he's got a nice voice.
Go listen to him do the acapella.
All the birds have been blue, and they don't know what to do, ever since you said goodbye to me.
And the birds up in the sky, well, all they do is cry, and that's why the rain must fall.
Naturally.
Lovely song.
Yeah, but Hugh Lewis pulled it off eventually.
Hugh Lewis had a tough job, man.
I believe it or not, I actually watched the documentary one night on the making of that, the whole night thing.
I remember Diana Ross was very sad that it all ended and Stevie Wonder was trying to do some Zulu Something like that, but yeah, Hugh Lewis was told, uh, you know, just go harmonize with these people and do that.
And, you know, he's not a natural singer.
I actually know a little bit about Hugh Lewis.
I saw, I read a biography of his many years ago.
So, but yeah, sure.
I get it.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, it was pretty rough.
Yeah, but it, it was fine when it was done.
You know, the only thing that matters is the final take, right?
What amazes me is Lionel Richie, after hosting an award show that night, and, you know, singing three songs and then up all night, he still sounds, like, gorgeous.
You know, he still sounds gorgeous.
Boy George on the We Are the World... We Are the World?
No, was it We Are the World?
Oh, Do They Know It's Christmas?
And in this world of plenty... He just sounds lovely.
He just sounds lovely.
Yeah.
Jazz musicians slumming it as pop stars.
Is that the news?
Were they jazz musicians?
They seem very skilled.
And I was a big fan of Huey Lewis for quite a while.
I mean, I think he's a really cool guy.
He's got that kind of easy-going, slight dad bod thing, and he just seemed like a pretty chill guy.
Sorry, I have to use the word chill once a show, because I have a teenage daughter.
It's just a fact.
I hope you're chill with it.
Oh god, I did it again.
It's so creepy I'm getting the chills.
Oh no!
But yeah, Huey Lewis also doesn't he have a giant dong?
Because he's done a whole bunch of movies, not as many as Meat Loaf, who did some really bad movies and destroyed his voice, by the way.
But didn't he have a nude scene?
And Huey Lewis has like a dingle-dangle dongo that apparently he could just lean forward and do push-ups with his hands behind his head.
Just by thinking about an alternative between Ayn Rand and the aforementioned Scarlett Johansson.
Who apparently disappears women behind her backs.
But anyway, all right, we're getting too obscure here.
We're getting too obscure.
So yeah, stop, you know, yeah, it's sad when you want to do something and it's not for you.
Hasn't everyone had that?
Hey, I wonder if I can sing?
It's all right, but not great.
So, yeah, it's...
Yeah, you're sad when you want to do something, right?
And you don't turn out to be that good at it.
I get that.
I mean, everybody wants to be Marlon Brando.
Everyone wants to be Pavarotti.
Everyone wants to be Nadia Comaneci.
Everybody wants to be the best.
I get that.
And the only way you're going to get any kind of chance to be the best is if people relentlessly keep you away from things that you're not great at.
That's your only chance at greatness is people tasering you in the nads whenever you start drifting off towards something you're not great at.
I could have made a living as an actor.
I went to theatre school.
They absolutely loved me until they found out about my politics.
I went there as an actor-writer, and after the first semester, they were like, man, just drop the writing.
Your acting is fantastic.
It's really subtle, really powerful.
And then they found out about my politics somehow, and then they just hated me, and I ended up leaving.
Mutual hatred.
But I could have made a living as an actor but it wasn't for me.
And you have to relentlessly stay away from the stuff you're not excellent at and just keep
thrashing around all the things you can do until you find the thing that just gets your mojo working.
I got my mojo working but it just ain't working on you.
So join in the great social gorgeousness and beauty of hammering people from Chasing people away from what they're bad at towards what they're good at.
Or if you don't want to participate that, if you want the hammer and tongs of excellence and sparks and showering, if you want all of that stuff to be done by everyone else, at least don't screw up our jobs by telling bad people they're good at stuff.
You're not helping.
You're actually making things worse and it's not a standard you'd ever want to live by.
So if you can't universalize it, everyone who's bad, right?
Think of your favorite book.
Think of your favorite book being made into a movie and you want all of the worst actors playing the leads.
Wouldn't that hurt your soul?
You're gonna go and see, uh, your favorite band, and their singer, they just replaced him with some guy they found in the parking lot who can't sing.
Hey man, he wants to get up there and sing!
Everybody should have that experience.
You'd be really, really upset.
you So, yeah, I think we've milked that one enough, but yeah, don't do it, man.
Replaced with William Hung.
Oh yes, he bangs.
I just listened to three episodes on non-violent communication.
Do you have any idea why this topic often leads to passive aggression?
Right.
So, the expression of aggression is very complicated in society and I go back and forth with this myself.
It doesn't mean that everything I've had trouble with is complex, but When people annoy me and I say, that's annoying, I'm annoyed, I don't mean you're being annoying, I'm just saying I am annoyed when you do this.
What do most people do when you say you're annoyed with them?
When you are emotionally expressive and you say, that's really annoying, what you're doing is really annoying.
What do most people do when you say that you're annoyed?
Most people will use it against you, right?
When you're annoyed, what most people will do is they will say, oh, I guess I didn't have any intention to trigger you, but I guess you're triggered, so, okay, I'm sorry that you were triggered, it wasn't my intention, don't be so sensitive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So people are annoying They poke you and then when you say, hey, they're like, hey, there's no need to be so sensitive.
It's a bullshit, petty, stupid superiority move, right?
So NVC, nonviolent communication, I mean, obviously you don't scream abuse at people and you don't, you know, yell at them and call them names.
I get across that.
But you can be angry with people and directly angry about it.
I just recorded something today where it was a long thing about how his friend's new marriage fell apart within three months.
And I really, I was really angry.
I was really, really angry.
Now, did I yell abuse at him?
I did not, but I directly expressed my anger, and then what people do is they get shocked, and they get withdrawn, and they withdraw, and they get defensive, and then they feel put down, and they have to level up by saying that your aggression, your anger, is insane.
Isn't that all we have?
Like, this is the new strategy in American politics.
You're weird.
That's just weird.
Right.
Right.
Right, right, right.
So, when people get angry at you, I understand that.
I mean, it can be uncomfortable.
I got your question, ACE9.
We'll get to it.
Yeah, people, it can be uncomfortable.
I get that.
Listen to their anger.
But what happens is we have a society where anger by the productive is unacceptable.
Right?
You understand?
This is anger by the productive is absolutely unacceptable.
In our society.
Now, you can be unproductive.
You can get as angry as you want.
In fact, that's really encouraged, because then that anger can be pointed at the productive.
But if you're productive, you cannot be angry.
Because we live in a society which enslaves the productive, and slaves are not allowed to get angry.
You're not allowed to be angry if you're being exploited.
you Because anger is your defense against exploitation.
So the NVC people are often annoying.
you And when other people say that they're annoying, they reply even more passively.
they then imply that the other person's annoyance or anger is irrational and that they're deficient
or defective or wrong for being angry and it just gets worse and worse and worse.
Yeah, everyone who's unproductive Everyone who's angry is justly expressing their discontent at a terrible system that is bad for them, right?
Everyone who's productive who gets angry is an extremist who must be squashed.
I mean, it's so boring and it's so predictable that, yeah, it's the way society works.
The only people not allowed to get angry are the people you want to exploit.
pretty clear I mean I yeah I had a back and forth with a bunch of NBC
guys many years ago on the old forum and I think I did some
shows about it You can find them at fdrpodcast.com.
Don't forget to install that app!
Top right of the screen in your browser.
All right.
Here we go.
Steph, can I ask you a question about my family?
No!
Yes.
I come from a really dysfunctional family, A.C.E.
of nine.
That's an adverse childhood experience of nine.
I'm really sorry about that.
That's terrible.
I recently found out that my brother was shit-talking me to other people, questioning my career and relationship success prospects.
His daughter, my niece, is an angel and so sweet.
I am her role model and life idol.
How do I maintain boundaries with my brother while still being accessible to my niece, thinking I'm really important to her because she wants to be me?
Well, this is the old question.
Do you want to raise your own healthy children or try to minimize the damage of dysfunctional people harming their own children?
I can't give you that answer.
I can give you my answer for my life, but I can't give you your answer for your life because we're different people.
How old is your niece?
You don't say, right?
Personally, for myself, I've stopped trying to protect children from dysfunctional people.
I have my own family.
Because I'm kind of a guy in life who likes to control the variables.
The more variables I control, generally, the happier I am.
Don't give me any of your autopilot.
Give me the joystick.
I don't want any auto-tune.
If I'm off-key, I want everyone to flinch and slowly cry tears of blood.
So, I just like controlling the variables.
Now, I don't have any control of the variables of dysfunctional people with dysfunctional families who are doing harm to their children.
I can't control those variables and I can be cut off at any time.
And the more good I try to do, the more I'm in a collision course with the dysfunctional parents.
Right, so if there's, you know, Bob and Jane, my friends, and they're mean to their kid, whatever that would mean, right, I wouldn't have them in my life, but let's say, right, okay, so they've got a kid named Sally, right, Bob and Jane the parents, Sally's the kid, and Sally and I get along really well, and, you know, Sally comes to me for comfort when her parents are mean to her and so on, okay, so what can I do?
Well, the more good I do to Sally, the more I'm on a collision course with Bob and Jane.
I don't like to be in situations where the good I can do is highly conditional and limited.
One of the reasons I'm out of politics, right?
I don't want to be in a situation like that.
I don't want to be in a situation where I've got to watch everything I say because if I go too far, oh, what do you think of my mom and dad?
Oh no, now I've got to lie because if I tell the truth, I'm never going to see it.
Oh God, forget that.
Oh no, life's too short.
Life is too short for that.
For me.
It's different for everyone.
Have your own family.
Have your own family.
Because you really can't control what goes on in the households of dysfunctional people.
You have no control.
I've cut off contact with my brother, but my niece calls me.
She's seven on her iPad, Facebook, Messenger to update me on just about everything.
I'd like to stay in a relationship with her, even though I'm not with my brother, but I don't know how.
I'm sorry, I don't understand.
What do you mean you don't know how?
She's already calling you.
I've cut off contact with your brother, your niece calls you.
She's seven, yeah?
I want my own family as well.
We're trying to scuttle over an ectopic pregnancy, though I'm sorry to hear that.
I really am.
I really am sorry about that.
I personally, I'm no doctor, this is not medical advice in any way shape or form, this is just my amateur idiot opinion, but I think if you're trying to get pregnant, you really, really, really want to minimize your stressors.
And if your relationship with your niece is causing you stress, you might at least want to put that on ice until such time as you get pregnant and have a baby of your own.
It's a possibility.
But if you're still in communication and it's not too stressful, I guess the problem is that, I mean, she's seven, so she's mostly into kid stuff, but as she gets older she's going to ask you more pointed questions about the family as a whole.
Why don't you see my dad?
It's going to be tough.
It's just tough.
You know, I can't stand those claustrophobic relationships where you have to watch everything you say for fear of absolutely dire consequences and circumstances.
Infy888, hi Steph, just wanted to say I love listening to your podcast and I wish you the best.
Thank you.
Sorry, what makes you think it's not already underway?
All right.
So you do have a relationship at the moment, but I would focus on minimizing stress with regards to pregnancy if I
were in your shoes at the moment.
All right.
Let me get to your other questions.
Adoption would be a pretty intense thing, right?
you you
Yeah, to me, the sort of quote World War III started in the 60s, but we can get into that another time.
All right.
Somebody says, I recently got fired for giving my colleague constructive feedback.
He could not handle it and told my boss that I'm putting him down and mocking him and calling him an idiot, which were all lies.
The boss did not care to verify any of those claims or to hear my side of the story.
I feel punished for being honest.
I feel... first of all, that's not a feeling, that's a judgment.
you have to learn to differentiate the two.
Thank you, Steph.
Great feedback.
We're already running into situations where she asks me things about my brother and I'm honest.
And it gets me in, quote, trouble with him.
Yeah.
You know, I hate to say it, man.
You gotta focus on your own family.
At least, that's what I would do.
I can't tell you what to do.
I would focus on my own family.
That would be my strategy and whatever good you can do is going to be vastly outweighed by the harm that others can do, right?
In this case, maybe your brother, right?
So, let's say your brother feeds your niece 95% of his meals and what he feeds her is pure crap, just garbage, right?
Just terrible stuff.
Okay, and then she's over at your house and 5% of the meals are made by you and you give her healthy stuff.
Does that make her healthy?
Because the junk food of 95% for diet is vastly outweighing the healthy food that you're giving her.
Now, maybe the healthy food can help her down the road or something like that, but you can't fundamentally fix kids when they're in control of just really dysfunctional people.
and you've got your own family to focus on, think about, and grow.
So you feel punished for being honest?
.
you No, no, you're not punished for being honest, my friend.
You are receiving the natural consequences of your own bad judgment.
So, you made a bad call, right?
You gave your colleague constructive feedback.
I'm thinking that he could take it.
Were you right?
Or was you wrong?
You was wrong!
And then you thought maybe your boss would have your back and find out the facts and you were wrong about that, too.
You know, I tried to pet that lion and it almost took my arm off!
I feel punished for being friendly.
It's like, no, you're being punished for the results of your own bad judgment.
Now, when I say bad judgment, I've had my own, I have lots of them, I still have them, so don't worry about it.
It's just, you end up being punished for being honest.
That's, oh, the victim, oh, no, God, I'm telling you.
There's a great post from many years ago.
It's like, what's the one thing that, Your work environment has taught you.
It's like, well, competent workers get punished with more work.
I'm punished for being honest!
No.
No, you made a bad call.
You made a bad call to criticize a co-worker.
You made a bad call working for a guy who doesn't have your back and betrays you.
So you're liberated from an environment wherein you were making shitty decisions.
Right?
You've been taken out of environment where you judged things badly.
But they should have done this.
But they didn't!
They didn't!
And that's on you!
You made the choice to work there.
You made the choice to work for that boss.
You made the choice to give constructive feedback to your co-worker, who then bitched out and whined like a tween to your boss.
You made all of these choices!
No, I'm getting punished for being honest!
No, you're not!
You're reaping the inevitable consequences of making bad choices.
You thought your co-worker could handle it.
He couldn't.
You thought your boss would have you back.
He didn't.
So you made mistakes.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
We all do it.
But please don't cry me this violin-laced operatic self-pity if I'm being punished for telling the truth and right.
No, you just made a bad call.
Hey, I do it all the time.
Don't worry about it.
It's fine.
But I try not to translate it into, oh, but I'm being punished.
You don't think I've been punished, like objectively punished for telling the truth and trying to help the world?
Yeah, I absolutely have.
I absolutely have.
But do you say I'm punished for telling the truth?
It's like, no.
I made my choices.
I knew the risks.
And so you have a story called, I'm perfect and you should pity me.
I'm perfect.
I was honest and you should pity me.
No, I'm not going to pity you.
You made a choice to criticize a coworker and rely on your boss.
Both of those choices were wrong.
Now you can either analyze what you did and say, why did I get it wrong?
Or you can whine that you're just being punished for telling the truth.
No, you got it wrong.
You thought the lion was friendly and it almost took your arm off.
Okay?
So learn from that.
How are you going to learn from it if you make excuses and blame everyone else?
You made these choices to work there to criticize your co-worker.
Maybe you didn't have a strong enough relationship with your boss.
Maybe you criticize someone your boss values more or produces more value for your boss in which case it sides with him.
Maybe your boss is completely screwed up and dysfunctional in which case you were taking money from a dysfunctional person and if you weren't aware of that, that's not good.
You made a choice, you made a call, you made a decision and you didn't get what you wanted.
You wanted to be able to criticize your co-worker and keep your job.
You criticized your co-worker, you got fired.
And you can either make a story out of it, an opera out of it, where you're the noble heroic virtue and everyone else is bad and you get punished for telling the truth and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah!
Or you could be an absolute freakin' adult, an actual freakin' adult, and say, well, I made a choice.
It worked out badly.
What can I learn from this?
How can I improve?
Not, how can I cast myself in a tragic play called Woe Is Me?
And I say this with great affection.
I love the fact that you're here.
I love the fact that you're bringing up these issues.
I really do.
Thank you.
Very, very important.
Very cool stuff.
Very neat.
Very nice.
Very good.
But you made a bad call.
Happens to all of us.
It happens to all of us.
I sympathize.
I really do.
But you're not learning anything if you're just pitying yourself.
You're not learning everything if you're just creating a morality play called, I'm virtuous and everyone else is bad.
So, you say, thanks... She says, thank you for answering my question.
Being rude to those who deserve it makes sense.
Also, congrats to Izzy on her promotion.
We'll donate later.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
To be technical, and I'm sure I spoke badly about this, you're not being rude if you are being rude back.
It's the old question, is self-defense violence?
Not really.
Because you're aiming to minimize violence.
You're aiming to diminish violence.
It's like saying, is surgery stabbing?
Well, I guess you could look at it that way, but surgery is designed for your health.
And so if you're rude back to someone, I don't feel that that's rude.
I feel that's fair.
Right?
So if you're in a fight and they say, like you're in some street fight or some fist fight in school or whatever, and you say, OK, nothing below the belt and no faces, OK, nothing below the belt and no faces, and the guy starts trying to punch your balls and face, and then you're like, are you then cheating if you punch his balls and face?
No!
You're not cheating.
It's fair.
He broke the rules.
You don't have to keep the rules.
You didn't break the rules.
You followed him breaking the rules.
You accepted that there are no rules.
So you can't be held to those rules when the other person has broken them.
Does that make sense?
You say, no face, nothing below the waist.
He goes to your balls, tries to punch you in the face.
Okay, so he's saying there are no rules.
So once he said there are no rules, you can do what you want.
And rude people are saying there's no such thing as consideration in this relationship.
So you're not being rude.
You're just saying, okay, well, we don't have to be considerate.
You're not being rude.
Rude is when you initiate it.
Violence is when you initiate it.
If that makes sense.
Sorry I know that's a little technical but I wouldn't want you calling yourself rude when you're simply responding to somebody else saying there are no rules here.
I don't have to be considerate.
I don't have to think of your feelings.
I don't have to do any of that.
Okay so we can just say what the hell we want to each other.
Now the other people will be rude to you and then when you direct back or assertive back or you play by their own rules right then they'll say well you're being rude.
Just because it's easier.
Because people would rather you have to be rude if they could do whatever they want.
Some people, right?
Alright, we may be low on questions.
We're certainly low on donations.
But that's fine.
I guess I'm just being punished for telling the truth.
Sorry, I don't mean to be too much of a jerk about it.
Just medium.
Medium jerk.
Medium jerk.
But, um...
Yeah, if you're listening to this later, freedomain.com.net, I would really, really appreciate it, to help out Le Show.
And I'll just go check one or two more places for any questions that have floated in.
And I'll check here.
Any last tips?
Happy to do another question or two, but I think we got through everything tonight, and it's good questions.
I really do appreciate that.
Yeah, I don't particularly like having people in my life where you can't be annoyed, right?
Steph, you said, I feel that's fair.
Isn't that a judgment and not a feeling?
I just want to make sure I understand this.
I think fair is an instinct as well, like it's a kind of feeling.
It's an instinct.
Fair is something we also share with the animal kingdom.
Fair is something that little toddlers have.
Aw, no fair!
Right?
So fair is kind of an instinct to make sure we get the right amount of resources.
So fair is in the realm of feeling.
I get that you can also say in the abstract fair, technical fair, that there's a judgment aspect to it as well, right?
So I feel that's fair.
It's sort of like when I talk about restitution, right?
So when I talk about restitution, I say, well, restitution has to be enough that you're okay with it.
You're okay with what happened, right?
So the example I've used, of course, is, you know, I borrow your car and I ding your car.
If I just hand back the car with five bucks saying, you fix it, you probably annoy it, right?
Because I dinged your car and I didn't fix it or pay, right?
Now, if I go and get it repaired and buffed out and also get the car detailed and all of that, then you're like, okay, I don't mind that it happened.
I'm not happy that it happened.
I'm okay.
You've reached a point of equilibrium that's kind of like a feeling thing.
There's a gut sense about these things.
However, if I ding your car and then hand it back to you with a million dollars, you're incredibly happy.
That I dinged your car because now you've got a slightly dinged car and a million dollars or something like that, right?
So that's too much.
That's excessive, right?
That's excessive restitution, right?
So... Fairness has an instinctual feel to it.
If that makes sense.
It happens in relationships all the time, right?
So, if you are a guy who works 10-12 hours a day for his family and then your wife is, I don't know, has got one kid in school and doesn't really do much cooking and cleaning, it feels unfair.
It's a feeling, like it bothers you, right?
See, there are some judgments that produce a feeling and there are other feelings that are the equivalent of a judgment.
I'm sorry, I don't want to sound self-justifying, so give me a second to explain it and maybe it'll hang together, maybe it'll fall apart.
So if you say, well I've just been punished for telling the truth, that's a thought that will provoke a feeling of self-righteousness and self-pity and self-justification.
But the feeling doesn't necessarily exist without that thought.
Because the thought is generating that.
It's one way of looking at it, which is self-pity and says, I have nothing to lose.
I have nothing to learn other than that I'm a victim and good people die like dogs in the trenches of corporate warfare or something, right?
Whereas if you have a sense of fairness in an interaction, right?
So if you have, like, if you're over the age of 20 and you have friends, when you all go out for dinner, what you do is You know, I'll pay, like, if I've got three groups of friends, I have more than that, but let's just say I've got three groups of friends, three families or three whatever, right?
So we'll go out and I'll pay for dinner and then they'll pay for dinner, but what we won't do is, well, you had the dessert and you had a drink and you ordered the steak that was slightly more expensive than this chicken and, like, we won't do that.
We won't do that.
We'll just... and we get a sense.
If there's a guy who never pays, after a while you just get annoyed.
Now, it's not the thought, it's the instinct.
It's the... fairness is like an instinct.
And we know this because, as I've said before, if you give people abstract mathematical problems, they can't solve them.
But if you put it in, this guy orders this drink, and this drink is this fair, is this... and they get it like that, right?
We have an instinct for fairness that comes all the way from being babies and toddlers.
So, the feelings arise from an instinctual sense of fairness, like, how come this guy never pays?
And then you might say to him, it's like, hang on, like, there are three of us, three families, we're all going out for dinner, we've paid the last five or six times, you don't pay.
Is there something going on?
Are you broke?
I mean, is there something we need to know?
I mean, it doesn't necessarily come from a state of hostility, but you get this kind of feeling, this instinct.
You're not keeping little notches on your, you know, It's just a general sense, right?
General sense of what's fair.
So if you're in a relationship where you're doing a lot of work and the other people like let's say that I mean I had one of these relationships right where I was working and paying the bills and my girlfriend was not doing much work and then when I came home she would like want me to do half the housework and it's like well that's fair it's like well but but you're not paying half the bills right so And you know, I'm like, I was said, look, I'm happy to do half the housework, but then you have to pay half the bills.
No, that's like, not how it works.
It's like, yeah, it's not how it works for you.
But it's kind of how it works in the realm of fairness.
So, and of course, these things ebb and flow in relationships, there's times when somebody is kind of unwell, or maybe feeling a bit down, and they don't contribute as much.
And there's other times when people have a lot more energy, they can, but it, you know, generally balances out.
I work hard, my wife works hard, and I never have any doubt at all that we're both contributing equally to the relationship.
In fact, we spend half the day saying to the other person, yeah, put your feet up, relax, you know?
Well, basically marriage is yelling at each other from other rooms until one of you dies.
Fairness is an instinct that manifests as a feeling and then often needs to be conceptualized, but this kind of judgment of like, well I guess I'm just getting punished for telling the truth, I feel punished, that is a real judgment that conditions the emotions that follow, whereas fairness is an instinct that we have that we have to find a way to verbalize.
And it is fair.
It is fair If somebody pays for what you're shipping, then you should ship it.
That's fair.
If they don't pay, you don't have to ship it.
It's not fair.
But you know, if you withhold shipping what someone has paid for, then you're kind of stealing from them.
But if you also ship something that someone didn't pay for, then you're kind of stealing from everyone who did pay for it because you've got to raise prices to cover that, right?
So hopefully that makes sense.
What do you think is going on with Bitcoin?
I just did a show on Bitcoin.
I just did a show on Bitcoin and I said it was technical, not foundational, and things seem to be rebounding alright.
Alright, I think we may be done.
It was a bit of an early show tonight.
And I appreciate the people who have donated, but it's a little hard to keep the motivation up sometimes.
So, that's all right.
It's not your job to motivate me.
Oh, thank you.
That helped.
I appreciate that.
Thank you for the tip.
Why are they not showing up?
All right.
Any other last questions, issues, comments, challenges, problems?
He knows you know, but he's got problems.
The Great Fish from Merlion.
Very interesting singer.
Great lyricist.
But I think a bit of a druggie, if I remember rightly.
Not that that was that unusual in the 70s.
Yes, the show you're looking for is 5588, The Economy, Crash or Correction?
FDRpodcast.com slash 5588.
All right.
Well, I think we're done and I really, really do.
We'll donate on the website as soon as the groceries are put away.
Thank you, thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Have yourselves an absolutely gorgeous and delightful evening.
We will talk to you Friday and don't forget, of course, if you want, I'm going to have to raise prices because demand is a little high, but you can squeeze a few more people in.
I just did two today because my family and my ladies were out with the shopping and because we got ourselves a wedding to go to.
A wedding!
We'll be telling you all about the wedding later because you know some of the people involved.
So I did two.
I did six hours of call-ins today.
One free, one paid.
And you can go to freedomain.com slash call-in to To book a call.
And it can be open, public.
It can be private, if that's what you prefer.
But freedomain.com slash call.
Sorry, freedomain.com slash call.
Yes, freedomain.com slash call, and you can put a call in request.
We've just had some really smoking call-ins lately, and they're not out yet, but they will be soon.
Yeah, freedomain.com slash call.
All right.
Thanks, everyone.
Have yourselves a glorious, wonderful evening.
We'll talk to you Friday and we'll do our usual Sunday, I think.
Yeah, we'll do our usual Sunday thing, which is the second hour will be done only for the spiciest questions known to man or God.
All right.
Thanks, everyone.
Have a beautiful evening.
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