All Episodes
Previous Next
Sept. 20, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:49:37
Go Save Her Eggs!
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good evening everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
Oh my gosh.
It is less than a week until my birthday.
You know, it's a birthday month and unfortunately we've been heading in the wrong direction with regards to subscriptions.
It's been, well I won't say quite tanking, but it's not exactly the opposite of tanking.
Now maybe I've been doing a bad job, in which case I am happy to hear how I can do it better.
Personally I think I've been putting out some fairly fine work, but You may not agree.
So, if you would like to help out the show, freedomain.com slash donate.
Massively appreciated, because, yeah, it's not heading in... I don't mind if it stays even.
I'm not looking to get super wealthy, but it really shouldn't be diminished too much.
So, you know, don't make me go shirtless.
Don't make me do OnlyFans, people, for the sake of all that's holy.
So if you could sign up at subscribestar.com slash freedomain or freedomain.locals.com or drop me a couple of kronig at freedomain.com slash donate.
I would very much appreciate it.
And let's get on with the show.
Let's get time to get ready for the show.
All right.
Howdy Steph.
I believe I finally had a genuine breakthrough thought.
Ah, yes.
For years, I've been tormented by the question, why do toxic people get fixated and obsessed with me?
I was sitting by a beautiful pond in the mountains and the thought occurred to me, why am I obsessed with toxic people?
I believe finally coming to that understanding on the pattern that I keep repeating has alone made me substantially less reactive.
Some weeks ago I had a good female friend call me out on my proclivity, oh good word, to appease people who I really shouldn't be appeasing.
That coupled with some other things finally led me to truly understand my role in these messes that keep playing out.
I'm wondering what other thoughts you may have.
And if this is a healthy understanding I've gained, hopefully this is something of general philosophical value as well.
But what is your understanding?
Your understanding can't be, why am I obsessed with toxic people?
That's a question, not an answer.
So, my good friend.
What is the answer?
What is the answer?
So, I mean, and there has to be more.
There has to be.
In the midnight hour, she cried more, more, more.
In the midnight hour, babe, more, more, more.
More, more, more.
All right.
So, anyone had to bomb squad, inspect the electronics.
That's great.
Let's get on all the NSA keywords in Minecraft.
And you know it's funny, this week I've been doing, I've done three and a half, maybe three hours, 45 minutes of interviews.
Someone's giving me great questions, great general philosophical and specific questions and we're going to put all of that together, put it out as one big giant blob.
It's probably going to be six hours worth of interviews this week.
Great questions and I always, always, always have for me the standard to not repeat myself As much as possible, do not repeat myself.
Not repeat myself, I say.
He said, making yet another joke.
Yeah, not repeat myself.
And new answers to old questions to me are a lot of fun and very, very interesting.
So that will be probably coming out next week.
Six hours of straight-up hardcore philosophy.
Oh yes, with a little bit, a few, a smidgen, a tiny little burpees worth of current events.
All right, let me see.
I will get to your question.
Because it goes back to what you talk about.
It's being manipulative thinking that I if I'm just good enough or whatever
enough that I would get people to change their behavior and treat me well.
Is it a secret for non-donors who is interviewing you?
No, I don't think it's a secret.
It's Keith Knight of the Libertarian Institute.
Really, really, I mean, the man's done his homework and the questions are fantastic.
We've done one on ethics.
We've done one on propaganda.
We've done one on self-knowledge.
It's just, yeah, it's really, really good stuff.
And, you know, I don't want to be one of these guys with canned answers.
I just don't want to be one of these, you know, Harry Brown with an E. I love the guy.
But man, did he ever have some canned answers.
Holy crap.
It was like input-output, right?
Just kind of same stuff over and over.
All right.
So.
Why are toxic people, why do they get fixated and obsessed with you?
Yeah.
Rebel Yell.
I actually saw Billy Billy Idol.
What a great name.
I saw Billy Idol live way, way back in the day.
In fact, my best friend's sister caught a plastic cup that he threw into the audience in his rebel phase and she kept it in a plastic ziplock on her shelf for years.
I also love that, I can't even remember who said it, but it was like something something more stained than Billy Idol's futon.
More stained than Billy Idol's futon.
I can only dream of analogies that vivid.
So why would toxic people get obsessed with you?
Why would toxic people get obsessed with you?
Because you give them what they want.
Because you give them what they want.
There is a great error in the world as a whole.
And that error is that inside a bad person is a good person just struggling and striving to get out.
What is that inside every fat person is a thin person trying to get out and one female comedian is like, not me, I hate the bitch!
But inside every good, every bad person you see there's just a really sweet, nice, wonderful person buried down there like hope at the bottom of the chest of hell.
Just a lovely sweet, you know, the original soul, God's original imprint of the person, the blueprint of the great person just embedded in that person.
He's a great person.
You just need to pick the lock and tease him on out.
Uh, no.
No.
No, it's not true.
It's not true.
Now, it is true that in some people there is potential for growth.
Obviously this is what we talk about and this is what we aim for is to give people the capacity
to grow.
And there's one thing that you have to do or say to someone to find out if they're worth
investing in.
Let's say that they're dysfunctional and messed up and if you say to them what can you do better and they can't think of anything, run!
Run like the wind!
Run like you're in a hard rock song on a Pink Floyd album.
My God!
Run like hell!
Because if they catch you in the backseat trying to pick her locks, they're gonna send you back to mother in a cardboard box.
It's a great song.
The live version is even better than the album version, which is unusual, but... So, yeah, can you improve?
Is there anything you could have done better?
Are you at all responsible for your situation?
How are you failing your own values?
What are your values?
And if they... No, no, I did everything perfectly.
It's all everybody else's life.
Brian, just run.
Just run.
Just run.
You can no more grow someone's observing ego than you can turn a cyclops into somebody with two eyes.
Maybe with a spoon and some cherry bombs but that's about it.
So when you come across dysfunctional people and there's a certain age after which dysfunctional people do not improve.
For me, the cutoff is around 30.
Maybe slightly younger for women, but the cutoff is about 30.
If somebody has not noticed that they're dysfunctional and tried to figure out how to help themselves, read books, do something practical, go to therapy, learn philosophy, something like that, if somebody hasn't figured that shit out by the time they're 30, they are a lost, lost, lost course.
Now, of course, people can always find exceptions, but who cares?
I could care less about exceptions.
I knew a guy, he was 40 and he finally came to his senses.
It's like, yeah, sure, sure.
Sure.
You ever go skydiving?
I suppose it's theoretically possible you could jump out of the plane without a parachute and still survive.
Yet still be parachuted.
It is true you could play the lottery to save for your old age retirement.
But it's probably not.
A good idea.
We play the odds in the real world.
We play the odds.
You know, theoretically, I would never recommend it, but theoretically, you could drive your bike all over town blindfolded and be totally fine.
You could just happen to turn and stop and do everything, but you don't do that!
People don't live like that.
That's why they say it's the exception that proves the rule.
I didn't understand that for the longest time, but the exception that proves the rule is, well, why do you remember it?
Because it's so outlandish.
It's so outlandish.
Not as outlandish as Billie Eilish and her brother reading an obvious political script, but it's pretty outlandish.
So, the reason why you have dysfunctional people around you is you give them what they want.
You have the hope that they will change.
And you also get, I'm not saying about you in general, but people as a whole, they get a petty flash of power.
Oh, that glorious, I'm a healer kind of power.
Oh, yes.
Oh, you poor, benighted, confused person.
What a mess you're making of life.
I'm going to slither in.
Like, squid arm to Jesus and hug you and love you and caress you back into sanity because I'm just... It's so gross.
Again, I'm not talking about you in particular, this person, but it's... Oh, I can just help people so much.
I'm such a... I'm such a helper.
I care about people.
I just want to make them better.
So, I mean, just stop giving bad people what they want and you'll find very quickly then you won't have any bad people around you.
Stop giving the bad people what they want.
And what do they want you to give them?
They want you to have hope that they'll improve because then they can get their hooks into you and drain your jugular dry and toss you off like a dandelion fluff into the winds, right?
Steph, what do you think is going on with the economy?
50 point interest rate drop.
Oh Joe, please tell me you don't know what's going on with the economy.
Gee, why would they lower interest rates right before an election?
Huh?
That's, oh boy, I just, you know that the Fed has more to do even than the mainstream media as a whole with elections, right?
I mean, why would they want the cost of borrowing money to go down shortly before an election?
Huh?
It's impossible that I can't.
My brain will explode if I try and think that hard.
Why can't I love myself?
Two reasons.
A. You were not loved yourself as a child and B. probably as a result of that you don't
do things that you consider moral and admirable which would accrue self-affection.
Good evening Steph I'd like to ask you to leave the room.
I'm giddy with excitement.
I'm running my first marathon on Saturday.
Hopefully it's only Saturday, not Saturday through Wednesday.
I put so much work and heart into the training and I feel prepared.
I do have a fear that I won't do as well as I think I'm going to do.
I'm attempting to hedge potential disappointment.
But I also just want to feel proud after my accomplishment.
How can I get myself into a good headspace?
Sorry, what is wrong with thinking you won't do as well as you think you're going to do?
I don't know.
What's wrong with that?
What's wrong with that?
Maybe I'm missing something.
Every time I sit down to do a show, I'm like, I hope I do as well as I think I'm going to do.
I hope I do as well as I want to do.
I hope I do as well as I'm perfectly capable or possibly capable of doing.
And I generally fall short because I have massively high standards for the quality of what it is that I produce.
I have a fear I won't do as well as I think I'm going to do.
Good!
Good!
F'ing A, brother, I'm very glad you have that fear, because basically that's the only way you're going to do well, is if you're frightened of doing badly.
If you said, I'm perfectly confident, I have absolute perfect confidence in everything that I'm going to do, it's like, were you not human?
I have a fear of it.
I'm attempting to hedge potential disappointment.
Okay?
So do you know how you hedge potential disappointment?
Run faster!
I mean, if you've trained, and I don't think I ever ran a full marathon.
I did do a 20 mile run once, but I don't think I ever did full marathons a little longer than that.
But if you are... Look, running is just retarded willpower, let's be honest.
It's not like you are trying to beat someone who's a tennis expert, but it's all these finicky little tiny muscle movements.
It's just put one foot in front of the other and make yourself go faster.
It's a completely retarded sport.
It's barely a sport.
And look, I mean, I respect the runners.
A lot of willpower and training.
I get all of that.
But it's like, what skill?
Move leg, move leg, move leg, move leg, move leg.
I have more, you know, people who throw dots with three beers in their belly have more actual skill.
It's just run, run, run, run and be from Kenya.
So.
Physical limitations aside, running is just willpower.
Are you just willing to run faster?
Are you willing to push through the burn?
Are you willing to overcome the Sense of your legs turning into dissolving zombies?
Are you willing to just fucking push yourself to the max?
Again, once you've trained and assuming that this isn't going to injure you or whatever, it's just a matter of willpower.
That's all that running is outside of training.
Of course, you know, natural lung power and blah blah blah, but it's just willpower.
The way you hedge potential disappointment is you run faster.
Just run faster, it's just willpower.
Just willpower.
Alright.
Alright, let's get to where things are.
Ah, I bought a copy of The Islander, featuring your essay, buddy.
Big ups.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, you can get that from the Lotus Eaters.
The Islander part two, volume two, has got one of my essays in it.
They lower rates so they can raise them.
No, they don't lower rates so they can raise them.
Of course, that's going to happen eventually, but they lower rates to stimulate economic activity so people feel slightly better and will vote for the incumbent.
Come on, people. Come on.
Oh, this is the guy... dysfunctional people are obsessed.
Yeah, I'm pretty disgusted with myself for wasting my time.
I just feel like I finally untangled the knot, so to speak, that's kept me in a cycle of getting sucked into this garbage, and as a result, able to let people's bullshit mostly fall off like rain on a raincoat.
Simple stuff, but it's been a long road.
Okay, maybe stop being an asshole to yourself.
Maybe.
Just maybe.
Stop saying you're disgusted with yourself.
That's a shitty thing to say.
Here's a test, man.
Here's a test.
It's a fundamental basic test with regards to language.
Okay?
Would you use that term with someone that you love?
Hey, you sexy beast!
Hey, Beck!
You are correct.
S.B.M.
Sexy Beast Molyneux.
So, it's just a basic test of self-respect.
Would you use that word against someone you love?
Let's say you have a child.
Would you say to your child, I'm disgusted with you!
Would you say to your beloved wife, I'm disgusted with you!
Pathetic!
Right?
No, you wouldn't say that.
Right?
You wouldn't say that.
You know, you gotta live with yourself your entire life.
Maybe it's time to try to get along with yourself.
Be kinda nice to yourself.
Have some sympathy for yourself.
Be a little gentle with yourself or at least don't be a fargan icehole to yourself.
Just try.
Try being nice to yourself, which means don't let prior verbal abusers take over your self-flagellating,
hysterical, self-important whips of self-attack.
Andrew.
Hey, one of the Gibbs.
Steph, I have people in my life who absolutely cannot stop talking on the telephone.
Even after I've expressed I need to end the conversation, it goes from a pleasant goodbye to a hostage situation and I want to say, conversation terminated, and just hang up.
This conversation has been terminated.
Uh, I can't do Arnold, but um...
Yeah.
The Ducanator.
I'll be BOK!
So, yeah, I've mentioned this before, my mother was yapping away, she had the door closed, she was in taking a bath and talking to me, and I got so bored I went to the mall, played a video game, met with a friend, chatted for a while, got a pop, came back, didn't even notice I'd gone.
You know there's a philosopher who says, or maybe he's a writer, who says that one of the basic
one of the most basic problems in life is that people have no capacity, so many people have
no capacity to sit in a room for an hour quietly with their own thoughts.
There are a lot of people who have loggeria.
Logorrhea is just compulsive talking.
And the reason they talk all the time and can't stop or shut up is because they can't stand the sound of their own silence.
It's a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
People talk and talk and talk because they can't stand the sound of their own silence.
My therapist once said that she quite respected the Dalai Lama.
Because the Dalai Lama spends an hour in the morning meditating and shaping his intention for the day.
So, he claims.
One of the things I love in life is when you have that slow wake up.
You know, that balloon arising from the Mariana Trench.
This sort of slow wake up.
I had some really delightful dreams this morning.
So, this slow wake up.
And you're just kind of still and at peace, the thoughts are rolling over you, the excitement for the day is starting.
What's my day going to be like?
What do I want to achieve?
Rehearsal, preparation, visualizations, all the good stuff that helps you achieve great things in the world.
That is the sound of silence in your mind.
Okay, let me ask you this.
Let me ask the audience this.
Let me ask you guys this.
What percentage of people in your life are content to sit in silence with their own thoughts?
What percentage of people don't have to have the TV on, don't have to have the radio on, don't have to have social media open, don't have to be yapping or typing or podcasts or like just they can sit in comfort with their own thoughts?
What do they call it?
Raw-dogging flights.
No meals.
No books.
No movies.
No audio.
Just sitting there in the flight.
How many people do you know who are content to live in the space of their own mind without distractions?
Zero percent.
Maybe five percent.
0% just myself.
Right.
you You know, for an ungodly percentage of people in this world, life is three things.
It's the three D's.
They're triple D's.
Their life is three things in chronological order.
Disaster, distraction, death.
Disaster, distraction, death.
Their childhoods are disasters, their adulthoods are distractions, and then they die.
They are chased out of themselves by trauma as children, they orbit themselves as adults through distraction, and then they just die.
You can throw in desperation as well for some.
I can do it and it's certainly beneficial at times.
Sometimes I'm just sick of being so isolated.
But you choose to be isolated.
I don't know.
What do you mean you're sick of being so isolated?
You choose to be isolated.
Because you have, as a hobby and a habit, trying to fix dysfunctional people, which keeps healthy and functional people far outside your life.
I'm not saying this is true of you, but there's a lot of people Who can't stand being around functional people because it makes them feel terrible for the time they've wasted and all of the people they've tried to help?
based upon vanity, but you've chosen to be isolated.
Everything in life is a choice.
If I could tattoo that on the back of your retina, well, that would be an NAP violation, so I wouldn't do that.
But I'm not saying I wouldn't be tempted to do that.
Everything in life is a choice.
I'm just sick of being so isolated, so stop choosing isolation.
Sick of being alone?
Stop choosing to be alone.
Sick of not having a girlfriend?
Stop choosing to avoid talking to women.
Sick of being underpaid?
Increase your value and negotiate better.
Once you get that everything in your life is a choice, Honestly, it's about the most powerful perspective that exists on this planet.
Everything in your life is a choice.
And victimhood is only for manipulative assholes.
Tell me, I'm happy to hear things.
Everything in your life is a choice.
Just take that persp...
Oh, but what if I get sick and there's no warning?
Yeah, your choice is how you deal with that.
I'm not saying you choose absolutely everything that happens to you.
I get that.
Your height is not your choice.
Your height is your parents' choice by who they chose to marry.
Everything in life is a choice.
So, my friend, don't say, I'm sick of being so isolated.
Say, I no longer want to choose isolation.
The language is everything, my God.
The framing, the language is everything.
Don't say, I'm sick of being isolated.
Say, I no longer want to choose isolation.
Yeah, James says I got sick of the fat.
Food is a choice.
Exercise is a choice.
Sleep is a choice.
How I respond to the emotions that came up is a choice!
Every time you are tempted to feel like a victim, it's not a good idea to be a victim.
Say I no longer choose, I no longer want to choose victimhood.
I no longer want to accept victimhood.
I will now choose the things that make me not a victim.
It's a result of your choices.
Thank you, Adam.
It's the result of your choices.
When you're a kid, your family, of course, is not the result of your choice.
But we have to leave childhood behind at some point.
It's gotta be a half-life or an expiration date for childhood.
Gotta be...
an expiration date for childhood.
When you're a kid, you genuinely have no choice over your life when you're a kid.
You're just stuck with the people you happen to be born with.
For better, for indifferent, or for worse.
Thank you, Andrew.
So, when you're a kid, you are a victim.
And as long as you consider yourself to be a victim, you will never ever escape your childhood.
You will forever be in that cupboard under the stairs with people thumping overhead hoping nobody notices you.
As an adult, you finally escape under the wing of dysfunctional parents if that's what you had.
You finally escape under the clawed wings of dysfunctional parents, when you recognize that as an adult, everything that's in your life is the result of choice.
It is very seductive to feel like a victim.
And I say this, I mean, I have my own paroxysms of self-pity and battles with... I understand.
I'm not any kind of guru who's beyond or above all of this stuff.
I have this wrestle from time to time as well.
Oh, woe is me!
The minister of doom and gloom from the kingdom of woe is me takes up residence between my ears and whispers sweet nothings.
Oh, you just tried to reason with the world and look how you've been attacked and look how you've been deplatformed and look how you were kicked off here and you were kicked off there and look what happened to your income and oh, you're such a victim.
It's tempting, I get it!
Who are you?
It's got this violins, oh no, woe is me, I just did nothing but good and I got treated
with nothing but bad and it's unfair.
I get it.
I get it.
Who are you?
Who put a gun to my head and made me talk about controversial things?
Anybody?
Anybody!
Andy Buehler!
Anybody!
Who put a gun to my head to make me talk about controversial things?
Mmm!
IQ!
Well, that shouldn't be a problem!
Mmm!
Abusive parents!
That's not going to be a voluntary family!
Oh, that's going to be fine!
I mean, why on earth have people not talked about this stuff much in the past?
I can't imagine why.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
I mean, if you want to know my deep secret thoughts about all of this stuff, if you're interested, I don't know if you are or you aren't, but just in case you are, if I believed in a God, I would say that God Made me rush out with absolute cockiness, hiding from me the blowback so the message could get out, and then I would just be shocked, or surprised, or appalled by the blowback, but the message would already be out.
Sometimes you just need to be overconfident to stake your claim.
So it would be like, yeah, yeah, just go talk about these things, yeah, it's a rational world, sure, yeah, go talk about these things, because the message has to get out, the truth has to get out.
You know, if I'd have known about the blowback before starting... It's hard to say, because, you know, that's a time-traveled bit of nonsense or whatever, right?
But if I'd have known about the genuine blowback before starting... I could see that maybe I would have tempered my... But then what?
But then what?
Oh, I'm not going to talk about the family, I'm not going to talk about science, I'm not going to talk about IQ, I'm not going to talk about politics, okay?
Then I'm just another non-aggression principal who's good, and foreign policy is bad, and the Federal Reserve is counterfeiting.
I'm just another libertarian bobblehead saying the same stuff that has never worked before,
will never ever work, but I guess it's not much but at least it's dishonest work.
Twins on the way making five children.
I credit you for much of it.
Yes, tell your wife she was great.
No, I'm kidding.
Thank you, that's very kind, and congratulations to you and your wife-slash-husband-slash... No, let's just go with wife or husband.
Wonderful to hear.
Wonderful to hear.
Congratulations.
Wonderful. Yep, I uh...
I took a long, slow, low-level pee on just about every third rail known to man, and then it's like, oh my, is there blowback?
Oh my gosh, I can't believe it!
Right?
So, the... Can you believe what the liberals are now doing?
What hypocrisy!
Dems are real racists!
If the situations were reversed, right, what aboutism?
Which is, you know, just Socratic questioning, but... No.
There's a great question from Keith Knight today, which was, how is it that people are able to hold contradictory perspectives or opinions in their minds, a double-think thing, without any seeming discomfort?
Great question.
All right, let us go to Rumble, Aaron, oh yes, two A's.
I get it.
Yeah, your parents wanted you to be first in the alphabet.
I get it.
All right, Aaron says, Stefan, I've been a fan since the early days you recorded in your car.
Well, you must have given people a lot of breeze.
Get back into politics.
We need you now more than ever.
Jump back on Twitter slash X and help us combat the insane hordes.
Well, you can't combat the insane hordes with reason.
I was talking about this today with Keith.
In terms of differences of opinion or perspective or debates within society, right?
It's been over 40 years since I really got into philosophy.
42 years really, almost 43.
So, half a century near as dammit.
I'm old!
So it's been almost half a century since I got into philosophy.
I can't even tell you, I probably have 60-70 thousand hours into philosophy.
Got a great education out of it, read thousands and thousands of books, interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people, studied rhetoric, debate, conversation, persuasion, negotiation, and public speaking, and appropriate levels of comedy, and all kinds of wild stuff, like the sort of combined, I know, business, and so on.
Developed all of these skills.
Now, for somebody to take me on in a debate and win, is pretty tough.
Love.
You know, it's obviously not infallible, but it's pretty tough with this level of experience that I have for people to take me on.
You know, the first time I ever debated in university, I was sixth best in Canada, or fifth best in Canada.
very first time.
So, 42, 43 years of study, research, and skill development in probably at least a dozen
different fields from history to politics to law to
certain aspects of self-knowledge to philosophy itself, logic,
and so all of that I sort of bring To bear on the world, right?
And it's a lot of skill, it's a lot of challenge, And it's tough work.
And I think you've seen even when I'm being sort of jumped by people when it's sort of an ambush as it was in the third Joe Rogan show or when I was on TV and got ambushed and you know I think I've held my own.
I think I fought back pretty well and pretty hard and not given way and I don't think I can ever remember publicly disavowing something I know to be true.
So on the one side is a lot of skill, an inhuman amount of research and reading and practice.
I mean, I'm sure most of us debate things in our heads a lot, right?
I do this all the time.
I steel man the opposing position.
Like, I've really, really polished how to extract principles and reverse them.
So that's on the one side.
On the other side is some deranged idiot screaming Nazi and phoning in a bomb threat.
See how this shit just can't work in a civilization?
You see how this just can't work?
Imagine being a boxer and you train!
For like night and day, 10 years, 15 years, you're just training and boxing and training and boxing and ugh!
You're like Muhammad Ali, like you just, I can't do another sit-up, man.
And you're finally ready for the heavyweight title and they just call in an airstrike and blow you up.
You understand there's no sport called boxing when there are airstrikes and there's no sport called civilizational debate when someone can scream Nazi and call in a bomb threat and have it all go away.
Right?
Now until such time as society stops listening to the crazy people and has the crazy and violent people Displace the rational and empirical people, society can go fuck itself.
If you're not willing to stand up and defend the rational among you and you
want the crazies to wash over you, you get the life you get and society as a
whole can go fuck itself.
And even you, listen I appreciate you bringing up this topic.
I'm.
I appreciate you bringing up this topic.
Staff, you gotta get back on Twitter.
Staff, you gotta rejoin the fight.
I would submit, you don't know how to get shit done in this world.
And I say this with affection, love and respect.
I really, really do.
I know this sounds odd.
But I have been an entrepreneur now for over 30 years.
I put my wallet, my ass, my reputation on the line.
I've won and I've lost.
So if you want someone to do something, telling them you want them to do it is completely
It's not how you get anything done in this world.
All it does is it tells me you've never really had to get anything done in this world.
When I wanted to start a business, did I just wander around saying, Hey man, I really want people to invest in me.
Hey man, you really should invest in me.
Hey, you don't be great as if you invested in me.
Man, come on.
Give me some money.
Give me some scratch.
Give me some dinero.
Shackle me, bro.
I need some money.
I want some money.
You should donate.
Right?
Right?
No.
When I had to go and raise, I wasn't alone in this of course, but when I had to go and
raise the $80,000 back in the day it took for me
to start this software company, what did I have to do?
Thank you.
Did I just go around saying to people, donate to me!
Invest in me!
Yeah!
No!
I had to build the raw materials of a proof-of-concept piece of software.
I had to do rigorous market analysis.
I had to do projected sales.
I had to talk about the contacts that I might have in the industry through which we might be able to get some of those sales.
I had to do competitive analysis.
I had to have a whole fucking binder put together before people would even think about investing
in what it is that I wanted to do.
you It makes about as much sense as a mosquito flying into my ear.
So let's say you want me back on Twitter.
Let's say you want me back, or whatever it is that you want me to do, right?
Let's say, hey, I'm open, man.
I'm open.
I'm open, right?
So what would you do if you really cared about getting me back on Twitter?
And I appreciate the thought.
I say this with all great affection.
What would you do if you really, really wanted to get me back on Twitter?
Well, what you would do if you were responsible and really cared about it, because otherwise people are just like, yeah, it'd be great if you're back on Twitter and then they just go back to, hey, I need to get some cereal for tomorrow and I wonder if there's anything new on my streaming service.
It's just a passing thought, right?
And it's really, really important to know when stuff is just passing thoughts for people and they don't really care about it because otherwise you get all invested in, you know, like there's this terrifying scene in the Ibsen play Head of Gobbler Where this woman is, I'm really going to butcher it, but it goes something like, it's just a lovely house, I don't like the house, the woman says, I don't like the house.
In fact, I kind of hate it.
It's like, well, why do you live here?
It's like, oh, it's ridiculous, man.
So I'm on a date with this guy.
And the conversation is so ungodly awkward, like we have nothing to say to each other.
So like we're doing this hairpin turn in this car, I look up at this house and out of absolute desperation, having nothing to say to this guy, like, oh, I love this house.
I like this house a lot.
I like this house.
I don't care about the house.
I had never really thought about the house.
It was just...
Nothing was happening and I was kind of dying on the inside because we had nothing to say to each other.
Things were so awkward and silent.
I just blurted out something and then this idiot thinks that I... Then he worked for like two years to buy me this house and I don't even care about it.
I don't even like it.
it's actually a complete monument to my own goddamn awkwardness in social situations.
So, uh, what are people saying here?
Getting back on Twitter would eliminate five to ten percent of long-time listener livestream questions.
Eh, maybe.
Getting back on Twitter would net you some percentage of new subscribers or something mentioning how it would benefit you and philosophy.
No!
Sorry to be annoying.
If you want to, look, this is not an exercise about me and Twitter.
This is an exercise about how you change people's minds.
Here's how you change people's minds.
Because, you know, we're all in the business of changing people's minds.
So, if you say to me, well, Steph, getting back on Twitter would net you some percentage of new subscribers.
Do you think I don't know that?
Holy shit, that sounds like a trip to my parents!
Oh, the Ibsen.
Ibsen was a fascinating writer.
He wrote with a scorpion in an upended glass jar and when he was out of inspiration he'd flick a pen at the scorpion and get it to sting the air and just get the joy juice flowing.
A complete psycho.
But not as bad as the guy who wrote Peter Pan.
Or, I guess, Alice in Wonderland for that matter.
So, you have to tell me Things I don't know.
I was just providing an example.
Not trying to convince you to go on X. Just to be clear.
I know.
I'm aware of that.
I did ask you to give me examples.
How do you get people to change their minds?
and I'll see you in the next one. Thanks.
So you have to give them evidence of a benefit to themselves that they don't already know for which you have some proof or some evidence.
You have to provide them a benefit for themselves that they don't already know and have some empirical proof.
So if I'm going to people and saying, invest $80,000 so I can start this company.
All right?
Then I have to say, here's the benefit that you will get out of that investment and here's the quantification of that benefit and here's the evidence by which I believe that to be true.
and the people who invested in my company got I think 80 times their
investment back.
So if people really cared about me coming back, say on X, then what they
would do is they would start a petition and they would say sign this petition if
you want Steph to come back on X and whether you'd be willing to subscribe if
if he did.
I will not be able to do it.
I'm not saying that would convince me but there's a quantifiable benefit to me and philosophy that I don't have the information about already that has some evidence behind it because it's got some numbers behind it.
That's how you change people's minds because all you're saying is you want me to do something but you just have to UPB this stuff, right?
You want me to go back on Twitter.
I don't want to go back on Twitter.
So why should I do what you want rather than what I want?
If people should do what other people want them to do, well, I want you to stop asking me to go back on Twitter so you should do it.
Like, it just cancels itself out.
If you want to get people to change their minds, you need to provide them some evidence for a quantifiable benefit to themselves or their cause that they don't already know.
You know, saying, hey man, you could reach more people if you were on X. I know!
Steph!
You're bull!
I know.
I know.
So you have to tell me something that I don't really know.
I don't know how many people would actually subscribe to me on X, right?
Because there's a monetization stuff on X and I'm aware of that and you know there's some nice stuff about that that could be beneficial and so on, right?
But if people really cared about it, you know people who get things done Make plans, execute plans, and bring empirical evidence to the table.
So, it's the difference between somebody saying, it'd be nice if the Cancer Society got more donations.
Yeah, that'd be nice.
Like, that's just farts in the wind.
It's just moving air molecules around.
Now, the people who matter, the people who get shit done, are the people who say,
I'm going to find a way, no matter what, to get more money into the coffers of the Cancer Research Society.
So I'm going to throw a giant party at a thousand dollars a plate.
I'm going to get all of these local celebrities to come.
There's going to be a fantastic band.
I'm going to work every contact and I'm going to work for a month or two or six or ten or twelve to make sure this happens and then I'm going to hand a nice juicy check for half a million dollars to the Cancer Society.
Now that's how you get shit done in life.
You don't just say, well, I would like this, if, that, obvious, yes.
Nobody cares.
Nobody cared that I wanted to start a company.
Nobody cared that I wanted to start a podcast.
Nobody cared, and very few people cared when I got deplatformed.
That's just a reality.
People got their own life.
I'm not mad about it.
People got their own lives to live and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And this has nothing to do with me and Twitter, just so you understand.
I want you to have the ability to affect real change in this life.
When I wanted to put a play on, I wrote a really, really great adaptation of Tregenya's Fathers and Sons, and after I left theater school, I wanted to produce this play.
Now, did I just say to a bunch of people, man, I'd really like to have this play produced?
No!
You make it happen.
Don't talk.
Don't cajole, don't exhort, don't whine, don't complain, don't nag, don't do any of that shit.
Just make stuff happen.
Just make stuff happen.
Thank you.
Bye.
you What I did was, I spent 25 bucks in the local newspaper saying auditions for
This play written by National Theatre School playwright attendee Stéphane Molyneux and I found a place in the library where I could hold the auditions and I just said it's going to be on Saturday at 2 p.m.
I need this type, this type, this type, this type of people.
People came and auditioned!
And then we rehearsed in the park, and I was actually going to produce the play in the park, but the weather looked like it was going to get kind of iffy, so I ended up renting a hall, a theatre.
Holy crap, and we chewed the living shit out of that newly Refinished theater floor.
My production designer, she brought in entire trees.
It was incredible.
Real trees!
With the lights coming down through the leaves.
Ah, it was beautiful.
Beautiful.
Real, honest to goodness.
She carted in honest to goodness trees.
But man, it chewed the shit out of that floor.
I thought I was doomed.
I thought I was going to owe them like $50,000, which would have broken me to repave the floor.
I was a broadcast student.
So we rehearsed.
And then there was a guy in the play.
He was just terrible.
I hated to do it.
I fired him.
I was going to take the role myself, but then I'd written the role based upon a friend of mine.
So I said, Hey, I know you're not an actor, but this role is like based on you.
If you could do it, that'd be great.
And he stepped in to do it and the play went on.
And we ran for two weeks, made my money back.
Maybe I made a little bit extra and I just made the play.
You just make things happen.
I want you to go back on Twitter, man.
We need you.
Then make something happen.
Well, I don't know what to... Okay, well then... Telling people what you want as an adult is almost always a complete and total fucking waste of time.
I want a girlfriend!
I want a better job!
I want a nicer place!
I want to live in a better neighborhood!
Oh god, shut up!
And you know, I say this with absolute love, affection and sympathy.
Just... Oh my god.
It's so girly.
I hate to sort of say it in this kind of way, but it just kind of is.
It's so girly.
I want, I want, I want, I want, I want.
I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't.
Yeah, it's crazy.
I don't get it.
I really wish the world were more philosophical.
I really want there to be a good philosophy show out there.
Oh my God!
When it comes to words, make it happen or make it stop.
.
If you don't care enough about it to organize a way to make it happen,
stop pretending you care a lot about it.
People saying, Steph, you should go back on Twitter.
To me it's the equivalent of, I like ice cream.
Oh, that's nice.
And?
I want you back on Twitter.
Yeah, I like carrot cake.
Since we're exchanging, I guess at least I can act on liking carrot cake.
I can make sweet love to it in the moonlight.
So...
...
Make things happen.
...
I wish... I want... You know, the world seems to be fairly inexplicably short on genies.
And fairies and tinkerbells are also in relatively short fucking supply.
You know, if you want things to happen, Make them happen or stop wasting everyone's time, attention, eardrums and oxygen.
Nobody cares what you want.
Nobody cares what I want.
People will care once you start making shit actually happen.
This was, I think her name was June Colbert, she was an activist back in the day and I was reading about her and this had a big influence on me.
She had some article, I think it was June Colbert, don't quote me on it, but she's like, you know, you just act like something's happening and magically it starts happening.
I just say, I've got all this great stuff for this fundraiser.
I'm gonna get, you know, a great band, and I'm gonna get these people interested, and these people, and people's like, oh wow, I guess it's really happening, and then they get on board, and then people come, and then you use those people to get more people to come, and then it happens!
You just act like it's gonna happen, and it happens!
But she doesn't just talk about stuff, and wishing that it would be, and wouldn't it be nice if, and it's just, my god!
Get things done!
Or shut up!
Get things done.
I'm begging you.
Oh, stop talking.
About it.
Because don't give yourself the satisfaction of thinking you're doing something about it.
You know, I have said that an apology and some restitution from Twitter would probably solve it.
Okay.
Make it happen.
I can't.
But that's the test of whether you care is whether you're willing to make it happen.
That's the only test of whether you care about something is whether you're willing to make it happen.
I am an empiricist, in case you haven't noticed or heard me repeat it about six zillion times over the course of my career.
I'm an empiricist.
If you really care about something, I want to see some evidence.
I want to see some evidence.
That's all.
you And if I... Because everyone can talk.
Everyone can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk.
But it's the people who get things done that society's resources, including time and attention, should flow to.
You know, when I first wrote a novel, and I was twenty... Oh, actually, I wrote two half a novels, one when I was eleven and then one when I was Maybe 20.
No, younger than that.
16 or 17.
And so, but my first real novel was called Revolutions.
And I remember then when I went back to university, people say, well, what did you do with your summer?
I said, well, I wrote this, I wrote that, I did this, I did that.
Oh, and I finished my first novel.
Oh my God!
Oh, you didn't.
I've always wanted to write a novel.
That is too funny for me.
That is... Oh, I've always wanted to write a play!
Yap, yap, yap.
Well, look at that sweet syllable noise floating through the air like a bunch of starlings overhead in the night.
Oh, I've always wanted to... No, you haven't.
No, you haven't, otherwise you would have done it.
I mean, of all the things I could understand making a Hollywood movie, you'd need like a hundred million bucks or whatever.
But writing a novel?
You'd need a pen and some fucking paper!
That's it!
You don't even need a computer.
You need a typewriter.
You need a two dollars worth of paper and fifteen cents worth of pencil.
What stands between you and the manifestation of that which you claimed you've always wanted to do?
Less than three dollars.
Yap, yap, yap.
And people, like, they have these... My mother said, oh, I want to write a book about my life and call it One Woman Century.
And it's like, that seems kind of narcissistic, but you know, never going to do it.
Never happened.
It's never going to happen.
Oh, I've been meaning to call you.
No, you haven't.
No, you haven't.
I was talking, I did a call-in show today.
I hope you all remember.
I'm working pretty hard.
Some of it's a little bit behind the scenes.
But I did a call-in show today with a guy who was miserable from the ages of 12 to 17 in school.
Why didn't your parents do anything about it?
Well, I never told them.
Really?
I said, so imagine that your parents bought a lottery ticket and told you to hold on to it.
And then it turns out that lottery ticket won a million dollars.
Would they wait for you to tell them where it was?
Or would they come to you and say, hey, where's that lottery ticket that we gave you to hold on to?
Because it's now, that lottery ticket is worth a million dollars.
Would they just wait for you to come to them?
Or would they actually ask you something?
Oh no, they would come and ask me.
Right!
Right.
That's all my point is.
If they wanted information out of you, they would have gotten it.
And they wouldn't have waited for you at the age of 12 to analyze your own feelings, know that you were unhappy, know the cause, know the source, know who to talk to, have right... Yeah.
WWE wrestler Mick Foley, hardcore legend, wrote a bestseller, Blood and Sweat Socks, longhand, on full scap, by hand, that can be done.
Yeah, I rewrote the second half of Just Poor, With a biro, that's a ballpoint pen, on a notepad I picked up at the airport for $4.99.
It's nothing.
These days, you know, I can understand, oh man, I've always wanted to write a song.
No you don't, no you haven't.
You're just making noise to yourself so that you can feel like you've got stuff down the road.
Writing a song I mean of all the things now you can record this shit and throw it up on social media
Like that, right?
Now I've always wanted to lose weight No, you haven't.
Losing weight is literally doing nothing.
I mean, as far as food goes, it's the easiest thing to do in the world because you're actually doing nothing.
You're just not stuffing your face.
You're just doing nothing.
My willpower to not go to the kitchen and continue to sit on the couch is immense.
There's less cooking.
There's less eating.
There's less cleaning up.
There's less pooping.
The whole thing.
No, you don't.
I've always wanted to work out.
No, you haven't.
Nope.
Not even a tiny little bit.
No, you have not.
And I, you know, at this point in my life, I honestly could care less what people say.
I mean, it's just a bunch of noise to me.
It's just a bunch of noise.
I've always wanted to... No, you haven't.
Nope.
One of these days, I'm going to climb Mount Everest.
How old are you?
85?
Yep.
Yep, yep, yep.
No, and when I was younger, when, you know, you'd see people achieve, oh, you know, Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.
Tolkien didn't even really start writing it till he was over 45.
Grandma Moses didn't stop painting until she was in her 80s.
Like, now, but that's not the way that it is, right?
Doors are closing as you pass.
Doors are closing.
Your head behind, above, below.
Doors are closing as you pass.
I want a Bugatti.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, this is about... This is about...
Trying to get things done in the world.
Trying to get things done in the world means convince people, if you want to convince people of quality, you need evidence.
You just, you need evidence.
The wish people want the benefit of intention without the work of execution.
And those people will suck your life dry and not in the fun way.
Those people will procrastinate and waste your entire life essence in their delusions of their competence and ability.
It is just appalling.
Thank you, Adam!
Madam I'm Adam Honestly the wish people
you Nope.
I've always won- oh!
Now, again, if it's kids, you know, fine, right?
I pillaged my daughter's ideas of a cool restaurant when she was little and put them into my novel, The Future.
So when she was little, yeah, wouldn't it be cool if we had a restaurant with birds flying around?
Wouldn't it be great if it was on top of a tree?
I totally pillaged that stuff for my novel.
Good artists borrow, great artists steal.
So, kids, yeah, indulge.
Yeah, it would be great.
Wouldn't it be cool if we could fly?
Yeah, wouldn't it be great if you could be an astronaut and a cowboy?
Yeah, sure.
Have your fantasy plane.
Sure, absolutely.
But at some point, you actually need to get shit done.
Right?
At some point, you need to actually get shit done.
Ah, pardon me.
How rude to yawn.
I apologize.
I'm trying this thing where I don't really eat till the evening.
Saw a dude in social media talking about manifesting.
Oh, you like that scene in my novel The Future?
Well, let's just say I spent a lot of time doing research on a fantasy restaurant when I was chatting with Izzy when
she was younger.
No, and you have to pull people off their fantasy of someday.
It's no kindness to people.
I'll give people maybe two or three wish tickets, right?
Just two or three.
Oh, I really want to.
Really want to.
Nope, don't care.
It's not going to happen.
I don't want you to talk about it because it's an insult to people who actually get things done for you to waffle on about stuff that you're never going to actually do.
It is an insult to people who actually get things done for you to complain about things that you're not doing or wish or fantasy or blah blah blah.
Nope.
Won't do it.
What do you think of The Parenting Style in full house if you ever watched it?
My girls love the show.
It seems like a humble show.
Seems to be a whole lot of adults around.
And Bob Saget had a absolutely foul streak to him.
Like, was it the bobsack at roast?
Oh my gosh.
Well, it's like Howard Stern, just like an absolutely foul streak.
and uh... gosh wasn't the blonde guy the inspiration for the song you ought to
know by Alanis Morissette
yeah no i mean when i was younger and uh... people would say
uh... oh you exercise i've always you know i've wanted to get an exercise i'd
be like well i've i've got some guest passes to the gym come to the gym
And I wouldn't press them on it, I wouldn't push them on it, I wouldn't nag them on it, I'd just see.
It's now free and I'd be happy to help set you up.
And if they don't come, then anytime they complain about any physical ailment, I'd
be like, don't care.
I don't care.
Your back hurts?
Well, you didn't come to the gym.
Well, how do you know that?
Well, it wouldn't have hurt.
Right?
People my age, I don't really have friends like this, but occasionally people my age are complaining about their ailments.
I've got gout!
Really?
What are you, some... tavern owner from 1750?
I have gout!
Oh, do you exercise?
Nope.
It's like the... the smokers.
I'm short of breath running up the stairs!
Yes, that's called smoking!
I get it.
I get it.
Yep.
you But I don't give sympathy for people who brought on their own disasters and for the most part, this is back to the earlier discussion on free will, people bring about their own disasters.
Stop spending time trying to fix losers and instead rise to the standards of people who win.
But!
See, losers have no standard by which they will engage with you.
They just want you around to listen to their bullshit and their waste of time, self-indulgent, self-congratulatory, go nowhere syllables of savage nothingness.
One day, I'm gonna... One day, I'm gonna ask that girl out.
One day, I'm gonna quit this job and start my own.
One day... Like, I remember when I used to go to karaoke many years ago, there was this guy, he's like, yeah, I've written this rock opera about... I can't even remember the topic, right?
Yeah, it's been sitting in my drawer for the last 10 years.
I'm like, why are you telling me this?
It's kind of embarrassing, isn't it?
Obviously, you don't think it's good enough to get behind, so why would I care about it at all?
One day I'm gonna leave this town, and one day I'm gonna buy a ranch, and one day I'm gonna do sit-ups.
Oh yeah, like all the people, you know, because I'm gonna be 58 all too soon, and you know, all the people You know, we gotta play pickleball or tennis or something and, you know, there are people who are like, oh, yeah, I'm having trouble on my back and it's like, well, yeah, but you're 50 pounds overweight.
So, what do you expect?
And here's the thing, like I put tens and tens and tens of thousands of hours into exercising.
over the years.
Now, the people who didn't do that had things that were more fun than exercising, and I think that's great!
Good for them!
I'm glad they did that.
But the people who didn't exercise who complain about their health at my age,
like, I don't, I don't get it.
you I mean, you knew you had to exercise.
You chose not to.
I'm not going to give you... I will not... I will not give people sympathy for the obvious results of their own choices.
I will not give people sympathy for the obvious results of their own freely chosen behavior.
You chose to sleep around.
You got a baby mama and a stalker.
It's like, that's why you didn't do, you shouldn't do that shit.
You know, I really went with the hot unstable guys, says the woman when I was younger.
Now, I'm 37 and lonely.
Why would I give you sympathy?
For the completely predictable results of your exercise of free will.
Why?
Like it makes no sense.
You choose the actions, you choose the consequences.
The people I knew, we all had this fork in the road, right?
All had this fork in the road in our late teens, early twenties, this fork in the road.
Do you try and make something of yourself, or do you just keep being a waiter?
And the people who just decided to keep being a waiter, it's like, I get it, you had fun, or the people who partied, right?
There was this guy, I still remember his name, in my high school, was a notorious partier.
I remember he got kicked out of our prom and all we heard him was bellowing, I DIDN'T DO NO DISTURBANCE, MAN!
I DIDN'T DO NO DISTURBANCE!
And, uh, he died.
Probably 15 years ago or so.
From alcoholism, I think.
And it's like, well, he chose to drink.
It's odd, it's not a choice.
Yes, it's a choice.
Yes, it's a choice.
Now, I get, after a while, you're really, really addicted, and it can be very difficult to quit.
I get that.
You know, after you jump off the bridge, you're kind of going to fall, but you still had a choice to jump, didn't you?
So, if you try alcohol and you really like alcohol, don't try it again, because it's
a whole lot easier to quit at the beginning than it is later.
The people who live the Bukowski semi-trashy life of traveling and living in flop houses
and hostels and working bit jobs here and there and all of that stuff, you know, it's
fun and, you know, when you're working three days straight in a software job to get your
product finished because people are really impatient and want the product.
It looks pretty nice to be floating around and working at a fish packing plant and then living in a car for a while and then hooking up with some girl outside of Vegas.
It seems pretty nice.
There are times when I envied those kind of loosey-goosey gypsy lives.
Yeah, it's good stuff, man.
But around now, or actually years ago, their lives kind of sucked.
They had no savings.
They had no skills.
They had no family.
They had no kids.
But it's like, but you had your fun.
You had your fun.
I'm not gonna say that you're wrong.
You had your fun.
And when you were having fun, I wasn't.
And now I'm having fun and you're not.
But here's the fundamental problem.
This is one of the reasons why statism is so bad.
I said this years ago.
I'll touch on it briefly here.
So statism is really bad.
Because you can force transfer the results of diligence, but you can't force transfer the results of laziness.
Right?
So if you're diligent and you work hard and you save your money, the government can take your money and give it to people who are failures.
But the people who lazed around and who had a lot of fun while you were working hard, You can't scrape that fun out of their history and give it to you.
This is what's so unbalanced.
You can take the stored results of hard work and conscientiousness and give it to the lazy and the indolent, but you can't take all the fun and avoidance of responsibility they had and give it to the diligent.
It's a one fucking way street where the shit flows only one way.
All right, tips!
I would very much appreciate those.
The lyrics from Time by Pink Floyd changed my whole perspective regarding this topic.
All right, hey Steph, I would like to ask you about a woman in my life.
She's a 32-year-old language teacher online and I am her student.
She has a lot of green flags and ticks a lot of boxes of what I'm looking for.
We've met a couple of times in real life and seem to enjoy each other's company.
The problem is she currently has a long-term boyfriend.
He doesn't want to have kids and she says that she has not decided yet.
I want to have a family and I think she would be a great mom.
I think she's making a huge mistake by staying with him.
I also think I have a decent chance of stealing her from him.
I should also mention she has a lot of travel history, as do I, but I don't see this as a problem because she has her own income from teaching.
The question is, should I pursue her?
I know you are not going to tell me what to do, but would be happy to hear your thoughts about this.
Thanks.
Well, all's fair in love and war and until the engagement... If this guy has been... How long?
Thank you for the donation.
How long has she been...
With this guy.
How long has she been with this guy?
Just tell me.
A year, five years, two years, three years.
Come on, baby.
Feed me.
Feed me.
I don't need an essay.
Just tell me.
I don't know exactly, but at least for two years.
Okay.
So, a man who's dating a woman, for two years she's in her early thirties, he has not made a commitment to her, she needs to be liberated from his egg theft.
This guy is fucking stealing her eggs and throwing them off a cliff.
Go in for a rescue mission even if you don't end up dating her.
Go in for a rescue mission because she's dithering at 32.
She's three years away from a geriatric pregnancy and she's like, I just don't know.
I can't quite decide.
She's gonna like starve to fucking death in front of the buffet because she can't pick a food.
You are on Seal Team Six Egg Rescue Mission!
Was talking to a guy.
I won't tell you the circumstances.
Doesn't really matter.
Was talking to a guy in his mid-twenties.
Two days ago.
Yesterday?
Yesterday!
Talking to a guy in his mid-twenties.
And he's like, well, you know, I haven't really decided if I'm going to have kids.
I don't think I want to have kids.
We're not going to have kids.
I'm like, Oh, why not?
Well, my wife and I, we've only been married for three.
And I thought he was going to say weeks and months, three years.
I'm like three years.
It's enough time.
I don't, I don't really want to have kids.
You know, if an accident happens, um, I guess we'll make the best of it.
But I said, well, what does your wife think?
She doesn't really want to have kids too much.
Oh, what does she do?
Oh, she's a hairdresser.
It's like, okay, so you don't have much of a career.
Your wife doesn't have much of a career.
You live in a basement and you don't want kids.
Tough nut to crack.
Tough nut to crack.
Now, I can't tell him to have kids, of course, and I asked him, you know, about his childhood and all of that, because that's just how I am.
Boundaries!
Not so much.
And so I said, you know, I mean, I said my sort of thoughts about this run along three lines.
Number one, I very much appreciate and enjoy being alive.
And for me to be alive people had to make some sacrifices in order for me to come into being And have the happy life that I have.
So I feel it's kind of selfish for me.
I'm not talking about you.
I said for me I feel it's kind of selfish for me to reap all the rewards of other people's sacrifices and enjoy the absolute fact of being alive but not ever pay that forward.
That to me is kind of like inheriting a family fortune that goes back four billion years and blowing it all on myself.
So that's just One of the aspects.
The other, of course, is I can't help but think of all of the struggle and strife and high sages and famines and pestilence, plagues, wars, you name it, that my ancestors had to get through to hand me this three and a half pounds of wetware I got going on between my ears that makes life so joyful.
And I said, and the other thing is for me, I'm a pretty creative guy.
I write novels and books and come up with analogies and debates and arguments and so on.
But there's nothing that I could ever create that is anywhere close to as cool and amazing as a human brain.
At all.
Can't do better than that.
Can't be more creative or create anything more wonderful than that.
So I said that, you know, it's my particular perspective.
Obviously he's not going to go home and Mount his wife like a Picasso, but he is probably going to think about it over time.
And, you know, he's got time, so it'll sink in, right?
So, whether you want to be with this woman, I guess you do, but you've got to pry her away from this time waster, this vampire of time.
Guys who date women in their 30s without figuring these things out He doesn't want to have kids and she says she's not decided yet.
The fuck?
You know, let me tell you my life, my friend.
Let me tell you my life.
I am inches away from 58 years old.
I have yet to decide.
Whether to be a ballet dancer, I just... I can't sort it out, man.
I can't... I can't figure it out.
Should I?
Shouldn't I be a ballet dancer?
Now, wouldn't I be fucking mental to say that?
What is it in the old TV show Scrubs?
There was this woman who was studying to be a doctor and she was like 67.
It's like, but why?
Right?
Ryan Reynolds style.
But why?
So that's a red flag, isn't it?
Well, I am three years from geriatric pregnancy.
I am with a guy who decidedly doesn't want children.
He's not committed to me yet.
I don't have a ring on my finger.
But I haven't decided about kids yet.
No, no, the big truck of reality and time is backing up and is going to run you the fuck over if you don't make a decision now!
Not later, not soon, not someday.
Right fucking now.
Right now.
So she's living in a state of no time.
Somebody says, one egg a month, times twelve months, times two years, twenty-four chances of getting pregnant, time enough for two or three kids, depending on how good a match, genetically speaking.
And there's more!
Because every day she spends in this relationship is another day she's going to have to spend getting over it.
Every mile you walk in the wrong direction Here's another mile, you gotta walk back in the other direction, right?
Every mile you walk in the wrong direction is three miles wrong, right?
So you think you start here, right?
You go north, you're supposed to be going south.
You go north, you realize after a mile, oh shit, I'm supposed to be going south.
You go back south.
Well, you could argue that it's actually four.
It takes you an hour to walk north, an hour to walk south.
Well, you're two hours short and two, you're actually You've gone three miles in the wrong direction and you've
got four miles of time invested.
So this is egg rescue time.
Save the eggs.
You're going in like Tom Cruise, Spider-Style.
Pow-wow!
Jaw clench, jaw clench, jaw clench.
we'll call it acting so you if you care about her
you say something like alright
you absolutely lovely woman you have to decide now whether you want kids
Like, let's just work backwards.
Let's say you want two kids.
Let's say this guy says he doesn't want kids, so it's not going to be with him.
So then you break up with him and it's going to take you probably a year to get over it, so that's 33.
It's going to take you another year to find a guy, that's 34.
It's going to take you another year to get engaged, that's 35.
It might take you another year to get married, that's 36.
You're already a year past geriatric pregnancy.
You're down to like four eggs and a prayer.
Let's say it could take you six months to a year to get pregnant, because you are kind of rolling a ping-pong down a bowling ball alley.
Then what?
Just getting older.
37, 38, maybe you try for another kid at 39.
And what's the age of the guy?
Is he older?
He's got his own spermatozoa issues as he's getting up in age.
What if one of the kids has a genetic issue because of age?
You abort?
Maybe?
You try again?
Oh my God!
This is the problem with people who travel.
They don't get bored enough to notice the passage of time.
Right?
I'm in a new place now.
I went to Bali, and oh yes.
Then I went to Singapore, oh yes.
And then I went to Japan, and oh yes.
And I taught in South Korea.
So you've got enough variety that you don't notice that the years are whipping by you.
Like kamikaze cyclists.
Gone, gone, gone.
Look at all that variety.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
People who stay around get bored and have kids.
People who travel Think that by exposing themselves to new stimuli they have somehow stopped the passage of time.
It could be too late for her already.
It could be too late for her already in a practical sense.
Because at some point, if she wants a quality man, like if she wants to stay home with her kids, if she wants a quality man, Well, a quality man doesn't want a woman who's traveled a lot, because a quality man, or rather any sensible man, knows exactly what traveled a lot really means.
What does, in general, traveled a lot really mean, if we're being honest?
What does it mean, do you think?
What do most people assume that it means?
Just out of curiosity.
Thank you.
I think we all know.
Wow, this Kleenex has really been around.
Inverse pogo stick.
Yeah, cock carousel, right?
Right.
We know.
We know what it means, right?
And a woman...
See, men are successful, and I say this because she's looking for a man, right?
So men are successful because they plan.
Right?
They plan.
Now, men who plan want women who plan, right?
Because women who plan can run a household.
And how does it look as a whole, how does it look for a woman If all she's done at the age of 32 is traveled a lot and taught some kids, how does that look as a whole?
How does that look for a man who's successful because he plans?
Right?
Kind of an important question.
Right?
So I'm just trying to open something here...
And seeing if it opens.
Oh, there it is.
Okay.
So this is the opening of my novel called The God of Atheists.
When she was twenty-seven and feeling deep body-hunger pangs for a baby, Joanne made a decision which won her two babies and lost her her husband.
Joanne worked in a bookshop.
It was dark, close to the university, and filled with tilting shelves and a dank, rotten smell.
As if the words in the books were flesh and were decomposing with their authors.
Alder came into the bookstore one rainy afternoon when the streets were quiet and wet, and Joanne was sitting behind the narrow counter marking down back issues of today's parent.
He was short, freckled, and so pale she could almost see his skull, which was unsettling but strangely intimate.
He turned at the door, squinting out at the rain, and the cold light through the streaming glass poured rivulets down his thin body.
Joanne stared at him and suddenly raised an eyebrow.
For the past year or so she had been glaring into the future, craving a family, and back into her past at her lack of preparation.
She had frittered and hooked up.
The wool needed to knit an infant together had not been gathered.
Day after day her thoughts went round and round.
Meet a man.
Like a man.
Date a man.
Keep a man.
Deepen a relationship with a man.
Three years equals thirty.
Marry a man.
Live with a man.
Not scare off man with instant baby talk.
Determine viability of marriage.
Four years equals thirty-four.
Plus nine months pregnancy almost thirty-five for the first one!
Almost eight years from coffee shop hair twirling to the wet and groaning birth table.
I could have given birth at fourteen, she thought.
Twenty-one years later, if the right man comes along today, I might squeeze out bundle of joy numero uno!
Strange math ballooned in her head.
My mother had me when she was twenty-three.
Twenty-three years after my first period, I could have a child?
In her journal, the day before she met Alder, Joanne had written, Problems with being between boyfriends in one's late twenties.
Availability of men seems inversely proportional to their fitness as fathers.
Potential fathers already married, otherwise unavailable, or simply elsewhere.
The men who remain are Unable to commit, too oddly constituted to imagine settling down with, broke, ugly, unstable, unskilled, uneducated, unkind, unfaithful, dishonest, boring, needy, independent, addicted to something unsavory, otherwise unsuitable.
Joanne had sighed, chewing at her bitter pencil.
Some sort of underground movement had been going on, perhaps under her very nose, it was hard to tell.
Somewhere along the footloose path of her twenties, a series of neutron bombs had gone off.
Hot, hidden flashes had silently stolen marriageable men from circulation.
None of her own friends had settled down, or were particularly close, yet somehow the Alpha Fathers had been carried off anyway.
It was as if some sort of pre-feminist hole had opened up in the space-time continuum through which jeweled female arms had reached to pluck modern men into fifties marriages.
Joanne saw the evidence of this other world when she rode her bike from work through the annex past the white globes of Palmerston under the frowning peaks of the enormous houses.
She saw men in polo shirts watering lawns, moving the neon detritus of children, or hand-washing sensible station wagons.
But these mansions always seemed to be inhabited by people of another age, somewhere in their forties, perhaps.
People the drug companies aimed vague commercials at.
People way outside her own cool demographic.
Men with careers, not just jobs.
Backpack travel stories or endless hamster wheel degrees.
Men who saved money instead of collecting CDs.
Men who opposed excessive taxation instead of railing against corporate imperialism.
Men who actually bought furniture instead of just inheriting it.
Boring men, Joanne told herself to avoid feeling sad.
When she was a little more honest, she thought, Boring, perhaps, but they know how to provide and don't view commitment as a noose to be chewed through.
After she turned twenty-seven, Joanne could no longer imagine that this other world was populated by men and women infinitely older than herself.
Her imaginary age barriers were beginning to sag under the stretching claws of the crow's feet widening from her eyes.
The backs of her hands, too, seemed prematurely withered, and she stared at them in horror one day under the dusty sunbeams of a lurching bus, and began to truly understand that they would, some day, be the veined claws of an old woman.
But what else had changed?
Well, she used to be a solid sleeper, now.
Sleep had to be wooed, or sometimes not so wooed, with sleeping pills.
When she lowered her arms, her armpits radiated wrinkles like stretching spiders.
Her breasts seemed drawn to consummate a love affair with her belly button.
She had first failed the pencil test, her breasts held up a pencil thrust under them, when she was twenty-five.
Now when she clenched her buttocks and craned her head, she could see lunar dimples on her buttcheeks.
Finally, and perhaps most terrifyingly, Joanne began to wonder.
What the hell was the difference between her and the women who got married anyway?
She had always been proud of her sexual power, not knowing that power always corrupts.
But then, one day, while biking past a hip-cocked line of loud and face-sparkled club girls, she suddenly had a terrible thought.
Pussies are as common as noses.
Joanne shouted and almost took a spill, her heart pounding.
Did I sell myself too cheaply?
Oh, that was a terrible thought, both for its implications And the possibility that her brand of feminism had been... somehow... off, which was... well, I thought she could not entertain, to say the least.
The morning... of the day she met Alder, Joanne looked straight into her spotted little round mirror and thought one word.
Decay.
The passage of time was leaving brutal tire marks on her flesh.
Staring at her face, she suddenly realized that her life was no longer something that was going to be, but rather something that already was.
It was deeply shocking.
What she had always thought she was preparing for was already passing.
There was no longer an infinite vein of choices to be mined, but to some degree, what she was going to be would be largely composed of who she already was.
The day she turned twenty-three, Joanne had made a list in her journal.
Now, half-dressed, her hands shaking, she dug out the entry from her bookshelf of red-bound diaries.
She found the day, and picking up her chewed pencil, crossed out the following entries, tears dropping from her eyes.
I will not marry a man who has been divorced.
I will not marry a man with children.
I will not marry a man who watches sports every Sunday.
I will not marry a fat man, I will not marry a skinny man, a short man, a bald man, a hairy man, a man who isn't sensual, a man who makes less than me, a man past his thirties, a man who does not like the band Enigma, a man who does not read, a man who does not get along well with his mother, a mama's boy, a man who wants me to stay home, a man who is aggressive, a man who is passive.
And so, on that grey day, Alda had scurried into Joanne's bookstore.
And his pale hair was fuzzy with rain, and one lock stuck to his forehead like Superman's question mark.
And after obviously working up his nerve, he asked for obscure books to impress her, and the fact that he wanted to impress her almost broke her heart.
And as they fell to talking, it did not seem to matter.
That his voice was quite nasal, or that his nails were chewed down, or that he was so obviously inexperienced.
because Joanne was mapping out the future through his body language.
Alda's soul could feel was a species of soft clay which she could spin and mold.
Within moments her feminism seemed to fade away, and she felt herself suddenly shape-shift into the kind of woman who could rule over a man.
And of course there was subjugation in that for her as well, but it no longer seemed to matter at all.
And so she played no games, and asked him if he was single and available for coffee, and theirs was a brisk courtship of efficient sex and scant small talk.
She made him dinner, and listened to his theories, and brought him a dish rack, and made his bed, and did not organize his bookshelves, but suggested they do it together.
Wiles!
Joanne thought and wondered, My God, I've become Wiley with feminine Wiles!
And it was all quite simple, really.
She just made herself necessary to him.
She insinuated herself into his life and made his days and nights more pleasant and cooked his breakfast.
And there was an undertow, of course.
She was quite aware of it, but strangely unashamed.
I make you eggs.
You make me pregnant.
All right, so I'll stop there, but you should absolutely read this book.
It is a fantastic book.
I will put the link in it right here.
There's an audiobook available for it as well.
It's a really, really good, good, good book.
And I was writing this in my twenties.
Can you imagine why this never got published?
How's the depopulation agenda gonna work, right?
Sigh.
Girls who are or want to be a flight attendant, I've been warned, they just want to bang random guys and travel.
Dum ba dee ba dum ba dee ba dum ba dee ba doodly doodly dum ba dee.
All right, let's see here.
Yeah, it's really, really great.
It's a great book.
Alright, any other last questions, comments, issues, challenges, or donations?
Oh please, feed the speckle-haired philosopher.
I really would appreciate it.
Why do groups of teen guys watch videos of guys wiping out, getting injured, cringe, then laugh about it?
Is it a way to build camaraderie, healthy attitude, something counter to complaining about ailments?
Men would have required physical empathy on the hunt, but also a positive mental attitude, bravery to hunt.
We are the hunters, not the hunted.
Is that a part of how the keyboard warriors are so passive-aggressive?
They never had that kind of camaraderie?
Yeah, I saw this I don't know how true it is but I saw this Twitter post where guys from Reddit post their brain scans.
The moderators of Reddit posted their brain scans and a lot of them had significant portions of their brain missing again.
I don't know if it's true or not.
So the reason why boys laugh at physical injuries is in preparation for war.
In preparation for war.
Men have to dehumanize physical injuries with each other so that they can be joined on the battle lines and not die alone.
That is the reality.
All right, going once, going twice.
Any other last donations for your friendly neighborhood philosopher before we talk again on Friday?
I really appreciate this conversation.
I really appreciate these questions, this support, this camaraderie, this community.
Fine, I'll just go back on Twitter.
I'm just kidding.
So, yes, if you have any support that you would like to provide,
I would be happy to help it.
You can, of course, hit me up for a call in.
Freedomain.com slash call.
Freedomain.com slash call.
This is for you later.
Later!
If you want.
And you can do public or private call-ins.
You are welcome to partake of those.
And I thank everyone so much enormously for coming by tonight.
Have yourself a beautiful, glorious evening.
Don't forget to check out The God of Atheists.
You're donating on Friday.
Thank you, Joe.
I appreciate that.
You do keep the pulse humming and the blood going.
So thank you for all of that.
Remember, we are building an absolute The principle behind beatings at boarding schools in the 20th century before?
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, you can be destroyed by older people is the foundation for going to war.
Yeah, you have to dehumanize boys so that you can in turn dehumanize their victims overseas.
Alright, have a wonderful evening everyone.
Thank you so much for joining me tonight.
Lots of love.
▲
Export Selection