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May 25, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:40:21
Everything I Have Achieved!
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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Friday Night Live, 23rd of May, 2025.
Hello, loud and clear.
We are going to talk philosophy, all things rational and empirical, and of course I am dying.
Well, we're all dying, I suppose, although it's nice to see that Scott Adams' odds went from 0% to 30% because he's trying some new treatment.
That's interesting.
And a positive, and of course, I wish him the very best in his treatment.
That is, what is up?
My nipples, it's cold out.
What's up with you?
Hey, is it a matter for you?
So, I am thrilled to get your questions and comments.
I certainly do have some thoughts, which I'm overjoyed to share with you, even a few controversial thoughts.
That I am, in fact, overjoyed to share with you, but I'm happy to hear your comments as well.
So, in my inbox, people asking me about sort of the increased waves of violence that is going on in the world.
Have you noticed that?
I don't think it's just me.
I think it's fairly safe to say that there is a smidge or two I mean, it's tough.
Obviously, I wish it were different.
I spent most of my career and almost all of my adulthood fighting and working hard for reason to resolve disputes rather than Blood-soaked, rainy pavements where people land, and it's tough.
It's tough to see.
It's tough to see.
Self-defense is criminalized, and that's left-wing policy as a whole is to criminalize self-defense.
I don't know if you've ever, there was a criminal that created significant ire amongst a bunch of policemen in Florida, and they shot him.
35 times?
39 times?
And people said, the reporters, why did you shoot him?
39 times!
Well, we ran out of bullets.
Couldn't shoot him more.
So, self-defense is criminalized, and Solzhenitsyn talked about this in the Gulag Archipelago, where if you're stabbed by a criminal, well, the criminal's just expressing his nature, but if you resist it, then you are bad.
and it is And evil is all about creating a sense of helplessness in the virtuous.
Because if you can create a sense of helplessness among the virtuous, then they will not fight you back.
Despair is the foundation of fifth and, in particular, sixth generation warfare.
These bad things are happening, and there's nothing you can do about it.
That's the essential.
Battle that we're facing.
Now, my particular philosophy, I shouldn't say it's mine, hopefully it's a universal philosophy, I'd be thrilled to hear your thoughts on it as well, but my particular philosophy is when it comes to seeing these increases in violence around the world.
Is to say, well, who opposed the violence that was threatened and enacted against me when I was speaking and touring and all of that?
Who opposed that violence against me?
Because, you know, the way that violence spreads in society, it's very common.
It's almost blindingly predictable.
How does violence spread in society?
Well, they pick someone and they apply endless negative labels.
To that person, right?
Endless negative labels.
And then they use violence to silence that person.
And because that person has negative labels attached to him or her, usually him, then people are like, well, I'm not going to defend that guy.
He's a bad guy.
And then the principle is broken.
The principle is broken.
So those who did not oppose the violence that was So
those who did not see fit to oppose the violence that I was subjected to, You know, I find it hard in my heart to rouse a lot of sympathy for people who are facing the violence that is almost the inevitable crop of what is sown when you don't oppose violence in principle.
Say, well, this guy's a bad guy, so you can be violent against him.
This guy's a Nazi, you can be violent.
Okay, well, you just broke in principle, and now you're saying that violence is an acceptable response to words.
It's an acceptable response to mere words.
So, I obviously wish everybody the best, but if you didn't work to protect me, I wish everyone the best, but I don't see how it's my business anymore.
All right, let's see here.
Hederava says, 20 weeks pregnant and feeling the baby kicking a lot.
I've been listening to Peaceful Parenting, and it wants me to have a million more babies, and this one isn't even done baking yet.
Oh, it makes me.
The baby kick caused a typo.
Yeah, yeah.
That's very nice.
That sentence made little sense, but it's okay.
All the blood is going to the baby.
Have low expectations.
Well, massive congratulations.
Massive congratulations.
Even now, you know, my daughter is going to be 17 this year.
And I've been spending the last couple of weeks teaching her how to drive.
And every time I see babies and marriage in a movie, it moves me beyond words.
Marriage is the most beautiful thing in the world and babies are the greatest thing in the world.
And the two are two sides of the same coin.
So, congratulations.
I wish you the very best.
I hope you have.
A reasonably comfortable pregnancy and the baby is nothing other than out of the primordial home.
So I hope that you have a wonderful pregnancy and easy birth and that the bonding and the breastfeeding, which can be surprisingly tricky at times, goes well and I love what's going for you in your life.
Congratulations and I wish you the very best and I hope you'll keep us posted about how things are going.
Yeah, I was annoyed today.
And honestly, if you've got questions and comments, I'm thrilled to hear them, but I'll keep talking until they come swirling in.
But I was annoyed today.
So I went to do some work.
My wife was vacuuming.
No, I won't make that joke.
Maybe.
But my wife was vacuuming, and it's kind of tough to do work in the noise.
And so what happened was...
Why can't the site be reached?
Yes, we're here.
Okay.
So I went out to a cafe to do some work.
and my daughter was doing some work as well.
And I do.
I try to sit apart from parents.
Oh.
Why is the internet out?
Are we back?
I think we're getting a couple of hiccups here.
I think we're getting a couple of hiccups here.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Yes, I was just saying that I was annoyed, and I think we're back.
Let me know.
I'll be back.
Had a wee hiccup.
Had a wee hiccup.
Yes, we're back.
Okay.
So I was at a coffee shop, and there were two women with two kids, and the women were Chatting away and having their wee little coven convention.
And the kids, one of them was maybe 18 months, was just sort of crawling and walking around, maybe 20 months.
And the other was more of a baby, maybe 12 months.
So I assumed that it was each, it was a child of each one of the moms.
And, you know, you ever have this thing where you're watching a movie and there's People driving and they keep looking away from the road, you know, like they're talking about some big plot or, you know, something that's going on in the movie.
And rather than looking ahead and driving, they look to, and I hate that because you just know, you just know that I go out walking after midnight, that the Patsy Cline, you know, side smash is coming out of nowhere.
like anytime somebody crosses a street, these days a bus is going to send them into orbit.
And so if you're watching...
You just know bad things are going to happen, right?
So when parents have toddlers around and they're not watching them, they're chatting away and having their carrot cake, I get tense because it's countdown.
It's countdown to catastrophe.
And, you know, the little boy was kind of hanging off the edge.
Of a table, and you're just waiting for that thing to come over and crash down on him, and, you know, the little baby was sort of rolling, or the toddler baby was rolling around on the couch, just waiting for him to fall off.
And I was working on my new novel.
I'm trying to write a sociopath.
It's tricky.
I mean, it's very much not part of my personality, although I think I've known a few.
I think I've known a few, but I'm trying to get that nature.
It's a very foreign mindset for me, but I'm really working to explore it as a whole.
So I'm working on a very challenging chapter with a sociopath.
So I bet part of me is looking over like, it's not going to end well.
And I should have said something, but my choice was to not.
Anyway, so eventually, And one of the moms said, well, it's not lunch until someone ends up crying.
And the kid was pretty hysterical.
I think it slammed down.
I still remember being a very little kid and closing.
the door was closed.
I had my fingers in the I still remember that sound.
Squish, crunch.
I didn't break anything, but it was pretty nasty.
And it's just, it's terrible.
It's terrible to me.
This inattentiveness and this...
First of all, there's nothing for them to do at a coffee shop.
What are they going to do?
It's completely boring.
What are they going to do at a coffee shop?
It's really sad.
and they're just going to fuss and fudge it and fidget around until something bad happens And then the mother, the boy who's, the painting landed on the fingers.
And the mother was holding the child and patting the child's back, and then the phone rang, and she took the call.
It's like, your kid just got his fingers crunched.
He's crying like crazy.
He's kind of hysterical, and you take a call?
I don't know.
I don't mean to be overly crabby.
I don't mean to be overly crabby, because I do see some good parenting, for sure.
And these weren't terrible parents.
To me, just inattentive.
And that inattentiveness is really tough.
Did you ever have that?
Let me ask you guys.
Did you ever have that as a kid?
Where you're just stuck and bored while adults are doing adulty things and you're not free to leave?
To me, it's like, you know, go meet in a park.
Let the kids roam around a little or whatever it is, right?
Not in a coffee shop where there's nothing for them to do other than fidget until disaster strikes.
Because they can't protect themselves at that age, right?
I remember...
Women do like to shop as a whole.
I mean, it's not like there's much for men at malls, right?
Women love to shop.
And retail therapy, do they call it?
And apparently, there's just nothing, like if you want in a movie or a TV show, if you want to show a high-status woman, It's pretty predictable, right?
What do you do?
Well, she comes home.
She's got the cinched waist flared, little black dress on, flared waist, little black dress on.
She's got some great heels on.
She's got oversized sunglasses, a big floppy hat.
And she's carrying bags from boutiques.
You know, this is how, apparently this is like the greatest thing on earth for women, is to buy a bunch of useless bags.
And that's just the most amazing thing, and that apparently is the greatest thing.
It's like that scene in the movie Pretty Woman, where Julia Roberts is not getting much attention from the sales clerks, and then she comes back later.
Look at all the money I spent elsewhere.
Big mistake.
You work on commission, right?
Big mistake.
And it's like, ugh!
Right?
That I don't understand.
I mean, when it comes to shopping, God help me.
I mean, it's one of the great things about being married, which I'll talk about a little bit in a sec, but my wife will make sure that I am kept in the clothing that I, well, need and deserve.
And I will, you know, it's funny because, and this is I don't even particularly like shopping for electronics anymore.
Fortunately, I don't need any new electronics, even though, I don't know, my phone is like six years old and so on.
But I bought the stuff that I needed to a couple of years ago, and now I don't need anything new, which is nice.
And I will not upgrade.
I will not upgrade.
I just can't do it.
Well, with one exception.
I will upgrade a larger tablet.
I did upgrade one.
But that's because it had a non-clear screen, which I read outside.
So yeah, I won't upgrade.
It's just too much work.
It's too much annoyance.
And I just won't do it.
And so there's nothing that I like shopping for anymore.
And my wife's not a big shopper either.
I keep telling her, oh, let's go buy something.
She doesn't really want to.
But that apparently is the very greatest thing, is a thin woman.
With big sunglasses and a pretty face, walking into a house with a big giant hallway, like a big giant entrance hall with curved stairs and marble.
And she's got Hermes bags and Versace bags and Donna Karan, DKNY bags and weird shoe manufacturers with half Martian names.
crazy.
But my mom, she used to love to shop and, My brother went to boarding school before I did, and I remember that year in particular.
Just endless amounts of sitting listlessly in stores with no seats.
Like you just find some place to sit, right?
I remember at one point I piled up some clothes to sit on and everyone got really mad at me.
Just shopping.
Just shopping.
She has all this stuff.
She could have been playing with me, we could have been having fun together, but no.
She's got all this stuff.
And now she doesn't have this stuff anymore, because this was like 50 years ago, more than 50 years ago in England.
So that crap is all gone.
All that shit and that stuff and that useless crap is gone.
You ever see those videos where there's two that come to mind.
One is a British cleaning woman, and she's just in there cleaning up people's houses, and there's no relatives who care about it, no kids who care about it, or no kids at all.
Picking all of these photos up.
Oh, look at this.
You know, there's photos framed, all these photos and albums.
It just goes in the dump.
We're all destined for dust in history.
It could be newer homes.
But yeah, really old people.
They've died.
Nobody's known about them.
They've got a kid maybe somewhere on the other side of the island or maybe somewhere else, South Korea or something.
And they go in and this dead person is finally found out through the smell.
And this company has to go in and they try and get in touch with the kids.
And they say, we've got all this stuff here.
And the kids are like, I don't care, just toss it.
Recycle it or give it to charity or something.
I don't care about any of this stuff.
And all the stuff that was lovingly gathered and held onto and cleaned and dusted.
And all the stuff you accumulate disperses like face droplets in a sneeze to nothing.
To nothing.
All right.
Somebody says, Quite a bit older, while my parents were separated, being taken with my brother by my mother when she did things like go to the hair salon.
Brain-numbingly boring.
Nobody to talk to.
Nothing to do.
Yeah.
I guess at least kids have tablets these days, but yeah, the hair stuff.
My mom had thin hair.
Cloudy hair.
And so she spent some time, of course, trying to thicken it and make it look cool.
And I still can't stand that stench of hairspray.
I just can't stand it.
I can't stand it because it just brings back 50 plus years and still.
Somebody says, oh, this is the pregnant lady.
Yeah, I was left alone for long periods of time.
My mom left me in a bathtub with a glass cup and it broke and I sliced my foot on it.
She would recall this story with amusement because of what I said to her.
Hurt self, big one.
Which tells you how young I was when she was just being inattentive, not sure what she was doing.
Many such cases.
Yeah, isn't that wild?
I mean, I've told this story before of my father.
My late father wanted to finish a game or two of tennis and letting me crawl around until I went into a garden shed and drank some weed killer, which could have had something to do with this and this.
Anyway, so, yeah, church was tough.
Yeah, church was tough.
See, church, it was so boring, nothing to do, can't speak.
Then after church, my mom would stay and chat with friends.
Yeah.
Someone says, my mom was a bit like that.
She was more about telling me what I was doing wrong on a continuous 24-hour stream of conscience rather than inattentive.
I would have preferred inattentive.
Not sure, though.
Someone says, you have the right to be crabby.
Had an asthmatic child come into the ER a month ago.
It was disgusting to see this mother complain about her child having asthma.
Called her dramatic and at one point said, with everything we've been going through with her, kids wouldn't recommend it.
She said that in a jokey manner in front of the kid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
James says, there was also the time I was around six when my father had to purchase a wallet for his father's birthday and I was suffering from an ear infection.
Fever.
I would get yelled at.
If I hid in those circular pants racks.
So I just had to sit there.
Oh yeah, the woman says, my mother dragged me through stores a lot too.
In comparison, I'm an efficient shopper.
I go in with a mission and then I leave ASAP.
If I want to peruse, I just go on the internet and order it.
I just can't browse in stores.
What a waste of time.
Oh, by the way, don't forget, of course, if you tipped last night, I'd appreciate it.
We're doing two shows in a row.
Freedomain.com to help out the show.
I'd really, really appreciate it.
I would really appreciate it.
Yeah, I've never been much of a gatherer.
And my daughter, we actually just went today and donated a pretty big item to a secondhand store.
They're actually going to have a bidding on it and all of that.
So we go through and we clean out, like all of our kids' stuff has been donated and for other kids and all of that.
So we try not to gather.
We try not to gather.
Because, I mean, that's just tough for people down the road, right?
People down the road.
Someone's going to have to deal with all of your crap when you're dead.
And the less, the better.
The less, the better.
As a whole.
For sure.
Look at that.
The internet doth be staying up.
Excellent.
So, I wanted to talk about vanity, I want to get there for you.
But I do want to talk about vanity.
I had an interesting conversation about that.
I wanted to share my thoughts about it.
And I'll get your thoughts on it as well.
And I'm just going to refresh here to make sure I'm not stalled on messages.
No, I'm not stalled on messages.
You're stalled on messages.
No problem.
So, there's a number of ways to be vain, and I wanted to talk about the two most common ones, the two major ones that keep you vain.
A vain is when you have an untested high opinion of yourself.
You have an untested, I'm a great writer, but you never show your writing to anyone, you never try and get it published, you never try and get an audience, right?
You know, I'm a great songwriter.
I'm really great at writing songs, but you don't play your songs to anyone.
You don't go to cafes and strum away.
This is strumming, apparently.
It's universal.
I speak sign language.
So when you have untested high opinions of yourself, you ever see these American gladiator things?
I have a number of quasi-toxic traits.
One is imagining that I can do those crazy obstacle courses.
And make it, and it's like, I absolutely couldn't.
I remember trying one not too long ago with my daughter.
I got about halfway through, and I'm like, hmm, this, if I continue, might be fatal.
So I stopped it.
My toxic traitors, you know, well, it looks easy for them.
Dunning-Kruger, right?
Well, it looks easy for them.
Therefore, it's going to look easy for me.
I remember doing some karaoke contests in the past, and I did okay.
Got a couple of rounds in and, you know, got cheered and voted on to the next round or whatever.
But then towards the end, you know, the truly silver-throated angel voices come out.
And I remember watching some guy do, you know, Oh, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch a long, lonely time.
An unchained melody, but in the correct key.
And it's got crazy falsettos and a huge range, the Righteous Brothers.
And he just soared through it.
And I'm like, well, isn't that nice?
Bye-bye.
Good luck with everyone.
I will not be passing this round.
And I didn't, right?
And it's not like I thought I was going to win or anything like that.
To me, it's just kind of fun to get up there, belt a song or two, and see what happens.
But vanity is having an untested high opinion of yourself.
I mean, I will not lie.
I have a very high opinion of myself as a philosopher.
I think I have realistic I have views of myself, but I have a high opinion of myself as a philosopher.
And one of the challenges, you may disagree, I may be wrong, I'll just be honest and tell you what I think.
With regards to what I do in this show, one of the reasons why I ask you all for your questions is that, I mean, I still have stuff to talk about for sure, but I think if the number of Major problems that I have solved in the realm of philosophy, and I believe that I have solved them.
I've debated them endlessly.
I've gotten lots of feedback and pushback and refined them, and I've solved the problem of secular ethics, solved the problem of free will, solved the problem of love, solved the problem of simulation theory, solved the problem of metaphysics and epistemology, and solved the problem of morality in relationships and all of that.
Just done, well, a lot.
I've done a lot.
And again, it won't be seen for a generation or two, everything that I've done.
Philosophy is the slowest moving of the disciplines by far.
By far.
because there is almost nothing practical in philosophical advancements for anyone who's alive.
If it's an advancement in physics, Theory of relativity allows for, equals mc squared allows for nuclear power and so on, right?
So various chemical and physical formulas allowed for the internal combustion engine and trains, right?
So physics, I mean, they do say physics advances, science advances, One grave at a time, right?
It takes a new generation.
But philosophy is much slower, much slower, because philosophy is almost universally negative, particularly moral philosophy is almost universally negative for everyone who currently exists, because everyone who currently exists has embedded in a particular moral paradigm, their relationships, their business, their friendships, everything is sort of embedded in a particular moral paradigm.
And if that moral paradigm is proven to be false, people's lives are revealed to be conformist catastrophes.
And it's like the peaceful parenting thing.
Oh, yeah, the philosophy of parenting, right?
I'm the philosopher who's tackled the philosophy of parenting with the greatest depth and clarity that has probably been achieved.
I've got a whole theory of mental health and psychology and self-knowledge and all that kind of stuff.
Not that I'm a psychologist, but, you know, I have a theory of sort of how the mind works.
So I've done...
If it's been, I mean, I've been almost 20 years doing this, right?
And in public, I'm 20, 40 years, right?
So 40 years of pretty applied thought I've solved a lot.
So I have a very high opinion of myself as a philosopher.
And of course, my call-in shows how to take self-knowledge and apply it to practical decisions within the world.
That is, within the choices that people make in their life.
I've connected abstract theory to practical, empirical decisions in a way that has not been done before, at least in the way that it's recorded and published before.
I got a whole theory of dreams and their purpose.
Really, I've covered the gamut.
And I'm very humbled and grateful for my ability to do that.
I did not earn my ability to do that.
I have that ability and I've tried to And of course, you know, I've explained why disparate groups have disparate outcomes.
And so all of this.
And my predictions have been pretty good.
So I've done a lot.
And so I thought, when I was little, I thought, gosh, I have something really great to offer the world.
And I tried for many years to offer my skills and abilities to the world.
Finally, when podcasting.
I came along and the middleman, the middlewoman in particular, was removed between me and you, right?
I didn't have to go through other people to get from me to you.
I could, as I do right now tonight, talk directly.
And so I felt or had an instinct or a thought that I was going to have great things to offer the world and then the technology caught up, which I am again.
I'm immensely humble, humbly grateful for.
I mean, I'm sure there have been plenty of smart and smarter philosophers throughout history, but like in my novel, Just Poor, Mary O'Donnell, right?
They did not have any way to get their thoughts in a permanent way out into the world.
I'm not smarter necessarily at all.
I just have the right technology at the right time.
And, of course, I've done my debates, I've done my public speaking, and I've put forward many predictions, and I've had, I mean, in many ways, every call-in show is a debate between truth and historical inflicted delusion.
So, I have pride in what I have provided to the world.
Because it's not vanity, because I've tested it, right?
I've put the books out, I've had the debates, I've had the pushback, I've had the feedback, I've had the criticisms, and I've worked with them and all of that.
So that is tested.
That's not vanity.
That has been put to the test.
So vanity is when you have a high opinion of yourself that you refuse to submit to empirical tests.
Oh, I could be a great...
Well, you should go and audition, or if you can't get a part, you can write your own stuff or whatever and just try and find a way to sort of make it happen.
I mean, one of the reasons why I ended up doing a couple of documentaries, and I would have done more except they were choked off from distribution through suppression, was I saw a hoaxedmovie.com.
Mike Cernovich is great.
And even more relevant now than it was when it first came out.
But Mike Cernovich is...
Seeing what I was able to do at the end of that movie, it was like, yeah, I should probably be in the camera more in a natural setting, and so on, right?
freedomain.com slash donate.
And how does vanity tend to be sustained the most?
How does vanity tend to be sustained the most?
So I think there's two ways.
Thank you very much, Grime Time.
I really, really appreciate it.
I'm very kind.
I humbly and gratefully appreciate your support.
It's very helpful to the show, and I really do thank you for it.
So, there's two major ways that people keep their vanity cooking and intact.
Thank you, Matt.
And the first is to be a big fish in a little pot.
To be the best actor in a small town, right?
Oh, hoaxedmovie.com is no longer valid, it says.
James, but you go to fdrurl.com slash hoaxed, fdrurl.com slash hoaxed, and it will go to Mike Zonovich's page where you can get it.
Yeah, I mean, didn't they yoink that out of Amazon?
Even after people had paid for it, they just took it away?
Wow, hoaxed movie is gone.
How strange.
I wonder why they let that happen.
Could have just redirected it somewhere, right?
But thank you.
I appreciate that.
So, yeah, when I went to Glendon campus of York University, which was fairly small, and I was, you know, I hate to sort of say it, but, you know, I was the best actor in a university which had only a couple of thousand people, right?
And I know that because I was cast as the lead in every play.
I never even had to audition, and so I played in a wide variety of I did a play called A Slight Egg.
I was the lead and I did another movie And I remember the director put duct tape all the way down my body so I would know what not to move.
And I played in Chekhov's The Bear as the butler as a comic role.
I was, anyway, so I was just casting a bunch of stuff and really enjoyed it.
And so I thought, gee, you know, I'm a pretty good actor.
And so I went to the National Theatre School.
I auditioned, and they take like 1% of people, 16 out of 1,600.
And I got in, and they liked my acting.
They said, because I went in for acting and playwriting, they said, forget the playwriting.
You're a great actor.
You should stick with that.
And then they found out about my politics and kind of turned on me like a bunch of cornered rabbit jack.
I was going to say Jack Terriers, but I probably should say Pitbulls.
And so then I went to theater school and, you know, I was kind of in the middle.
I was kind of in the middle.
I was certainly people better than me, for sure.
And I was kind of in the middle.
And so I put that to the test and found my sort of limitations.
And I'm very glad that I took theater school.
I'm very glad that I learned how to use my voice and how to...
It was all really, really great stuff.
And as it turns out, I have way too many words of my own to spend my life mouthing other people's language, right?
So, if you're a big fish in a little pond and you stay there, It's more likely that you're going to be vain.
Put it to the test.
You have to keep increasing your challenge and skill level until you figure out where you sit in, I say in reality, but in something empirical and objective, right?
I know the guy who's the best player in...
And if you're really, really good in volleyball and you then don't continue to, but you still play, you just keep playing with people who aren't very good, then you're going to have an inflated sense of your own abilities because you're not testing it by upping your skill set, upping your skill challenges, right?
So that's really, really important.
If you think you'd be a good manager, work to be a manager and find out.
So vanity is inflated.
It's turned tumoresque or cancerous in a way by staying a big fish in a little pond.
Always keep trying to do better, to challenge yourself more, to take on more challenges.
And that way you avoid what is a pretty terrible curse called vanity.
Because vanity keeps you addicted to something that is unreal.
And if you believe things that are unreal, if you believe things that are unreal, you can't be close to anyone.
Like, I remember when I met my wife, she said, how was your day?
And I said, oh, great.
Thank you.
I said it was great.
I got my first book published, and she said, "Oh, I'd like to read it," and so on.
Now, I like my writing, my fiction writing in particular, and I'm really, really enjoying this new novel.
It's really different for me.
It's really challenging and really exciting.
Because, you know, I think I'm a good fiction writer, and particularly my novel, Almost, which is freedomain.com /books.
It's free.
You should definitely check it out.
If I thought I was a great writer, and my wife thought I was a bad writer, there would be an awkward disconnect, right?
And I don't know if you've ever had this in life.
Most people.
Most people have had this in life at one time or another, where, you know, you meet some girl, she's, oh, I love to paint and I'm taking this art course and this, that, and the other, and then...
They're just bad.
They're just bad.
That's really tough.
That's really tough.
So, if you believe things...
If you believe things that are false, or at least not empirically verified, then it's really awkward for people to be around you because they don't accept what it is that you believe.
And it's really tough for them.
It's really tough for them.
What do you say?
You know, you're not really as good as you think you are.
Ah, you know, you believe this book.
Yeah, right.
So, you know, if I...
She says, great.
If I said to my wife, I want to be a professional singer, she'd say, eh, no.
It's not really a thing.
So, the price of vanity is isolation, right?
You are alone with your inflated opinion of yourself.
And when you have an inflated opinion of yourself, like vanity and insecurity, like the old Simple Minds song, right?
Vanity and security are two sides of the same coin.
Vanity is a superstructure of insecurity because you won't put it to the test, right?
You won't put it to the test.
And I mean, I remember many years ago, I used to go to karaoke downtown with a friend of mine and the You know, he wrote this whole space rock opera, and he was telling us the whole story.
And it's like, why are you telling us the story?
Go produce it.
Go record it.
go, you know, whatever, right?
I mean, you know, he was an instrumentalist, and he was a singer, and it's like, get some people to record your interviews.
But don't tell us about it.
Just, I don't know, what's the point, right?
Just make it happen.
So, isolation is the result of vanity.
And all that punctures your vanity creates detonated holes that lets the love in.
Because love is to some degree based upon respect.
And if you believe things about yourself, And refuse to put them to the test, then people sense the vanity.
The vanity means they can't respect you.
And if they can't respect you, they can't love you.
Honesty is necessary but not sufficient for love.
And vanity is...
Yeah, Joe says, on my previous job, I knew I was underpaid.
So I went to look for another job and got a $20,000 raise on my new job.
Yeah, put my theory to the test and got $20,000.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Put it to the test.
I think I have valuable things to say to the world in terms of philosophy.
Put it to the test.
Put your philosophical arguments out there, or whatever it is you're going to do.
Sorry, that's number one.
Number one is big fish in a little pond.
You stay in an area where you are the best.
Maybe you're really into chess, right?
And so you just hang around the park where they do this rapid chess stuff, and maybe you win a bunch of stuff, but you won't enter into any genuine competitions, right?
So, that's number one.
Number two, and this is particularly true.
I'm going to say this to the men.
It happens to the women as well.
But I'm going to say this to the men in particular.
The other way that you foment and wall yourself off with the mossy high bricks of vanity is to compare your strengths to other people's weaknesses.
And this is brutal in dating.
Horrendous.
This breaks up more relationships than any other single thing.
You compare your strengths to other people's weaknesses.
So, my wife is instinctively, ferociously, almost demonically organized.
I have organized thoughts.
My wife has an organized family life.
And these things are complementary, right?
So if I were to say to...
That would be comparing something that I'm ferociously strong into something she's good at, but not as good.
Whereas, of course, if my wife were to compare her, I would say innate, but her immense capacity and enactment of organization, her keeping things running, keeping things, I mean, one day, one day when I'm old and even grayer.
I will tell everyone how complicated life is sometimes, and then you'll appreciate what my wife is doing.
So, if I were to say, the good, the essential good, is intellectual creativity.
I say, well, I'm stronger, I'm better at that than you are, so I'm superior, right?
My strength's against her, and it's not a weakness, but not as strong.
If my wife were to say, Well, you know, being organized is the most important thing in life, and I'm way better at it than you, therefore I'm superior to you.
Oof.
You ever have people like that in your life?
You ever do that?
People who, like, they compare their strengths to your weaknesses and call you inferior or deficient or wrong or bad.
You know, I have these scraps of memory, right?
My memory, nothing's connected.
It's all free-floating.
I have these scraps of memory.
And every single time, I say to my wife, I vaguely remember this.
She's like, it was here, on this month, in this place, on this day.
This was the weather.
Here's why we were there.
Like, she just remembers it all.
Amazing.
What is it they say?
women make the best archaeologists because of their ability to dig up the past.
No, and she uses it for the power of good and keeps my brain organized, but...
Or if I say...
Did I get a new jacket?
Wait, did you buy me something?
She's like, no, no, no, you've had this jacket for, you know, three years and 14 days, and we got it on this place for this reason and that purpose and blah, blah, blah, right?
Amazing.
I remember often that I have clothes.
That's kind of the limit.
That's kind of the limit for me.
It really is.
It's a force of nature.
It is like watching, you know, I'm like a tornado going through the town.
My wife is like watching the reverse of the tornado going through the town.
She puts everything back together, makes everything whole again.
It's really amazing and beautiful and wonderful to be around.
I think it's complementary.
I think that my strengths are my strengths.
Her strengths are her strengths.
I have huge respect for her strengths.
She has huge respect for my strengths.
We work together well.
I appreciate her strengths.
She appreciates my strengths.
And it's a good team.
It's a good team.
We are a good team.
However, if I wanted to be vainglorious, then I would define the things that I'm naturally strong at as the synchronon, the most important things, the essential things, what it really means to be human, right?
AI can organize things, right?
So, if I wanted to be vain and thus isolated and I'm tremulous in my self-assessment and subject to the, you know, if you're vain, then somebody who's perceptive and honest is your enemy, and you're going to fight them like crazy, right?
So if you're vain, then that's going to be how it goes, and you don't want that in life.
You don't want to be like a guy who's on the run, a felon who's on the run.
You don't want to be like that, how he feels when there's a cop around.
Right?
And so if there's an honest and direct person who's around and you are vain, they are your natural enemies.
You are their natural prey, in a sense, right?
So you have to stay away from those people and you have to keep your friends away from those people and it's all just a bunch of management.
A falsehood requires way too much management, in my view.
Plus, you don't have to remember that much if you tell the truth.
It's all real.
So another way that people get trapped in vanity and therefore isolation and I think often depression and so on is to compare their strengths to other people's weaknesses and define their strengths as more important than other people's strengths.
Creative people can do this all the time, right?
They do this all the time.
People who are good at making money say, well, making money is the key.
People who are...
We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and the purpose of marriage, along with love and respect in children, I mean, one of the most functional aspects of marriage is you want to marry someone whose strengths and weaknesses complement your own, right?
So find people who complement your strengths.
In both senses of the word, though, slightly different spelling and pronunciation.
And avoid vanity by avoiding...
That's really, really important.
And humility lets other people in, lets other people have feedback and influence in your life.
And humility, and it's funny because, I mean, people will...
I'm sure it's kind of boring and inevitable.
And they just apply these negative labels rather than think anything through.
But, of course, anybody with at least two-thirds or three-quarters of a brain would recognize that the reason I achieved so much in the realm of philosophy was not vanity at all.
It was humility.
It was humility.
So, when I really sat down and thought about Ethics.
Morality.
I'm like, I don't have a good definition.
I mean, I've studied a whole bunch of good definitions, but none of them really satisfy me.
I don't have a good definition of morality.
I've been studying philosophy at that point for like over 20 years.
I still don't have a good practical, empirical, testable, verifiable, syllogistically provable definition of philosophy.
That's humility.
I've been studying something for 20 years or more, and I don't have an answer to the most essential question in that discipline.
That's humility.
When people would ask me about free will, I wouldn't have a good definition of free will.
Free will is our ability to compare our proposed actions to ideal standards.
And there are these phases, like these storms and these seasons and these paroxysms that go through this community, or at least used to.
And for quite some time, James will remember this as well, but for, it felt like about two years, it was like, Bam!
Bam!
Bam!
Determinism, determinism, determinism.
And out of the fires of that brutal bulrog whip combat, I came up with good definitions of free will and debated them a lot with people back in the day.
I still remember one guy who was a determinist, a staunch determinist, asked him about his childhood and he'd been locked in his room by his parents for most of his childhood.
Well, I can understand why free will is a challenge because you were caged.
So, not having good...
What is love?
Hojo.
Well, I didn't have a good answer.
I didn't have a good answer.
Love is an essential aspect of happiness.
Happiness is the purpose of philosophy.
That wasn't Ned Esferatu, was it?
I don't think it was him.
I think it was someone else.
And I didn't have a good definition of love.
I, when I...
Oh yes, that's right.
That's right.
Nils.
Well, it was public, right?
I started writing articles about it.
The achievements that I was able to surmount were the result of humility.
I refused to pretend to have certainty about that which I was not certain about.
Boy, that feels like a bit of a convoluted sentence.
I refused, and this is the Socratic argument, right?
I refused to pretend to know that which I did not know.
certain of that which I was not certain of.
Thank you.
That's humility.
And that's the lesson of Socrates.
Socrates went around questioning everyone who said they knew what justice was, they knew what virtue was, they knew what the gods wanted and so on, and he would question them and they would fall apart.
So Socrates said, I'm the wisest because at least I know that I know nothing.
That's humility.
To wipe everything clean, right?
To wipe everything clean.
You see, the funny thing is I was not sure I was going to have a whole show on me tonight, but I do.
I do.
Thank you for these great questions and comments.
So, the achievements that I have, I keep wanting to say the achievements that I have achieved because I am big brain, big words.
I can't stop.
I can't keep taking the achievements.
What I have achieved?
I have achieved through Socratic, deep, robust humility.
To wipe the slate clean, blank, blank page, right?
Blank, right?
If I write a chapter and it's bad, I just scrap it and start again.
That's humility, right?
This is not good.
I'm not going to edit it.
What I have achieved, I have achieved through humility.
And because I was humble enough to say, I don't know what virtue is.
I don't really have a strong definition.
Of truth.
And I don't know what free will is, and I don't know what love is, and I don't know how to translate abstract values and virtues into practical decisions within relationships, and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
And I had a lot invested in minarchism.
Thank you, Jimmy.
I had a lot invested in minarchism.
Really did.
It's the foundation of everything that I had worked to believe in for many, many years.
I had 20 years invested in...
It doesn't make it.
It does not make it.
It does not achieve it.
It does not get what needs to be gotten.
Right?
I mean, that was a Galileo who took the bowling ball and the banana or whatever it was and everyone thought the heavier thing would fall faster and it turned out it didn't because he actually tested it.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Is it true?
I'm not sure.
I don't know.
I'm going to throw this thing in because I had the thing open.
Freedomain.com slash books, the present.
You should check it out.
And just download the...
Download it.
Listen to it.
You'll love it.
It's a great book.
It's a great book.
So vanity is imaginary achievements that vanish when you do, because they're not based on anything real, and humility...
Vanity is mortality.
Humility is eternity.
Immortality.
Immortality.
I write because nobody else is writing what I want to read.
In particular with fiction.
In particular with fiction.
I write because nobody else is writing what I want to read, and I assume that I'm not alone in wanting these things, and I was actually quite right.
People really do like my novels, and I'm very pleased for that.
Avoid, avoid, avoid vanity.
It's a drug.
It's tempting as hell.
I get that.
I understand.
Avoid vanity.
It isolates you.
It makes honest and direct people your enemies.
It strips people of their respect for you.
And it has you surrounded by other vain, glorious fools, each of whom, of all of you, are propping up each other's imaginary achievements or fake progress.
And it contributes enormously.
I'm not kidding about this.
Vanity is foundational to violence.
I mean, let me ask you this.
Have you ever, in your life, confronted someone's puffed-up beliefs in their own abilities, talents, or achievements?
Have you ever confronted someone?
Could be in your family, could be extended family, could be a friend, could be a lover.
Have you ever confronted someone's What happens when you confront someone's vanity?
What happens when you start to poke around the house of cards that props up vainglorious, inflated, megalomaniacal, or narcissistic self-imagery?
Yes, they did not like it, to say the least.
Well, lies must always be defended.
With aggression.
The truth fends for itself.
Lies must always be defended with aggression.
Chris says, yeah, they did not like it to say the least.
Mitch says, yeah, and they started screaming at me almost immediately.
Right.
Abuse comes from vanity.
So, you think of parents, right?
Think of parents who's like, well, my kids should just obey me.
They should just listen to me.
They should just do what I say, damn it.
I'm right.
They're wrong.
How dare they question me, blah, blah, blah.
Well, they'll end up escalating even to the point of violence.
Right?
It's bad.
Thank you, Chalks.
I appreciate the tip.
It's bad.
When, certainly with regards to my mother, when my mother...
Oh, you know what's funny?
I'm wondering why I'm a little goggle-eyed and reflective.
Bro has the wrong glasses on.
There we go.
These are like a couple of generations old, which is fine for reading this stuff, but not too goggle-eyed.
like two finding Nemo fish tanks on my face.
But yeah, if you look at a I mean, I remember, I've told this story before, I'll keep it very brief, but I remember a woman who claimed she had psychic abilities, and I said, we should go collect the amazing Randy's million-dollar prize.
He's got a prize in Vegas to anyone who can prove psychic abilities, and it doesn't work that way.
She kind of turned on me.
It's the same thing with astrology, right?
Astrology is kind of a shit test, right?
Can I rope you into crazy?
Can I feminize you, right?
Men are not supposed to believe in astrology because we're men.
I mean, a lot of women will and whatever, right?
But astrology is a woman's shit test to find out if she can push you around or if you're too lustful to be a man.
Will you shut up and nod when she talks about all of this arse in Moon's Venus kaleidoscopic constellation crap?
Yes, the positions of the sun determine your nature when you're born.
It's just a shit test.
Don't fall for it.
Don't fall for it.
It's just a shit test to see if she can bully you and push you around.
That's what it exists for.
Along with an appreciation of Taylor Swift.
So, yeah, when people have delusions, and, you know, I remember a friend of mine when I was younger had a great, great belief in his judo skills.
Great belief in his judo skills.
And I was like, you know, I've never really seen you, but you're kind of short and tubby.
So he ended up entering into a judo competition and got crunched by a giant Russian judo fighter and ended up in hospital and was out of commission for six months.
*pfff*
All right.
Serpenta says, I did against my father a lot in yesteryears, sometimes without realizing it.
I would get hostility, a deathly glare, petty passive aggressiveness from him.
At times, he would go to full on rage and him threatening to kick me out of the house.
saying I'm effing useless and that I'll live in a nearby tent city, all while I feared being assaulted.
But I would egg him on even more.
Yeah.
And not making a case.
For the existence of psychic abilities, but some people do have a really strong intuition.
Not really supernatural, but if somebody is superstitious, I'd like to see how they could believe that.
Oh, yeah, yeah, people have very strong intuitions, for sure.
For sure.
I mean, sometimes in call-in shows, I harp on a particular topic without having any clue why it matters, and then only an hour later, oh, that's why.
It's just intuitions, for sure.
And, of course, our dreams are very intuitive about our lives, and that's something we all can gain.
Access to, I mean, every night if we want to process them, right?
How to pass a shit test, how to handle them.
Why do women do them?
Why do women do shit tests?
Hit me with a why if you'd like to know this.
And of course, not all women do, right?
But hit me with a why if you'd like me to answer this one.
I want to make sure I'm not just focusing on one person's questions, but rather providing value to the community as a whole.
As a whole.
Don't forget, freedomain.com slash donate.
If you'd like to help out the show, I would very much appreciate it.
Yes.
Okay, so the shit test is she doesn't know if you can be pushed around by a stronger personality.
Do you have self-control?
So the way that you pass a shit test is you say to the woman without hostility, yeah, I don't believe that.
That's not really true.
I mean, it's fine if you do.
I just, you know, I don't believe it.
I mean, don't...
My balls will fall out of my pants.
Just don't.
You can go talk about astrology with your female friends.
When women say, what do you think of these heels?
I'm like, well, I'm not a woman and I'm not gay, so I don't have any opinion.
They look uncomfortable.
What can I tell you, right?
Women will try sometimes, some women will try to put you into the role of either gay or Another woman.
And as a man, you have to, no, no, no.
Oh, I'm getting together with my female friends.
It'd be great if you drop by.
It's like, no, I don't want to.
No, go have your girl time.
And that way, when you go have your guy time, you know?
So, women have a, for the male view, peculiar set of beliefs.
A lot of women, not all, right?
Obviously.
And I guess it's part of the charm of women having those beliefs, right?
A lot of magical thinking.
And it's kind of hard to gainsay that in a way, because we men, we have to fight for everything we get.
But, you know, any reasonably attractive woman has a conveyor belt of resources floating her way just for breathing.
Just for breathing.
You know, just don't be fat.
And if you resist the conveyor belt of food, you get a conveyor belt of resources.
And even now, you can be fat as long as you vote, and the government will.
I send you endless resources just to buy your vote and enslave you to the state.
So men, we're pillaged and put down and exploited and scorned and marked and attacked and we have to fight for everything.
And we don't know what it's like to be a reasonably attractive woman, right?
We don't know.
So for me, it's hard to criticize women Too much.
Because I don't understand what it's like to have every media outlet, every goddamn politician, and 90% of men drooling over you, praising you, exalting you, and defending you, and attacking anyone who attacks you.
I mean, you know what it's like every time I'd say anything mildly critical of women back on my social media days.
You'd have the endless, ball-less simp army come flowing down the mountainside like an estrogen.
Avalanche to try and bury me and loyalty to women.
So I don't know.
I don't know what that's like.
I don't know what it's like to put out an opinion and if somebody mildly disagrees with me to have 10,000 people viciously attack that person.
I have no idea what that's like.
I have no idea what it's like to walk down the street and have You know, every other man want to take me to dinner.
Every other person want to take me to dinner and buy me things and take me to Cabo St. Lucas and whatever.
I don't know what it's like.
I don't know what it's like to be Sophie Raine and make $47 million on OnlyFans.
I have no idea.
I have no idea.
How unreal is that?
Women are the natural aristocrats of testosterone subjugation.
I don't know what that's like.
Men have to fight and work for everything.
Women have this conveyor belt, particularly with the state, but also with this conveyor belt.
No, the conveyor belt's not supposed to last forever.
The conveyor belt's supposed to last for about a year, year and a half, during the wooing phase in your late teens, before you get married, shacked up, and have babies.
But now, with the state, with the state, man alive.
God help you.
God help you.
This is why these women remain kind of infants.
A lot of women, right?
Not all, obviously.
But a lot of women remain infants into their dotage because they get praised endlessly by the media that wants to subjugate them and control them.
They get praised endlessly.
And women respond more to emotional arguments then.
Men.
Men respond more to data and facts and empirical evidence.
Women respond more to emotional arguments, which is why Netflix versus, I don't know, FBI crime stats.
But to be kept in a state of being worshipped your whole life is to be kept in a state of late teen immaturity.
And men, we have no clue.
I mean, maybe a couple of men.
You know, maybe Steven Tyler and Brad Pitt or whatever, right, in their prime.
Maybe.
Maybe.
A few men, but the vast majority of men, we have no idea what it's like to be that praised, that defended, to have, you know, 10,000 simps.
You don't even have to snap your fingers.
You know, like I was reading a little bit last night from my ancient Taylor Swift tweet from six years ago, five and a half years ago.
You know, the moment that women are upset, all of these men are like, how dare you?
Like, I don't have any idea.
I have no idea.
I mean, I couldn't even get people I'd worked with for years to defend me when I was deplatformed, but, I mean, this pathetic, you know they don't work out, the simp army that comes and, you have affronted a woman, how dare you?
With their imaginary silk gloves and the field of battle, pistols at dawn nonsense.
I know what it's like.
I have no clue.
I have no clue.
In my wildest dreams, I can't imagine what it's like to have, you know, education panders to women.
Every major media institution, from fiction to nonfiction, well, they're both fiction, panders to women.
Governments, politicians pander to women.
Feminists pander to women.
You've got the male feminists who pander to women.
You've got the Federal Reserve panders to women.
You've got affirmative action hiring pandas to women.
It's just, it's, I can't.
I mean, the best way to keep women unlovable is to praise them forever, and that way it provokes their vanity, which means they can't ever get close to anyone.
It's horrendous.
It is a genuine, magical, horrendous, satanic psyop to keep praising women to the point where they're absolutely unbearable to be around.
Again, not all women, right?
But the women who swallow this shit?
Yeah, like the Schrodinger's feminist, right?
I am both empowered and a victim, depending on how things go, right?
And to have everybody want to hold your hand and tell you it's not your fault when you fuck up?
Can't imagine.
What do men say to other men when we fuck up?
You fucked up!
Fucked up!
Right?
Oh, it's not your fault, honey.
It's the mean patriarchy.
I mean, and so the more that education in the media panders to women and praises women, the more they become allergic to honest men, right?
Direct and honest men.
That's horrendous.
then it does breed a lot of violence and aggression for women, right?
So, sorry, let me just...
No.
The shit test is an attempt to find out if you will lie to get things.
Are you dishonest?
That's what a shit test is about.
A woman doesn't want to get married to and have kids with a guy who turns out to be a pathological liar because he's just going to cheat on her and he's not going to work hard.
He's going to get fired from his jobs.
Other men aren't going to like him because he lies.
Pardon me, got the sneezes tonight.
So a woman has to find out if a man is a liar before she has kids with him.
How does a woman find out if a man is a liar?
She says something that's untrue deep down, and she knows it's untrue deep down, and she knows that he knows it's untrue deep down, and she sees if he'll just pant and lick her leg and agree.
It's just a manipulative liar.
Now, that's on the one hand.
On the other hand, if he's like, well, that's bullshit and how dare you make really aggressive stuff, then he's too irascible and ill-tempered to have kids with.
So, it's not an attempt to emasculate.
It's an attempt to find out who's a pathological liar.
Yeah.
Jared says, women want to know that the men around them aren't solely persuaded by pressure or hotness.
Yeah, for sure.
for sure and For the men here, please understand this.
You and I, as men, have not been subjected to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of directed, focused, obsessive propaganda.
Like, we don't know what it's like.
So, I mean, most propaganda hits women.
Most propaganda is aimed at and hits women.
You know, it's pretty easy to be brave in a battlefield knowing that no one's ever going to shoot at you, right?
Pretty easy to be honest and direct and empirical when...
You've been the victim of propaganda rather than the target of propaganda.
And women score much higher than men in the trait called agreeableness, which in its extreme, well, in one Aristotelian extreme is irascibility and ill-temperating, the other is hyper-conformity and aggression to questions.
So, we don't know.
We don't know what it's like.
We don't know.
You know, try being...
to be praised relentlessly, to be elevated relentlessly, to be called perfection and good and great and wonderful while the sneering is all at the boys and the troublemakers and the don't listen and fidget and we'll drug the shit out of you if you're not interested by my boring woke lecturers.
And then you hit puberty and every man is And then every show is about how wonderful girls are and how terrible boys are.
Everything you turn on, every movie you go to, and every musical and everything, everything all the time, and that politicians are all like, oh, the strong, brave women, and independent women, and women of the backbone, and women, blah, blah, blah, and everyone praises you all.
I mean, it produces psychosis that the vanity of your average European queen or king doesn't come close to the inflicted estrogen, cocaine, vanity stuffed up the noses of women.
From babyhood onwards.
Like, please, have some pity.
I have some sympathy.
Is that why people keep throwing money to women on OnlyFans, to keep them hooked on it, and then no good man wants her?
No, I don't think that's it.
No, OnlyFans arises out of masturbation culture that a lot of men consider a masturbation.
To be a valid sexual orientation these days.
And so you give women money on the internet.
give money to women on the internet because when a woman receives a gift from you that triggers your lizard brain to think that you have sexual access or a potential there thereby right so if you give a ring to a woman or you give a present to a woman if she's married or engaged or But if she accepts your gift, it means you have a chance.
So it's a way of enhancing the pleasure of masturbation, I assume.
I don't know, I assume.
but that's that's the way that it works and of course what's the 80 of They're just reformed prostitutes, right?
Or half-reformed prostitutes.
They have a history of sex work.
Which means that they've been training to do that kind of work for years.
It's safer.
But, of course, 80% of OnlyFans, customers, the vast majority of men, are married, right?
So it also comes out of the deadbed sexless marriages, right?
This woman says, not entirely sure how I evaded this psychosis, but it all seemed really lame from an early age to me, and I was always kind of an outcast.
As a result, I don't Have female friends, so you know.
Oh, yeah.
You really have to not care about being ostracized to stay sane as a woman.
But if you're comfortable with ostracism, chances are you've got other issues.
LOL.
Yeah.
It can be self-sabotage at times as well.
For sure.
Yeah, I mean, I've had to be the human shield for this stuff with regards to my daughter.
To deconstruct it, right?
I did a show, The Truth About Frozen, many years ago.
Because you have to deconstruct this kind of stuff or make children aware of the propaganda and what's going on.
Really important.
Really essential.
Essential for parenting these days.
So, sorry.
Somebody had a question.
What do I think of Harvard?
Harvard in the yard.
What do I think of Harvard, Trump's ban on Harvard accepting foreign students?
Was it something like that?
Now, hasn't this been overturned?
Hasn't this been overturned by some...
People don't vote for the judges, really.
They vote for the president, but the judges keep interfering with the will of the people.
And it doesn't go well from here, right?
What happened with Trump's...
I think, was it just Harvard?
Yeah, the Trump administration's recent actions targeting foreign students primarily focus on Harvard University.
So, in May 2025, the Trump administration revoked Harvard University's certification under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, effectively barring the university from enrolling international students for the 2025-26.
academic year.
Harvard could no longer host new foreign students and its approximately 6,800 existing international students, about 27% of its student body were ordered to transfer to other schools or face loss of legal status and potential deportation.
uh So, yeah, it's a lot to do with the anti-Semitism and so on.
So, had ties to the Chinese Communist Party and so on.
So, let's see here.
A federal judge is ruling, holding nationwide student status revocation.
Judicial oversight may limit the administration's reach.
So, what do I think about it?
I mean, what was I reading that, was it President Xi in China?
One of his kids was at an American university.
It's wild.
It's wild.
So, I think the idea that you would let people from countries utterly devoted to your destruction come and study in your universities is kind of incomprehensible to me.
Now, again, this should all be free market stuff.
The government shouldn't have any power or control in any of this kind of stuff, but yeah, it's crazy.
Yeah, the show is 2714, The Truth About Frozen.
So, it's pretty bad.
If US universities or any sort of country's universities, if those universities are heavily devoted to Massive amounts of income from foreign students.
And I don't know how it is in the States, but at least the last time I checked here in Canada, foreign students pay many multiples of the price of domestic students.
It's crazy.
Let me just tap that.
foreign students.
Um, bum, bum, bum.
Mmm.
New Canadian media.
Oh, that's from 2023.
International students face unlimited tuition increases at most Canadian universities.
Despite making up just 17% of students studying in Canada, international students contributed 43.5% of all tuition fees collected in 2020.
So yeah, it's heavily subsidized for local students.
Uh, uh, uh, uh, Let's see here.
In the US, the average tuition at public four-year institutions, 2024 to 2025, was over $30,000 per year for internationals versus $11,600 for state residents.
Yeah, so, I mean, you just get massive amounts of money from foreign students, which means that you're going to inevitably end up pandering to foreign students how much espionage is happening to You know, to train, let's say, Elbonia, right, the sort of made-up Scott Adams country, right?
So to train, let's say, Elbonia hates America, wants to destroy America, right?
Then to train an Elbonian engineer is more dangerous than training an Elbonian soldier, right?
So why would you train the people of a country that wants to destroy you?
Again, none of it makes any sense from a sort of rational, logical self-preservation standpoint, but again, with government, all corruption is possible until it's not.
So, those are my thoughts.
Or to put it another way, like let's say it's a free society, it's a free market, you know, like I talk about in my novel, The Future, freedome.com slash books.
But let's say that, would you want...
Makes no sense at all.
I mean, let's take a sort of extreme example.
It's not that extreme.
It's an extreme when we think about it.
Can you imagine, during World War II, can you imagine British universities training German engineers?
And arms manufacturers and weapons manufacturers, oh yes, come over.
As long as you're paying three times the tuition, we're happy to train you on how to better build V2 rockets to decimate our cities.
Madness.
Madness.
Somebody says, this lady, this is going to be a silly question.
Don't program me, I say.
But I say, I love my cat.
And I ask my husband if he also loves the cat.
And he says no, because the cat cannot be virtuous.
So we can love our pets even if they're not virtuous.
So we need more words for love.
I have affection for my cat.
Seems cumbersome.
I mean, it's fine to use the word love.
It's just not the same as the way you would love a virtuous person.
Right?
Look, I'm not the language police, obviously.
If you want to say you love your cat, that's fine, right?
But you just have to look at So why is it that we have great affection for our pets?
Because our pets are essential for our human survival, like particularly, you know, winter and farming communities, right?
Winter-based, snow-based.
So cats, of course, are essential for keeping vermin out of your winter food stocks, right?
Now, that's why we have.
I mean, I feel this very strongly.
I have this immense attachment.
To animals.
Very powerful.
Very powerful.
Of course, my ancestors were landowners and farmers and so on, right?
So, when my daughter holds a frog, right?
She doesn't really do it as much anymore.
But when she used to hold frogs, if every now and then the frog would jump from her hand and land on something hard, like, I don't know.
Tarmac or concrete or something like that.
I'd be like, oh, I'd feel it.
I'd be like, please, God.
And I'd always have to turn her away.
She'd hold the frog.
And, oh, look at the frog.
It's so cute.
It's a beautiful frog.
Please point it to the grass.
So if it jumps, it lands on something soft.
And we'd have these disagreements.
She'd say, oh, but they're fine.
It's like, yeah, but it's not nice.
Not nice.
And so it was the same thing with the ducks, right?
The ducks were our pets, right?
We have had dozens of ducks, and we've taken them from, you know, ducklings all the way to flying around.
And if the ducks would be limping, oh, I have this, and I think it's common, right?
And it's a bit of a white thing, right, that this is the real care for animals and so on.
And so pets, we bond with them very deeply and powerfully.
Because they're essential for our survival.
Like, we could not survive without pets.
At least, not very well.
I mean, you need cats, you need dogs, your livestock is essential, and you have to have that attachment and that connection to your pets.
So, please understand, you're programmed that way.
And that's not to say don't feel it, right?
That's fine.
I mean, I'm programmed to feel hungry.
That doesn't mean I can't enjoy a meal.
But please understand, like, You're programmed that way.
You're programmed to have devotion to your pets.
Because if you have devotion to your pets, your pets will have loyalty to you and will be much more likely to protect you, to help you, right?
You needed dogs for protection and warning and sort of herding sheep and so on, right?
So we have a very strong attachment.
And listen, the intellectual understanding of this, I don't mean this to diminish the passion and connection that you have with your pets.
I don't mean that at all.
At all.
Like, enjoy it.
Relish it.
My daughter and I, was it yesterday?
My God.
The days are blurring.
I have to ask my wife.
The days are blurring.
Yes, yesterday we go, we went to a cat shelter.
And, you know, I give my donation and we go in and we play with the cats.
And she loves cats.
Loves cats.
And they're great.
They're wonderful, wonderful creatures.
And blood pressure goes down when you pet cats, and dogs are wonderful.
And to have something so excited when you come home is beautiful.
So to love your cat?
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
But would you feel the same about an armadillo?
Probably not.
Right?
So, I mean...
I mean, what was it?
I saw a video of somebody in Thailand flicking a cockroach off somebody's head.
It turns out the cockroach was his pet or something like that.
Like, there are people who have pets that are completely incomprehensible to me.
Every now and then there's some lunatic in Florida who has a freaking alligator in the bathtub or something, or people have...
Was it Tom Green?
the comedian.
And he was like, The fact that people have these pets, it's weird to me.
It's weird to me when it evolved to have snakes as pets, at least not in Europe.
So, there's nothing wrong with your attachment and your affection and your love for your cat.
It's programmed in by our ancestors.
In other words, those with greater affections.
I mean, it's again, Aristotelian mean, right?
Those who had too much attachment to their pets ended up not getting married and become the eponymous cat ladies, right?
Like I was talking to this woman at the cat shelter and she said, oh yeah, sometimes we'll come across crazy old women who've got like a hundred cats.
And then we've got a huge problem, right?
Because where do you put them, right?
So, think of it as kind of like a codependence or symbiosis.
Am I having a brain fart?
What is that thing?
I think it's symbiosis.
Oh, embarrassing.
Every now and then.
That may but does not necessarily benefit each other.
Sympiotic relationships, mutual benefit to mutual harm.
Okay, but what is the one, I should know this, what is the one that is mutually beneficial, right?
Mutualistic relationships found in lichens.
All right.
What is the one that is mutually beneficial?
I really should know this.
I'm sorry that I don't.
Help me, people.
Don't leave me twisting in the wind.
I'm not a biologist.
All right.
Mutualism.
mutualism or interspecies reciprocal altruism is a long-term relationship between individuals at different species where both individuals benefit.
Okay, I don't feel too bad about that because...
What's this word?
And then you're like, ah, somebody says it.
And you're like, that's why I wasn't sitting here about to...
Symbiosis.
Looks right.
Mutualism.
Yeah, mutualism.
Thank you, James.
I had to look it up.
James is, like, terrifying when it comes to trivia.
He will win every time.
Every time.
The clamfish and the anemones.
A territorial fish protects the anemone from an enemy-eating fish.
The anemone-eating tentacles protect the clamfish from its predators.
Yeah, okay.
So, yeah, mutualism.
Don't say that.
So, mutualism.
We protect the pets.
And we breed the pets.
and we feed the pets and in return the pets, um, Symbiotic was correct.
It has nothing to do with harm.
That is not correct.
Sorry about that.
Sorry about that.
The term is sometimes more exclusively used in a restricted mutualistic sense where both symbionts contribute to each other's subsistence.
But technically, it is not that way.
Technically, it is sort of a codependent relationship or an interwoven relationship that could result in positive, neutral, or negative.
So, a common use is mutualism, but mutualism is technically more correct.
Welcome to my TED Talk.
All right.
Did I?
Yeah, so...
Biology Dictionary says, symbiosis, the close living relationship between organisms from different species with benefits to one or both of them.
Symbiosis, this is from Buchanica.
Symbiosis, any of several living arrangements between members of two different species, including mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism.
Both positive, beneficial, and negative, unfavorable to harmful associations are therefore And the members are called symbionts.
Okay, so I'm going to go with Britannica rather than donor.
Oh wait, I'm so sorry.
Britannica doesn't donate to me.
Oh yes, oh donors, you are so absolutely correct.
I'm bathing in your wisdom.
It's going to regrow my hair and make my nose even nosier.
Sorry, don't stand corrected if you donate to freedomaid.com slash donate.
I will send you feet pics.
Alright.
Unlike my opponents who send you defeat pics.
Alright.
What the hell are we talking about?
Oh yeah, so cats.
So yeah, cats is totally fine.
Enjoy, love, affection, right?
But it's programmed into you.
It's programmed into you, right?
Which is why we eat pigs.
pigs are not pets.
And most people are comfortable, even though pigs are, We eat pigs and we're comfortable with that, but we will not eat cats and dogs because we're horrified by that and all of that is baked into our DNA.
All of that.
All right.
All right.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
There was an R2R question further up.
Yes, there was.
Can I do a search in the comments?
I will get to the I have a question.
Says somebody from an hour ago.
Sorry.
Me and my wife, my wife and I, are struggling with RTR, real-time relationships.
It says to express emotions in real-time using I statements.
But how do we navigate a situation where my wife is bringing to me some emotional upset, but during the conversation she says something that is upsetting to me and feels insensitive?
I want to be there for her and listen and help her with her emotions, but also...
How do we navigate this without silencing each other?
If she's talking about her feelings without blaming you or ascribing causality to you, why would it be that upsetting?
I mean, if my wife stubs her toe and says, ah, that really hurts, am I, ah, right?
Am I upset?
No.
She's just using her I statements.
If she says to me, I stubbed my toe, it really hurts, then you're to blame, right?
Maybe I left my weights in the hallway or something, right?
Okay.
Well, I'm going to feel bad, right?
But I am to blame.
So if she says something that is not RTR, in other words, she ascribes causality to you, blames you, attacks you, so to speak, then...
RTR is when you honestly express what you think and feel, but without assuming that it's true.
Right?
And in particular, your feelings, right?
If your wife does something that upsets you, you say, I'm upset.
I was upset after you did this.
I'm not sure exactly why.
I'm not saying it's your fault, but this really upset me.
I mean, that's not going to make someone defensive, is it?
Is it?
I mean, unless they're really defensive, in which case, We need to be curious about our emotional experiences, right?
Something can upset me.
It might have nothing to do with what I think the cause is, right?
So, just to be open about all of that.
All right.
Boy, look at that.
The time flies.
The time flies.
And, um...
Thank you for such great questions.
Of course, freedomain.com slash books.
Other books, freedomain.com slash documentaries.
You should check out the documentaries.
And freedomain.com slash call if you would like to book a call-in show.
It can be public or private.
The private ones, I'm pretty blunt, give pretty directional advice.
And you can go into names, places, dates, whatever you want because it's just between us.
And that's well worth it.
And of course, the open call-ins are...
We can do that too.
So I really do appreciate everyone's time tonight.
Thank you so much if you're listening to this later.
Of course, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
Massively, deeply, and oh so humbly appreciated.
Lots of love, my friends.
I will talk to you soon.
Sunday, 11 a.m.
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