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June 13, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:35:06
Philosophy vs Psychology - Freedomain Premium Livestream
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All right.
I think we're on.
Thank you for your patience.
Sorry it was a couple of minutes late.
It's a little bit of a maze to get to the premium style over here on Telegram.
But, of course, thank you so much for dropping by today.
And, of course, in particular, thank you so much for your support of Freedomain and this meaty philosophical conversation.
I really, really do appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I moved my head briefly, and the headset went crazy.
All right, hang on a sec.
There we go.
Oh, so technical.
All right.
There we go.
All right.
So, this is, of course, a big thank you to the donors.
To you, who help out so much and keep things chugging and alive, thank you so, so much.
And also, of course, it is your show.
So, I'm here to answer any questions that you have, respond to any criticisms, whatever you like.
If you would like to ask a question, make a comment.
Challenge, denigrate, whatever's on your mind?
I have been working quite a bit on the new book, which is very interesting.
Every time I write a new book, I try not to have written anything I've written before.
I try not to write anything that I've written before.
And that keeps it interesting, keeps it spicy.
But, of course, the big challenge is...
I mean, there are writers, of course, there are a lot of writers who, you know, kind of write the same thing over and over again.
And, I mean, nothing particularly wrong with that, but it would not work for me.
I have a sort of strong preference, I suppose, to making sure that I stay interested in whatever it is that I'm doing.
And I am a little bit of a, I don't know, I mean, maybe I would say sort of the ADHD stuff.
I don't think I have never even remotely categorized myself in that context.
You know, people just say ADHD because they're usually not smart enough to keep smart kids engaged, in particular smart boys engaged.
Attention deficit is I can't keep you interested.
I just can't keep you interested.
And that's pretty challenging.
So I have to keep myself interested in what I'm doing.
And that means trying to find new ways of doing things.
And when I look at sort of the novels that I've written, I started off with historical novels because...
They still have a pretty ambivalent relationship to the modern world as a whole.
Oh, and by the way, I'll keep my eyes peeled on the call list here.
So if you have a question or a comment or something you want to talk about, please feel free to raise your hand.
And I will be happy to interrupt what I'm saying in order to respond to what you say.
So I'll just keep my eyes going here, but I'll talk a little bit about...
Whether you find that interesting or not, I think we all have these sort of creative challenges in life.
It could be in the business world.
It could be in relationships.
How do you keep things interesting and moving in relationships?
And sort of when I think about the novels, I started definitely with historical novels.
My very first novel was called The Jealous War.
Well, no, no.
My very first novel was called By the Light of an Alien Sun.
It's a science fiction novel, and then I wrote...
And then, and then, and then I wrote a novel, which was my first real novel, called The Jealous War.
It was the first one that I finished.
And then I wrote Revolutions.
And, of course, The Jealous War and Revolutions were both historical novels.
One was First World War novel, and the other, of course, was a sort of late 19th century novel set in Russia.
About a very fascinating historical character revolutionary called Sergei Nachayev and his mentor Alexander Horsin.
And these were all historical novels because I really wanted to write novels of ideas, of philosophy, of depth and power, of that kind of stuff.
And, dear Lord, I mean, maybe it's because time washes away the detritus and leaves you with the gold.
Right?
That is like a gold panner, right?
So the reason why you pan gold is because gold is generally heavier than other elements.
Because gold is heavier than other elements, it tends to sink to the bottom.
And using that property is why gold panning is a thing, why gold panning works.
And I suppose if you look back in the past, all the trashy, inconsequential, frothy stuff is gone, and you're left with the stuff that has...
And so I found that by going into the past, I was able to extract more depth and meaning from the world that was.
Because in the world that is, depth and meaning seem to be largely absent, to put it as nicely as humanly possible.
Significantly absent.
Elementally absent.
And, of course, they were two very different environments.
The Western Front in World War I, very different environment from the intellectual battles in mid-late 19th century Russia.
And then, and then, and then, I wrote The God of Atheists, which was a modern comedy, where it is from the young that the depth and power come.
The basic principle or the idea is that the older people teach the young kids to ask questions, to think, be skeptical, and then they think that they'll turn that on the world as a whole, and then it turns out that they turn that curiosity and skepticism on their own parents, which is both funny and uncomfortable for everyone involved.
And then I wrote Almost, and that actually came up almost as a big, big old 340,000-word.
Basically, three novels are set in England and Germany and France and other places in Europe throughout the First World War all the way through to the opening days of the Second World War.
And that actually came out of listening to an audiobook that...
Thank you.
And I found that I was, and I still feel that even now, it's like a quarter century since I wrote the book, I think it's my best book in many ways, but the war, my God.
I mean, I started with the First World War and then in some ways hit my peak with the Second World War because I feel, you know, I'm just sort of thinking about this many years later, and I don't know if you guys have war stories.
Of course, if you're American, you would have the Vietnam War, perhaps with an older grandfather even left over from now.
Probably not by this point.
He'd have to be very old for the Korean War.
But I feel like, for me, the two wars of the 20th, Century.
Did not end.
Never quite ended.
Which is why I think, when I dip into that history, it has so much power for me now.
And I've been thinking about this more and more lately.
As I get further and further away from my childhood, I mean, of course, you know, the goal is hopefully that you get some kind of clarity.
On your childhood.
Particularly if you've had a rough childhood.
I'm sort of very aware of the passage of time.
I've seen those those lines of your life.
You know, you make it to 80. Well, I'm 59 this year.
So, you know, three quarters through on average.
And so my childhood was 40 plus years ago.
50. In some ways.
And so hopefully you get some sort of clarity.
And I've been reading about what happened to the population of Germany at the closing months and really in the half decade after the Second World War.
And, you know, in particular, the ravages of the Russian troops who came.
Pouring in from the East, and they had massive rage and hatred of the Germans, because, of course, the Russians had suffered so much on the Eastern Front.
And what they did to the population, girls from the age of 8 to 80, Where women were relentlessly raped.
And there's these sort of haunting videos of German women, you know, half dead, dragging themselves along the street, starved.
The occupation of Germany in the sort of late stage of the Second World War and after the Second World War was savage.
Now, again, we can say, ah, yes, but they were savage.
Not the eight-year-olds, whatever you want to say about the collective guilt of the Germans.
It was not everyone's fault who was punished.
And, you know, of course, thinking of my own mother, born in 37, right?
So she would have been eight at the end of the war.
And if I look at my mother's sort of disordered personality and chaos, and I won't sort of get into all of the details that reinforce this perception or belief, but I mean, I imagine that she was, like most females in Germany, treated in staggeringly brutal ways, that the war...
Destroyed her.
And then her destruction created a giant tombstone domino that fell down and almost destroyed me.
And when I sort of look at that kind of history and I say, okay, well, if I was in a country, if I was a female and I was in a country that had been bombed end-to-end where there was absolutely no rule of law and the most savage orc-type enraged beasts were roaming the land, Raping everything in sight for a long time.
You know, I grew up in a fairly stable world, but my home was chaotic.
And of course, both my mother's home and the world was chaotic and evil almost beyond comprehension.
And what happened in the West, the First World War, of course, Boom, the great 13-year Great Depression, Second World War.
What happened in the West, you know, it still has me, for sure.
And I think I've done a pretty good job of shielding the next generation, at least in my family, from all of that.
very real phenomenon, a very real thing.
So I remember when I was listening to the Churchill biography, I found myself just...
Thank you.
I mean, I think in many ways the West, Europe, Western Europe has been dead man walking since, since the 50s.
It's such a collective shock and horror that it really can't be processed.
Some stuff you can process.
I mean, a lot of stuff you can process.
But not everything.
Not everything.
So, I did huge amounts of research.
I took 18 months off, actually, to write The God of Atheists and to write almost.
And it was very good for me, hopefully, if you read the books and I've gotten some very good feedback on those.
But hopefully, if you read the books, you'll agree that the books have significant merit in and of themselves.
But it certainly was powerful for me.
And then, of course, I didn't write because I was doing my non-fiction, my sort of works on philosophy and relationships and so on, documentaries and so on, and then I got back into fiction a couple of years ago when I wrote The Future, and then, and I have to thank somebody who reminded me of an idea I put out many years ago on the show where I was talking about a president who was cryogenically frozen.
And woke up in a free society.
How would he be treated?
How would he be viewed?
And somebody reminded me of that, and I was like, you know what?
That would be a nice break or a change.
I constantly need to plow new ground, in a way, to keep my juices flowing, to keep my intellectual juices flowing.
I can't do repetition.
I mean, it's not even like a...
Like, I can't.
My brain just won't give me anything.
So, then I wrote the present, which is the story of the slow collapse of the current civilization.
Well, slow and then rapid.
And now I'm working on a new book, which is a story told in reverse.
So, it's interesting.
Challenging.
Exciting.
And I'm really quite pleased at how the analogies and metaphors are flowing.
Because in the future, my novel The Future and in my novel The Present, analogies and metaphors were not central or core to the story.
Certainly the present, by its sort of very nature, a snapshot of the world that is, is naturalistic.
Except for Oliver's dream, which is naturalistic in a way, of course, but fantastical in the storytelling.
But this one, I want to allow myself to have lucid dreams of people's thoughts and actions.
I want to go deeper into character.
And deeper into history so that people's decisions at the surface are informed.
Because, you know, most people that you meet, you see their surface actions.
It's kind of like an iceberg, right?
You know, like 90% of it is underwater.
So I wanted to explore the depths and then show how the depths produce the surface choices and people's lack of knowledge of the depths.
It's why the surface choices tend to be so chaotic.
But that means I have to allow myself, and it's hard to fight this, because, you know, it's always too much metaphor, too many metaphors, too many analogies, and too much depth, and it's like, but I haven't tried something like this before.
And because I haven't tried something like this before, I get a lot of creativity.
Whatever I have tried before, I get little creativity.
But whatever is new is fertile.
I can't even go back to old styles.
You know how you leave a farmer's field.
You leave it fallow.
You let it lie to recover so the nutrients can return.
I can't even do that.
Like, I am an inveterate explorer.
I have to go to new ground.
I can only plant crops in ground that I'm clearing for the first time.
All I can get.
All I can do.
And so I feel like an idiot.
I feel incompetent because it's something new.
But out of that feeling of flailing around, I think comes something sort of very fresh.
For me, at least.
I really am enjoying working on the new book.
And I thank you.
Of course, it means a little bit less in terms of our shows.
I did a couple of hours this morning.
And it's slower than usual.
I mean, I remember when I was working on Almost, I would sort of obsessively and perhaps a little pathetically keep track of my word count during the day.
And I remember sometimes writing three, four, five, six.
I remember one 7,200 word day.
This is back when I was typing by hand.
And I'm trying that again.
I haven't typed a book by hand in many, many years, probably 20 years or more.
And I'm trying that again.
Rather than dictating it, trying by hand.
And that's, I find, a very interesting process as well.
And I think it does actually help with the analogies because typing by hand slows things down a little bit to the point where the ideas accumulate behind my eyeballs.
Whereas if I just dictate, the ideas accumulate and I speak them out right away.
They don't accumulate and get richer and deeper.
So I think slowing down the production speed is actually quite helpful in terms of making the book richer and deeper.
So, I appreciate your support and I appreciate your patience.
I think this is going to be a very good and interesting story when it's done.
And I can't wait to share parts of it as I move forward and go ahead.
So, I have that thought.
I have a bunch of other thoughts, as you can well imagine.
But, again, I'm here for you.
And if you have any questions, comments, Issues, challenges.
You can raise your hand, and I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.
Just take a moment for that, in case, well, maybe you're at work.
Hey, Steph, it's so odd.
Hey, how you doing?
I'm well, how are you?
I'm well, thank you.
So I have a psychological question for you, a psychiatry question for you.
I know that...
And in my sessions with clients, I do a lot of Socratic questioning, and I do a lot of philosophical reasoning with them.
And the lines have started to get kind of blurred for me between what is psych and what is philosophy.
And so I kind of just want to know from you, maybe just to kind of give me...
Is there still a difference for you between someone who seeks therapy versus someone who goes to a philosophical understanding?
And if so, what that difference is and why someone would need therapy over philosophy?
And do you still feel that psychology has its place considering how much the field has gone downhill?
Right, right.
I don't mean to be the rude guy who's answering a question with a question, but I'm sure that you have some model of the mind that you are attempting to help your clients with.
And I was just curious, I mean, if you want to talk about that, we can, or if you find it interesting, but I would be curious what your model of the mind is for the way that you approach your clients.
What is it that you're trying to get them to?
Or what would you define as a reasonably healthy state?
We can't sort of be purely healthy because we live in a bit of an asylum.
But what is your model of the mind and what is it that you're trying to achieve?
Well, I'm very client-centered.
So despite maybe not agreeing with what a client comes into the therapy room for, um, And my modality that I normally work with is cognitive behavioral therapy.
I really try to help people understand that their feelings can shift when we base our understanding on reality and perception makes a huge difference.
And so I really try to get them to look at things very reality-based and what's actually in front of them versus what they kind of interpret life to be.
And then I take in, like I said, I take in whatever their goals are for treatment.
And I always play the devil's advocate because I want them to be able to understand what their values are and what their beliefs are on a strong foundation.
And a lot of times I feel like clients come in.
And they loosely say these words on what they believe, but they don't actually have a foundation that they've built these beliefs from.
And so I work a lot on what their value system is and really make sure that they actually truly walk in those values so that they're not being hypocritical, that they're basically walking in harmony between their behaviors and their actual beliefs.
So that is generally the framework in which I work from.
And I feel that it has a lot to do more, honestly, with philosophy than it does with psychiatry.
And so sometimes I even get skewed on like, wait, am I actually doing psychology?
Is that still a field?
Or am I really helping them determine what their philosophy in life is?
If that makes sense.
Beautifully expressed, beautifully put.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
So, yeah, I mean, a lot of, I'm certainly no expert on, on, on, I'm anxious.
Well, anxious about what?
Well, I'm anxious that my wife is going to leave me, okay?
What evidence is there that your wife is unhappy?
Well, she looks at me funny from time to time.
Have you talked to her about it?
So somebody has a belief, I'm anxious because I think my wife's going to leave me, and you start probing for evidence.
And, of course, if there is evidence, well, why do you think your wife's going to leave me?
Oh, she moved out yesterday.
It's like, okay, well, that's not paranoid, right?
I mean, she does sound like she's at least considering leaving in a permanent fashion.
So it is trying to figure out the truth or the empirical evidence for people's perceptions.
And again, I'm sorry to have butchered whatever I've butchered, but is that somewhat close?
Pretty much so, yes.
Or somebody says, I have a lump in my shoulder.
It's cancer, right?
And it's like, okay, well, what are the odds of it being a cancer?
Have you talked to a specialist?
Have you had a biopsy?
Could it just be a lipoma?
Like, whatever it is, right?
It's sort of well known that medical students go through a belief that they have every illness that they're studying, and so on.
And I remember I had a colonoscopy last year.
And I looked up the facts, and I probably got this wrong, but it was like, I don't know, like 4% of colonoscopies reveal something bad, right?
So that's less than 1 in 20. So, you know, you're probably okay, right?
I don't have any family history, and I eat pretty well, and all of that.
So, what is the worst-case scenario?
Okay, well, that's the worst-case scenario.
What are the odds of the worst-case scenario coming true?
And have you got the information that you need?
So trying to empower people with action to find out the odds of what's going on is important.
And so, it's a fascinating question, and I don't want to jump in if you have more to add in this sort of probing of this relationship.
So if there's something that you wanted to add, I'd be certainly happy to hear it.
No, this, that's it.
I mean, you've, you've, And so, yes, I bring them down to a normal baseline, whatever you determine normal to be.
But I try to bring them down to a calmer baseline and then build from there and decide like, okay, now that we understand what reality is and what's actually in front of you, now let's really determine what's wrong with you.
Why are you actually seeking therapy?
Right.
Okay.
Okay.
And so philosophy as a whole, uh, I really do appreciate the question.
But philosophy as a whole is based upon that which is universal, right?
And this is sort of the modern distinction, right?
So, in the past, it was largely the truth.
And now, in the modern world, the truth has been abandoned for my truth.
Mm-hmm.
And my truth is a paradox.
It's kind of a paradoxical thing.
So there is no my universal truth.
Right?
There is no my universal truth.
So if somebody says, I've been bullied my whole life.
If somebody says, I've been bullied my whole life.
Now, that is not a universal truth.
That is not a syllogistical deductive or inductive reasoning proof of anything.
They're simply saying, I've been bullied my whole life.
A bullying is a judgment, a bullying is a power relationship, and bullying is, to some degree, a feeling.
So philosophy doesn't have much to say to someone who says, I've been bullied my whole life.
Now, if you say, what is the definition of a bully?
How would you establish that bullying has occurred?
What would be the moral remedies for bullying and so on, right?
Those would be universal philosophical and moral questions.
When somebody says, I've been bullied my whole life, what they're really saying is, I feel that I've been bullied my whole life.
And that feeling is very real to them.
I mean, I'm sure you know this infinitely better than I do, but it's very real.
And it does tend to become, unfortunately, as you know, like anxiety, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you're anxious about everything, that's tough on your system because you've got cortisol and adrenal floods all the time and it can suppress your immune system as far as I understand.
I'm sort of no expert, but that's sort of my understanding.
So worry can create its own problems.
Anxiety can create its own problems.
And a feeling of being bullied...
Thank you.
And of course, I mean, I grew up in an environment of, you know, some fairly significant extremes.
It really wasn't until I was in my sort of early to mid-teens that I sort of met people who had a balanced approach.
To life.
Or who were able to approach sort of new relationships with, you know, generalized benevolence and confidence and so on.
And it was really, really important for me to meet those people.
Because if somebody feels, oh my God, I've been bullied my whole life, then, you know, they get a new boss and they're going to expect to be bullied.
And what that means is they're going to be overly reactive.
You can't tell me what to do and difficult and all of that because they're just never going to get bullied again, in which case.
Things don't go particularly well.
Or, you know, they kind of signal submission and they signal, oh, you don't have to give me credit for my work and it's fine if you ask me to work all weekend and I'll do whatever.
And then they become overly compliant.
And since most people do what they can get away with, I mean, most people don't have an inner sense of ethics and integrity.
Most people do what they can get away with.
And so, if you behave as a victim, or this person behaves as a victim, most people will end up exploiting them.
I mean, some people will say, well, gee, just because this guy obviously has an issue with victimhood, that doesn't mean that he should be the one that I asked to work all weekend.
Right?
But if, for most bosses or most people, if you have an employee who's going to be like, yeah, yeah, I'm fine working all weekend.
Then that's the person you'll assign to work all weekend.
Because the other people will sort of be annoyed and upset if you ask them to work all weekend.
And they won't.
So you'll just go to the person who's the most compliant.
And so if somebody feels like a victim, they, in a sense, provoke or summon exploitation and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Or if they say, I'm a victim.
And then they're overly difficult and fight back with their boss on everything because they just don't want to be victimized and can't sort of find that middle ground.
Then, you know, maybe they end up getting fired.
And then they say, oh, well, you know, of course I'm a victim.
The one time I stand up for myself, I end up getting fired, right?
So then maybe they go back to compliance and sort of swing between these two extremes.
So if I were to delineate it, I would say that philosophy is about universal truths.
And psychology would be more about truths that feel universal, but might not be.
Very well put.
Yeah, I can see that.
And the trick for me is, most times, not always, but most times, They feel like their, quote-unquote, their truth is the truth.
And getting them to recognize that, no, it's actually this little bubble that you've created for yourself, and the truth is actually more liberating and more freeing than you can imagine.
And if we can adapt to the truth, you can find some freedom for yourself and your truth.
And it's very difficult to get them to look beyond their little bubble that they live in.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or maybe, yeah, yeah, that's fantastic.
And I think I would go a little further than that and say that my truth, by its definition, is non-universalizable.
Boy, that's a new word.
It cannot be universalized.
So if somebody says, you know, I've been a victim my whole life, everybody pushes me around and bullies me, well, that's not universal.
So by that very definition, you are dividing humanity into two different classes of people, the victims and the bullies.
And so philosophically, it's not UPP compliant, right?
So the person says, I've been pushed around my whole life.
That's not philosophical because it can't be universalized, because you have to have at least one bully for every victim.
I guess you can have one bully for multiple victims if it's online and so on, but it can't be universalized.
So then, I suppose, from a psychology standpoint, I would imagine the question is something like, okay, not everyone is a victim, but you feel like a victim.
Why?
Now, they can say, look, human beings, it's a predator-prey relationship.
It's a win-lose relationship.
You're either a victim or a bully, and I don't want to be a bully.
Okay, but then you say, of course, well, are there people in the world who are neither victims nor bullies?
And, I mean, I think people as a whole would have to say, well, yes, right?
I mean, not everyone could be a victim.
I mean, you'd really have to distort society as a whole to say everyone is either a victim or a bully.
So, okay, so there's...
Victims, bullies, and those who are neither.
I mean, I'm not sure.
It's sort of defining by a negative.
Neither victims nor bullies, right?
And then the question is why?
And for me, the fascinating question, this is part of the call-in shows, is what is the genesis of World views.
Or views of the self.
Sorry, not worldviews.
Views of the self.
Yes.
And?
We call them, we call those schemas.
What is your schema?
Your schema.
And now, does schemas sort of map power relationships?
Or is it sort of a view of human nature?
Or what is schemas?
What's the definition there?
I guess schemas would be more how you view the world through your eyes.
So through basically a filter that you've put in front of your eyes because of your life experiences and what you've gone through, you have created a schema, a worldview for yourself based upon the experiences you've gone through.
Okay.
So that that's kind of what we call schemas.
It's like, okay, well you have a schema of like I'm looking through the schema of always being the victim or I'm looking through a schema of always being the bully or I am I Everyone hates my race.
There's this schema that you've created because of your experience and that's how you see the worldview.
Right.
Okay.
Okay.
Basically a filter.
Right.
And, of course, the challenge of philosophy is to say that your personal experiences do not equal universal truths.
Correct.
But of course, throughout most of human history, and you could argue even now, universal truths I mean, you're growing up in some, I don't know, pretty savage Aztec tribe, and you say, you know, I think that these child-murdering priests are probably not the most moral people among us.
Well, then you're going to end up next on the stone altar of somebody digging your heart out with their bare hands, right?
So it was pretty hard to get any kind of universal truth.
I mean, we saw this, of course, in Jesus and Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and, you know, you name it, right?
Galileo.
So, personal truths, it is...
And of course, if you were a victim, and the significant proportions of people in society throughout almost all of human history were actual slaves, right?
And for a slave to say, I've been a victim my whole life, I mean, can't really argue with that from a...
And it's the same thing with the caste system in India, where you can't change your caste.
So, you know, if you're at the bottom, you say, well, I've been treated as a, I've been bullied and been victimized my whole life, and as has my entire family and the caste that I live in.
Well, it's kind of hard to argue with that, because it's literally codified into the entire social structure.
If you're a serf, In some 19th century Russian estate or some 17th century or 16th century English manor, if you're a serf and, you know, you'll get put to death for catching one of the king's or the lord's rabbits as a poacher and you say, well, I've been put down and victimized my whole life.
Well, yeah, that's kind of true.
And you really didn't have a chance to change your state.
Dr. Sowell has actually a really great book actually on 19th century slavery.
In America, where he was talking about the numbers of slaves who were actually able to escape slavery if they had really good ideas or were good entrepreneurs or whatever, they were actually able to sort of buy their way out and escape.
But for the most part, that was not something that was available to slaves, right?
So they would be, they're born and die slaves, their children would be slaves, and they weren't exactly expecting this most ancient of human evil institutions to be done away with by slaves.
So, at least for the most part, there's still some slavery around in the world.
So you couldn't really change.
So you would have a sort of brand of your status in society kind of go hissing into your skin at birth.
Born a serf, born a slave, born a king, born a lord.
And even, of course, in the Middle Ages, in a lot of places in Europe, you had to follow your father's profession, right?
That's why you have last names like Smith for blacksmith, Baker, and so on, right?
Farmer.
You had to follow your father's profession, and you could only apprentice within that profession.
You could only perform that profession.
And so your self-image, or what was branded into you in terms of your social status, You couldn't change it, and wanting to change it was dangerous.
It was dangerous to your happiness, it was dangerous to your reproductive choices, and if you actually did try it, it could be very dangerous to your life as a whole.
So people's self-image, I think, in general, was developed in a permanent fashion in order to survive political and economic restrictions that they were born into.
The sort of social mobility of the modern world would be incomprehensible to people in the past.
The sort of churn rate, you know, like 40% of people go from...
I mean, I sort of look at the history of my family in just the last 100, 150 years, at least on my father's side.
I know less about my mother's side.
I don't speak German, but from aristocrats, right?
The 19th century owned a lot of land in Ireland.
We trace our way all the way back to the Norman invasion of 1066, which is why we have a French...
And, you know, 900 years of land ownership and all of that, and fairly high intellectual hobnobbing and philosophy and psychology and all these things.
And, you know, then, of course, the First World War, we've been involved in wars before, but First World War, you know, massive sections of the male side of the family got wiped out.
Second World War, there was more.
This produced probably significant addictions in my grandfather, who sold off a bunch of his land to feed his addictions, and then people set sail for academia.
And, uh, and then of course I grew up at the bottom of society and it's a single mother household and I've managed to claw my way out of that.
And so, so this kind of.
Just oscillated like crazy.
Just oscillated like crazy.
And this mobility is incomprehensible.
And I think this mobility has largely given rise to the practice of psychology.
Because in the past, if you were a slave, I mean, imagine that you were a psychologist in sort of ancient Greece, and some guy comes to you and says, well, I've been a slave, I was born a slave, my children are born slaves, they'll die as slaves, and I just feel like, I feel depressed about being a slave.
I mean, what are you going to say?
Well, Thank you.
In the same way, if some patient comes to you and says, I'm tortured and obsessed with thoughts of death.
It's like, well, I understand that.
That is the human condition.
That is life as a whole.
And you're going to have to find a way to reconcile with the fact that you're immortal.
Because there is no escape from that.
I was just reading the other day that people who got cryogenically frozen pretty early on, they basically just turned into a bunch of thick good protein slop at the bottom of the containers, and of course there's nothing left at all of them, right?
So even that goal or hope to escape death, at least for the early adopters, did not work very well, or it didn't work at all.
So in the past, where there was very little social mobility, You couldn't say to a slave, well, you're not really being bullied.
It's like, well, yeah, you are.
You're a slave.
You have no choice over your day.
You have no choice over your occupation.
You have no choice over your activities.
And maybe you could say, you know, try to get the moments of relative freedom while you can when you're at home with your wife.
You know, in the same way that Solzhenitsyn used to talk about under Stalin, that a husband and wife could have some freedom of speech as long as they were at home and whispering under the covers of their family.
Then you could have some freedom of speech, but other than that, no, not really at all.
So, I think the social mobility aspect of the world, at least in the West, gives rise to the fact that the hissing brand of status and self-perception that's pushed into you, or branded into you, when you're a kid, Doesn't have to be how your whole life goes.
For most of human history, if you were a victim, if you were born into sort of the victim classes, well, you were a victim.
And you really couldn't get out of it.
Couldn't escape it.
Maybe you could, I mean, when the new world opened up, that's why a lot of people fled, right?
When the new world opened up, people could flee and take that horrible six-week voyage with significant mortality rates just for the opportunity of not being.
A slave.
Get your couple of acres, get your mule, get your livestock, and you can live relatively free.
And so you could change things.
But you had to, I mean, basically had to risk death on a horrendous voyage and get exposed to an entire new continent's worth of pathogens and germs and so on.
It was a smallpox.
Yeah, yeah.
The natives gave the Europeans syphilis and the And you just had to go that way.
But now, of course, you can change your status by changing your mindset without having to leave the country and do a horrible six-week journey with a significant mortality rate.
You're not stuck in some bottom caste system in India.
And so I think because changing your mindset Can change your environment.
Psychology now has value, but I'm not sure that in the past too much it would have.
And I think that the rise of psychology in a sort of modern form did coincide with the rise of social mobility in mid-late 19th century that you could go from poor to bourgeois and, you know, from bourgeois to nouveau riche even.
And so in the past, Sticking with your perceived mindset or sticking with your branded mindset was your only chance for survival.
And now it's become a limiting factor.
Now, if you perceive yourself as a victim, again, in the past, if you were a slave, you couldn't do anything about it.
But now, if you perceive yourself as a victim, that becomes a self-fulfilling and self-limiting prophecy.
The breaking of that mindset can liberate you from the mindset, whereas in the past, if you were a slave, breaking the mindset of a slave would probably just get you killed, or tortured, or beaten up, or punished in some horrible fashion.
So, I think now, because changing your mind can change your life, whereas in the past, changing your mind could not change your life.
In fact, it would probably just shorten it or make it worse in many ways.
But I think now, Changing your mindset, your schemas, right?
Changing your schemas can change your life.
And I think that's a really, it's a wild and remarkable thing that has happened in the modern world or the relatively modern world.
So I think that philosophy is about universal truths and permanent truths and psychology is about beliefs that feel universal and permanent.
It can be changed.
Does that make sense?
Excellent.
Thank you, Stefan.
You're very welcome.
I appreciate it.
That's exactly what I needed to hear, so I appreciate it.
Good, good.
Yeah, I appreciate it.
Sometimes the great questions give some pretty good answers, and I think that was the case for that.
All right, let me just scan through the list here of the people.
Thank you again for joining, and thank you again for supporting the show.
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Alright, so if you just want to raise your hand, if you have anything to ask or to add, or, you know, could be something that you've heard today.
In the conversation, I would love to hear from you.
I certainly have other topics, so I'll just give you a moment here.
See if anybody, you could all be listening at work for all I know, just can't talk.
Just can't talk.
So, I was in conversation with someone the other day, and I was talking about sibling conflicts.
And an idea came to me.
I haven't run up past you fine ladies and gentlemen and see what you think.
But an idea came to me, which, I won't sort of get into details, doesn't particularly matter, but...
Oh, and you know what?
Let me just dip into the chat here for a sec.
Let me just dip into a chat here for a sec.
So hit me with a Y if you've had significant sibling conflicts.
I certainly have.
I certainly have.
Uh, yes.
There's Mr. J. Yes, Mr. L. Yes.
F. Yes.
H. H. Yes.
From Mr. C. Okay.
Alright.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Okay.
If in-laws count, then yes.
Okay.
Mum.
I guess, what's that?
Brother-in-law?
Yes.
Okay.
And just to gauge what proportion of the listeners Hit me with an N. I know everybody has conflicts from time to time, so I'm talking about sort of fairly significant sibling conflicts.
Hit me with an N if you've not had significant or long-lasting sibling conflicts.
Chronic, I guess.
Chronic sibling conflicts.
I just want to see what proportion of the listenership I would be talking to or about.
All right, few people have not.
That's good to hear.
I assume you have siblings.
Doesn't count if you don't have siblings.
Okay, so let's see here.
Yeah, about two-thirds of you have had significant conflicts, and it's funny because I think this is from a Dr. Phil episode from many years ago, but about 50% of sibling relationships are classified as abusive.
Like, technically, sort of psychologically abusive.
They wouldn't be by the terms of what we talk about here, but just sort of in general psychological terms.
So, alright.
All right.
So, I wanted to talk about...
Every family in the first five books of Moses were dysfunctional.
Right, right.
So I wanted to talk about people love watching conflict.
They love, love, love, love, love watching conflict.
They love watching fights.
I mean, sports, of course, boxing, MMA, martial arts.
The Octagon.
Was that MMA?
Something like that.
But, you know, think of all the action movies that people love.
Like Tom Cruise has these, particularly takes half a week or more to record.
he has this you know unbelievably brutal fight scenes I think must be kind of funny for Tom Cruise like who has these incredibly difficult shoots like the sort of Mission Impossible stuff or whatever right he's hanging off airplanes and and all this kind of stuff and and I think in one he wanted to do this this jump that he ended up shattering his ankle about and all of that so he's always wanted to do these stunts and those stunts and I mean when he gets a movie like I don't
Jerry Maguire and Magnolia as well, where he has something where he doesn't have to spend three days jumping through a plate glass.
It must be kind of nice.
It must be kind of nice.
But, yeah, people love watching fights.
They love watching fights.
And I wonder if that translates as to why parents Or family members as a whole.
Why they so often seem to provoke sibling conflicts.
I wonder if it's just this Roman Colosseum.
You know, they have dog fights, they have cock fights, they have gladiator fights.
I mean, you sort of go on.
People just love watching fights.
And I was just wondering if that is part of why parents seem to do Almost everything they can, sometimes.
Yeah, are you not entertained?
Yeah, that's right.
Are you not entertained?
People love watching fights.
I mean, people love watching fights so much that, you know, sort of in the old wrestling scenarios, which seems, you know, kind of faked, and I think were pretty faked, they don't care.
They don't care.
They'll suspend disbelief, right?
They don't particularly care that It's not particularly real.
Doesn't care.
Cheered on nonetheless.
And I remember, before I did my first appearance on Joe Rogan, Joe invited my then-producer and myself to go and watch MMA, Mixed Martial Arts.
And I don't mind, in particular, watching fight scenes.
I tend to fast forward through them these days because, you know, I'm getting older, life's getting shorter, and I don't particularly care to watch the sort of back and forth.
You know, you just want to see how it ends, right?
And, you know, the other thing, too, is that, I mean, I've seen so many fight scenes over the course of my life that they just become less and less interesting.
time.
I mean, there's less and less new stuff, right?
There's no particular, you know, it's just you know, the, uh, the guy, he looks like he's about to be beaten by the bad guy, and then someone behind the bad guy shoots him.
Or, you know, he's gonna let the, he's gonna not kill the bad guy, but then the bad guy, this was kind of actually pretty fun, pretty hilariously parodied in the Minecraft movie, He's not going to kill the bad guy.
But then the bad guy has a secret weapon and is going to shoot the good guy and the good guy turns around and finally kills the bad guy.
But it's self-defense, so it's okay.
It's okay.
And so, you know, you see these things enough and it becomes pretty tough to be excited by the newness of it all, so to speak.
So, I think...
Thank you.
Right.
So I wonder if some, you know, obviously not wholly stable parents end up creating some of these cage match issues with their kids to watch them fight.
And tell me what you guys think.
You can type this in, or of course if you want to chat.
Why do you think?
People love to watch fights so much.
I remember when I was a kid, my mother used to go out and she didn't want us to watch TV, so she would lock the TV in her bedroom.
And my brother and I, very cleverly, would climb on the outside of our apartment building, go along a pretty narrow ledge, and then climb into her window.
So this was back.
In the early 70s, right?
Mid-70s.
So this is long before air conditioning.
So everybody just left their windows open all the time.
And so we would squeeze our way into my mom's bedroom.
We'd watch TV and then we would do as much as we thought we could safely.
And then we would...
We'd climb along the ledge on the outside of our apartment building.
I can't believe people didn't see this or say something, but whatever, right?
And we would then go back into our room.
And I remember one night, we turned on the TV, and this is back...
There was BBC One.
Technically, there was BBC Two, but they never played anything of interest.
I remember there was a really high stakes or high stress.
Sweating up a British lip rapid-fire question game show called Mastermind.
And I remember the entire country would shut down whenever there was a Bond movie on.
But ITV came along, I think, a little later, and ITV was more fun.
But there was nothing particular to watch.
The entertainment options when I was a kid were so ridiculously low, we had no choice but to go out.
We had no choice.
We just roamed the neighborhood.
And of course, you know, I mean, it's kind of tough for kids these days, right?
Because when I was a kid, I was just at the tail end of the baby boom, and we lived on this estate with a bunch of other apartment buildings, and you could go out at any time, pretty much day or night.
You could go out and there would be like five to 10 kids at least, and usually more, that you could just play with.
You'd figure out some game, you could roam around the woods, you could explore, you could Even if they didn't, you could play a game of war with sticks and tennis balls or whatever you could find.
And so there was always the glorious anarchy of self-organized spontaneous games.
And, you know, if six, seven, eight-year-olds can do it, then society's...
I mean, I think this is the basis for my sort of thoughts about volunteerism or anarcho-capitalism, which was...
And we would build, you know, lean-tos and forts and so on in the woods, and all of this was spontaneously self-organized.
So if kids can do it, then society can do it as a whole.
Sorry, Paul, yeah, I'll open it up in just a sec.
So anyway, sorry, back to the point of the story.
Lord knows, I do have fiction brain at the moment.
So back to the point of the story, I remember my brother and I climbed into my mother's room, turned on the TV, and we watched a boxing match.
And of course, there was a boxing match in England and all of that.
And I remember just being kind of grossed out.
I still remember the sort of vague gray patches of blood on the highly pixelated TV screen.
You know, we were lucky to have a 12-inch black and white TV.
We used to try and watch Wimbledon, but you couldn't really see what was going on.
The ball was just a vague blur.
And I remember, I must have been probably seven.
No, no, wait, hang on.
So I was at boarding school from six to eight, and I spent a lot of time at boarding school.
I remember one really sad and lonely Christmas there with a couple of other kids and one poor teacher who drew the short straw, I guess.
And we were there all Christmas.
I have no idea, of course, where my parents were.
Or my brother, for that matter.
So probably it was about eight.
I think it was just after boarding school.
So it was about eight when we watched this boxing match.
And I just remember thinking it was kind of gross and unpleasant.
Gross and unpleasant.
Pleasant.
Just watching guys pound each other.
And I've never seen a boxing match since.
The only thing I saw was Joe's invitation to Mixed Martial Arts.
And, yeah, it was very, very surreal.
We're like, I don't know why you'd want to watch people have their faces disassembled in real time.
But I just think it's a real, people love to watch conflict.
And I guess maybe parents enjoy They're sort of ridiculously unfair.
You know, they give unbound or, you know, if you have, you know, you have a kid already, you bring home a baby, then, you know, the best way to provoke conflict between the siblings or have the siblings not like each other is to pour ridiculous amounts of energy into the new baby and ignore the needs or reject the needs or push away the needs of children.
And of course, you know, I mean, it's pretty obvious to say, you know, you have a kid already and you bring home a baby, then you should, you know, introduce it gently and help the older kid understand and make sure you don't take everything away from the older kid for the sake of the baby and all of that.
But it's just, it's so easy to just create these conflicts.
Just be unfair and lopsided.
And a lot of parents seem to do that kind of stuff, and I think it's really quite tragic.
All right, Paul, you wanted to sound off if you wanted to.
Let me see if I can find you here.
Yeah, do you want to unmute?
I'm happy to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks, Stefan.
Talking about the fights and why we like to see them, I don't think it's so hard to understand.
I mean, it's...
We're talking about wrestling and things that are highly contrived.
Even though that's just theatre, there's always this idea that one's a good guy and one's a bad guy.
And consider many of the things we talk about on the show.
People, we grow up with hypocrisy.
We grow up seeing people in power get away with things that normal people can't get away with.
And then look at the context, conversely, about fictional violence.
It's always some underdog who in real life would never be able to beat up the bad guy.
We see the Karate Kid.
Anyone, some small little small fry who is just a dedication and then some moral righteousness takes on someone who's much more experienced in fighting and violence.
And we want to see, it's at least one context, we get to see a good guy beat up a bad guy.
Because in our real experience, if we perceive ourselves as good guys, the bad guys are always much more powerful.
And so it is just a moral outrage in that we get a certain satisfaction.
It's the same sort of thing people watch court shows, like Judge Judy, and that we deal with jerks all the time, our whole lives.
It's nice for once to see these jerks get a dressing down and talking to, things you never see.
So it's not a novelty.
Well, it is a novelty factor.
It's something we don't understand.
There's this moral element to it, and I think that's what it really comes down to.
To some degree, the Christian view, right?
That the last become first, the first become last.
The underdogs end up on top and the people on top end up in hell, right?
So what Nietzsche referred to, I mean, a little unjustly, but not entirely inaccurately, is this resentment, right?
That sort of drives a lot of morality that we just want to see bad guys get punished.
We can't do it ourselves.
It doesn't happen usually under the legal system, but we can at least watch it in the octagon.
Is it something like that?
Well, there's something like that.
And notice too, I think the Americans understand it better.
Now, like I live in Europe and we've got this idea.
We sort of think the Americans are really prudish because sex on TV is...
Something will be restricted if there's a bit of nudity.
Whereas in Europe, there can be complete frontal nudity and it'll be PG at worst.
But on the other hand, if there's a gun or a violence or anything like that, But I think we're the ones who got it wrong because, consider, whenever there's sex on TV or in movies, it's almost always between a pair that's not married.
There's no consequences about pregnancy, disease, or even any emotional consequences.
Whereas violent films, it's usually, in the end, some good guy kicking the arse of some bad guy.
No matter how evil he was, there's only a bit of a satisfaction because it's a good guy.
It's good defeats evil.
And so I think there is a moral lesson, maybe not to use violence, but when to use violence is much more positive on the American side than it is over here.
Well, I mean, I hear what you're saying, of course, but it is still largely a fantasy.
It's all fantasy, but we're talking about what is it that we like?
Why do we like seeing things like this?
It's a pleasant fiction, but it is a fiction.
I acknowledge that.
Well, certainly as leftism takes over more and more of the legal system, So he's the victim.
But if you protect yourself against somebody who's trying to stab you with a knife, well, then you're the bad guy and you get punished, right?
And this is sort of the Daniel Penny stuff, the Carl Rittenhouse stuff, and all of that, Self-defense is consistently being undermined.
So I think it gives people a sense of release that good guys can use violence and they're praised or rewarded or at least approved of for it.
But in general, it seems to me that bad guys can use a lot of violence and good guys, well, usually get at least threatened, if not downright punished, for any use of violence.
So maybe this is sort of an escapism fantasy where good guys...
And then, you know, sort of frantically flipping through the history book.
Oh, hang on.
Wait a minute.
Oh, no.
Hang on.
It just seems to be...
You know, massive amounts of violence.
So, it's good guys and bad guys.
that good guys can use violence and be praised for it, especially in the realm of self-defense, I think becomes less true over time.
And I mean, there's certainly places in America, like in Florida, what did they, did some guy shot at a cop or shot a cop And then the reporter said to the police chief, well, why did you put 40 bullets into him?
And he's like, well, because we ran out of bullets.
Otherwise, there'd be more.
And I think in Florida, and as opposed to, say, California, in Florida, you know, if somebody breaks into your house, I mean, I think as a whole, I'm not saying this is true everywhere, but I think as a whole, the philosophy is, well, if you end up with a bunch of holes in you.
Get your leadicillin, right?
If you end up with a bunch of holes in you because you broke into some guy's house, well, the moral of the story is don't break into people's houses, right?
So, yeah, I mean, the idea that, and this is sort of the, you know, the young fellow who stabbed the guy, Metcalf, right?
I mean, this is self-defense, is it, right?
Do bad guys using violence or good guys using violence do better?
And I think, in general, Over history, you can see it's often the bad guys using violence who do a whole lot better.
But I think people do like that fantasy that the good guys using violence are going to just get praised and applauded and all of that.
It doesn't really seem to be the case, right?
I mean, so for instance, in the draft scenario, the guys who get drafted who use violence in service of the state, those guys are heroic and they get medals and ticket tape rates and so on.
But the people who even though in some ways the draft is equivalent to, or even worse than slavery, because you had a much higher survival rate under slavery than you did under, um, most modern wars.
And so, you know, obviously a slave who escapes, you know, there's, there's all of these, the underground railroad stuff and all the people who helped the slaves escape, uh, are, you know, now in the modern sentiment.
And I, I don't disagree with it.
But, you know, the people who helped slaves escape and get to Canada or wherever they could go or to the north, they were considered heroic, right?
And a lot of people on the left, right, they, oh, you know, the people who helped the slaves escape were great.
But, you know, Donald Trump has a bone spur and can't be drafted and suddenly he's a coward, right?
And so, you know, avoiding slavery, getting escaping from slavery is heroic and noble and good, but avoiding You know, what is arguably, you know, in some ways equivalent to or sometimes worse than slavery, which is the draft.
Well, that's just cowardly and bad, right?
So there's just all these bizarre standards that people have.
But sorry, you were going to say?
Well, it demonstrates that the reality is far more nuanced than what we see in the fiction.
I mean, I'm not excusing people who do resort to violence, wrong or evil, but there is a reason that they became that way.
And even the good side, the good people, of course, in films are completely without flaw, at least in action films.
They don't really develop these characters as much as people.
They're completely without flaw.
And the bad guys, it's always Autobots versus Decepticons.
I mean, you're old enough to understand my analogy there.
Oh, that's a transformative thing.
Yeah, that's right.
There's always very good guys and very bad guys, and then they fight, and the good guy wins.
And yeah, that's the fiction, but that's what we like to watch, because that's pleasing to us.
But it's exactly as you say, it's far more nuanced.
The same actions can be considered good or bad, depending on the context.
So that was my take on it anyway, Stefan.
So thank you very much for having me.
I appreciate it.
And that's one of the big things that's going on online at the moment is God help them.
It's not going very well.
But that's, you know, just evidence, I think, of more censorship and split.
Some questions you can't ask.
Some questions you can't ask unless you have a completely prescripted answer.
All right.
Sorry, let me just check.
if the people wanted to sound off or sound in, you can just raise your hand.
I've got another little bit of time before I'm actually going to go out with some friends tonight Do trivia.
I am a very unbalanced trivia player.
Some things, I'm virtually undefeatable, and other things, American sports history.
No idea.
No idea.
Yes, you can certainly have the mic.
Just unmute yourself, and I'd be happy to let you go for it.
Hey, Steph.
So on the topic of sibling conflict, I think we sort of drifted into fighting.
But back onto the topic of sibling conflict, is it as simple as the parents...
My entire thesis was that people like to watch fighting, and maybe that's what parents are doing, provoking conflict among siblings.
I don't want to sound too disorganized.
It can happen, don't get me wrong, but just maybe not right today, but go ahead.
My mistake.
That's fine.
Well, I mean, so parents aren't, like, putting their kids in cage matches would be my retort.
Well, but hang on.
I mean, the kids usually can't leave the home.
Correct.
And they're provoking conflict.
So, I mean, it's not exactly an octagon, but it's not the entire opposite either.
Yeah, yeah.
So I was envisioning more, like, physical combat.
Is it as simple as the parents live in eternal conflict?
And they can't solve it, so it makes them feel better about their lot by pushing that onto their children or pushing those feelings into other people.
I see.
So like if the parents, this is to go back to our earlier therapist's issue around schemas, right?
So if the schema is human beings have conflict, human beings fight all the time, then if the siblings don't fight, that challenge is that schema of the parents?
Is it something like that?
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth.
I just want to make sure I understand where you're going.
No, that's it.
Like, the parents would feel uncomfortable, in a sense, if their kids were getting along, but they were fighting with their spouse or fighting with their, I don't know, colleagues or friends or just always in conflict with people.
Well, and they would lose their moral authority if the kids at the age of, say, three and five could figure out how to get along.
But the parents in their 30s or 40s can't figure out how to get along.
Then the parents would lose their moral authority.
you So to maintain their authority, they therefore have to put the kids into conflict.
Otherwise, their kids just stop listening to them.
Don't take them seriously.
What birds am I hearing?
Oh, sorry, I'm working outside.
No, you don't have to apologize.
I love hearing birds.
I'm just curious what am I hearing?
I actually have no idea.
There's birds everywhere.
Oh, okay.
You're not an ornithologist, dude.
No.
All right.
And do you have siblings?
Yes, yes.
I have four siblings, two half-siblings.
And how was your guys' relationship growing up?
Pretty bad.
I mean, I got picked on.
My oldest brother, who is the half-brother, is nine years older than me.
And he would turn my older brother, who was 15 months older than me, against me so that I'd pick on me.
You know, call me names and all that kind of stuff.
And now when it came to my younger brother, who's four years younger than me, I could never be right.
So it was like, if I had an issue with my older brother, well, he's older, so defer to him.
If I have an issue with my younger brother, well, I'm older, so I need to take responsibility.
Right, right.
Okay, okay.
And have things thawed at all over your adult life?
Yeah, things have thawed a little bit because I have applied vulnerability and honesty with my younger brother because we had built up huge amounts of resentment towards each other.
And obviously that's my parents'fault and so that's been my attitude recently.
And things have thawed a bit, but it's sort of like there's so much scar tissue, I don't think it's ever going to become a close relationship.
Excellent.
But we were always in conflict and, you know, my parents could never solve it.
So I definitely resonate with that chronic conflict with your siblings.
Right, right.
And that just becomes a fixed way of being and it's just like a language that you speak that you can't undo.
Yeah.
Okay.
Is there more that you wanted to add?
I appreciate your input.
No, that's it.
Thanks, Steph.
All right.
Thanks, man.
All right.
So what else people say?
Somebody says, Our house became peaceful when our parents were away.
Us kids left each other alone.
We even negotiated screen time and how much money we would pay each other to bring us chips and soda, drinks from the grocery store.
Ah, yes, my brother's was.
I'll time you.
I'll time you to see how quickly you can go to the store and back.
I'm so eager to please.
I still am a little bit.
All right.
Chris says, people might enjoy watching conflict in order to take their attention away from their inner conflicts or conflicts in their personal lives.
Yeah, I think that's quite true.
And very insightful, thank you.
Somebody writes, I like action movies, and I think it comes out of my experience as being the oldest, but I was never strong physically.
I argued with my mom every day.
My siblings hated me for it.
I was also bullied at school.
And rejected.
I'm sorry about that.
Action movies always felt like the underdog winning for me.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
For sure, yeah.
I mean, I remember there was a movie called My Bodyguard about a kid being bullied who hires a big kid.
A really giant kid.
I just remember the line, you can't smoke, it's going to stunt your growth.
The kid was like six foot three or something like that.
But, yeah, this idea that the underdog is going to have his day.
This is the big appeal, of course, of...
Back to the future is you've got the Crispin Glover, a nerdy character.
And the Crispin Glover character has that fork in the road.
He uses violence to protect the girl from the potential rapist or the guy who looks like he's going to rape her.
I think it's pretty strongly implied.
And he uses violence to protect.
And then his whole life changes.
I mean, it's a fun movie, don't get me wrong.
The idea that you punch one person and your whole life changes, that it just comes down to one particular individual choice, and that is your whole life.
And if you just punch that one bully, Then that bully ends up waxing your car and you end up being a very successful novelist.
And if you don't punch that one bully, then you end up as a sort of lost-in-space turbo nerd for the rest of your life.
It really does blame the victim, right?
I mean, the Crispin Glover character was, you know, abused and neglected at home.
And that lays some pretty serious train tracks down in your brain.
And you can't just jump them by, you know, planting your fists in the face of a...
a bully or a sort of criminal right it's uh it is a lovely fantasy.
It's like the fantasy that, uh, this is sort of the, goodwill hunting fantasy, right?
So the fantasy, which was actually not good, girl interrupted was very different because girl interrupted there was no big secret that she had to reveal so the um the fantasy in goodwill hunting and um
The fantasy is you are dysfunctional because you have a secret and then you reveal that secret, you tell that secret, you cry, you throw yourself on the ground, you have a big emotional, you know, space laser orgasm of suffering and then it's all released from you and you're back to normal and even though The Matt Damon character in Good Will Hunting,
well, Will, I guess, grew up in a horribly abused, violent, and neglected household and became a masochist in some ways because of it, right?
Sort of, my dad would say, you choose what I'm going to beat with you, I choose the wrench because fuck you, right?
That's sort of the, he becomes a very tough, almost a masochist, like, I'll take more pain because I hate you so much.
But the idea that you then, you know, it's not your fault and you have this big cry, And you're all the way better.
You're just fixed.
This is the idea that it's dammed up, right?
You've got this suffering.
It's dammed up behind this wall of lies.
And you reveal the truth.
You accept the truth.
And then all of the suffering is released.
And instead of you having this big sort of locked up dam of suffering, it spreads out across the landscape and waters the crops.
And the fish swim, and the birds fly, and everything's wonderful and beautiful after that, and everything's fixed, right?
I've got to go see about a girl.
Son of a bitch, he stole my land.
And that's, I mean, I don't think that's true.
I mean, it definitely is better to accept the truth and it definitely is better to not take responsibility for what you...
You don't take responsibility for that and all of that.
And it is better to grieve and go through all that sadness and deal with all of that.
That definitely is better.
Better, for sure.
But it doesn't fix everything.
It does not fix everything to get to the truth.
I mean, I don't want to sound overly blackpilled, but I've been sort of thinking about this lately.
People, there is this belief.
But if you get to the truth, then your suffering ends.
It wasn't your fault.
It wasn't your fault.
I know, I know.
It wasn't your fault.
You get to the truth.
You get to the truth, and your suffering ends.
Releases the dam.
Waters the dry fields.
The desert becomes green, and the pressure is relieved, and you're fine.
No.
Unfortunately, it would be nice to live in a world where that could happen.
And of course, I've written about that world in my novel, The Future, which you should really check out at redomain.com slash books.
It's free, but I mean, maybe...
I'm certainly happy to hear what you think.
But in general, when you get to the truth, yes, it does solve some suffering.
It does solve some suffering.
When you get to the truth, it solves some suffering, but it inflicts new suffering.
So you get to the truth about your society.
Now I understand.
I understand how it works, why it does what it does, and so on.
But now, there's new suffering in that you have a knowledge of the truth that other people don't have.
We'll often consider you a bad person for being in possession of that truth.
I mean, to take a sort of simple example, once you understand the truth about the wage gap, right?
76 cents on the dollar is like, no.
If you normalize for education, career choices, and age, women end up actually making a couple of pennies extra than men on the dollar, right?
And it has been illegal since, I think, 1965 for women to be paid less than men for jobs of the same value.
I mean, I know that's somewhat subjective, but this sort of disparate impact stuff is a pretty big deal.
I think Trump just did another EO against it, whether that'll last or not, probably not.
So let's say you know the truth about the wage gap, right?
That the wage gap is the result of Women tend to go into lower paid fields.
They tend to work less hard than men.
They take time off to have children, which is not any kind of fault.
It's kind of why we're all here.
But once you know the truth about the wage gap, then you have solved the problem, if you're a male, of feeling guilty.
Ah, we undervalue and underpay women.
Gee, that's terrible, right?
Once you understand the truth about the wage gap, you've solved a problem.
You no longer feel guilty or that there's this, you know, horrible shakedown operation from the patriarchy to make sure that women are underpaid, right?
So you've solved a problem.
Yay!
Good!
We like solving problems.
And of course, if you're a woman and you understand that the wage gap is the result of choices and predilections, then you're no longer going to feel exploited, resentful, angry, bitter, right?
So, we got to the truth.
This is just one example of, you know, a thousand or two that we could talk about.
So, A, I understand the wage gap.
So, I can effectively argue against it.
I've got the data.
I can prove what's going on.
So, I say, ah, good.
Yay, got to the truth.
And so, getting to the truth has solved problems and reduced suffering.
But then, you've just switched your suffering.
Because now, you're in possession of the truth about the wage gap.
And so, every time the wage gap comes up, you suffer.
Right?
You suffer.
And you suffer in one of two ways.
You either say, now the wage gap is not real.
It's a result of choices and predilections, right?
And they say, oh, well, but women are programmed to get out of STEM.
So, like in Pakistan or India, there's a lot more female computer programmers than there are in the West, where women have much more choice about where they're going to end up making their daily bread from.
So, no, it's not.
It's not a thing.
So then, you either get into these arguments with people who are turbo normies and will be very volatile and landmined and And then you get attacked and blah, blah, blah.
Scorned and sexist.
Or you have to bite your tongue and shut up and let foolishness and falsehood rule the conversation.
So, the truth.
It has this wonderful knack of solving problems and causing problems.
Now, of course, in a society where people are taught well and peaceful parenting and well-educated, then this would not be nearly as much, if at all, as an issue, but it certainly is an issue now.
And I think everyone in this conversation, and I hope you guys don't mind if I release this to the general population as a sort of, I don't think we talked about anything particularly personal here, but...
Thank you.
We're all in possession of truths that are difficult for society or almost impossible for society to handle, right?
And it's solved some problems, for sure.
Being in possession of the truth solves some problems, for sure.
But It sure as heck causes other problems, for sure.
So, I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd rather have the truth and deal with whatever comes sliding out of that.
I'd rather have the truth and then sort of navigate my way going forward from there.
Because falsehoods are internalized, but social life is chosen, right?
So Jack says, truth that includes a solution is fantastic, truth that just leaves you in nihilism is painful.
But there is no truth that includes a solution, at the moment, in the world that is.
Right?
Because when you're in possession of the truth, you are then in opposition to the NPC turbonomy programming.
And you have to sort of narrow Your circle, your social circle, to people who are willing to accept the truth.
Even if it's difficult, even if it's painful, you have to narrow.
Your social circle to people who are willing to accept the truth.
It doesn't mean your truth, but willing to sort of pursue an objective methodology for determining truth from falsehood.
So, I mean, I, of course, in the, I mean, I earned it painfully, but, you know, I'm in the slightly more advantageous position than a lot of people, in that, you know, as a guy who does philosophy online, I don't, I mean, I have you as bosses, right?
My lovely listeners, and in particular, my lovely supporters, and thank you again, humbly, deeply, gratefully, freedomate.com slash donate, if it's been a while, but I don't have that.
I don't have, you know, massive ways of extended family that I have to pacify and appease and all this kind of stuff, right?
So I do have the choice to have a social circle, which is kind of what I have, where the truth is valued and respected and good.
And I don't have any particular tension in bringing forward even things that are, you know, kind of controversial or whatever.
But if I've got People are like, oh, that's interesting, you know.
Could be a good perspective.
I'm willing to research that.
So, but for a lot of people, of course, and for a lot of my life, that really wasn't the case or wasn't the situation, so.
I don't know, man.
The truth.
The truth, the truth, the truth.
Ah, get to the truth and you'll be happy.
Right?
Only the truth can set you free.
And it's like, but the truth is, it's worth it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm going to...
The truth is worth it.
But the truth does not solve problems.
Only the truth solves problems and creates problems and provokes sometimes the kind of change that is pretty hard to navigate and manage.
All right, well, I'll stop here and I really do appreciate what great conversations you guys provide to me.
Some absolutely delightful brain tickles and I really do.
Appreciate that.
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