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July 7, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:26:13

The Effects of Single Mothers! Twitter/X Space

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Time	Text
	Actually we are ready.
	Yes, Defen Moll and you from Free Domain.
	I had a little bit of time.
	Like to spend it with some of my favorite people from the old school and the new school are here on X. And I hope you're having a wonderful day.
	Hope you're enjoying time with things you love and with any luck things that love you back without a happy ending.
	So I hope you are ready, willing.
	Hello, everybody.
	Stefan Molly from Freedom.
	Welcome.
	I had a little bit of time this afternoon, so I wanted to spend a few minutes or moments with some of my favorite people on the planet, which is the churning sea of wisdom and vitriol known as the X community, X Spaces.
	Spending time with my ex.
	It actually gives me kind of chills, so let's not move too much in that direction.
	Of course, my friends, if you have comments, questions, issues, and challenges, I am thrilled to chat.
	I see some people are taking some swings at my theory of ethics called universally preferable behavior.
	You can get the free book at freedommand.com slash books, or you can get a shortened version of it at essentialphilosophy.com.
	Both are free.
	I hope you will avail yourselves of them because, well, we do kind of need to know what good and bad and right and wrong are if we are to be good on the planet.
	All right.
	So be greater.
	Let's go straight to your questions and comments.
	Let's see here.
	Be greater.
	Why?
	Okay, add a speaker.
	There we go.
	Be greater.
	Just unmute.
	I'm Olias, my friend, what's on your mind?
	Hey, first of all, how's it going, Steven?
	Good.
	Yeah, I got a kid at work that works for me at one of my shops in Los Angeles in California.
	And he is just not a very responsible individual.
	He's only 20 years old, raised by a single mother, you know, and I've just given him some, you know, kind of like a mentorship, just taking him under my wing.
	But he's with a girl that right now, he is with a girl.
	I think she's like 19 or something.
	Unfortunately, she's been cheating on him and he won't leave her.
	I just figure, what were your thoughts on that?
	How should I approach the situation?
	So he's 20.
	You've given him a mentorship, but he's being kind of pushed around by his girlfriend.
	He was raised by a single mother.
	Okay, so does this young man have any idea of the mess that he's in?
	Has he sort of admitted this?
	Like, oh, yeah, I let my girlfriend push me around.
	I got to stop.
	Or is he like, nope, I'm happy?
	No, yeah, the first part.
	He sees that he's in a mess.
	He's starting to realize that, you know, how he portrays himself is not the reality.
	You know, that it's not, yeah, he can talk to talk and say that he's a big tuck guy, but he's saying himself, himself, he's acknowledging that, you know, it's not real just because of this relationship.
	You know, the relationship, you know, makes him look bad, and he's not able to reconcile that.
	He's having an identity crisis, I guess, in a way.
	Good.
	That's a huge plus.
	So I've mentored, of course, a number of young men and women in my business career, particularly in the past.
	And this is my suggestions.
	So number one, lift.
	It is absolutely essential for men.
	It is absolutely one of the big changes in my life was I was athletic as a kid.
	And then in my early teens, you know, things were really terrible at home.
	And I just didn't really move around much and I ate too much.
	And then when I got into philosophy, I read, of course, about the ancient Greek, you know, the wisdom of the strong body and the strong mind.
	And of course, because I grew up in the British culture, there's a big, it's called in philosophy, the mind-body dichotomy, which is the mind is eternal, spiritual, abstract, conceptual, and the body is, you know, messy, farty, poopy, you know, kind of a besmirching stain upon the glories of the mind's capacities.
	And this, of course, is reinforced to some degree by Christianity, where the soul is immaterial and perfect and ideal, and the body is Satan's chamber of making you do bad things with lusts and gluttony and sloth and all these kinds of things.
	And so the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, as they say.
	So that means, of course, that the body is your enemy and you must strive towards some sort of ideal.
	Now, the Greeks didn't have that nearly as much.
	Of course, obviously, as a pre-Christian civilization, at least Socrates is 500 years before Christ.
	So they had not as much of a mind-body dichotomy in that training was essential.
	Now, of course, part of this was pederasty, which was the ancient Greek philosophers a lot of times had sexual relations with their students, often very, very young men.
	So that to me is not at all ideal.
	But nonetheless, I sort of got into lifting weights.
	I was about 14 or 15.
	And then I joined the cross-country team.
	And then I joined the water polo team.
	And then I joined the swim team.
	And then I joined the tennis club.
	And I just was moving all the time and lifting.
	And, oh, man, night and day.
	Absolutely night and day.
	You are not the same person pre-lifting as you are post-lifting.
	And I was one of the things I tweeted about first when I came back on X after a five-year hiatus was as a man in particular, you don't even know who you are if you don't lift because you are weak.
	And when you are weak, you are submissive.
	And if you grow up without a father figure, I'm afraid the gym must become your father.
	Your muscles are your patriarchy and the strength that you did not get when the strength that you did not get from your father, you must get from your muscles.
	And I really don't know that there's any other way around it.
	Now, cardio is not bad.
	It's not bad, but it's just not the same.
	You just need physical strength.
	When you have physical strength, you move through the world differently.
	When you have physical strength, you are not as intimidated as easily.
	And when you have physical strength, and by that I mean muscles, then you are less easy to push around and you have a kind of confidence and you're kind of taken with a seriousness.
	Muscles is a way of displaying discipline.
	Muscles is a way of displaying discipline.
	I mean, you can have all the mental discipline that you want.
	You could be learning kanji and Klingon and how to perform operations in space.
	But if you're physically, If you're physically doughy, all you transmit is laziness and self-indulgence.
	So you need to lift.
	And I would certainly strongly recommend this to any young man, especially if you grew up with a single mother.
	You have to lift.
	You have to lift, in my humble opinion.
	It's just, you know, obviously my amateur opinion, but you have to lift.
	So I would definitely focus on that.
	And listen, lift at a gym which isn't overly feminized, I suppose you could say.
	It doesn't have to be a dark, dirty dungeon where giant men with giant mustaches move metal around, but don't go to any place with frilly pink weights.
	Maybe don't go to a place where there's an overindulgence in Ashtanga yoga classes and pilates.
	But, you know, go to some place where there's going to be some men who can help you, some men who can encourage you, some elders who can teach you the ropes, and just lift.
	It is absolutely essential for men, especially in the modern world.
	You just become a different, you know, you're born again through tendons and muscles.
	You put on an armor of discipline that shields you from conflict and gives you a very subtle upper hand.
	You know, it's a muscles are a cheat code in the world, my friends, because when you're involved in any negotiation, you know, 90% of communication is non-verbal.
	The mind and the tongue can do anything it wants in the shaping of syllables.
	But if you are in conflict with another man, and this conflict can be some sort of physical intimidation, but of course, it can also be just a negotiation in the business world for a raise for salary to get a job.
	If you are with muscle, you will win.
	You will win.
	You will win.
	Now, I mean, maybe there'll be some petty resentment or whatever it is, but in general, you will win.
	People give way to muscle.
	It's how we're programmed.
	It's a cheat code.
	It's a cheat code.
	And of course, over the course of my career, I've had bomb threats, death threats, physical altercations, intimidations, people in my face.
	And it doesn't phase me that much because of the aforementioned physical strength.
	Now, listen, I'm obviously, I'm not Joey Swole, right?
	I'm not some big buff guy.
	But nonetheless, it just gives you an upper edge.
	And women tend to nag less men who have muscles.
	Women nag often from a feeling of insecurity and a feeling of a lack of protection.
	And if you have muscles, women tend to relax a little bit.
	And again, you can say, oh, but what good muscles do?
	And the modern world's like, it doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter.
	Because 90% of communication is non-verbal.
	So if you're being pushed around by your girlfriend, don't push back.
	Just go lift.
	You'd be absolutely shocked how quickly things change.
	Listen, you lift, your skeleton gets stronger.
	Your bones get stronger.
	And of course, there was this whole thing in the 70s and 80s, like the running culture.
	Running culture.
	No, that's not what I'm saying.
	Running is fine, I suppose.
	And I remember once when I worked up north, I ran 24 miles to a town and back because I was completely bored of the tent.
	So I've nothing against the running.
	It's fine.
	To me, it's a little rough on the knees, but that's neither here nor there.
	But lifting is life.
	As a man in particular, lifting is life.
	So I would definitely tell him, get the to a jimmery, to paraphrase, Hamlet, and get, get lifting.
	Now, the other thing, too, is that, and of course, I wouldn't talk about sex with an employee in a million years, but just between you and I, and I guess whoever's listening, one of the things that happens when you grow up with a single mother, and this is not just my theory, this seems to be fairly well established.
	And you can look at my Bomb in the Brain series at FDRpodcasts.com if you want more on this.
	But when you grow up with a single mother, you tend not to like the female template that rules you.
	Men, oh, boys, boys don't mind being ruled by honorable men, but they sure as surelock hate being ruled by false and neurotic women, which is more likely than not when you're talking about single mothers.
	And just to be clear, I'm not saying all single mothers are like this.
	I'm not saying all married women are blah, blah, blah, but there's a tendency, right?
	That sort of shrill, naggy, whiny, complaining stuff that a lot of single moms do.
	Men, a boy, so we hate to be ruled by that stuff.
	So if you're raised by a single mother, you tend to have an aversion to the female template you've been handed.
	Not to all women, but to the female template, like as your mother is all women, right?
	Because when we evolved, women in the tribe weren't that much different, and neither were the men.
	But we have more options now than we ever did in evolution.
	And of course, our evolutionary nature has yet to catch up with that.
	So you raise by a single mother.
	You don't like the female template.
	So what can you do?
	Well, what nature does is it compensates for your caution around female nature as you've perceived it.
	It compensates for that by cranking up the lust hormones, cranking up the lust hormones.
	This is called R-selected behavior.
	There's K-selected behavior, which is generally larger predators, wolves and lions and so on.
	And there's R-selected behavior, which is the rabbits and the prey species and so on.
	And rabbits have a higher sex drive than wolves because wolves need to invest more in their Offspring.
	So, the way that nature compensates for your negativity towards the female template of the single mother who raised you is: nature basically says, All right, all right, all right, fine, fine, fine.
	Your female template is not great, not great, not a lot to admire there, not a lot to respect there, not a lot to really want to pursue from a moral standpoint.
	But on the other hand, I can just make you rabbit on cocaine lusty.
	I could just make you horny from here to eternity, and that will compensate for the negatives.
	And so a lot of times men who are raised by single mothers, and there's other things for women, but I've got, I think the truth about single motherhood is on my channel as well.
	So often boys raised by single motherhood kind of becomes a little sex crazed, maybe a little sex addicted.
	And that's nature's way of overcoming the negative female template they've been given with just plain blind lust.
	Blind lust.
	So lifting, I think, will help that.
	And I don't know if there's anything you can do as a boss in this kind of area.
	But what you need to do, or what he needs to do, if he ever listens to this, is he needs to recognize that she ain't every woman, bro.
	You're single mother.
	Single mothers, for boys in particular, have different effects on girls, but single mothers have no credibility with boys.
	None.
	No credibility.
	Like you couldn't even keep a guy around.
	Like either, this is the boy's view of the single mother, which is, okay, so there's really only, there's only two possibilities here, mommy.
	There's only about two possibilities.
	Number one, you chose a total a-hole to have a child with when you were way older than me.
	Right?
	Let's say the single mom had the kid at 25 and she's trying to lecture some 15-year-old.
	Then the 15-year-old boy is like, why would I listen to you?
	You were still making catastrophic errors, which you won't admit to 10 years older than what you're trying to tell me.
	So it literally is like being slender and being nagged into losing weight by a morbidly obese person.
	It's just ridiculous.
	And the ridiculousness of being instructed by single mothers as a boy means there's rebellion and eye rolling and a complete lack of respect, which of course drives the single mothers kind of crazy and then they escalate and they get more aggressive verbally or sometimes even physically.
	So it's bad.
	So there's only two choices, mom.
	Either you chose a bad man to have a child with, in which case you are a fool and a half.
	You can't judge things.
	You can't judge people.
	And I don't have any respect for you for that.
	Or you chose a good man to have a child with and you drove him away.
	You drove him away, mom.
	And in which case, the mom, you have even less respect for her, if that's possible.
	And I don't know any way around this.
	I really don't.
	I don't.
	I mean, I'm just telling you the way that a boy's mind works when raised by a single mother.
	I don't have an answer to this other than maybe the single mother can say, here's all the reasons I made these mistakes.
	I'm going to take full ownership.
	I've gone to therapy.
	I fully admit that I'm trying to lecture you on things where I made far worse mistakes than you did when I was far older than you.
	But I have, in a mature and adult fashion, taken ownership, taken responsibility, sorted out these problems, solved these problems.
	Maybe.
	I mean, but, you know, to a large degree, that's asking the impossible.
	Because if the single mother had that kind of maturity, she either would have chosen a better man, or if she did chose a good man, she wouldn't drive him away.
	And it's a brutal situation.
	I have sympathy for the children most of all, of course.
	I also have some sympathy for the single mothers, but less because they're adults.
	But there's just no way around it.
	Single mothers have no, maybe they have more credibility with girls.
	I don't know.
	It's not my wheelhouse, so to speak.
	But boys cannot look at single mothers.
	They're single mothers with respect.
	And so because of that, they tend not to take instruction from their elder, right?
	They won't take advice from their mother.
	And what that means is they're left to the prey of hormones, of culture, and of peers and media.
	And that's all trying to lead them astray.
	So that would be my general thoughts, how much you want to invest in this young man.
	I don't know, man.
	You can't fix people.
	I mean, I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine about this this morning, like you can't fix people.
	Like, but, oh, but don't you want to get better with your partner?
	It's like, yeah, my, my wife and I, we'd be married like 23 years.
	And I mean, I think we were pretty great when we got together, but I think we're better now.
	But we've grown together.
	We've grown together now.
	That's great.
	That's great.
	But you can't fix people.
	You can't make them grow.
	You can't drag them along any particular path towards self-knowledge and self-improvement.
	Marriage or relationships are not reform schools.
	They're not rehabilitation schools.
	They're not recidivist schools.
	They're not supposed to turn bad people into good people.
	That's, you know, magic sex can't make bad people good.
	So you may want to cut your losses and go with someone from a more stable background.
	You may want to maybe point him in the direction of some more masculine areas of the internet, but it is really tough to undo, particularly at such a young age.
	But of course, he's still probably five years away from brain maturity.
	So I'm sure there's some possibilities.
	And of course, I just really wanted to thank you for caring about this young man so much.
	He's very lucky to have someone like you in his orbit.
	Does that make any sense?
	Oh, you can hear me now.
	Okay.
	Good, good.
	So sorry, does that make any sense?
	I didn't hear anything you said.
	We've been, me and the whole lobby have been just waiting for you to come back.
	I'm so sorry.
	I told my phone to switch to the speaker, and then it switched back to some other output.
	And of course, I wasn't checking the chat.
	So I'm afraid you will have to get the speech after, but I promise you, it's a great one.
	So my apologies for that.
	I've turned off Bluetooth and just wrestling with the new technology and some absolutely arst-tastic programming on the iOS thing.
	You know, hey, if I want you to use the speakerphone, don't switch back to something else When I haven't asked you to.
	But I'm sorry about that, but we will have the speech out when it's going.
	All right.
	You're welcome, man.
	All right.
	Let's see who else is on the list of chitty chats.
	Jolie.
	Jolie, you're on the air.
	If you wanted to unmute, go for it.
	Hello, Mr. Amalnew.
	You may not remember me, but a long time ago, I sent you a DM over your opinion on Roger Waters for the basis for Pink Floyd.
	I think that was one of the last conversations we had about that before Twitter banned you.
	So I just first wanted to say thank you and welcome back to Twitter.
	It's an honor to be following you again.
	Second, I guess since this is a philosophy space, my question is this.
	Have you read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius?
	And if so, what was your personal opinion on it?
	I appreciate that.
	And thank you for bringing up the Roger Waters.
	I was a massive fan.
	I mean, still like Pink Floyd.
	I was a massive fan of Pink Floyd when I was younger.
	Used to listen to side three of The Wall when I'd go to bed in junior high school or high school pretty early on.
	And I actually, this is for the donors, for the subscribers at freedomain.locals.com.
	There is, I think, an hour on the album The Wall.
	I've done an hour to an hour 10, which is fantastic stuff, if I do say so myself.
	So I really appreciate you bringing that up.
	And if you did, if you were the person who inspired me to go and do a review of the Pink Floyd album, The Wall, I really do appreciate that because, man, did I get some great stuff out of that?
	So thank you for that.
	Marcus Aurelius's Meditations.
	Yes, I, of course, heard about it for a long time.
	I started reading it a couple of years ago and I thought it was bad.
	I thought it was like a tween girls' diary.
	I thought it was like, it didn't inspire me.
	There was no, it was just, you know, like, well, don't, don't take things too seriously and don't get too wrapped up in this.
	And don't, it's like, okay, well, whatever, like, I mean, care less about things.
	I mean, I know he's got a bit of a Buddhist thing as a whole, or at least a quasi-Buddhist thing.
	I know he's not directly knowledgeable of Buddhism back in the day.
	But I, I found it uninspiring and I found it relatively useless.
	See, I'll tell you, this, this is not, and maybe I'm missing something obvious here.
	So I'm not saying that this is any sort of final thought, but I look for practical things, right?
	So I look for practical things.
	So in the speech that I gave, which obviously you'll hear later, with the young man, I said, you know, my first advice was to go lift weights, lifting his life.
	So go lift weights.
	And then it was like recognized that you probably didn't respect your single mother.
	So you need to challenge your template of what femininity is, because otherwise nature will, if you dislike women or the female template that you get from your single mother, then nature will crank up your hormones to almost sex obsessed or sex addict levels.
	And then you're kind of out of control of things.
	And so I'm looking for practical, practical tips on how to apply ideas or arguments.
	That's what I'm looking for.
	And when I read Marcus Aurelius, I didn't find anything.
	And I think I read about, I don't know, 30 or 40 pages.
	And I was like, okay, well, this is nice.
	You know, it's a nice lecture on the Aristotelian mean.
	Well, you don't want to care nothing and you don't want to care too much.
	And it's like, yeah, but how?
	We don't have a big dial.
	We don't have a big dial where we can say, well, you know, this is caring a little bit.
	I'm dial this back, a little dial this up.
	We're not twisting dials like some Chernobyl avoiding disaster mechanic in Russia.
	And so just saying, well, you know, you want to be sort of in the moderate area and you don't want to be careless, but you don't want to care too much.
	And it's like, okay, but what does that mean in practical terms?
	Because everybody has a different set of dials.
	Everyone has different ideas about what the mean is or the medium is.
	It's like, be a moderate.
	Be a moderate.
	Well, what does that even mean?
	Well, you don't want to be an extremist.
	It's like, what does that even mean?
	It's just this appeal to this neutral, bland, beige middle that I don't really know how to implement it.
	So when I am reading a philosopher or a thinker and so on, I mean, I'm enjoying the thoughts and so on, but I'm also looking for practical things.
	Like there's no diet book that says, well, you should try to eat roughly in moderation.
	Don't eat too little, don't eat too much, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, well, that's just kind of obvious.
	What I want to know is what mixture of protein, carb, sugar, fat, or whatever, based upon X, Y, and Z standards or requirements or criteria, can I use?
	And give me some recipes.
	And give me something practical.
	Don't just talk about moderation in diet because that doesn't really help me in terms of actual planning, actual cooking, actual grocery purchases and actual eating.
	It's sort of, and to me, it's saying, well, you know, moderation, you know, you shouldn't exercise too much because you injure yourself, but you shouldn't exercise too little because you'll get soft.
	It's like, you know, everyone kind of understands that.
	Everyone kind of understands that.
	I mean, we understand that when we ride a bike, if you ride a bike super slowly, it wobbles a lot and it's hard to stay up.
	If you ride a bike super fast, it's dangerous if you hit something like a stone and it's hard to stop.
	So we all understand that when we're running, if you've ever, you know, you do that run down a hill and you run too fast, you lose control, and then you're just fighting not to crash into something or fall over or whatever.
	So, you know, all kids understand moderation, right?
	I mean, if you're, if you, if you're playing frisbee with a friend and you're a little kid, you don't like whip the frisbee directly at his head, right?
	But at the same time, you don't just throw it so softly that it falls six inches from your feet.
	You do things in moderation.
	So we, you know, when you're learning a new skill, whether it's learning how to walk or learning how to ride a bike or something like that, well, you don't want to learn too slowly because then it gets boring, but you don't want to learn too fast because then you make mistakes and you could fall.
	And so we're all trained in moderation from infancy toddlerhood onwards.
	So for somebody to say, you know, moderation is important and so on.
	And what I want to know is what practical things can I Do and I just didn't get anything particularly practical out of those writings, if that makes sense.
	No, I totally get that.
	It seems like, based off of what you read, it feels almost too impersonally inspirational to and practically inspirational to the point where it's where I'm guessing Marcus Aurelius was trying to make current people into more higher beings in a sense, at least on a mental level.
	Okay, so sorry, sorry to interrupt.
	So fantastic.
	Okay, so I appreciate you, you probably know more about Marcus Aurelius and his books or his writings than I do.
	So what does it mean?
	I actually haven't read it.
	I actually haven't read it myself.
	I'm just, I, I just, sometimes I research Roman history and whatnot.
	Sorry, you're asking me, hang on, you're asking me my opinion on something you haven't read?
	Yeah, I've heard, oh, I've heard of it.
	I know it.
	Okay, bro, bro, bro, okay, come on.
	Come on.
	No, no, I mean, so telling me you've heard of it, do you think that I can puzzle out that you've heard of it by the fact that you've asked about it?
	Yeah, I'm guessing yes.
	Well, that's not a guess.
	I mean, if you tell me, Steph, what do you think of Marcus Aurelius' meditations?
	I know you've heard of it, otherwise you wouldn't ask me about it.
	I assumed that you'd read at least some significant portion of it, and you can understand why I would think that you've read some portion of it.
	Yeah, no, that is correct.
	And listen, I'm not trying to be an ag here.
	I'm genuinely curious because my jaw is a little on the floor, which, you know, just could be my overreaction or whatever.
	I'm fine with that.
	But why would you ask me about something you've not asked me my opinion of something you've not read?
	And again, I don't know if this sounds critical.
	I'm genuinely curious.
	It's an interesting phenomenon.
	I've not really experienced that before.
	No worries.
	It's simple.
	I saw the title of your phase, come talk philosophy.
	That's and meditations was like the first thing that came into my mind.
	Do you think that, okay, let me ask you this.
	Did you grow up with a father?
	Okay.
	And how close are you with your father?
	We are, yeah, we're pretty close.
	Okay.
	And when you were in school, obviously, you wouldn't do a book report on a book you hadn't read, right?
	Obviously not.
	I mean, it'd be pretty tough to fake, right?
	Did it cross your mind to say, Steph, I want your opinion on something, but I cannot engage in a dialogue with it about it because I haven't read it?
	You're right.
	It honestly didn't cross my mind.
	I just, I guess my mental state going into the question was I've heard other reviews of the book.
	I've heard how magnanimous and how grand in terms of the philosophy that it was that seeing how, again, this phase is called philosophy, I thought, thought it couldn't hurt to ask what your opinion was on it.
	Well, sorry, how would it hurt to ask?
	When I say hurt to ask, I just thought that was just me saying, why not?
	Why not just ask you about it?
	Well, I mean, the reason I think, and again, I'm not trying to be an act here, but I think I'm just trying to give you some sort of feedback, is that do you think that I would assume you'd read the book that you were asking me my opinion of?
	Yes, at least initially.
	What do you mean initially?
	Like, I'm guessing looking back on the question...
	Looking back on the initial question that you read, Marcus Aurelius, I guess...
	I was guessing...
	Not guessing, but more just...
	It just automatically went into my mind that we'd...
	So I, again, not trying to nag you.
	I'm just genuinely kind of curious about your experience here.
	So I, and I assume that the audience here also was quite surprised when you said you hadn't read a word of Marcus Aurelius.
	You'd maybe read a review or two or something like that.
	Because if you had said to me, Steph, I want your opinion of Marcus Aurelius' meditations.
	I've never read them.
	What do you think I would say?
	You say, I'm guessing you'd say something like, interesting perspective, but why would you ask me about a book that you specifically have never read?
	Well, no, I mean, I don't think I would say that.
	What I would say is, listen, I appreciate that.
	Why don't you read Marcus Aurelius and get back to me?
	And we'll have a conversation about it then.
	Fair point.
	Fair point.
	And again, it's not a nag.
	It's just an interesting thing to me.
	And now, the other thing that I would say about Marcus Aurelius is I assume he's not a good philosopher if no one hates him.
	And I don't think I've ever read a bad thing about Marcus Aurelius' meditations.
	Oh, it's so wonderful, this, that, and the other.
	It's like the prophets or Zen of the automotorcycle maintenance or, you know, The Secret or, you know, like no, nobody seems to hate the guy, which means that he's done nothing to promote virtue in any practical sense.
	So when you promote virtue, you interfere with the designs and interests of evil people.
	And so if you actually practically promote virtue, you measurably increase the virtue in the world, then that interferes with the plans, goals, and executions of evil people, and then they slander you, right?
	So I generally assume, and it's a pretty good rule of thumb, although I can't prove it 100% naturally, but if no one has a bad thing to say about any philosopher, then I know for a fact that philosopher has done nothing practical to increase the amount of virtue in the world.
	And so why would I waste my time?
	And this is why, you know, 40 or 50 pages in, I was just like, yeah, this is just a bunch of, it's sort of like having a meal of, if you've ever gone to the fair, right, in the summer, when I was a kid, of course, like most kids, I'm like, ooh, candy floss, the way they make it in the bowl with the spinny stick, and it suddenly coalesces like a ghost, a pink, pink ghost of tasty flavorness, right?
	And so you take a big bite of candy floss and it just kind of dissolves into those hard sugar nuggets that get stuck in your gums, right?
	So it looks big.
	You bite into it and it just kind of vaporizes in your mouth and you're just left with kind of annoying residue.
	And that's sort of my experience of reading a lot of philosophy, which is, okay, that's that's great.
	How does this advance virtue?
	And how does this, by advancing virtue, harm evil?
	And so, I mean, he obviously was involved in his political struggles and so on, but that's just a struggle for power.
	So I look for a philosopher.
	And if no one hates them and no one has slandered them, I just assume they're doing nothing of any particular value.
	You know, like if bacteria could speak, they would hate antibiotics, right?
	They would hate like, oh, I'm antibiotics.
	The guy who made antibiotics is the worst guy ever because his medicine kills us, right?
	Or diminishes our capacity to reproduce or whatever it does.
	So it's the same thing.
	I map someone I'm willing to listen to by the degree of hatred that they generate.
	And it doesn't mean, of course, that everyone who's hated is a moral philosopher.
	But if you are a moral philosopher, which is to promote virtue and to thwart evil, if you're a moral philosopher and no evil person hates you, it's because you've done f all in the world to thwart their interests, which means you're just a chin wagger, a noisemaker, and the nutritional equivalent of candy floss, if that makes sense.
	No, it absolutely does.
	Okay, well, listen, I appreciate you dropping by.
	Thank you, thank you, thank you.
	Thank you.
	It was nice to welcome back to Twitter.
	I look forward to these spaces in the future if you ever decide to do them again.
	I may.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	The appropriately named Stephen Freeman.
	Stephen Freeman.
	Why does that seem familiar?
	Am I thinking of Ian?
	Anyway, just unmute.
	So you're on the air and in my ear.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Are we taking a moment here?
	Who are you talking to then?
	Because you broke up a bit.
	Yeah, I'm talking to you, Steve.
	What's on your mind?
	Okay, excellent.
	Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for your hard work as always for being back on Twitter.
	I saw a couple of things on Marcus Aurelius.
	The first one was that I believe he didn't write the book.
	It wasn't like he was a philosopher who released it as text.
	It was kind of his own writings that people picked up afterwards and released.
	So God knows how much of that is legit.
	But I take your point about, you know, there's nothing particularly controversial in there.
	The thing that did, it's been a long time since I've read it.
	But the thing that did stand out for me is he talks at one point about, you know, not suffering fools and just being patient with the idiots that you're going to come across every day.
	Sorry, did he, sorry, did he say not suffering fools and being patient with fools?
	I thought the two were contradictory.
	Yeah, and I'm probably not, it's been a long time.
	This is kind of my interpretation of it, but he just talks about like every day being visited by people who are just annoying to him and just not getting frustrated.
	But I'm not, you know, that's not verbatim.
	That's kind of my memory of it.
	But the thing that stuck in my mind or that sort of popped into my mind was observing you on Twitter and just the number of really annoying people that, you know, are commenting on your stuff and your responses.
	And the thing I wanted to ask you is just how you keep patience with it.
	Because unlike Marcus Aridius, just reading those things that people say just irritates me, but they're not even addressed to me.
	And I just wanted to ask you how you keep your patience to such a degree with such idiots.
	Is there a particular tweet that comes to mind or is it a general accumulation of oog?
	Well, I mean, I just signed up again after quite a few years today.
	And I've just seen a stream of things that you've responded to and things that people have responded.
	You know, it's just nasty stuff.
	I can look at one and remind myself, but, you know, they're just things about like, you know, you're the mom and saying you're, you know, just personal insults, just basically.
	Oh, yeah.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	So I did this tweet about how, you know, I can't puzzle out why family members are mean to each other, particularly parents to children, and then nice to strangers.
	And I was talking about how my mom would be like mean to me and then real nice to a waiter, or she'd be like yelling at me.
	And then the doorbell would ring and she'd be super sweet to whoever the doorbell.
	And, you know, there have been a not inconsiderable number of people who've said, well, you were just being a little asshole and your mom just was angry at you because you were being a jerk.
	And now it's not, I went back and checked the tweet.
	It's not like I didn't say as a child, but of course, the situation is clearly a child's situation, right?
	So, but yeah, so I think it's a great question.
	So how do I have patience?
	So tell me what, I hate to be Mr. Definition Guy here, but you're assuming that I have patience.
	And that's interesting because what do you mean by patience in this context?
	Because I don't experience it that way, but maybe I do if you have a way of using the word that is different from how I would use it.
	So what do you mean by patience?
	Yeah, so one of the reasons why I kind of deleted Twitter and a bunch of other social media around the time that you got deplatformed.
	And that was part of it.
	Another part of it was I found myself just arguing with people.
	So I'd see comments like that or I'd be challenged in that way.
	And I'd just kind of, you know, go all guns blazing and just unleash hell and then just find myself like feeling negative and not really getting anywhere.
	Whereas you kind of seem to be able to respond quite quickly, like logically and rationally and not unleash your act.
	Maybe that's just because I was younger back then, but that's just something that it stands out to me that you're able to respond quite quickly with quite an objective view and just not get, you know, lose your mind to these kind of obvious idea.
	Well, you see, Stephen, what actually happened was I read Marcus Aurelius' meditations.
	Okay.
	So, no, what?
	I don't view it as a matter of patience.
	It's not like, oh, I have to calm down and be patient with these people.
	I just view it.
	I view the people who are sort of, we can say trolls, right?
	The people who are trolls, first of all, they're blindingly obvious, right?
	And so anybody who gets sucked into that kind of nonsense almost deserves the waste of time and energy.
	But what I do view them in particular, there is a horrifying, and I don't blame people for this because philosophers mostly suck in terms of giving practical moral advice to people in the world.
	It's all just, you know, be nice and reciprocal altruism and Kantian categorical imperatives and things like that, which doesn't really do much.
	And philosophers have never taken on child abuse.
	Philosophers have never taken on parenting as a whole.
	So mostly they've just been spitting silver-tongued nuggets of useless garbage into the palate of mankind and then wondering why they're not taken seriously.
	So there is a sort of chilling lack of respect for expertise among the general population for thinkers, philosophers, moralists as a whole.
	Ayn Rand wrote about this many years ago that in the midst of the 60s crisis where the communists were taking over the major institutions in their sort of long march through the institutions, the American Philosophical Society had a big meeting to talk about whether nouns existed or not.
	And this dust in the wind stuff from Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, dust in the wind, man, just dust in the wind.
	I mean, the fact that when a moralist comes along, people think that they know better.
	I understand, like I sympathize with.
	It's not common that you'll meet a robust, rational moral philosopher who's willing to try and teach you something of value.
	So I don't view the lack of respect that people have for my expertise as their fault.
	It's really the fault of all the other philosophers who haven't done much good, much practical good in the world.
	So, but it's sort of like if I've been playing chess, and I've been doing philosophy for 40, 43 years, almost 44 years, mid-teens to, you know, my late 50s.
	So let's just say, I don't know, 40 years, whatever, right?
	So 40 years.
	Now, not only have I done philosophy in terms of I've studied it and I have a graduate degree.
	My master's thesis was in the history of philosophy and took on some very big topics and issues.
	Not only have I been a debater and a public speaker, I've written books.
	I've engaged in countless debates with people.
	I have, you know, been running this philosophy show for 20 years.
	And so I am very experienced.
	And it is to me just a mark of people need to learn how to respect expertise.
	And learning how to respect expertise doesn't mean that I'm always right and they're always wrong or anything like that.
	But it's kind of like if I've just been playing, you know, chess with my brother and then I'm like, I sit down across a grand master with 40 years of experience and I think I can win, I'm wrong.
	I'm just wrong.
	You know, I was playing pickleball with my wife the other day and next to us were a bunch of tennis players.
	And these were young guys who were incredibly good.
	Like you could barely even see the serve.
	Now, I was okay at tennis.
	I was sort of a decent amateur, but these guys, I think they were pros.
	Now, if I if I were, well, I've been playing tennis since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
	And if I were to sit across from these guys and think I could win a point except by accident, I'd be deluding myself.
	Have respect for expertise.
	And my wife was like, well, they're pretty good.
	And I'm like, yeah, she thinks I'm a good tennis and racquet sports player.
	And I just had to tell her, like, those guys would clean the floor with me.
	Like, they wouldn't even break a sweat.
	And just so, you know, like they're really, really good.
	I mean, these are the kind of guys who, you know, they go to summer camp for tennis and they have, you know, coaches and all kinds of stuff.
	And, you know, more power to them, I think that's fantastic.
	But the idea that I could sort of wander in there and play with them in any reasonable capacity is just ridiculous.
	And so for me, it's not so much patience.
	It's like, I'm sorry that you don't have any respect for expertise.
	I'm sorry that you've not met mature people who can put a flex on without being abusive, but I'm going to do it anyway.
	So it's kind of like if you are like if you have some sort of advanced black belt in karate or, I don't know, judo or taitwind or whatever, you're a really, really, you've studied this stuff for decades.
	And of course, the challenge is that if you're into like martial arts, you age out, right?
	You just, your body ages out.
	But that's not the way with philosophy.
	You just, you just keep getting stronger.
	You just keep getting stronger until mortality puts your mind out of its fire.
	So if you are like a mixed martial artist in your prime or you've been doing this stuff for like 20 years or you are a fantastic martial artist and somebody fights with you, I mean, you're going to show them that they don't know what they're talking about.
	Now, of course, you're not going to break their arms or anything like that, but you're just going to show them what expertise looks like.
	And so I'm not, it's not a matter of patience for me.
	My sort of mindset is, you know, they, they're probably the smartest person in their small social circle, or maybe even in their class at university there.
	And that's great.
	You know, I think it's wonderful, but they don't really know what they're doing and they don't really know what they're talking about.
	And I'm going to, I want to say put them in their place, but putting them in their place is a good thing.
	Because if you think you know everything and you're the best at everything, you don't study anything and you don't ever grow at anything.
	So if I think I'm a fantastic chess player, right?
	I'm such a good chess player.
	And then I sit down with someone who's really experienced and they clean my clock in about five minutes, then that gives me room to grow.
	So I know this sounds kind of odd.
	I'm opening up opportunities for people.
	If you think you're really, really good at martial arts, okay, come at me, bro.
	And if I slip to the side, trip you up and throw you on your butt Without even really thinking about it, that means that you have room to grow in martial arts.
	It means don't be complacent, don't think you know all of that and all of that.
	You have room to grow.
	So, I'm just sort of pointing out to people that a real expertise, which I've accumulated for 40 plus years in, you know, some of the most rigorous and challenging public arenas that are around, well, come at me.
	And I'm now going to show you that you have room to grow, just as I do.
	I mean, I still have much, much room to grow with regards to philosophy.
	It's the old discipline.
	So you're never done.
	So I don't view it as, you know, I think you had this like, come at me, they come at you, and you just want to beat the living crap out of them, you know, to the point where their nose is coming out the back of their head or something like that.
	And obviously, I think that's a bit of a strong reaction, but it's just like, oh, I'll just judo you and you'll land on your butt and everyone can see it.
	And hopefully that will help raise my credibility.
	And hopefully that will give you the idea that you have room to grow and you shouldn't be complacent in your certainty of knowledge.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
	It's funny, actually, because I do have a black belt in Taekwondo.
	You just used that.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So listen, so if I, if I came at you after taking maybe five lessons in Taekwondo, if I came at you, I mean, wouldn't you put me on my butt?
	Yeah, and it's an interesting analogy because one of the things that an example that kind of came to mind is back in the day when I first found UPB, that was quite a game changer for me because it gave me this framework for kind of being able to figure out right and wrong quite easily.
	And I remember talking to quite a few people about it, including like, you know, philosopher friends, people who are quite intelligent in the context of them having problems or them having challenges and kind of giving this stuff to them, not in a, oh, you know, I've got this philosophical principle, like how, you know, smart I am, but in a, with a genuine kind of intention to help.
	And what I'd find would happen is you'd have like, you know, say eight people in a room and I'd find myself like literally spending hours just kind of defending myself or most like answering questions and just being challenged.
	Like what, you know, like how in Hollywood films, when they do martial arts, they would have like one guy attacks at a time and then the hero kind of like takes on one and then the next one, they never all attack at the same time.
	It's just this one after the other.
	And I'd find there'd be times which literally like hours would pass and you haven't actually made any progress.
	You've just been kind of like having people challenge you.
	And I realized after a while that, you know, the curiosity isn't there, that a lot of the intentionally, even from people that should know better, like, you know, friends and stuff, they hear this different idea.
	And because it's not come from, you know, whatever teacher or whatever authority that they recognize, they just want to find reasons to, or find ways to cut it down, you know, kind of the sophist techniques.
	I just find that really irritating.
	Like you're trying to help and trying to add value.
	And then you're just kind of like constantly fighting.
	And then what happens is the actual discussion gets lost and the people that you may have been able to help or have had a reasonable discussion with, it just gets buried in all this kind of like, you know, how would you say it, sort of debate sparring kind of thing that's going on.
	And the whole message gets lost at that point.
	And when I reread some or read some of those messages on your see that, it's just people not wanting to actually debate.
	They just kind of want to score points.
	Yeah.
	And that's fine.
	I mean, come in, try and score points.
	You know, like I see this one guy floating around Twitter who's like, oh, UPB is just a plagiarism of Kant's categorical imperative.
	And it's like, okay, just, I don't know if he's read Kant, but he certainly hasn't read UPB.
	And he certainly hasn't looked up my rebuttals to the fact.
	I mean, just because Kant and I both share universal moral rules doesn't mean that, you know, universal moral, everyone who talks about universal moral rules is plagiarizing Kant.
	Even if they talked before Kant, magically, they were able to do that.
	So, okay, so let me ask you this, Stephen.
	Let me ask you this.
	You don't have to answer.
	Don't have to answer.
	But did you happen to grow up with a family member, possibly a mother, possibly a father, more likely a mother?
	Did you happen to grow up with a family member that you strove to convince to be more rational and did not succeed?
	Yeah, we've kind of talked about this before on a private chat, but yes, ever all including my mother.
	Okay.
	To my credit, to my credit, I don't remember the private chat, but maybe unconsciously or something like that.
	You said a while ago, and I know you have many of them, but yeah, you've nailed it.
	I mean, many years of trying to convince family members to be rational and just like not succeeding.
	Yeah, so it is very important to, you know, I hate to sort of pick up your family, but pearls before swine.
	You have to have a limit on how much you are willing to engage with anti-rational people because they just end up making you dance by refusing to listen to reason.
	So, well, I appreciate that.
	And welcome back.
	I hope that you'll stick around.
	At least I promise that my account on Twitter or X will remain exciting and positive.
	And I really do appreciate your conversation.
	And of course, if anybody wants to get into a private call-in, they can do that at freedomain.com slash call.
	All right.
	Darwin to Jesus or Darwin to Jesus, I guess it could be.
	What's on your mind, my friend?
	Hey, Stefan, how's it going?
	Thanks for allowing me to come up here and speak.
	How long do you have?
	I probably could do another half hour, but I also have a bunch of other people who want to chat, so go for it.
	I will get right down to it then.
	You definitely have had a big effect on me, but setting that aside and my journey, I'm curious, what is your exact position on atheism?
	Because I don't remember you really talking about that very much.
	Could you go through that?
	Okay.
	Again, sorry to be annoying guy, but atheism means a lot of different things to different people.
	So definition of atheism, do you mean a disbelief in God?
	Is that because some people think it means against God or hostile to religion?
	is the atheism that you're talking about simply referring to a lack of a belief in God?
	Is that right?
	That's kind of what I'm asking you about, because there are different definitions.
	And it's my understanding that you call yourself an atheist.
	So I'm wondering if I'm correct about that, and you do, what you mean by that.
	Okay, that's certainly fair.
	So my stance on atheism has changed in some ways and not in others.
	So I was originally an atheist who was hostile to and contemptuous of religion as a whole.
	I have softened my stance over the years for a variety of reasons, mostly which have to do with experiencing some very positive things in the Christian community and seeing the atheist community, quote, evolve into a semi-socialist, communist, tyranny, bootlicking, authoritarian fest over the years.
	So with regards to the existence of God, listen, bro, I'm going to church because I'm curious and I also love to see good, good public speakers and I'm open to the experience.
	I'm going to church.
	I am, of course, I did a whole series on the Bible, which is available at fdrpodcast.com.
	And I'm more than willing to be convinced by the divine.
	My heart is open and I have not, because I'm an empiricist, right?
	But I have not received anything as yet.
	So foundationally, reason and evidence is my guiding principle.
	And nothing has changed with regards to the rationality of believing in a God, which cannot be proven, and the empirical evidence for a God, which cannot be established.
	So I would say that I am an atheist in not believing in God, but I am not anti-religious or at least anti-Christian in the way that I was in the past, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	Where I'm sitting, it sounds like you're more of an agnostic at this point.
	What I mean by that is typically, if you ask a normal agnostic, do you believe in God or do you believe that there is no God?
	They're going to say that they don't hold a belief either way, that they're basically right on the fence.
	And that kind of sounds more like what you're saying.
	And it is true that a lot of atheists, when they describe themselves, especially these days, they kind of describe the agnostic position.
	Because there used to be back in the day when somebody said, I'm an atheist, that they meant there is no God.
	But these days, it kind of means, well, I don't believe that there is a God.
	I don't believe that there isn't.
	I just lack a belief.
	And that kind of sounds like where you're at now.
	Is that right?
	No, that's not correct.
	So agnosticism technically is I cannot prove there is a God.
	I cannot disprove that there is a God.
	I leave the question in limbo, so to speak.
	I accept that logically and empirically there is no God.
	However, in the practical effects of faith, I see more benevolent behavior among Christians than among atheists.
	And atheists in many ways are much more dangerous, well, really almost infinitely more dangerous than Christians, because Christians do not use force in general to impose their beliefs upon others.
	But atheists have not given up their belief in incorporeal, irrational entities.
	They think, oh, well, I don't believe in God because God doesn't exist.
	It's like, bro, the state, government, does not exist.
	And in my conversations with atheists, when I tell them the basic fact that the government is a concept in people's minds, but does not exist, I mean, they lose their shite, man.
	When I talk to Christians about my skepticism about the existence of God, we have reasonable and rational discussions.
	You talk to atheists and say, look, you're part of a much more dangerous religion, a cult, really, because you believe that something exists called the state.
	And they say, well, there are buildings that the government's in.
	It's like, yeah, but there are churches, but you don't accept the fact that there are churches.
	That doesn't mean that God exists.
	So I have found atheists to be infinitely more superstitious than Christians.
	And I say infinitely more superstitious than Christians.
	Christians, at least, have accepted and have warred with the Aristotelian tenets of logic and the Baconian principles of empiricism.
	I mean, certainly for thousands of years and half a millennia with regards to Bacon.
	And they've wrestled with science, they've wrestled with reason, they've wrestled with empiricism, they've wrestled with evil being allowed to flourish in a world supposedly run by God.
	So there is a noble tradition in Christianity of wrestling with these issues and acknowledging these issues.
	You can't even get an atheist to admit that the government doesn't exist, that it's a concept in people's minds, that there's buildings and there's paper and there's books and there's uniforms and there's weaponry and so on.
	But that does not mean that the concept exists.
	And just trying to get like atheists, well, there's no gods.
	But you talk about the government.
	And the government exists as a belief in people's minds.
	The state is a state of mind, and it does not prove the existence of a thing because people believe in it.
	And they will accept all of those arguments with regards to religion, but they will not accept those arguments with regards to their fetish, the state.
	And of course, the state is a mechanism by which beliefs get translated into enforcement, which is not the case with Christianity.
	Could be the cases with other religions, not really the case with Christianity.
	And this is one of the reasons I did a poll on X recently.
	Would you rather have a leftist atheist move in next door or a Christian?
	And overwhelmingly, people chose the Christian, as would I. Because the Christians are much more rational.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	No, I didn't mean to cut you off.
	I completely agree with what you're saying.
	And I was an atheist when I used to listen to you back in the day before you went on leave or whatever.
	I wasn't sure exactly what happened.
	I haven't went and seen why you were away.
	I'm sure you've told everybody.
	I just haven't seen it.
	But I used to listen to you all the time when I was an atheist.
	And I came to the same conclusion that Christians actually seem to be the good guys when it comes to a huge array of issues.
	I mean, I basically decided That if you look at what Western civilization is built upon, very much seems apparent to me that it's built on Christian values and that atheism is trying to erode those values.
	And what we're seeing is we're seeing chaos and we're seeing a tremendous amount of confusion.
	And it made me start siding with Christians before I became one against atheists.
	And I feel like that's pretty much where you are now is in that same sort of weird place where you're like, I'm an atheist.
	But I really like what the Christians are saying.
	They seem to be the ones that might have a chance at keeping our civilization together and intact and getting us through this.
	Whereas atheism is more like a fire.
	It just kind of seems to destroy everything, but it can't really build anything.
	And I know that you are trying to build certain things with UPB and stuff like that.
	So we might disagree slightly.
	but I think that you would still agree that atheism in general is more like fire.
	I think that's I'm not trying to correct it for you, but I don't find it to be in a weird place.
	Philosophy can make the world look weird, but it never leads me to a weird place because it's truth, reason, and evidence.
	But I will say that my break with atheists as a whole happened around the publication and the reception of UPB, like a rational system of secular ethics.
	That is the holy grail of philosophy.
	And certainly it's the holy grail of atheists.
	To have a system of morality that requires neither gods nor governments for enforcement and can be rationally proven from first principles is the holy grail of philosophy and certainly the holy grail of atheism.
	And because atheists are constantly, well, the morals come from God, right?
	So the Christians, morals comes from God.
	And the atheists are like, well, morals don't come from God.
	And so I was able to prove from first principles, and it is a solid proof.
	It holds.
	I was able to prove from first principles a rational system of secular morality.
	And that's the answer.
	And the atheists, of course, logically, logically, the atheists should have been like, hallelujah.
	They should have been like, yay, fantastic.
	We finally have the answer as to the source of morality without relying on sort of pathetic dog-eat-dog Darwinism.
	And they ignored it or were skeptical or scornful of it.
	And that's because UPB proves morality at the expense of their fetish called the morality of statism, their worship of the state.
	So they choose power over virtue.
	And Christianity, of course, in general, aims to choose virtue over power and successfully so a lot of the times.
	And I think atheism is basically just, modern atheism is just a psyop to remove morality from the West so that it can be overrun by brutal power seekers.
	And atheists are in complicity with, are complicit with that, because atheists should have been, even if they disagreed with the UPB, it certainly is at its very worst on sort of first reading.
	It's a good effort.
	Maybe it could be refined or improved or whatever it is, but it definitely the proof holds.
	And they should have been all over it.
	But instead, they ignore it and run the other way, which means that they are tools of power, not purveyors of reason.
	So I hope that helps.
	Yeah, yeah, I agree.
	I did want to ask about something else, but I know that there are a lot of other speakers, and you've let me speak with you for at least 10 minutes now.
	So I'm happy to step aside if you want to move to somebody else.
	But I did want to shift gears.
	If you do want to give one more time, it's up to you.
	Hold your thought because it's not the last time I'll do one of these, and I do want to get to other people as best I can.
	So I really do appreciate you dropping by.
	And I really do appreciate the questions, of course.
	Thank you.
	Thank you so much.
	All right.
	Lahina.
	Lahina, you are on the speaker.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So this is just a quick question.
	What do you consider is evil?
	Because you were talking about it earlier.
	Okay.
	That's a great question.
	So evil is the initiation of force or fraud.
	And so evil is when you use force or violence against, obviously, others.
	And defrauding is a form of violence because it strips people of their property through language rather than direct force, but it is a form of theft.
	So it is the initiation of the use of force or fraud and violations of property rights.
	I mean, they're two sides of the same coin, right?
	So we own ourselves, we own the effects of our actions.
	And so violence against our person, like against our body, is a violation of our self-ownership.
	And a theft is a violation of the property that we have produced through our labor.
	So, yeah, evil is the initiation of force of fraud and violations of property rights, if that makes sense.
	Cole, Cole, what's on your mind, my friend?
	Yes.
	I just wanted to pop up real quick and say thank you for all the years of amazing content.
	Your analytics and your long talks have always been so fucking inspirational.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	Thank you, Cole.
	That's lovely to hear.
	And it warms my heart, of course.
	And of course, I'm very privileged with the technology to get the kind of feedback that philosophers usually don't get until long after they're dead, which, of course, doesn't do them much good, but may do their legacy some good.
	So I appreciate that.
	Thank you so much.
	Ready, Bible.
	If you want to unmute, you are welcome to throw your words into my eardrums.
	If you are speaking, I cannot hear you.
	Hi, Steven.
	Can you hear me now?
	Yes, if you could speak up a little bit, you're kind of quiet.
	Okay.
	My question is, how would you look at the world if it was true that God actually did exist?
	And I just want to quickly just clarify, specifically the Christian God, the God that forgives us and has mercy through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ.
	Well, and that's how I was raised as a Christian, an Anglican, I suppose, specifically.
	And I'm sorry, I didn't want to cut you off if you had more to add because I'd love to answer the question, but I don't want to leap in if you have more that you wanted to add.
	No, that's my question really about, yeah, how would you look at the world if it was actually, assuming that it is actually true, that God does exist, how would that change the way you look at the world?
	Well, I'm sorry to nag, it's more than God existing, because you could be a deist and believe that.
	You mean Christianity, Jesus, sacrifice, redemption, and so on, right?
	Yeah, maybe simply put, how would you look at the world if the Bible was true?
	You know, that the Christian God was existing?
	That's a great question.
	And the answer is that it would be glorious.
	It would be absolutely glorious for a number of reasons.
	One, I wouldn't feel the urgency and the rush of mortality because I would live forever.
	Number two, I would get to spend eternity with my wonderful wife, with my lovely daughter in time, with friends, and all kinds of wonderful things.
	I would get to meet the virtuous men and women of the past and have great conversations.
	I would be in the penumbra or aura or Saturn's girdle of God's immeasurable grace and beauty and strength and virtue and power.
	It would be glorious, wonderful.
	There would be a purpose and order to the universe rather than the sort of blind chaos and detricus and rabble of atoms and void chasing each other in a giant circle.
	And that would give a pleasing congruence between my life, which I try to organize according to moral principles, and the universe, which is organized according to not just physical principles, but moral principles, that morality would infuse the universe in the way that I try to have morality inform my daily life and decisions.
	So there would be a congruence between what I do and how the universe is, which would be wonderful and beautiful beyond words.
	There would be less of a, I mean, I feel, and this is sort of personal, so I hope this makes some kind of sense.
	But, you know, since very early on in my life, I've constantly been trying to test what I'm capable of and what I can do.
	And I've been very skeptical about it because the odds that, you know, me just some kid who grew up in a crappy single mom household in the middle of nowhere, poverty stricken and all of that, the idea that I would be like an important philosopher who solves the problem of secular ethics and things, enormously skeptical.
	The odds are ridiculously tiny.
	Philosophers have been working on the problem for thousands of years.
	I've solved the problem.
	It's infinitely more rare than winning the lottery.
	You know, like hundreds of people win the lottery around the world like every week, more maybe.
	I mean, some significant amount, right?
	So to be one in 5,000 years or 3,000 years is ridiculous, right?
	And I'm very sort of skeptical of it.
	But at the same time, I am an empiricist and I have solved the problem and done other great things in the realm of philosophy.
	And so as an empiricist, I have to just sort of accept that that is the case.
	And if it is the case, and I accept that it is the case empirically, if it is the case that I have like really unique and rare gifts when it comes to formulating and explaining philosophy to the world, oh my God, it's a burden.
	It's a very, very serious and difficult burden.
	And I feel that weight, you know, I had some time open up today and I'm like, oh, I can go and talk philosophy with people and answer questions and, you know, get a little bit more of my thoughts carved into the fabric of the universe through the atoms of the internet and storage devices.
	And I'm like, I have to.
	If I can move philosophy forward a little bit over the next hour, an hour and a half when I have some free time, I got to do it.
	And so I feel this burden.
	And I mean, this is a ridiculous example, of course, but the way that I sort of feel it is if you had the capacity to heal very sick people by touching your fingertips of their forehead, wouldn't you spend a lot of your time doing that and feel kind of bad if you weren't doing that?
	And so if I have a capacity, which some of which I've earned and some of which is obviously just sort of built in or baked into the neurons, to formulate and explain philosophy in a way that is very impactful and positive, it's a burden, man.
	And in a way, I love it.
	I love doing philosophy, but it definitely, there's a certain lack of free will in it because I feel the urgency.
	I also feel the rarity of what it is that I'm able to do.
	I do philosophy because the philosophy that I do is not present in the philosophy I've read.
	And so I'm filling a void or a vacuum, especially in terms of bringing philosophy to the family, to people's personal life, and to childraising in particular.
	So if there was a God, then the moral arc or path of the universe would be a little bit less, as it feels like, in my trembling, nervous hands from time to time.
	And there would be a much larger story that I would simply be a small part of rather than feeling the need to author the progress of philosophy in the modern world as much as I can.
	So just sort of off the top of my head, I think it would be absolutely wonderful if it were true.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	The thing that really surprised me about the Bible is there's a philosophical argument.
	And so, sorry, I asked you to speak up, but now you're pu-pu-puing.
	You're putting a lot of plosifs.
	So if you could just move the mic to one side and I'll try and fix your volume in post-production, but it's really tough with the puh-pup-puz coming out.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	Sorry about that.
	An argument that the Bible makes, written in Romans chapter 1, verse 20, is basically that it's obvious that God exists because of the world that he made.
	I'm interested in your response to that argument that's in the Bible.
	It's obvious that God exists because of the world that he made.
	Well, I'm not sure how that's at all obvious.
	I mean, we could say, oh, yes, but he made the world habitable for human beings, but that's, of course, begging the question, the fact that we live on Earth in that Goldilocks zone where it's not too hot and not too cold.
	Well, there's seven other planets in the solar system that don't have life because they're not in the Goldilocks zone, or if there's something on Mars, it's probably just bacteria.
	So I don't see that so much as far as the immense evils in the world.
	So evil is largely the product of child abuse.
	And so if that is the case, and that largely is the case, then evil is forged in a furnace not chosen by the mind because we don't choose who we're born to.
	So some kid who is sexually assaulted and abused and beaten and burned and so on, like the odds of them growing up to be a sort of happy, moral, calm-minded individual are virtually zero.
	And so if I were to design a system as an all-powerful, all-moral being, I think that I would not design a system where people ended up being malevolent largely because of the families they happen to be born into.
	That's not fair, foundationally.
	I would give people more of an option to overcome their past.
	And of course, I mean, I'm working to try and raise the awareness of that, as of course, are countless other people in the world, many of doing it better than I am.
	But I would not look at the world and say, yeah, well, a lot of people, the genetics plus violence produces criminals a lot of times.
	And people didn't choose their families.
	They certainly don't choose their genetics.
	And we certainly do have free will.
	But it's really tough for a lot of people.
	I mean, my daughter is very lucky in how she was raised compared to how I was raised.
	And that's given her a kind of strength that it took me a long time to achieve.
	So physically, there's a lot of wasted space.
	And as far as the moral development of mankind, I think so many people have such brutality in their childhoods that it's hard to say they have much of a chance, if that makes sense.
	Thank you for that.
	I have one more question of you.
	If you could hold off, I promise I'll be doing more of these, but I doubt I'll get to everyone.
	But I really do appreciate your questions.
	Thank you so much.
	All right.
	Let us get to some people I've talked to before.
	So, Ainaris, if you want to unmute, I'm happy to hear your thoughts, my friend.
	If you're speaking, I cannot hear.
	No?
	Okay.
	All right.
	Sorry that we didn't get a chance to chat, but again, I will be doing more of these.
	Wait.
	Yeah.
	No, you're on a speaker, but it is not to be.
	All right.
	I think he's gone.
	Saturnalia.
	That is a very good.
	That is a very good title.
	Or user name, if you want to unmute, what's on your mind?
	Why have I lost everyone's audio?
	Hello?
	Yes, there you go.
	Yeah.
	Hi, I'm Saban.
	I'm good.
	Clarity?
	Good.
	Okay, I just wanted you to see if you could dismantle a theory I came up with three days ago.
	Go.
	All right.
	I'm going to read it word for word.
	I bought often by...
	Hang on.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	How long is it?
	It's a standard paragraph.
	Okay, perfect.
	Sorry.
	I just wanted to make sure we weren't into some five-page semi-thesis, but yeah, go for it.
	No, no, no, of course not.
	I will say, though, it may be a bit controversial.
	I think we can handle it.
	Okay.
	I've often been asked by non-white people that have been visiting the country why my people, you know, white people are, you know, they're so crazy.
	They're insane.
	That's what I've been told.
	And I developed this theory that when our psychological operations for warfare were first being pioneered post-World War II and throughout the Cold War, the country was still about 90% white, you know, at least until like the Hard Seller Act, that if you were designing and setting the standards of this psychological warfare, you'd want to capture as much of the population as possible with a standardized metric to rely on.
	So if I ask myself how I'd accomplish this, I probably target like the first standard deviation of Bell Curve on both sides, you know, in the empirical region.
	That would be people with a mean IQ of 100.
	That would capture about 68% of the population.
	Sorry, when you're talking about standard deviations, you're talking 85 to 100 on the low end and 100 to 115 on the high end.
	Is that what you mean?
	Okay, go ahead.
	The 68%, you know, where most of the population lies.
	So if this captures 68% of the population, that would be perfect.
	And I think that is at least in part the answer to why so many of us dance and smile while we vote for essentially our own extinction.
	That's why we're insane, and that's why it gets worse decade after decade.
	And is that what the visitors, is that what they're referring to by insanity?
	I'm sorry, wife?
	Okay, never mind.
	Sorry.
	Finish your thought.
	Oh, I'm finished.
	I'm just wondering what your thoughts are.
	Well, I think in general, the world, after the First World War and the Second World War, the big question in the world was, why did these things happen?
	Why were 10 million people or more killed in the First World War and 40 million or more in the Second World War?
	Why did this happen?
	And I think some of the answer was, well, most of the countries were white and they were nationalistic.
	So I think then they say, well, the causes of the First, and of course, the First World War, not so much, but the Second World War, of course, dragged a lot of other countries in as well because of the British Empire, or at least the vestiges of the British Empire.
	So it's not like the Indians were thrilled, obviously, to be part of this massive European conflict.
	So there was this sort of big question, which was, gee, how did we end up with these two absolutely horrifying wars?
	And I think the answer that a lot of people came up with was, well, it's white nationalism, that white nationalism leads to world wars.
	And I think that's why there's a lot of opposition to that as a whole.
	I obviously don't particularly agree with that analysis, but I think that in general is where a lot of people are coming from, if that makes sense.
	So if you oppose war and war is caused by white nationalism, then you should oppose white nationalism as a cause of war.
	I think that's the general idea that people have.
	Again, I have issues with that in general, but we don't sort of have to talk about that here.
	And so I think that would be my answer to that.
	So I appreciate the comments, though.
	And I think we can do, what have we got here?
	Michael, we can do you just at the end here.
	Thanks everyone for dropping by, of course, today.
	If you find the show helpful, enjoyable, rich, and enlightening.
	Freedomain.com slash donate, freedomain.com slash donate.
	And don't forget to sign up to subscriptions at FDRURL.com slash locals.
	All right, Mickey Mac.
	Michael, what's in your mind?
	Oh, hey, Stefan.
	I wanted to ask a question about the virtue of telling the truth.
	I know you've spoken before about truth being preferable, or sorry, not preferable, but aesthetically preferable, but not universally preferable.
	And you've given the example, great example of your, or a killer comes to your door and they ask you, where is your wife?
	And you're not going to tell them the truth.
	Therefore, it's not a universal truth that you should tell the truth.
	But I'm sorry, sorry to interrupt.
	Just sorry to interrupt, but that's not particularly my example.
	It's one that I've used, but I think it comes out of Kant, where he'd say, well, you have to tell the truth about where your wife is and let them go kill your wife.
	That's his argument.
	Obviously, that's not mine, but I just wanted to correct people.
	So not correct you.
	There's no reason why you would know that, but I think it's a Kantian example.
	But please go ahead.
	Thank you, Bert, for clarifying.
	So I was wondering if you can actually make the state or the claim that truth is universal, but in the same sense that the initiation, like you would be authorized to initiate force in self-defense, not initiate, sorry, you would be authorized to use force in self-defense.
	And in that same way, you would be authorized to lie in self-defense or not tell the truth, if that makes sense.
	That was just kind of a thought that I had.
	And I'm wondering if that could withstand your reason or what you think about that.
	Thanks.
	No, I think that's right.
	I mean, I think that the truth is a relationship.
	And the truth is earned in the same way that reciprocity in business is earned.
	So if I'm offering iPads for sale and you send me, I say, oh, 500 bucks for an iPad, you send me 500 bucks.
	I now owe you an iPad or I owe you the 500 bucks back.
	Right.
	So because you have dealt with me in an honorable fashion and sent the value, I now must deal with you in an honorable fashion and send you an iPad.
	That doesn't mean, of course, that I have to send an iPad to everybody and their dog who just wants an iPad.
	But because I've offered it for sale at 500 bucks, you've given me the 500 bucks.
	I now owe you the iPad.
	So in the same way, you owe people the truth if they're honest with you, right?
	So if you meet some guy and he says, oh, I'm a pilot and I live in Rochester, New York, and I own a yacht, right?
	Okay, well, I guess you have to take him at face value for whatever reason, assuming he's reasonably dressed and so on.
	And so, you know, you tell him whatever what you do and so on.
	Now, let's say that it turns out that he's not a pilot.
	He's unemployed.
	He doesn't live in Rochester or whatever.
	And he doesn't have a yacht.
	So he just lied.
	Now, then he comes up to you and talks to you some more.
	Do you feel the urge to say, well, I got to be honest with this guy?
	Well, no, because he's a liar.
	So probably what you'd want to do is detach as gently and quickly as possible because this man's a pathological liar and probably has a massive whackload of significant and severe emotional instabilities and all that kind of stuff.
	So you don't owe that person the truth.
	And so if you say, oh, I'm so sorry, I have an appointment.
	I completely forgot.
	My apologies, right?
	And you sort of gracefully make your exit, and let's say you don't have an appointment.
	Well, I wouldn't feel any particular compunction about making up an appointment that I had to be at in order to escape from a pathological liar who was cornering me and just going to stuff my ears with more falsehoods.
	Whereas, you know, if your friend has told you the truth and been honorable and honest with you and so on, then you shouldn't just go around lying to him because he's earned that sort of reciprocal relationship.
	And so if you combine that with the other principle that I have, which is not my principle, but the most optimized methodology of interacting with people in a non-sort of coercive situation, which is treat people the best you can the first time you meet them.
	And after that, treat them as they treat you, which means, you know, tell the truth the first time you meet people and then don't have higher standards than they have after that.
	So I put those two things together.
	And I think you can say that, you know, treat people the best you can the first time you meet them, which means don't pull a knife on them the first time you meet them.
	But if they pull a knife on you, right, then you no longer are bound by not pulling a knife or whatever, or acting in self-defense.
	So one of the great problems of morality is it has you lashed to these absolute standards that you must enact regardless of the behavior of the other, that you just have to, like a train on a train track, you just have to follow these rules regardless of reciprocity.
	And honestly, it's some very corrupt people who've put forward that idea that you just have to be really nice and positive and friendly and generous and kind and happy and blah, blah, blah, forgive regardless of the behavior of the others.
	And of course, if you followed my Twitter over the last week, week and a half since I came back, it's been a lot of battles trying to get people to have standards not based on abstract absolutes, but on an actual relationship.
	So forgive people who earn your forgiveness, but don't hand it out like a whore to anyone who asks for it.
	You know, have reciprocal monetary and business relationships with people who provide equal value.
	Don't just throw iPads out in the street to everyone because then you're just going to go out of business and it's not a healthy situation.
	So the idea that morality is not just a set of abstract rules that program you like a programmer, but you have to judge them based upon relationships is tough for a lot of people who just want the instant answer and the easy answer.
	We'll just follow this rule.
	Well, you just have to forgive people.
	That's the rule.
	And it's like, no, that's not the rule.
	That is not the rule because it's not reciprocal.
	And the other thing, too, is how many people forgave me for telling them that they should have standards for forgiveness.
	Otherwise, they're just being exploited.
	Because obviously evil people don't want to apologize and make restitution, right?
	I mean, the guy who steals your bike doesn't want to give your bike back.
	So he just Wants your forgiveness so that you won't go and try and get your bike back.
	He just wants to live in peace, knowing that he's done his evil and stolen your bike.
	And then you don't require him to give the bike back and, you know, give you 50 bucks for your trouble.
	He wants to keep your bike and not feel threatened by any possibility of blowback from you or you coming and getting your friends and coming over and getting the bike back and pushing him over or whatever.
	So he wants peace of mind and your bike.
	And how does he get that?
	By commanding that you forgive him no matter what.
	That you just, you just have to forgive him no matter what.
	It's evil people who want this.
	It's evil people who drive this.
	It's not accidental.
	It's a strategy so they get to keep your stuff and not be uneasy.
	It's a way of making sure that theft, whether it's physical or spiritual, is as profitable as possible.
	And the fact that people don't see this means that they're still blinded by this sort of spell-like, car-like corruptions of those around them.
	So I think you're right that it is relational-based and not sort of an absolute based.
	And you don't, you owe peace to people who are peaceful with you.
	But if they're violent towards you, then you damn well can use and probably should use violence to protect yourself.
	So listen, I really, really appreciate that.
	And guys, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for the great questions.
	And I'm sorry to the couple of people that I didn't get to, but I will be back on air.
	Certainly tomorrow morning, 11 a.m., Sunday, 11 a.m., I'm doing a live stream and you can certainly type your questions in there.
	And I'm sure I'll be doing another spaces again soon.
	Thank you to Elon Musk for this amazing platform.
	Thank you to you guys for your great questions.
	Lots of love from up here.
	Don't forget to drop by freedomain.com, get your free books and all your kinds of goodies and bonuses.
	And have yourself a glorious, wonderful, beautiful day.
	Thank you, everyone, so much.
	Take care.

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