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June 15, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:01:01
Happy Father's Day 2025!
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Time Text
Good morning, good morning, everybody.
Oh, my gosh.
What have we got?
15th of June, 2025.
150625.
And it is Happy Father's Day.
Happy Father's Day to everyone.
I certainly have some thoughts about the issues.
And I kind of celebrated last night.
I did a call-in show.
And it's a public call-in, so it'll go out.
And it really was...
I don't remember a time I've been that shocked by a call-in show.
I'm not unshockable.
Unshockable, that's what you are.
So I'm not unshockable, but it's been a while since I've been this shocked.
And it was a long call-in show, but I think it will be worth it.
And it was with the father.
Who had insomnia.
And boy, did we ever find out why.
Oh my God.
Shocking.
I try, you know, I obviously try not to get condemnatory or overly angry or something, but that happened.
So that would go out to donors soon and the stream as a whole after a while.
But yeah, that was something.
That was something.
So I hope you'll check that out.
You can go, of course, to join up, freedomain.com slash donate.
You can sign up for subscriptions.
You can go to fdurail.com slash locals or subscribeser.com slash freedomain.
And it will be helpful to me, helpful to you, and you get access to a lot of very, very cool stuff.
And, yeah, I've been finding some old call-in shows.
Lately, that are actually really good.
From the archives, the kind of stuff that would normally come out when I'm dead.
So, I hope that you will check those out when they come out.
And again, they go out to donors first, so I hope you will check that out as well.
All right, questions, comments, issues.
Somebody says, Hi, Steph.
I've recently started a therapeutic coaching venture.
I use a lot of your philosophy and mindsets on my clients, and it's working very well for them.
Fantastic.
Fantastic.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate that.
So, questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems?
I mean, fatherhood really has been crippled in the modern West.
Men pay like 80% of the taxes.
Women take resources from men.
And it's funny, you know.
When I was younger, I used to think that if you were really generous with people, they would be grateful.
You ever had that experience?
Where you say, oh, I'm going to be really generous with someone, and, I mean, you don't expect them to, you know, name their firstborn after you, but thanks exist for a reason, and thanks exist so that people don't feel taken for granted, right?
The king does not thank the slave, right?
The slave grovels and thanks the king.
Thanking someone is saying, you don't owe me and I appreciate what you've done for me, right?
If you order something online and it gets delivered, you don't write a personally worded card of thanks for the generosity of whoever delivered it to you because that's what you're paying them to do, right?
So again, we say thanks to the waitress even though we're paying the waitress, thank you for the food, blah, blah, blah.
But that's just being polite.
Thanks is a way of saying, You don't owe me, and I appreciate what you've done.
So, in my experience, with many people, I would say the majority of people, the more generous you are, the more you get taken for granted.
That's really, really sad.
And boy, is it ever short-sighted on the people who take advantage of you.
That's just a terrible idea.
Ooh, not good.
Not good.
Generosity begets kindness, begets generosity, and it's a virtuous spiral, like it's an upward spiral.
But in my experience, when you're generous with people, they just start to expect it.
And your generosity is viewed by people not as something they should be grateful for, but as something that gives them higher status.
Right, I mean...
And the teacher will thank you and so on.
But it's not like the teacher reciprocates then by coming over and doing your laundry, right?
It doesn't really work that way.
So a lot of people, if you're generous to them, they will take it as a sign that they have power and that they are superior to you.
Therefore, they're much less likely to thank you, and therefore, that all diminishes and goes away.
I remember once, with a family member many years ago, he and his wife were expecting their first child.
And I stayed, like, for the entire long weekend, cleaning.
That's the instinct to clean.
They lived in a condo at the time.
And I stayed for an entire long weekend cleaning that condo top to bottom with And I mean, we pulled out the fridge, we pulled out the stove, like everything.
You just have this urge.
Of course, right?
Babies come in with a fairly novel immune system and so you try to clean things up, right?
And, oh man, it just struck me a week or two later that when I had my kid, I could not imagine that family member Ever coming to my place, wherever I would happen to be living, and helping me clean for three days straight.
Like I just, I couldn't, They'd find some excuse.
They'd be busy.
They'd be tired.
They'd have other engagements.
It would be something, right?
Like if you've ever done this thing when you're a young man, young woman, I think young men a little bit more.
I mean, I remember toting it up once.
I moved 18 times in 10 years.
And I didn't get quite down to my college roommates.
And when I say roommates, we lived in the same room, like one room, both of us.
I remember he actually was down to a wooden bowl and a spoon.
He was a complete minimalist traveler.
I'd never caught quite that low, but I did stay pretty lean.
I lived pretty lean.
And so what you do as a young man is you help each other move, because nobody's got any money for movers, or as they call it in England, removers.
And so you help each other move.
And it's just kind of, you know, maybe you'll spring for some pizza and beer or whatever it is.
That's just the way that it goes.
And there's always one guy.
There's always one guy, or maybe it's more than one.
He's happy to have all his friends come and help him move, but when it's time to help his other friends move, he's got a sore back, he's busy, and it just seems to be kind of a consistent thing.
So be sure to thank people in your life and reciprocate.
I mean, I remember And then when I asked them to read and give me feedback on my novel, Just Poor, they said, well, it delayed, delayed, never quite happened.
And then I sort of said, hey, come on, I did all of this stuff for your artistic goals.
Maybe you could help me with my novel.
That person said, well, you know, you just haven't quite motivated me to do it.
And I'm like, ah!
So, when I help you, it's my duty.
When I ask you to help me, it's my fault if you don't.
And then it was like, bong!
Farewell, goodnight, affidavit, goodbye.
But I've always found it just as a whole.
Being generous and having standards is a very powerful combination.
So being generous means help people out, go above and beyond, do the extra mile, whatever.
Be generous and then have standards.
So be generous and ask in return.
If you're just generous without having standards or asking in return, you're just kind of cringe-begging, slaving, and throwing resources at people so they'll like you.
And look, I've done it myself, so this is not any sort of sarcastic thing to put people down.
I've spent many years doing that kind of stuff.
But if you're generous and you have standards, that's the sweet spot, my friends.
That is the sweet spot.
Because then you help people out and you ask for favors in return.
And you come across this.
It's a feeling.
It's a feeling.
It's like this.
Somebody says, don't let the door hit you on the backside on the way out the door.
Don't let the door hit you where the good Lord splits you.
Being generous to people and then asking for favors, you get this cold, it's like a diamond heart.
It's like cold, kind of icy.
There's just no way they're going to do it because you helping them has driven their vanity and status to heights and they won't give that up by helping you back because that would be to return to a state of equality.
And very few people, I'm telling you, my friends.
This is why voluntarism, anarchism, anarcho-capitalism is so hard for people to grasp because so few people can operate on a plane of equality in this life.
It's always got to be, you know, like that two pieces of paper being pushed together on a tabletop.
One goes over, one goes under.
They just, they can't do equality.
They can't do reciprocity.
They can't do mutuality.
It's got to be hierarchical.
Like if you're at a party, it's called these cocktail eyes.
Have you ever been at a party and you're trying to chat with someone and they're just looking around the room looking for something better, looking for someone more important, looking for someone who can do something for them?
This happens at networking events in business all the time, chatting with someone and the moment they realize that you can't help them advance their career or their whatever it is, they'll just, oh, excuse me, right?
And I get that from a business standpoint and so many people.
Do that as a whole.
They just, they cannot operate on a state, in a state of equality.
One person has to be superior, one has to be inferior.
One's on top, one's on the bottom, and not in that fun way.
So, always look for that.
So how do you test for equality?
Well, I mean, one of the things you do is you test for reciprocity.
In dating, that's an important thing, right?
So, as a guy who dated a fair share of women in the past, I would always be very generous, right?
Oh, I'll come pick you up.
I'll choose a restaurant.
I'll pay for dinner.
And I would look for reciprocity.
Which doesn't include sex, because sex itself is reciprocal, right?
So, I would look for reciprocity.
It didn't mean money, necessarily, at all.
It could be any number of things.
It could be a woman who would say, oh, you mentioned you write books.
I'd love to read one, right?
And if she reads a couple of chapters and gives me some feedback, that's worth way more than the price of dinner to me, right?
So it doesn't matter about money.
Reciprocity, right?
If you bring something nice for her, then, I mean, I remember going on a date with a woman and she brought me a plant and she said, you know, You're a bachelor.
I assume you don't have plants.
I'm aware that I may be handing over the plant to the equivalent of a Soviet gulag, but it's nice having plants.
And I really thought I kept that plant for years.
It was a very thoughtful gesture.
So you look for reciprocity.
So if you're putting all the work in as a man, being attractive, taking her out, choosing the places, choosing the activities, making her laugh, and so on, then...
Oh, lovely.
Well, I guess I'm that important, and this person is now my serf, my slave.
They're just bringing me resources, and they get smug, they get superior, and they get entitled, and blech!
And that's when you run, because that person is exploitive and kind of narcissistic, in my humble opinion.
But you look for reciprocity.
I mean, I've told this story a million times about how I mentioned to eventually my wife when I went out on a couple of dates that I had to interrupt my writing.
I was taking time off from work to write both Almost and my novel, The God of Atheists.
And I said, oh, I've got to intermatch.
I said, so I kind of have to interrupt it because I have to go and pick up some sandals I got fixed.
They're all the way downtown.
And she's like, no, I'm going to be downtown this afternoon.
I'll pick them up.
And I was just like, shocked.
Shocked.
Teaching women to be vain means that they will not perform reciprocity.
They will not do nice things for a man because any more than...
He'd be like, no, I don't.
They're my serfs, right?
So there's no reciprocity there.
My reciprocity is I don't throw them in a dungeon.
So always look for reciprocity in friendships, in business, and so on.
And it's even true when you have a hierarchical relationship.
You need to look for reciprocity.
So, if you have a boss, the boss should be appreciative of things that you do and not take them for granted.
I mean, again, I've said this story, but it's been many years.
It was one of these really crystalline waking dream turning points in my life.
I had been working in my journal with the idea that it was worse to assault a child Than it is to assault an adult in a wheelchair.
Like, you know, if we saw some big guy beating up some woman in a wheelchair, we'd be absolutely appalled.
And we would call him, like, just the worst guy ever.
because she's in a wheelchair, right?
But that's, Assuming it's your child.
Because the woman in the wheelchair, she can call on the cell phone, the police will protect her, she's independent, she can get the guy thrown in jail, she goes back to her own place, she can be secure, she can be safe, she can be armed, she can have pepper spray, whatever is legal, right?
So, whereas a child is, and she's a full legal adult, she's got independent consciousness and so on, full economic, political, and social rights and independence, and she's got all these people she can call, the police will.
Be on her side.
And everyone will side with her about, my God, I can't believe this guy beat you up or tried to beat you up when you were in a wheelchair.
Everybody would just be appalled and nobody would ever say, you know, let's say he's a neighbor, right?
Oh, but he's your neighbor.
You should get along with your neighbors.
You go over and have tea with him and ignore that anything ever happened.
You wouldn't have any of that bullshit, right?
But a child is completely dependent, has no independence, can't call the cops, or rarely.
And people don't side with the child.
When the child grows up and says, I was assaulted, they say, well, you know, they're your parents.
You've got to find a way to make it work.
So I was working through this whole thing.
This would be probably about 30 years ago or so.
I was working through this whole thing, just trying to understand all of this.
And this was a poem that I wrote in my late teens, early 20s about how everyone's reading their newspaper, waiting for a bus, and a lion comes along, takes out a kid, and people don't even look up from their newspapers.
Right.
This is how little people deal with child abuse.
Anyway, I was living downtown after I broke up.
With my fiancé.
And I was going downstairs to go and get a coffee.
And across, it was a fairly rough section of town, and across the street, there was this big black guy who was standing over a frail old woman, a frail middle-aged woman, and she seemed old at the time, a frail middle-aged woman who was kind of shaking her, you know, the armrests on the Wheelchair.
She was in a wheelchair and he's just leaning over her and shaking at her and shouting at her.
And I just, of course, ran up and told him to back off and, what the hell is he doing?
And, like, you've got to be kidding me.
Like, she's in a wheelchair.
You're a big guy.
And it was just an instinct.
I wouldn't even say it was particularly, you know, brave or it was just like.
Got to do something.
Like when I see a child getting aggressed against in public, I just go up.
It's almost like a force pulls me up, and I just kind of have to.
It's not even really a choice.
Anyway, so he backed down.
Of course, I was working out a lot of the time, and this was a fairly strapping young lad.
So he backed down, and then I talked to the woman, asked if she was okay, and so on.
And she said she was shaken up, and she was hungry.
So I took her to a restaurant and I paid for her dinner and then, and then what?
Well, and then she started chiseling me for more money.
And that didn't seem quite right.
Hey, thanks.
Now, if you could just spot me 50 bucks or 100 bucks or whatever on that, it just didn't seem quite right.
So sometimes when you're generous with people, they just start expecting more and more and you can get turned inside out and drained dry.
You know, some people, you give them your blood, they get better, and they'll come and mow your lawn.
Other people, you give them your blood, and they're like, oh, he's a generous guy, so I'm going to go hit him up for money.
Generosity is beautiful in a reciprocal relationship.
Generosity around exploiters will end your existence as a happy person.
It really is terrible.
Be very careful with your generosity.
Very, very careful.
With your generosity, always look for reciprocity.
Otherwise, you're going to get exploited.
All right.
Let me get to your comments.
I'm grateful to you.
I have a happy marriage.
It's successful because I've implemented a lot of what you have to say.
Oh, I'm great for that.
And thank you for that.
All right.
Well, with Canada Post, they don't deliver packages.
They just deliver these.
Sorry, we missed you from the depot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They would just leave your package on the door.
Thank you, David.
Thank you, C2.
They'd just leave your package on the door, but we live in a low-trust society with porch pirates now, right?
So you can't leave people's stuff on the door.
The amount of...
A high-trust society is just incredibly efficient.
A low-trust society is just...
It's so expensive.
It's so expensive and time consuming to live in a low trust society.
Thank you.
People get resentful when you're generous.
I mean, geez, if not a thanks, at least a minor consideration and respect for me and my responsibilities.
So they get resentful when you're generous?
People get resentful when you're generous.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Like, think of the people on welfare, right?
When was the last time, the welfare state is a single mother state, so we can pretty much equate the two.
When was the last time a single mother went on social media and gave something like the following speech?
I really want to thank mostly the men of society for paying the taxes, and I'm really sorry that I ended up having children without a father around.
I really, really appreciate how hard people work to provide me housing and food and healthcare and education and dental care.
I really, really appreciate the men who get up early, who go to work, and I take the money out of their bank account through the state.
And I'm really sorry that you have less money for your family because I did not plan correctly.
I will work as hard as I can to become independent, but I just really want to show my absolute deep, sincere, and grateful appreciation.
For everything that the taxpayers are doing for me to keep me going.
It never happens.
And in fact, it doesn't even cross the mind of most of the people on welfare at all.
What happens is they get entitled to it, and then you get no thanks.
All you get is rage if there's any cuts or interruptions, right?
That's all you get.
When was the last time that women as a whole went on social media and said, and I know it happens, but it's not very common, and said, you know, really want to thank men for all of the hard work they had
If you've ever lived out in the woods, the fact that you can turn a tap and get water without having to boil it or use water purification tablets, I still appreciate it because I spent a year and a half living in the woods.
All of the amenities of the world make sense.
Women love jewelry.
When was the last time they said, I really want to thank men for doing the hard and dangerous work of mining, which is where we get the gold and the diamonds from?
I really do appreciate it.
And I get to wear these lovely trinkets because men are out in the hot sun or down in the underworld like dwarves getting black lung and hunched backs from all of their mining activities.
Never happens, right?
Never happens.
So, when you give people stuff, particularly through the power of the state, They simply get entitled, and they cannot express gratitude, because expressing gratitude would be to reduce their ability to exploit without a conscience, without being triggered by their conscience.
So when you're exploiting people, you have to dehumanize them, otherwise you feel bad.
And exploitation isn't fun if you feel bad, right?
So they can't express gratitude.
All they can do is say, well, I'm entitled, right?
And then they express rage.
If there's any interruption in the flow of exploited values that come their way.
I mean, there was this video that came out a day or two ago, and it was this morbidly obese woman talking about how much she needs SNAP, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or something like that, how much she needs SNAP food for her four kids.
And she was, of course, playing the victim and half crying and all the other women are like patting her on their arm.
You're okay, honey.
You're doing fine.
You're okay.
And, I mean, it's...
The optics are wild to me that you have a morbidly obese woman saying she needs more food for her family.
And again, her childhood was probably horrible, and I get all of that, but...
It's interesting to see the comments because the comments were like, looks like she's eating all the food, which I thought was a little mean, but I can understand the joke.
And, of course, it was, why would she have four kids if she can't afford to feed them?
You know, just that basic stuff, right?
Now, of course, she was saying, I was working three jobs.
Now, that's kind of tough because if you're working three jobs, who's taking care of your kids?
But she actually was saying that I was working three jobs when she first started having children.
But there's no thanks, right?
She's probably taken, over the course of these four kids' lives, I don't know exactly how old they are, but people on welfare, you know, again, assuming they're getting subsidized healthcare, if not free healthcare, subsidized housing, if not free housing, subsidized food, if not free food.
The schools are paid for by the taxpayers.
The daycare is probably paid for largely by the taxpayers.
So she's probably getting, I mean, it's really hard to say, but I know that you have to earn over $8,200,000 to get the same value.
So let's just say she's getting $60,000 worth of value.
U.S. It's probably a little low when you add all the things up together, but let's say that she's getting $60,000.
That's a huge amount of money.
Massive amount of money.
I mean, the first $60,000 is the big thing.
You know, get a million, get an extra $60,000 doesn't mean diminishing gains, right?
But she's getting $60,000 a year, right?
So over 20 years, that's $1.2 million, which she doesn't have to pay tax on, so it's actually even more.
She's getting $60,000 worth of value.
She doesn't have to pay tax on it.
So that's probably closer to 80, 90, maybe even 100,000, depending on how you count it.
But we'll just go bare minimum.
So if someone gave you $1.2 million so that you really didn't have to work, what would you say?
Wouldn't you thank them enormously?
Wouldn't you be like in tears with gratitude?
If you had a bunch of kids and then somebody said, we're going to give you $60,000 a year tax-free, wouldn't you be incredibly grateful?
Wouldn't you be in tears of gratitude?
That shit doesn't happen.
It does not happen.
Generosity through the state always begets entitlement.
You owe me.
I need these.
Who's going to feed my kids?
Who's going to feed my kids?
Well, you.
You had them.
I didn't.
I'll feed my kids.
You feed your kids.
How about that?
How about that?
Having to teach people that relationships should be reciprocal is a bit of an eye-opener.
When virtue is not valued in society and it usually costs you, how long can you afford virtue?
Yeah, but...
I missed the username.
Yeah, you still owe me an apology.
All right.
Chris says, I think there's a lack of vulnerability present when people don't reciprocate.
Like you say, they close up with a hard shell around the heart.
Like you say, they close up with a hard shell around the heart.
Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris.
Oh, the people who exploit you, they just, they're hiding their vulnerability.
I'm sorry.
I don't mean to laugh at you.
I'm really sorry.
But that really is funny.
Oh, my God.
No, they're lazy and they want to take stuff.
Lack of vulnerability.
You know, they want to reciprocate.
They're just too tenderhearted and don't want to show it.
It's like, no, they're exploiters, bro.
My God.
Oh my god.
Please don't project all of this sensitivity onto exploiters.
They're just cold-hearted takers.
That's it.
Now, bad childhood, blah blah blah, but who cares, right?
Who cares?
I mean, someone might care about an exploiter's bad childhood, but that someone can never be the person they're exploiting or have exploited, right?
I mean, to take an extreme example, a therapist might work with a rapist to figure out his bad childhood.
But his victims should not be those people to help him out, right?
Thank you.
All right.
I don't go to that extreme, but if I need help and get it, I will do a favor like buy a nice meal for them when I can afford to do so.
That's what a friend does, yeah.
Why are bad people much better at detecting good people than good people are at detecting bad people?
What a great question.
Because evil people run the education system, right?
And so evil people running the education system, evil people are not going to teach you how to identify evil people, right?
That would be like the lion stalking a zebra, shooting up a flare, saying, I'm here!
So, no, I mean, the educational system and the media is largely run by immoral or corrupt or evil people, and so they want to reverse everything.
They want to reverse everything so that your instincts are completely screwed up.
So, they will never, Tell you how to identify bad people.
So, for instance, there are two of the most replicable instances in psychology or social sciences.
Do you know what the two of them are?
The two most robust findings that replicate all of the world incredibly consistently.
Do you know what these two things are?
These are the two things that you're not allowed to talk about because these are the two things that will help protect you.
Right?
The two things that will help you understand the world and protect you, you're not allowed to talk about because very corrupt people are in charge of the information that we consume, except Twitter.
So, do you know what are the two most robust and replicable findings in psychology and the social sciences?
Thank you.
All right.
IQ is one.
Yes, that's right.
IQ is one of the most robust and around the world replicable.
Genetics?
And now.
Now.
Now.
It's a bit obscure.
So I don't know exactly where they stand in the hierarchy, but two of the most replicable things in science and IQ, sorry, in science, No, it's not family dynamics.
So the two most replicated studies in psychology and social sciences are IQ and stereotypes.
Are stereotypes accurate?
Stereotypes don't just emerge out of nowhere.
And, of course, you wouldn't want to take a general stereotype and apply it to every single person.
But, yeah, stereotypes and IQ are the two most replicated studies.
And one of the reasons why people think psychology is largely bullshit is because its most robust findings are suppressed viciously, right?
So...
Thank you.
So, yeah, you can't talk about these things, right?
Thank you.
All right.
All right.
Let's see.
Let me get to your comments.
Great comments today.
Thank you, everyone, so much.
The shock that men would dare ask what is in the relationship for him, or what does she bring to the table?
Oh, yeah.
Of course, all women's preferences are standards.
All men's preferences are based on insecurity and hysterical need to control women.
Right.
So, I mean, He was having a debate with women and he was saying, if your man, if your boyfriend doesn't want you to go to the club, doesn't want you to go to the bar and drink with your girlfriends, is that bad?
Oh, that's so bad.
He's so insecure.
He should trust me.
He's too controlling.
That's controlling.
Okay.
Well, what if your man wants to go to a strip club?
Oh, that's bad.
He shouldn't do that, right?
Well, wouldn't he just say, well, you've got to trust me.
You're insecure if you don't want me to go to a strip club.
And Brian's argument, which was a very solid, a good argument, was that the man's chances of sleeping with the stripper are virtually zero, but 90% of the men of the club will have sex with a reasonably attractive woman if she offers it.
The relationship is far safer if the man goes to the strip club than if the woman goes to the club and gets drunk.
Right, so, yeah, asking women what they bring to the table.
Well, see, but women now have had three generations of old age pensions in the welfare state.
So they don't need...
I get it.
I get it.
If I get...
I don't need no stinking grocery store.
It's not complicated, right?
The welfare state was put in place in part to convince women empirically that they don't need men and therefore make women less appealing, more entitled, less dateable, and to reduce the birth rate.
All right, somebody says, Steph, I want to be clear with you.
Good, because being opaque with me is not helpful.
I've had hours and hours of value from you over the years, and it's only fairly recently that I have subscribed to you on a monthly subscription now that my finances are becoming more stable.
My plan is to build up my therapeutic coaching, and I will be able to increase my subscription, plus I'm spreading your values to my clients, as I mentioned.
I've also spread it to my friends and family.
I've not hoarded the knowledge.
I just wanted to get this off.
Yeah, I mean, I...
You're...
It's just a matter of priorities.
And this is not to do with donating to me.
Do it or don't do it.
I just sort of make the case.
So everyone thinks, well, I'll have a reciprocal relationship.
We'll take my example.
So people say, well, I'll donate to Steph when my finances are more stable.
But that's a passive thing.
And it's not even true.
There's very few people in the world whose finances are so bad that if they subscribe for $5 or $10 a month to me, they're going to end up homeless.
Come on, there's always something you can cut.
It's literally a coffee a month.
You know, like there's a $3 subscription at freedomain.com slash donate.
I will not believe anyone, and I'll just be honest with you, right?
And I could be wrong, but I will not believe anyone who says, Steph, I can't afford $3, $5, or $10 a month.
I just don't have the money.
I just don't believe it.
I really don't.
I don't believe it.
And I wouldn't say that to people.
I can say, I'm not comfortable.
I don't want to.
I'm not happy.
It makes me anxious.
But to say, I can't afford, like, especially, you know, you're obviously an intelligent guy, you've got computers, cell phones, internet, you probably have, I mean, there are luxuries that we all have, right?
And so the idea that you can't subscribe because you just don't have the money is essentially not true.
It's essentially not true.
And I'm not nagging you about this.
I'm just saying that you need to understand how you come across to other people.
Thank you, Chris.
You just need to understand.
And I'm not trying to get you to donate, honestly.
I just...
But if someone says to me, Steph, I couldn't afford three bucks a month.
I couldn't afford five bucks a month.
I just don't believe you.
Now, I'm not saying you should spend it, but you could.
There's almost nobody in the West where it's like, well, my necessary expenses are $2,000 a month.
My income is $2,000 a month.
And if I subscribe for a couple of extra bucks a month, I'm going to get kicked out of my apartment.
I'm going to go hungry.
That's just not the way that life works.
That's not the way.
I mean, do you go out to eat?
Do you have a coffee out once in a while?
Do you pick up a bagel in a drive-thru?
I'm just saying that it's a choice.
And you want to recognize that it's a choice for you.
Don't hide behind the determinism of made-up math.
I'm just being blunt with you.
And I want you to tell the truth to people because the more you get into the habit of telling the truth to people, the higher quality people you can have in your life.
Because if you say stuff like, my finances are becoming more stable, Years and years I took value from you, but now my finances are becoming more stable so I can do a subscription.
The problem is that people with intelligence and honesty won't believe you.
And I'm not saying that you're sitting there rubbing your hands and consciously lying to me, but you have to really think before you communicate and make sure that you're telling as much truth as possible.
Now, if somebody says to me, if you'd have said to me, I felt uncomfortable, I didn't want to, I was having trouble with generosity, I blah, blah, blah, I chose to have a cup of coffee out rather than fund philosophy.
Hey, I got no problem with that.
The fact that you didn't subscribe is not the problem.
I appreciate you starting to subscribe and my gift to you for your subscription is that you got to tell the truth.
And there's nobody, really, who's going to believe you if you say, I couldn't do five bucks a month because that would have broken me down financially and I would have ended up living on the streets.
I couldn't do it, right?
So if you blame your finances as to why you're not subscribing, nobody's going to believe you.
Now, listen, don't get me wrong.
If you're a homeless guy and you're listening to this somehow, right, whatever, right, then I get that.
But that's not you, right?
And that's not really a thing.
So, don't make excuses that are not true.
Sorry, I just want to be blunt with you.
I want to be honest with you.
So, don't tell me that you didn't subscribe because your finances were unstable or whatever it is, right?
If it was a priority to you, You would have subscribed.
It was not a priority to you, which I'm fine with.
I mean, obviously, philosophy is a very high priority for me.
But if it's not a high priority for you, high enough to make it a priority in order to spend three or five or ten bucks a month or whatever, right?
That's fine.
Then just tell me it wasn't a high priority.
And I let other people pay for the value that I was consuming.
And I appreciated not having ads in your show.
And I just, I was a free rider.
Okay, I was a free rider.
It happens.
It happens.
But don't say it's because of some external factor, like I didn't have the money or my finances were unstable, whatever that means, right?
If it was a high enough priority, right?
I mean, so let's take a silly example, right?
I just really want to be frank with this because I want you guys as a whole in general, and I have this standard for myself and I fail it from time to time.
But let me give you an example, right?
So if you were sick and the life-saving medicine was $5 a month, let's say you needed to take it for a couple of years, would you die?
Right?
Of course you wouldn't.
You would find a way to pay the $5 a month in order to survive.
Now, just for the less intelligent among you, I know this isn't most people, I'm not saying that I'm equivalent to life-saving medicine.
This is an extreme example to show you that if the doctor said, well, you're dying, and this medicine for five bucks a month...
Thank you.
Would you say, oh, you know what?
My finances are too unstable right now.
No.
You would find a way to pay the $5 a month to get the medicine to stay alive.
So when people tell me it's impossible, I couldn't do it because of my finances, I just know that's not true.
That is not to say you have to subscribe or donate.
That's not the conversation.
The conversation isn't, well, you have to donate, subscribe.
The conversation is about don't pretend that your free will is constrained by something it's not in fact constrained by.
So when people say, well, I can afford a cell phone, I can afford an internet plan, I can afford a place to live, I can afford a car maybe, I can afford coffees out, I can afford dinners out, I can afford treats and this and that and the other.
I can afford desserts, which you don't need and are kind of poisonous anyway.
I can afford all of these things, but Steph, I can't afford to support philosophy.
You can.
Again, this is not an argument that you should, but don't tell me you didn't have a choice.
My finances were too unstable.
That's not true.
You chose to not own your choices.
Because if you give yourself excuses in the past, you're going to give yourself excuses in the future and you're going to limit your choices.
Do not give yourself access to excuses.
Excuses diminish you.
They diminish your free will.
They diminish the honor and glory of your existence.
And excuses keep people of great integrity away from you.
Because people with great integrity, people, and by integrity I simply mean you don't make up excuses, right?
People with great integrity don't like spending time around people who make excuses because it's kind of infectious.
We all have that undertow, that tendency, that desire, that drive to make excuses.
Kids are born that way.
We have to outgrow it, right?
It wasn't my fault.
Or, you know, the guy last night, every time I found this kind of annoying, and I called him on it like half a dozen times.
I actually had to tell the audio cleanup to not take out breathing noises because every time I'd ask him a question, he didn't like it.
You know, there's this impatient sigh, right?
So, that's kind of unpleasant to be around, right?
So, be somebody who owns every choice.
If you didn't subscribe and you didn't donate, That is fine.
The issue that I'm talking about here is not, oh my god, you've got to go and subscribe and donate.
Don't get me wrong.
I'd be happy if you did.
But the issue here is when I hear excuses that are false.
When I hear excuses that are false.
And some excuses are genuine, right?
Like, I was late to the job interview because I got t-boned by a drunk driver.
Okay, that's a valid excuse, right?
But I couldn't afford Five bucks a month is not true.
Now, just own it.
Don't give yourself excuses.
Don't diminish the glory of your free will by making up a situation where you just had no choice.
I couldn't subscribe because I would starve or be homeless or whatever it is, right?
I couldn't make my car payments.
I'd lose my car.
I'd lose my job.
Right?
But that's not true.
Everyone In this conversation, everyone listening to this, you can afford five bucks a month.
Now, please understand, if you choose not to subscribe for five bucks a month, or whatever, three bucks a month, if you choose not to subscribe, I'm fine with that.
I really am genuinely and totally fine with that.
Just don't lie to me about it.
And don't lie to yourself about it.
You know, if it was five bucks a month to stay alive, you'd find that five bucks you wouldn't even owe.
I mean, I give up one coffee out a month and I get to live?
Okay, I give up one coffee a month and I can support philosophy?
Yes.
So just don't, because you're, and the reason I'm, is you're a life coach here, right?
Therapeutic coaching.
So if, when you're telling me about how you're taking my material and using it in your therapeutic coaching to make money, I'm fine with that too.
But if you're a therapeutic coach, then you want to teach people To take 100% ownership of their choices.
No excuses.
No excuses.
So don't give me an excuse when you're telling me about how you're making money from my material.
That's all.
And I'm fine with that too, but that's all.
All right.
Again, great comments and questions, right?
Was it a huge shock that most people or a large percentage have no desire for universalism in ethics or behavior?
Yeah, I mean, I've gone through a whole bunch of, like...
I mean, I remember when the media first started going after me back in 2008 or something like that.
I was like, well, hang on.
I mean, we're talking about child abuse and child abusers and voluntary relationships.
And I was raised that if you're not happy in a relationship, you can just leave.
So I was a bit surprised.
And I was like, I mean, I had to sit there and think until my brain bled through my ears or something.
Like, what am I not getting?
What am I missing?
What am I not getting?
And what I understood was that my mother understood the world far better than I did.
So she could do all these terrible things in full.
Like, there was probably hundreds of people who could hear me getting beaten because we lived in a variety of apartment buildings, the paper-thin walls and so on, and nobody ever called the cops.
And so my mom was perfectly safe to loudly beat us.
And she knew that nobody would do anything.
So my mom understood the world better than I did.
Aren't women just harnessing the power of nature, like building a spinning wheel by a waterfall for energy?
Simps are just programmed to be simps.
Well, then you wouldn't call them simps, which is a negative term, right?
So, I would say no, because...
women would actually need to provide value in order to be taken care of over the course of their life.
Because a woman who...
That's more than half a century.
That's 55 years.
And so there would be enough warnings, right?
See, one of the things that we don't do in society anymore is we don't let people serve as a warning to others because we just rush in and save them and shore up their bad decisions and so on, right?
A guy says, maybe the dude was shaking the woman in the wheelchair to get his money back.
Yeah, not reading that comment.
I don't expect you to apologize for disagreeing with me.
Tons of people disagree with me because you were kind of rude and insulting.
All right.
Entitled people demand more.
From generosity.
Anxious people refuse to take it or apologize profusely.
It's so rare that when women do show appreciation towards men, it feels like a grift.
Yeah, I mean, I remember a woman in my 20s, and I was paying the bills, and she expected thanks when she made dinner, she expected thanks when she did the laundry, and I said, I don't get any thanks for paying the bills.
Again, beginning of the end, right?
Do we know what the average IQ is for the single moms on welfare?
Well, single moms seem to have IQs on average in the low 90s.
So again, this is nothing to do with individuals, right?
Every time there's a power failure, and they are very rare, when the power comes back, I use the opportunity to teach my daughter a lesson in gratitude for what many take for granted.
It seems to really resonate.
Oh yeah, for sure.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, if you pass by construction, you say to your kids, hey, let's find the women.
you have people digging culverts out and sewers.
Hey, let's find the woman.
Somebody says, oh, this is the person earlier.
Nice to see you, Simph.
I completely agree with you that generosity produces a sense of entitlement in exploitive people.
I've also observed that resentment, as that resentment, which I would say likely comes from a position of not seeming Like a mooch, and they're a reminder that they are not generous or reciprocal.
Sorry, I didn't quite follow that.
Bernadine Bluntley on ThemTube does really good content, just turned 35. Anything men can do, we can do better.
Place clips of all the very hard, difficult jobs women don't do.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of jobs are just mandated, made up.
HR.
Air-conditioned offices and preventing men from getting jobs.
I want to be equal to men and I want a man who's better than me.
Square circle.
Incoming.
They say perhaps they aren't grateful for the welfare in part because they understand that all the resources they are given are coerced from people rather than given voluntarily.
Slave system, slave society symptom.
Yeah, for sure.
Oh yeah, the difficult jobs, oil rigs where they wrap chain around a running drill, deep underwater welding, mining on small carts like we used to in gym class as they were lowered down a slope into a mine.
Yeah, I remember my father took me on a tour of a diamond mine in Africa when I was there at the age of 16 and I just remember opening a door, the wind was astounding because they have to keep the air circulating so much that the wind is just astounding.
This reminds me of, quote, empaths.
I was once in a Facebook group with them.
Let me tell you they are the most vile and aggressive people.
They are always the victims of an evil narcissist.
They also claim that they are taken advantage of due to how kind and generous they are.
Pure projection and lack of self-knowledge.
Well, these are all the people who feed corrupt people and then complain that they are corrupt people.
Whatever you feed, you get more of, right?
So if you give resources to corrupt people, you are in part responsible for The existence of corrupt people, right?
Good point.
Give it to me straight, Steph, says Chris.
My excuse for exploiters is a bit startling to me in hindsight.
I appreciate your feedback.
Thank you.
That's right.
Stereotypes are pretty spot on across the board, right?
IQ.
Is that why people like Freud, Adler, and Jung contributed enormous concepts to psychology?
But Adler not so much, but Freud and Jung were both myth makers, and Freud was an absolute monster.
And I did a whole speech about this at a Night for Freedom in New York some years ago.
But yeah, Freud was an absolute monster.
A cocaine addict who gave his friends cocaine and praised cocaine and was just brutal to his clients.
And his clients came to him.
There were a lot of women who came to Freud and were talking about how they had been sexually assaulted by mothers and fathers in their family.
And he started to talk about this.
He got threatened.
He had six kids at the time, I guess.
And then this is where he came up with the Oedipus complex and the Electra complex, which is, well, it's not that the young man was, the boy was sexually assaulted, molested or raped by his mother.
It's that he secretly wanted to be, wants to sleep with his mother and kill his father and so on, right?
Well, if you're sexually assaulted by your mother, you are going to be enraged at your father for marrying a woman and not protecting you, marrying a woman like that and not protecting you.
Or if the girl is sexually assaulted, raped, molested by her father, then it's a wish.
It didn't really happen.
It's just a fantasy.
It's an desire.
It's a dream.
So he set back children's rights like 100 years.
And I would argue it was one of the main reasons that led to World War I. You read my question one word off.
Oh, sorry about that.
Why are bad people much better at detecting good people than good people are at detecting good people?
I mean, I think it would be the same reason that we're still not trained to detect virtue.
I appreciate your answer to the other question as well.
We're going to go donor only in a few minutes.
So again, you know the drill.
Om.
Thank you for the tip.
I appreciate that.
Alright.
Um...
...
Thank you.
You have sold me nearly instantly, but we are broke, not broken, and the reason is IT fraud is sabotage.
Sorry, I didn't quite follow that, but I appreciate the tip.
In some cultures, you are not respected because it's viewed as what you should do.
Asking for reciprocity is like asking for a participation trophy.
The average draft beer is about $5 at the bar.
Oh yeah, so if you drink, you can afford to support philosophy.
And if you buy a beer at a bar, one beer, you could have supported philosophy.
So it's just a matter of being honest about your priorities.
Whatever you do is what you prioritize.
And if you prioritize getting a coffee out or having a beer, if that's what you spend money on and then you don't...
By their fruits shall you know them.
Judge actions, not words or intentions, right?
So if you want to know what you value in life, just look at what you spend money on and what you don't spend money on.
That's what you value.
And I know that, and you know that, and everybody knows that, right?
Because voluntary trade is the empirical test of Hierarchical values.
All right.
I have questions to discuss with you regarding the man versus woman daily bickering since one ad crashed the market to address innovation and communication spurring friction for family.
Hence the public delineation using code, cache and constant vibrations to address radio communications failure.
Let me have a look at this.
Can I see this?
Let me just have a look here.
I'm not quite sure I'm following what it is that you're talking about, but I will have a look at the ad to see what it doth mean.
That's very poetic.
So I'm sorry, I can't quite follow the question.
Thanks, Steph.
That hit me in the feels.
And that's what I needed.
Good.
I am not assertive with others or with myself.
I need to be more honest.
I find being honest difficult.
This comment is me being honest.
I make self-excuses and I make excuses for others too.
Yeah, it's a deeply human experience.
I share it with you.
Everybody here, if they're honest, shares that with you.
So I appreciate that.
All right.
This is a sarcastic comment.
My money is locked in a safe guarded by someone with a gun who will shoot me down if I try to use any of it to sub to you.
Well, if that was true, then you literally can't sub.
Short of that, it's I chose not to.
Your choice.
That's right.
That's right.
Thank you, Steph.
That has certainly given me a prod about honesty, which I needed.
I struggle with assertiveness and I'm getting better, but I still have some way to go.
Yeah?
appreciate that and so on, right?
Okay.
Thank you.
Ba-ba-boom.
All right.
Biden once said, a woman can do anything a man could do but better in one of his many pandering moments.
Yeah, for sure.
It's demonic, right?
It's really demonic.
All right, so we're going to go to donors only on the Locals platform, and we'll chat about a couple of spicy things there.
So we're going to go in 30 seconds, just freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
If you're listening to this later, I really would appreciate it.
Happy Father's Day.
Happy Father's Day.
And I hope that you commit to being a great dad and having the children enjoy your company and look to you for wisdom.
And listen to this call I did yesterday about...
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