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Jan. 19, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:10:27
Are YOU a Narcissist?
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Good morning, everybody.
Welcome to your Sunday morning philosophy.
Thank you, Eric.
Thank you, Think Clearly.
I appreciate that.
And I'm thrilled, eager, and happy to take your questions and comments.
For those friends of ours living in these United States of America, I guess TikTok went dark as of yesterday afternoon.
And, of course, America, you see, is so horrified at the idea of Chinese technology that they only allow hundreds of billions of dollars of American investment to flow into China.
That's how horrified they are.
They're so horrified of Chinese spying technology that they allow significant portions of their infrastructure to be built in China.
Terrifying.
In general, I assume that picking the least popular, it's the sort of Andrew Anglin principle, picking the least popular social media platform to ban sets a precedent, right?
I mean, that's just the way.
Andrew Anglin was the first guy to get cancelled.
And, yeah, so you just pick the least popular person, start with them, nobody defends them, and then just move on to other people.
All right.
Any new Trump coin millionaires?
On the chat?
No, but that hork to a girl has kind of vanished from sight, right?
She gone, baby, gone.
She is the wind.
She went for a nap and apparently has hibernated for almost an eternity.
All right.
Frida says, good morning, just finishing listening to the Friday night stream a few minutes ago, so I have a fresh question.
How do you identify narcissistic tendencies in yourself?
How do you identify narcissistic tendencies within yourself?
So, narcissism, again, I just...
I use this term as a rank amateur.
I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist.
I have no capacity to diagnose anyone.
I'm just using this in an amateur colloquial fashion.
Narcissism is when you can only perceive your own emotional state and you cannot, at an elemental level, process other people's emotional states.
Now, I mean, a sociopath probably can't even feel his own emotional state.
But a narcissist will feel his or her own emotional state, but not those of others.
The typical example for me would be the sort of typical example of the guy who was abused by his mother.
He goes and talks to his mother about it.
his mother dissolves into tears and self-pity and says, well, I guess I've just been the worst mother ever, right?
And she's only experiencing her own emotional state, right?
Thank you.
She only knows that she feels hurt.
She cannot fundamentally process that her son also feels hurt, right?
So that is a big problem.
Oh, woe is me, right?
So she has upset her son as a child, when he was a child, right?
And he brings to her attention that she upset him, and then what happens is she can only feel her own sorrow at being upset.
She cannot process that he feels sorrow.
This is sort of the mirror neurons thing.
So there is a line or a moment in the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn where He says that there was a guard.
There was a guard who would beat up the prisoners, and then at some point the guard ran afoul of the system, became a prisoner, and was beat up by the other guards, right?
And the guard who was beaten up by the other guards said, Oh my God, I had no idea how much it actually hurt.
I had no idea how much it actually hurt.
In other words, he was inflicting this pain on other people, and then...
And assumed that they're pleased for mercy, they're pleased for having them not hit them, was just a kind of manipulation, right?
It was just, oh, they're just manipulating me, they're just, you know, they're pretending to be hurt and so on.
But when he actually got beaten, he was like, holy crap, this hurts unbelievably, but no idea.
This hurt so much.
So that is the...
So if there's a principle...
And you can't imagine that it applies to others in a way.
That probably would be a sign of some kind of narcissism.
In other words, if you have a breakup, right?
You have a breakup and you only process how much it hurts you, but you don't think about how much it hurts others or hurts the other person.
That would be narcissism.
I mean, I think there's narcissistic elements, again, just my own opinion, but I think there are narcissistic elements in all divorces because if people who were contemplating divorce or heading in that direction, if they have children, if they were to truly recognize how bad divorce is for their children, then they would improve their own behaviors, right?
They would improve their own behaviors.
They would be more reasonable.
They would negotiate.
Mature.
They would manage their tempers.
And so all divorce is based upon or founded upon ignoring the needs and preferences and what is best for the children.
What is best for the children is the couple work it out and stay together.
That's what's best for the children.
So there are massively selfish or narcissistic elements in all divorces.
All divorces.
Because the needs of the children are being ignored.
Narcissism, to me, would also be the mother who says, well, I want to go to work because work fulfills me, right?
right?
The mother who says, I want to go to work because work fulfills me, right?
But she doesn't sit there and say what's best for my children, right?
Thank you.
What's best for my children?
So...
You want to put yourself in the other person's shoes on a regular basis because compassion or empathy is like a muscle that you have to work at continually developing.
So you have to put yourself in as a regular exercise, right?
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is very foundational because it continually reminds you to put yourself in Another person's state of mind.
You put yourself in another person's state of mind, and that's a regular exercise of compassion.
So you think, what is best for my kids?
What is best for my wife?
What is best for my community?
What is best for the world?
What is best for my family as a whole?
What is best for philosophy?
And through doing that, you get yourself out of simply focusing only on your own pleasures and preferences.
And you then become emotionally available to other people, right?
I mean, a lot of times people will say, women will say often, oh, my boyfriend is emotionally unavailable.
And usually what that means is he's become cautious about sharing his thoughts and feelings because they get used against him.
So that would be an example.
All right.
So, yeah, put yourself in the position of other people on a regular basis.
I mean, try to do it daily, right?
If you're at work, say, what is it like being my boss?
What is it like being my customer?
What is it like being my employee?
What is it like being on the other side of the negotiating table?
What is it like living with me?
What are other people's views of me?
I mean, every now and then, I will look across the table or if I'm sitting sort of kitty-cornered with my wife and we're chatting, I think, Of what it's like to be in her mind looking at me.
It's a really good exercise to do.
What is it like?
I mean, I'm here looking at the camera and I think about what it's like being on the receiving end of what it is that I'm talking about.
To be an effective communicator, you do really have to think about what other people are experiencing as you're talking and as you're communicating.
So you ever do this?
I mean, if you're in a relationship.
What is it like to be in a relationship with me?
What are the pluses I'm bringing to bear?
What are the positives I'm bringing to bear?
about what is it like to be in a relationship with me?
That is always a big and interesting question, right?
So try and do that on a regular basis.
Yes.
Thank you.
What is it like to be in a relationship with me?
Like I can look at the camera and I can see what you see, right?
I can look at myself here on the camera and this is what you're seeing, so I want to put myself in your shoes.
Putting yourself in the mind of another is the best way to combat that kind of selfishness.
And it actually is very good at self-protecting because sometimes what you'll do is you'll put yourself in the mind of another and you'll recognize their cruelty, their sadism, and so on, right?
I mean, I've put myself in the minds of others who hate me, right?
Like, what is it like to look at me, Steph, and hate my guts or think you do or whatever it is, right?
That's also important as well so that you can empathize with others.
Lack of empathy or hostility towards you is an essential element of self-protection.
All right, let's see here.
Do sociopaths even have an emotional state?
So sociopaths have an instinctual awareness, in my understanding and in my obviously amateur opinion, But sociopaths have an instinctual understanding of what is good or bad for them.
So, of course, sociopaths who are criminals don't want to get caught, right?
They know that society disapproves, that the cops are after them, and they will cover their tracks.
So they have a sort of fight-or-flight, instinctual understanding of plus or minus from me.
But they wouldn't experience emotions in the way that you and I would.
A narcissist will experience tremendous levels of self-pity when they feel harmed or wronged, but sociopaths will often just react with anger if anything negative happens to them.
What are some reasons someone would attract mostly narcissists?
Well, I was talking about this this morning.
I did a Bible verse.
This morning.
So one of the reasons that somebody would attract mostly narcissists is they have an excess of compassion.
In other words, they have not universalized the principle of compassion to include themselves.
So they are compassionate to others, but they do not think of compassion towards themselves or about themselves or directed at themselves.
So this would be the enabler, right?
Somebody who, you know, the husbands are drunk and they...
We'll go and buy them alcohol, and they'll work extra hard to pay the bills, and they will call in sick for their husband when their husband is actually hungover, and they will try to reduce the negative consequences of her husband's alcoholism.
So that is, quote, having an excess of compassion.
An excess of compassion is a deficiency of standards.
And so she's not sitting there, and particularly if there are kids involved.
She's not sitting there thinking, well, is this good for me?
Is this good for my kids?
She's just, well, what's the best thing for my husband in the moment, right?
That's an excess of compassion, which is a tasty delicacy for narcissistic people to have an enabler around because narcissists believe that they are above the moral law and therefore they need people to help them escape the moral law, right?
So the moral law called don't be a single mother, well, narcissists will then just say, well, the government should pay me and it doesn't matter if my kids end up growing up in debt.
I should escape the consequences of the moral law.
And so enablers help you escape the consequences of your behavior.
And since narcissists believe that they're above consequences and they should not be subject to consequences, they rage against consequences.
They will be very attracted to people.
who only have compassion for the narcissist and no compassion for their own selves?
All right.
There are so many restaurants and fast food places in the West.
So someone...
In my experience, it's common to see mostly women work in fast food.
In the proliferation of fast food...
Sorry, is the...
Is the proliferation of fast food a result of the marriage rate declining?
In other words, if more women were married and cooking for their families at home, would we have fewer restaurants?
Well, I was actually just talking about this with my daughter the other day, that when I was a kid, it was very rare to go to a restaurant.
It was very rare.
I maybe went to McDonald's once or twice a year.
My mother and I would occasionally, very occasionally, go to Wimpy's Diner if we were out shopping for the day.
There was a restaurant in the Don Mills Mall my mother and I would occasionally go to, but it was very rare.
I mean, maybe a little bit more.
I remember there was a restaurant called the Appian Way, our pizza place in the old Don Mills Mall.
This is going to shock people who were younger.
It was 25 cents for a Coke and 75 cents for a slice of pizza.
So for a buck, you got a good lunch.
So that was rare.
Eating at home was the norm.
And when I grew up in England, there were no restaurants around.
I can't even remember the closest restaurant.
I remember my mother had some upper-class friends that occasionally we would go, but it would be at their expensive restaurant, and they would pay.
I actually remember one elderly woman with very fragile hands digging around in her purse at the end of the meal, and I was convinced that I was going to get a 10-penny piece.
And I didn't.
But very, very occasionally.
Occasionally, of course, when my mother would come and visit me, as she did on occasion when I was in boarding school, she would take me out for lunch.
I wrote about that in an early novel that is lost to time.
And so it was very rare.
I remember I first discovered the joys of chickpeas at an all-you-can-eat restaurant called Ponderosa.
And I have loved them ever since.
So, it was very rare to go out.
Yeah, almost all eating happened at home.
My mother was a comically bad cook, but we did not.
We did not go out.
Now, of course, the proliferation of restaurants has to do with the fact that women are working, and because women are working, People eat out a lot.
They order in the Uber and all of that and Amazon.
Like all of this delivery stuff is because women are working outside of the home.
So if women were married and cooking, yes, there would be far fewer restaurants for sure.
Somebody says, I work in family law.
Half my clients tell me their spouse or baby mama slash daddy is a narcissist.
yeah for sure within the first hour of me speaking with them eventually that percentage goes up the more you speak with them But it's funny, of course, because people choose narcissists at the expense of their children, right?
This is family law.
So people choose narcissists at the expense of their children and then confidently identify the other person as a narcissist, but not themselves, right?
This is live, that's right.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My mother literally said to me, she says, Robert, you know when someone has made mistakes, all you have to do is look at all the good they have done.
Right.
Let's see here.
you TikTok allows folks to not work for a company.
More dollars, more freedom of thought.
Right.
Right.
I mean, I think banning an entire platform that Americans use to communicate to Americans would seem to me not overly friendly to the First Amendment.
And, of course, the whole thing is that if, let's say, TikTok is full of misinformation or disinformation or whatever it is, let's say it's just full of things that are false, that are bad for Americans, well, of course, the big question is...
Why are Americans so bad at sorting out true and false information?
So all of the censorship is a lot to do with covering up the negative effects of government schools because it's easier to censor people than it is to reform government schools because government schools are virtually impossible to reform.
Likely this has played a role in, quote, conspiracies.
Recently becoming understood as truth, not good for the powers that be.
Oh, yeah, the amount of information that is available to people has removed all claims of ignorance from people's vocabulary of excuses.
It's amazing.
Amazing.
I grew up middle class, and we ate out more regularly, but it was at most one to two times per week, with Sunday being the regular dinner-after-church thing with Grandpa.
Yes, one to two times per week eating out, absolutely incomprehensible to me as a kid.
Friday night's show on narcissism was very helpful for me as well.
Good, I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Atay says, Thank you, Steph.
Spot on regarding the enabling via excess compassion.
I grew up in a narcissistic family as the family's scapegoat.
Finally defood three years ago after years of therapy.
It's a long, lonely road once one finds moral standards.
Well, I hear what you're saying, and I'm obviously not going to disagree with your experience, but the loneliness, it comes from when you begin to have moral standards, you don't become lonely, you realize you always were alone.
And you want to, like if you are alone but don't feel lonely, in other words, you're in pseudo-relationships where there's proximity without honesty, contact, intimacy, openness.
If you are alone but don't feel alone, that's really bad, right?
That's like having some mold on your back you can't feel that's dangerous, right?
Hey, Dylan, how's it going?
Good morning, insomniac.
Insomniac cat.
Well, insomniacs never get to say good morning.
It's just like another damn day of tiredness.
Of tiredness.
In the clown world of Me Too, perhaps men being, quote, narcissistic is learned self-preservation.
Who else gives a crap here?
It's the Baldoni thing, right?
I think Baldoni, by doing the show where he did the movie It Ends With Us, where he just plays a causeless abuser.
I mean, even...
Christian Grey from Fifty Shades of Grey, even he had a backstory in that he was sexually abused and molested by an older woman when he was a child.
So he has a backstory that explains his brutal predilections for violent sex.
But Jason Baldoni played a character in a movie who was causelessly bad, and the woman was...
A perfect, wonderful, eternal victim.
So he ran into that trope, right?
Abuse tends to be mutual in relationships.
Abuse tends to be mutual.
Now, one may be physical, one may be verbal, but abuse levels tend to be mutual in relationships, like like attracts like.
So, and women will sometimes, and men, will sometimes put up with abuse For status, right?
So this is the hot girl, hot guy phenomenon.
Justin Baldoni is a very good-looking guy.
Great physique.
And talented, of course.
But the guy who wants the hot girlfriend will sometimes put up with her abuse because he gets high status for having such an attractive girlfriend, right?
And the woman, so Jason Baldoni, is super good-looking.
And a surgeon and, you know, like wealthy, just crazy high status, right?
I've been, God help me, like I should not have gone in alone.
I should not have gone in alone.
I've been reading a couple of popular women's romance stories because I'm trying to figure out What is going on with women these days that they find the vast majority of men unattractive?
I've been looking into this and trying to figure this out.
What is the equivalent of brain-rot pornography for women these days?
It tends to be these sort of romance novels.
It's generally surly guys with great hair, sometimes with tattoos, great physiques, and mysteriously single and Super empathetic, yet at the same time, very dominant and masculine.
And like in one of them, well, it's always some mysterious money, right?
So in one of the novels that I was reading, the man had won the lottery.
He'd won like $12 million in the lottery.
In another one, he had inherited his money.
In another one, he was in his late 20s, and he was the CEO of a startup that just had...
The woman didn't even know what it did, but just mystery money from being a young guy.
And it always is the case that the women are mid, no particular outstanding characteristics.
And the reason why women write these mid characters is so that all women can project themselves into this woman.
Because if the woman had some significant characteristic, then it would be tough for other women to put Themselves in her shoes, so to speak, right?
So they're all these neutral, mid, slightly neurotic women.
And the men are always super attractive, super wealthy, and young, which is not a good, not a big combination.
Unless, of course, they come from a very wealthy family.
But a very wealthy family will patrol their children to make sure they don't marry mids.
So they have...
Family money, but no family filtering.
And they're super empathetic at times, which is very attractive, but most times they're just kind of dominant and often bad-tempered.
And the other thing that they have is they have an absolute lack of understanding, these men, of how attractive they are.
So they're always described the same way, which is, you know, Other women are always throwing themselves at my fiancé, but he doesn't even notice.
Absolute brain rot.
It's a super stimuli, right?
So one of the reasons why young men are more physically attractive than older men is because they're broke and something needs to compensate for it, right?
So, yeah, this super stimuli.
I want a man to be both dominant and aggressive and deeply emotionally empathetic as well.
Sorry, honey, you're going to have to pick a lane.
I want him to be young and hot and have no idea how attractive he is.
It's like, no, that's not a thing.
That's not a thing.
I want him to only have eyes for me and I also want him to not notice when other women find him attractive.
It's just absolutely terrible.
And so if you have this super stimuli, he's hot.
He only has eyes for me.
He's one guy in 10,000.
I'm an absolute mid.
But he only has eyes for me, even though other women throw themselves at him all the time.
He's young.
He's super wealthy.
And even though he has an incredibly demanding job, he has all the time in the world for me.
So these men, they're all like CEOs.
Of course, the writers, these few writers don't have any idea what a CEO does.
They probably never met one, never interviewed one, never talked to the wife of a CEO. But CEOs are workaholics.
That's how they become CEOs.
Guys who are wealthy are workaholics.
In general, that's how they become wealthy.
And so never in these novels does the woman ever complain that the man is not available because he's working 12 hours a day or 14 hours a day or he's traveling for business.
He's always just...
Around and available and taking her out for dinner.
And he's the CEO of something, which is just a mystery portal through which money comes through, like government laws.
But he never really has to work.
And she never complains about being lonely and isolated because he's working all the time.
It is psychotic.
Like, it is such a level of unreality.
It is such a level of unreality.
Right, so there was a movie, one of the Wayne's World's movies, Dana Carvey.
Plays Garth, who's kind of like a long-haired, socially awkward stoner weed guy.
And this super hot woman gets interested in Garth, and he's like, really, like, how could this be happening, right?
And then it turns out that she wants him to murder her husband, or something like that.
And that's the plot line, which is...
But if it was reversed for women, there would be no wanting to murder your husband.
It would just be this guy who just...
You know, like the Fifty Shades of Grey.
Christian Grey is incredibly accomplished.
He plays piano.
He runs massive companies.
He flies helicopters.
He's just like massively, like one in a hundred million kind of guys, right?
Like a Tom Cruise level of competence and expertise, except taller.
And this guy who is incredibly accomplished, incredibly wealthy, just sees this woman.
Who comes to interview him and then, what, she works in a hardware store and he's like, you're the one for me.
I'm going to cast aside everything else, all the other women I can have.
Just you.
Just you.
I'm obsessed.
Right?
That's insane.
It's insane.
It described Edward Cullen.
Yeah, yeah.
So this guy who's lived for a thousand years is really interested In a confused woman who would be a toddler relative to his age, right?
I mean, for a thousand-year vampire to be interested in a 17-year-old girl is as close to pedophilia as you can imagine.
I'm just obsessed with you.
I've just become obsessed with you.
Also, the man becomes obsessed with her, but never dangerous.
Always under control.
Oh, it's mad.
Absolutely mad.
And this is such toxin for women because it raises levels of expectations beyond.
And I don't even think this stuff is in particular accidental.
It is a drug and a super stimuli for women that is so absolutely tragic because it just kills the birthright.
Because then a normal, ordinary guy is always seen as wildly deficient.
Wait, you're not a super hot vampire who can run through trees and take on ten wolves?
Well, that's boring.
yeah good luck with all of that it's like putting people on massive quantities of cocaine and then asking them to appreciate a slow moving nature documentary or a 16 hour German film called Berlin Alexanderplatz Thanks.
It won't happen.
It won't happen, man.
So, yeah, tuning women to these super stimuli, these impossible things that all come together, right?
This would be like some fantasy that there's some guy living in his mother's basement and this super hot Victoria's Secret bikini model becomes obsessed with him.
Wants to have sex with him all the time, comes with a lot of money, enjoys playing his video games and is incredibly sensitive to his psychosocial needs.
It teaches people that you don't have to make any compromises in attraction.
You don't have to make any compromises in attraction.
All commitment requires compromises because nobody is ever exactly what you want.
And they shouldn't be, because exactly what you want might not be what you actually need.
Are there more attractive women in the world than my wife?
There are.
Are there more attractive men in the wife than her husband?
There are.
It's really terrible.
Do these romance novels push women to unhealthy levels of hypergamy?
That's pretty funny.
So the woman says, my husband is actually a super cool, strong, smart, ancient vampire staff.
I suppose I'm living in a fantasy.
Well played.
Well played.
Reference to previous shows.
Well played.
Hypergamy.
So, yeah, for sure.
One of the ways to destroy a culture is to teach women that they should never have to settle or compromise on anything.
I've never dated a woman who's into romance novels, but I sure know a woman who was really into vampire romance novels who divorced her husband.
Thank you.
I mean, that stuff is an environmental toxin.
It is a drug.
It is a terrible, terrible drug.
And it's worse in many ways than something like cocaine, because at least everybody knows that's a drug that you shouldn't take.
But it's romance shit.
Oof.
Oof.
Not good.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's a non-accidental toxin.
It's a non-accidental toxin.
This stuff all gets published.
And of course, this has been going on for a long time, but it used to have more literary merit.
So, you know, the male fantasy is the hooker with the heart of gold.
You know, this is the pretty woman, Julie Roberts, Richard Gere thing, where this woman is a super attractive prostitute, fantastically good at sex.
But secretly she has a warm heart and just would love you and wants to be a great...
Like, that's the Madonna whore thing, right?
So...
Super hot, super sexy, fantastic in bed in terms of technical skill, and also, you know, she's going to be a great wife and mother, right?
That's...
And always, also, always in these romance novels, the woman is in a situation of danger and the man comes blazing in and saves her with physical violence.
Doesn't that happen in Fifty Shades of Grey?
Yeah, some creep is attacking the woman after she's at a bar, and then Christian Grey comes in and beats the crap out of him.
I think part of why women dress so provocatively is so that guys can come and rescue them, and that's quite sexy, I think, for them, which I think is messed up, man.
It is of benefit, of course, to the very attractive men that these standards are there.
It's just that the men then will get a lot of sex, but they won't get a lot of commitment, right?
It happened in Shrek, the poor dragon.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
That's right, yeah, he saves her, right, from the dragon.
I hear older unhappy ladies and obese men telling the young women at work not to settle.
I cringe when I hear it.
The donkey.
Yeah, Chris Farley was originally the voice of Shrek.
And I think Mike Myers recorded all of Shrek's dialogue and then realized it would be better with a Scottish accent and then demanded that everything be re-recorded, which I think is quite expensive, but probably a good choice.
Yeah, there's a debate on Twitter because Andrew Wilson, who's the bearded, smart cackle guy smart cackle guy on the whatever podcast, you know, they'll ask women how they rate themselves.
It's sort of the female delusion thing, right?
And he, you know, Brian rates himself as a four.
I think Andrew rates himself as a four or a five, five on a good day.
And he rates his wife as a 6. And the women are horrified, right?
They're horrified that he rates his wife as a 6. And she replied on Twitter and said, well, that's actually kind of generous.
I wouldn't rate myself a 6. Like, just in terms of physical looks, right?
Just in terms of physical looks.
So why would women, why would a woman be horrified that a husband would rate his wife a 6 in terms of looks?
Why would they be horrified?
Well, the reason that they would be horrified is they need to have a man obsessed with their looks and calling them a 10 because they don't have virtue to bring to the table.
Thank you.
They don't have qualities of friendship, of support, of motherhood, of curiosity, of honesty, of directness, of moral courage.
So, as you get older, I mean, looks fade, right?
Of course, right?
Looks fade.
But virtue increases, right?
which is why you're supposed to find someone who's virtuous, and that's how you compensate for the loss of looks, is you gain more admiration for the person's virtue as the virtue grows over time.
All right.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Wait, you guys don't have Victoria's Secret models obsessing over you?
It's wild.
And the women never have to achieve anything in particular to have these supermen obsess over them.
Steph, do you think this is linked to why swinging and couple sharing has gotten more mainstream?
I assume that's...
Both romance novels and pornography which have similar negative effects on each gender.
My grandma told me to go to college and get a career and not bother with marriage.
She lived in a multi-million dollar house as a widow, never had to work in her life.
Yeah.
I mean, there's very little more toxic in the world than the advice to young women from older dysfunctional women.
What is the obsession with Andrew Tate?
Well, Andrew Tate, you know, whatever you think of him, Andrew Tate has shown significant levels of resilience with regards to the lawfare or the legal challenges against him, and he bluntly speaks his mind, which for a lot of young men in the West who've grown up in claustrophobic female feelings over reality culture,
The idea that you can just directly speak your mind is fascinating to young men who have been silenced by endless bouts of female finger-wagging Karen topic castration since they were very little.
Now, if you suppress masculinity to the point where men are punished Ridiculously punished for speaking their minds, right?
Then what happens is you will get a blowback that is as extreme, so to speak, as the repression, right?
So young men are not allowed to speak their minds.
They're not allowed to speak their minds in school.
They have a great deal of difficulty speaking their minds online and so on, right?
Because cancel culture is anti-masculine, right?
It is saying, That you will be severely punished for being honest about your thoughts and feelings, right?
And then, of course, after punishing men for expressing their thoughts and feelings for years, women then claim that men are just emotionally distant and unavailable.
of course it's like this obsession that some women have that if some guy uh approaches them and asks them for a date that they will mark him online to prove how attractive they are right so there was a a woman to me
it's totally suspicious but there was a woman who posted on twitter recently about a hackathon right A hackathon.
And in the hackathon, let me see if I can find it, in the hackathon, there was one woman, right?
There was one woman, and the woman...
She says the woman got a note from a guy, right?
And the note from the guy read something like...
I can't find it here exactly.
But the note from the guy read...
Oh, here it is.
My friend was the only girl at a hackathon and somebody gave her this note.
And then there's a little skull emoji.
And the note was, Hey, I think you're really cute.
And I love those two braids in the back of your hair.
Let me take you out sometime.
I'd love a lesson from you on how to hack, LOL. Text me!
And that is...
It's got, what, 57 million views?
57 million views.
Now, I don't know.
Can I post this in here?
Let's find out if I need to save it, or can I just post it?
I don't think I can.
No, it won't.
But I can...
I'll post the link.
All right, so you can...
Oh, no, no, I can't at some point post in my bookmarks.
So you can have a look at this, and you can tell me what you think of this.
And I'll tell you the reason why is that I don't think that this is real at all.
I don't think that this is real, even a tiny bit.
Let me just post it here.
Of course, I spend my entire life logging in, but let me post it here, and I'll tell you why I don't think it's real, and you can tell me what you think, if you think it is, in fact, real.
All right, so here we go.
Downloads.
For the love of all this holy, I asked to save it.
Did it save it?
It did not.
Okay, let me just try that again.
It did not save it.
I'll give it a name so I don't upload my wedding photos, which I'm sure you guys would enjoy as well.
But I'll tell you why I don't think it's real.
So this is the note.
Thank you.
Now, let me ask you this.
Does this look like a man's handwriting or a girl's handwriting?
Does this look like a man's handwriting?
M for man's, G for girls.
Does it sound like anything a man would say in any way, shape?
I love those two braids in the back of your hair.
Does that seem like...
Yeah, it looks like pretty women writing.
Yeah, for sure.
It's girly writing.
It's girly writing.
No hate on girly writing, but that's what it is.
Here's another thing.
Do you notice something about the nail color and the note color?
The nail color and the note color are identical.
Now, it is a subtle thing about accessorizing.
That sometimes women will choose, not proof, right?
Not proof.
But sometimes women will buy paper that matches their nails.
That's probably not a complete accident.
I mean, they're exactly the same color.
Exactly the same color.
Yeah, what dude has pink sticky notes?
Right.
I mean, I don't think men buy sticky notes at all.
But if they do, they're probably not pink.
So it's girly writing.
It knows the technical name for the braids.
And it's got false humility.
And it's got an LOL. And it's a pink note that exactly matches the girl's name.
Nail color I call bullshit.
I just don't think this is a real note at all.
I just don't think this is real at all.
Dude has pink sticky notes if he hastily grabbed the value pack.
No, I get that.
Yeah, you get the yellow and blue and right.
I get all of that for sure.
For sure.
But even having sticky notes is girly.
Men, we write in the margins.
Men write in the margins.
It's girls who have sticky notes.
Sticky notes, right?
Or, of course, if you're a man, you don't even write to the margins.
You just use your Kindle to take notes directly because then you can get them all later, right?
Like when I'm doing book reviews or when I did book reviews, I used Kindle because you can get all of your notes organized later.
Men have giant brains that can just hold notes.
Yeah, yeah.
Why would they lie about getting a fake note?
status display.
So, I can't say I know exactly for sure There's probably a whole bunch of things, but you see a lot of this, right?
So, it is very interesting to see all of this, right?
Thank you.
Thank you.
There is quite a lot.
And you see this, of course, you know, a guy comes and talks to a girl at the gym and she films it and puts him on blast on social media.
I don't know.
But I think what's happened to the female brain through feminism, I think what's happened to the female brain is loyalty in females have been turned towards other females and not towards males.
So, women have changed their loyalties from men to other women.
And this has, of course, massive consequences on just about every conceivable level.
And one of the main reasons why the media wants women to have loyalties to other women rather than to men is it fuels useless consumption.
Right, there's a note that's been around for quite a long time, which is a woman complaining and saying, you know, men, male privilege is being able to wear the same outfit countless times, even though a woman can't wear a dress twice in a row, no matter how cute it is, right?
And the men are replying, saying, there's not one man alive that cares if you wear the same cute dress twice in a row.
That's all women.
That's all women.
All the women.
It's all the women.
I mean, if you look at a mall, at all of the little frou-frou stuff that is like 80% of what the mall is, right?
Like all the little jewelry stores and handbag stores and shoe stores and like, it's not for men.
It's not for men.
The only store that's in the mall for men is Victoria's Secret so we can chew through the lingerie.
So, yeah, I mean, it's not for men because men don't care, right?
We don't care.
And we don't want money spent on that crap, right?
Giving women, quote, their own money, removes the traditional restraint upon female spending that is men's feedback, right?
So getting women to align with other women increases bullying, increases conspicuous and useless consumption, and puts no break upon female increases conspicuous and useless consumption, and puts no break upon female you Thank you.
Thank you, David.
I appreciate that.
And it's very bad for society when women only listen to women, just as it's bad for society if men only listen to men.
Men and women have a lot to teach each other.
We complement each other very well.
But if men have no authority and women have no authority, but men only listen to men and women only listen to women, we lose our reason.
We lose our balance.
We lose our yin and yang.
So, there is a certain amount of status of like, so for a woman, she's signaling status She's not signaling status to men.
Because men, if a man is put on blast, For writing a note to a woman, if a man is put on blast and humiliated for having a polite, reasonable approach to a woman, that's not going to help the woman with men as a whole, right?
Because if a man feels like he's going to be blasted and humiliated for approaching a woman, he's not going to approach a woman.
So it's not because she wants to raise her status with men.
It's because she wants to raise her status with women by saying, I'm just so hot that men just keep coming on to me and I just, I'm so tired of it.
I'm just so tired of all these men swarming me and blah, blah, blah.
And it's like, okay, well, you know, if you're tired of men swarming you because you're so attractive, there's a pretty good solution for that, which is pick one!
Pick one.
Pick a man.
Settle down and it'll stop.
It really will.
It'll just go, here, settle down.
Have kids.
And you will be amazed.
You will be amazed at how much time on your hands you'll have because men won't be hitting on you like Roger Taylor on the drum set.
It'll be a true Christmas miracle.
Just pick one.
Pick a man, which is really the purpose of men being attracted to you, so you can pick a man, settle down, have kids.
It's very sad.
It's very sad.
Thank you.
So for a woman, she can get a lot of status from other women by complaining about how men just keep coming on to me.
Men just keep wanting to date me.
Men just are endlessly attracted to me.
It's negative towards men, which is why it's so destructive, but you will get some envy from other women.
Or it will raise your status with other women.
Complaining about men alienates men, but raises your status with dysfunctional women.
Now, to be fair, some women will push back on this, and some women have pushed back on this, this, right?
And some women are like, stop doing this.
Men are just doing their best.
Because women will complain that men don't approach them, and then they will support this kind of blasting men who approach them, right?
All right.
My mom spent $27,000 to redo a bathroom that nobody gets to use but guests.
Um, every now and then my wife will say, "We need to redo this kitchen." I'd be like, does it cook food?
You know, it's just a thing.
Well, on the same time though, maybe I have an unfinished basement and maybe I like, hey, it'd be nice to finish the basement.
And then my daughter says, absolutely not.
We have so many great memories down there.
Not changing it.
I understand.
So you just need people to talk you out of wasting money, right?
This backsplash needs to go.
It's like, we have a backsplash?
You just, you don't need another new microphone.
But I like them!
I could get a 1% better quality of audio.
I mean, every now and then, I'm like, I should build a studio.
Because, you know, I just basically philosophize in front of a sheet.
Do I need a studio?
Would it improve the quality of the philosophy that I do?
I don't think so.
You know what women like?
A dozen roses.
You know what men like?
40 bucks.
Right.
Somebody says, it seems to me like most men act more feminine, especially under age 40, overpronouncing their S's like a girl when the talk That's something I notice a lot.
Well...
Because women have become female-oriented, men think that they've become more attractive to women by appearing more feminine.
And it's really not the case.
It's really not the case.
All right.
Well, and of course, there are people, and I've done a show on this many years ago, who trace the rise in national debts and unfunded liabilities to votes for women, right?
It's a Paul Reiser thing that marriage is just you talking your partner out of their crazy tree and then them talking you out of your crazy tree.
And spending is kind of like that.
If you're alone, then it's easier to spend.
But if you have to run your spending decisions past a sane and rational partner, then women can help restrain men's useless spending and men can help restrain women's useless spending.
So when you separate the sexes, Men spend too much on computer stuff and women spend too much on frou-frou, like adornment frou-frou.
Living in a city causes bias towards the total of feminized men.
Sorry, that feels like an incomplete thought.
I refuse to believe women don't like being hit on.
Well, but it is a flex to say, I get hit on all the time.
It's exhausting, right?
That is just a way of signaling how attractive you are.
It's a status thing to do, right?
All right.
Today, even those espousing family and simple of life still say, you have to get your bag first.
What does that mean?
Handbag?
I don't know what that means.
Steph gave his spiciest takes in the basement.
Will a new studio improve donations?
Um, I don't think it would.
I mean, hit me with the Y if you'd like me to spend money on a studio.
Hit me with the Y if you would like me to spend money on a studio.
You are donors, for the most part, most of you, and you are listeners, so your opinion matters to me a lot.
It was a red studio.
It might, if it was red.
Yeah, this back in the day, right?
Well, I mean, you can watch the very politically incorrect show Landman to see the extremes of masculinity and femininity and how they collide.
Yeah, philosophers wearing sheets.
Yeah, it's not a toga.
It's in the back, right?
Yeah, that's a hard no on everyone, right?
Don't see the point, not much.
What would it change?
Probably better things for you to spend your money on.
No, it wouldn't help me at all.
It wouldn't help me at all.
In fact, it would be a negative thing for me.
It'd be a negative thing for me.
I mean, I don't know that I would be better at doing philosophy with a backdrop.
Would you hang weapons on the wall, like Beanie Man?
Oh, Hat Fishing Tim Pool?
Yeah.
All right.
So, yes, I think we've got a hard no on that, right?
And, of course, if I were to say to my wife, I want to spend this money on the studio, she'd say, why?
It's a fair question, right?
Fair question?
Totally fair question.
Hang up some swords.
Over the hills with the swords of a thousand men.
That was a song I listened to as a teenager, and then it kind of popped back into my brain.
I don't even remember why.
Somewhere in summertime.
All right.
Let me see if there's any other questions, comments, issues, or challenges.
Somebody wrote...
I'll be honest with you all, one of the worst things I did for my mental health was getting a better understanding of how politics works.
I think that's a very fair point.
This, I don't know if it's true or not, but somebody wrote, I'm a 25-year-old male.
My wife, who's a 29-year-old female, aborted our baby over astrology.
Wife got an abortion because the child would have been a Sagittarius.
I'm upset because we were trying for a child.
My wife and I have been married for about three years and we were blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Honestly, that's...
That's wild.
That's absolutely wild that that could even happen.
Ah, yes.
The occasional burst of minor sanity from Bill Maher that then gets broadcasted like crazy from every conservative known to man.
Oh, scrap of sanity!
I'm going to make him a zillion dollars alright let me just check here if questions, comments, issues, challenges or problems problems.
Thank you.
Steph, do you think it might be accurate to say that women have a harder time with honesty than men do?
I think men and women have a tendency to lie about different things as a whole.
Men will lie about status and women will lie about status but in a different kind of way.
So, a woman will lie about status by complaining about men hitting on her all the time.
Men will live out status in terms of income and prestige.
Although that's changing now.
Women have all of these fake titles from HR about how important they are.
But in general, people, again, you don't know who you are until you exercise, until you work out.
You don't know who you are, really, until you work out because you don't know if you're just reacting to weakness in a world full of threats, right?
Do you have any thoughts about tomorrow, Steph?
Tomorrow never comes.
You mean the inauguration?
Oh, not particularly.
I don't think I have any particular thoughts about tomorrow.
What do you guys think?
I mean, I'm sure that there are deep movements afoot to castrate Trump's second term in the way that...
They castrated his first term or tried to, or effectively did in many ways.
And I hope Trump's learned some of his lessons from the first time and I hope he overcomes his tendency to hire poorly.
Well, it's also, it's tough to hire in the public square.
It's tough to hire in the public square because the tendency to use some standard other than a sort of pure raw meritocracy Because, you know, everyone looks at your hiring decisions and compares it to demographics and says, unjust, if they don't exactly match demographics or have an excess of, quote, underrepresented demographics.
So hiring in the public square is really tough because you're just going to get nagged into oblivion if you have a pure meritocracy.
I mean, a pure meritocracy cannot match demographics exactly.
It just can't, for reasons we've talked about for years.
So you get a meritocracy or you get demographic copy-paste.
Can you really see the rings of Saturn with a telescope?
Yes.
Yes, it's how you know that Saturn's had multiple marriages.
It's Martin Luther's day tomorrow.
You mean the original or the king?
You should watch my show on...
I should watch my presentation on Martin Luther King.
It's really good.
Rare planet alignments going on in 2025. Yeah, the planets are aligning up, right?
Planets are going to align.
All right.
Let's see if I had anything else.
A juicy note to mention.
Otherwise, I have lots of...
I should just keep doing the show because otherwise I have a lot of paperwork to do and paperwork is absolutely deadly to the soul.
The amount of paperwork in the modern world is absolutely brutal.
Paperwork has just become this massive humiliation ritual.
It's just horrible.
Oh yeah, I was going to talk about the, so the Baldoni thing, I think what happened, well, because, sorry, I'd never finished this thought, because Justin Baldoni did a movie that was so gynocentric, I think that people thought that he was going to be an easy mark for me too, and the fact that he's fighting back so hard is interesting to me, right?
So if you do stuff massively gynocentric, then you can end up being...
Targeted in female ways, right?
Because you're kind of cucking, but it's time for a secretary if too much paperwork.
Well, some paperwork you've got to do yourself, right?
Yeah, the show is 3560, The Truth About Martin Luther King.
The Truth About Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech.
Not the OG Martin, the Martin Luther King.
Okay, yeah, I assume so.
It's tomorrow, right?
It'd be pretty tough to celebrate O.G. Martin Luther in America these days.
Pretty tough.
All right.
Well, listen, I appreciate you guys dropping by today.
freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
I really, really would appreciate it.
It's a real joy and a pleasure to do these shows with you.
I really do appreciate all of that.
What society from the past most closely resembled a truly free society?
There's nothing closer than the present because of the free flow of information at the moment.
Any literature suggestions?
So I'm reading the guy who wrote Eugene Onegin.
I'm reading his short stories at the moment.
Alexander, I can't remember, but that's what I'm reading at the moment.
I'm also going through Kash Patel's book, which is interesting.
Any predictions for what will happen in effect of a Trump term?
Well, I mean, there'll be massive amounts of social conflict because Trump is going to take away people's...
Virtue signaling.
He's going to take away their dopamine because Trump's going to actually try and do some real good rather than just have people feel good about things.
So, there's going to be a lot of mental health crises because Trump's going to do things that nobody wants to do that is going to make the country better.
And so, people are going to end up confronting the fact that they did not want the country to get better, they just wanted to feel better and that's going to cause significant Mental health crises for people as they realize that they've sacrificed other people's happiness and success for the sake of feeling good about themselves.
In other words, Trump is going to expose people's narcissism.
And when you expose narcissists, they get extremely volatile.
So be very, very careful out there over the next couple of years in America and maybe other places as well.
It's like the Javier Malay thing, like in Argentina.
He has improved the economy.
They've got a trade surplus.
They're tackling the debt.
And so that is very tough for people.
That is very, very tough for people.
When you start to get a hint that you haven't been interested in doing good, but only feeling good at the expense of other people's success and happiness, ouch!
That is going to be very destabilizing for people, and they are going to go a little crazy.
A lot of people are going to go pretty crazy.
When sanity comes, To a society, or at least when an alternative approach to virtue signaling comes to a society, people will get very, very destabilized.
And we all know this from, you know, if we've talked to dysfunctional family members or friends, we've talked to them about what it means to be virtuous, truly virtuous, then it's brutal.
It's brutal what happens in terms of destabilization.
He's obviously coming in with renewed purpose and so on.
If you have one more moment, Steph, could you answer someone else's question about how not to scare potential mates away if you have a bad past as a woman?
Well, you have to admit your bad past and say to everyone what you've done to deal with it.
I mean, we've all done wrong things in the past.
All you do is you say, I did bad things in the past and I realized that it was because I had bad people around me.
I took bad advice.
I made bad decisions.
So I got...
Get rid of the bad people and I've learned how to make better decisions through this or this or this metric, right?
It's sort of like if you're an entrepreneur and you haven't failed, you know, if you've been an entrepreneur for a while and you haven't failed, that's not good.
It means you haven't learned those lessons.
If you go in to investors as an entrepreneur and they say, well, what happened with your last business?
You say, well, it failed.
Why did it fail?
Well, because I forgot that cash flow was a king.
I didn't secure bridge financing.
And I tended to hire people I liked who were friends of mine rather than the very best people for the job.
Man, if I ever learned my lessons, I will never do any of that again.
Not only will they not hold it against you, but they might actually view it as a plus that you've suffered for your bad decisions and therefore you've made a strong commitment to make better decisions.
So having a bad past is not the end of the world at all.
In fact, it can be a plus if you've learned your lessons and done the hard work to not have it happen again.
All right.
Have a glorious, glorious afternoon.
Lots of love from up here.
Take care, my friends.
Oh, do you think it's important to ask a potential partner body count and IQ? Um, well, I mean, STDs are a thing.
I don't know if you want to say body count, but I think you certainly do want to require about past relationships.
IQ, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily, I mean, not many people know their IQ, but you would just look for markers of intelligence and all of that, so.
Have a beautiful afternoon.
Lots of love from up here, my friends.
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