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July 14, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:16:07
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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
Pinch Punch, first day of the monthy month.
It is the 1st of May 2025.
And may I say how delightful it is to chat philosophy with you lovely, lovely people?
And I'm here not merely to speak alone, but also to listen.
In fact, the listening is probably even more important.
So if you have, of course, questions, issues, challenges, problems, you know the drill.
I am thrilled to hear.
Thrilled to help.
And you just have to raise your hand, and I can then unmute you, and you can tell me what is on your sweet, sweet mind, and we can see what we can do with regards to philosophy as a whole and how it can be wrangled and tamed to serve the very fibers of your existence.
Go ahead.
Yes, go ahead.
So just wanted to ask a question that I guess, so I just got back down off the mountains.
I actually read through the present, and that was obviously an incredible read.
I'm not necessarily what I was relating.
My question, sorry for, I'm just a little nervous.
So why is it that, and this is just a riddle that I've really been trying to wrestle with.
Why is it that I can wake up, immediately rush to get everything ready to go walk alone up a mountain and spend a couple days up there and be extremely motivated to do all that?
But, you know, different other life things, I just struggle to summon the motivation.
Hmm.
Interesting.
I'm happy to, of course, happy to answer your question if you could tell me a little bit more about, did you read or listen to the audiobook of my novel, The Present?
I read it on, I had a Kindle I brought with me.
Okay, okay.
So yeah, tell me a little bit about what you thought, what your experience was.
I do, of course, like all artists on that wavelength, it's great to get a little feedback.
Oh, man, I think, well, one thing I did want to, when they were talking about the families, right?
You know, the Christian family gathering and just how warm and loving and peaceful.
I mean, honestly, I kind of had a tear come to my eye right there, just thinking like, wow, you know, how beautiful that would be to actually experience.
I thought that it was very insightful as far as Rachel goes, where she's, I think that you present her as a character in a very neutral way, I guess, if that makes sense.
You just lay out the facts, I mean, like you do with a lot of things.
And yeah, it was a very, very interesting book.
Definitely a reminder of sort of the instability of things at the moment, which I've kind of haven't put too much thought into recently, kind of been focused more on normal life stuff.
But yeah, I mean, it was a great read.
Good.
I really enjoyed it.
Yeah.
So for those of you who haven't read it or listened to it, it's freedomain.com slash books.
It's free.
And I do sort of pour heart and soul into the novels.
And that's actually sort of where I started.
I started writing short stories at the age of six.
I started writing my first novel at the age of 11.
So it sort of predates the podcast philosophy world by many decades.
It was sort of my original love and passion.
So if y'all could go and have a read or a listen, I would very much appreciate it.
And feedback is always welcome.
All right.
Thank you for that.
So give me a comparison of the joys of walking up a mountain versus the things you just plain don't want to do.
Oh, man, like improving my job slash income situation, working on tailoring a better resume.
I mean, geez, cleaning my apartment, you know, probably not a not a super disaster, but basically a disaster.
Geez, yeah, I just like, you know, even picking up, you know, more classes, like working on getting more IT certifications, things like that will improve my market value, you know, in the, you know, in employment.
And I just like, it's not that I can, it's not that I'm incapable.
It's not that I ever, never have, but I'm just perplexed by it.
Yeah, that I'm just so much happier to go rush, you know, throw together a kit and go climb up in the mountains in the quiet, you know, reading one of your books.
And, you know, the physical exertion and risk, you know, given the, you know, the weather risk of high alpine environments.
I'm willing to just do all that, but, you know, gee, I mean, honestly, I'm really, it's a riddle within myself that like, well, why can't I just summon it?
Like, why can't I unplug that motivation to do that and plug it into other things?
Like, it's easy, right?
No, listen.
I mean, it's not easy.
We all, we all divide life into things that we want to do and things that we don't want to do.
And there's a lot of stuff, of course, especially in the modern world, you know, that we just, we don't want to do.
And I understand that.
Okay.
So let me ask you, what is your relationship to things you don't want to do?
Let's take one, say, like cleaning up your apartment, right?
Tidying up, decluttering whatever your apartment.
So what's your relationship to that?
As far as how I typically go about it.
No, that would be how you do it.
The relationship being like when you think of it, what are the pluses of doing it?
What is your relationship to Why it's even on the list of something to do at all?
Just having things more organized, not feeling embarrassed at the idea of inviting company over.
You know, just I mean, feeling more comfortable in my living space.
Okay, so is it for you overall, is it a net positive to do it?
Of course, yeah.
Okay.
So it's a net positive to do it.
It's a net positive to go hiking.
So there must be a difference between the two in some fashion, right?
So all we need to do is figure out what that difference is.
Right?
If there were two mountains that were kind of equal and, you know, you and I were going hiking and I said, oh, I want to go on mountain B rather than mountain A, I mean, you'd be pretty much okay with that because it's kind of the same deal or gig both ways, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So there must be a difference between doing the hiking and cleaning your apartment.
I don't know what that difference is, but just because you have a different relationship between the two empirically, right?
There must be a difference, if that makes sense.
Absolutely it does.
Okay, so what is the difference?
Well, I mean, it's tedious.
Walking can be tedious.
A good point.
Or rather, to put it more accurately, the walking in and of itself can be tedious.
I mean, if you were just walking in a small circle in your living room, that'd be kind of tedious, right?
So it's not just the walking.
And I'm sorry to be annoyingly, we just got to drill down and get to the differences here.
I mean, is it part of the fact that maybe I'm just when I have to go through cleaning my apartment, for instance, I have to kind of confront my own irresponsible behavior and not maintaining it?
Well, but if, I mean, the best way to confront your irresponsible behavior, if that's the case, is to clean the place.
So I don't think it's that.
I don't see the immediate benefit, I suppose.
But one you love and one you resent, right?
So there must be an emotional opposition between the two, if that makes sense.
The End I mean, tidying can be tedious, but, you know, as you say, you could just, you could throw on a you could throw on a podcast, you could throw on an audiobook, you could listen to music.
I mean, there's tons of things that you could do that make it less tedious, right?
Yeah.
So it's not the tediousness of it.
It is the what.
What is that?
That is the opposite for you.
Because one you want to do and one you resent doing and avoid, right?
Yeah.
So you can't have the same value for both.
Otherwise, it's like hiking mountain A versus hiking mountain B. You wouldn't particularly care, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Now, I mean, just to hit the gas on the evaluation, my guess would be that you grew up with maybe teachers or a parent or parents who insisted that you tidy up and kind of made you do it or wanted you to do it in a way that was negative for you.
Yeah, that's accurate.
Okay, so what was your, usually it's the mom, could be the dad, usually the mom.
What was your mother's relationship to you cleaning and tidying up when you were a kid?
Well, immediately right off the bat.
Now, since, you know, becoming an adult and all that and moving out of the house, my mom apparently has become a neat freak.
But I do remember early on where she wasn't.
And my dad, I mean, he's a total slob.
And so, yeah, I mean, I did screen dad for it.
Sure.
You know, I'll go, you know, clean the room, you know, kind of thing.
But I also suppose that there was a bit of hypocrisy that, you know, at the time, obviously I was a kid, I didn't recognize it as much as such.
But yeah, absolutely.
It got screamed at.
Yeah, I got sent to live off with weirdos, and they were very, oh, what's a good word for it?
Regimented, maybe, but they were pretty harsh as far as what they kind of expected out of me.
And so I don't know.
Maybe if it's just my way of feeling that I have control over my environment by keeping it a mess, it's protective in a way.
You know, maybe my mom is less likely to, I don't know, want to come into my room, I suppose, if it was messy.
Hmm.
All right.
So why do you think your mother yelled at you to tidy up the place?
Because, I mean, in theory, at least, I mean, it's good practice to try.
No, no, no, don't, don't, don't give, don't give me theories.
Why do you think?
Because we could do that all day, right?
And we don't have any proof.
So why do you think your mother would yell at you to keep the place clean?
Because she didn't have a better way of, well, she didn't choose a better way of trying to go about instilling that Type of behavior.
Okay, that's a negative, though.
Why did she do something because she didn't know a better way?
That doesn't give an answer as to why she did what she did.
I mean, if she didn't know a better way, she could have done it any number of ways, but this is the way that she chose to do it.
So, why did she yell at you or be aggressive to get you to tidy?
And listen, it's a great conversation because you're far from the only man that this has ever happened to, and certainly far from the only child that this has ever happened to, right?
So, what do you think the answer is as to why she chose that particular approach?
Maybe because that's how she wanted to talk to my dad, but lacked the courage to do so.
Maybe that's shifting it from you to your dad.
So why would she be aggressive in this kind of way about tidying?
Because there's lots of ways to get kids to...
You could make it a contest.
You could make it any number of things could happen to get kids to tidy, right?
You can also leave it until they get old enough to value it themselves.
You keep making the case and let them have their messy rooms until they get old enough to deal with it themselves, right?
Yeah.
So, why did she do it this way?
I'm not sure.
Okay.
So give me an example of what she might say or the approach she would take when she got exasperated or intense about you being messy or your room being a mess or something.
Oh, God.
I mean, she would yell and call me a slob.
Geez, I remember one time she wanted the kitchen floor to be clean.
And it's not that I never helped clean or anything, right?
But she was so hysterical and screaming.
And I might have been, geez, like 11 at the time, maybe even a little bit younger than that.
But she was like going off screaming about how I never want to help out and she's just a bitch.
That's when she was, she was like, I'm just a bitch.
I'm just a bitch.
Like slapping, just, you know, dumping water all over the kitchen floor, just sloshing it around, not even effectively cleaning the kitchen.
And it was a total state of hysteria.
Well, not hysteria, abuse or bullying.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, I just get screamed at how I'm a sloth.
And I hadn't really remembered about that.
And such, I thought about a lot of these experiences I've had over the years.
And I just, I hadn't, I hadn't remembered that one for a while.
So I'm sorry if I just kind of, I don't know, you know, when you get old memories like that.
But yeah, I mean, that's basically, I mean, that's how it would go down.
You know, geez, I remember one time she yelled at me to clean the bathroom and I did it.
I didn't even mopped the floor and I had it done within 10 minutes.
And she kept trying to tell me to go clean the bathroom, even though I'd already done it and refused to believe me when I said that I had cleaned it until she decided to look.
And then, you know, she did eventually calm down and apologize.
But, yeah, geez.
Okay, so why now you said that your father was a slob and also that your mother, since she got older, did she also become a slob?
No, she became a total clean freak.
I mean, about all kinds of things.
I mean, it wasn't really what I was used to early on in childhood.
But, you know, I haven't talked to her in years at this point.
Like the last time I was at her new house or whatever, she is living with my father still, but I'm at their new house.
Yeah, I mean, she took, I mean, everything is like shiny and spotless.
You know, my dad, yeah, I mean, he, so they lived in separate rooms, right?
They had, they had separate bedrooms.
And I mean, even as a kid, like, oh, God, I know that, and I know that this is bad, but, you know, he'd throw beer cans in the corner.
I mean, my dad drank like every single day and he'd pile up beer cans.
And it was such a wonderful thing, I guess, you know, to have a six-year-old gather up these beer cans.
And I, you know, I'd guess I'd get like, you know, 30 bucks or whatever for going across the street to, you know, recycle them and get money.
But yeah, I mean, he just, yeah, I was a total mess at his room.
Okay.
Got it.
And did this change over the course of your teenage years at all?
My dad, no, my mom somewhat.
I think that is probably when it kind of moved from my mom really didn't, you know, it was like, you know, she just didn't do much.
I know that she was depressed and she had taken like pros act for a period.
And I had, you know, my grandmother was living with us too.
And that was a big focus of hers.
But yeah, yeah, I think, I think she might have started to, I don't know, feel that things were more organized.
So I guess we could appear more presentable.
You know, there's added guilt.
I don't know.
You know, all of a sudden, you know, being very strict about the house that, oh, you know, turning the living room into a parlor, it's all got to be perfect in there.
And that's where when we were much younger, you know, we used to have all of our toys and, you know, play and, you know, have a, we had a Sega channel and playing on the, you know, one of those big, you know, tube TVs.
Not a massive one, but you know, and so yeah, it went from that to now it's the parlor and everything has to be all nice and we're not allowed to go in there kind of thing.
Okay.
Yeah, but around my teenage years is when that started taking place.
Okay, so I would imagine that your mother felt as a whole powerless in her life.
Yeah.
So tell me, if that's the case, if that is the case.
How did that show up, do you think?
Well, you know, and I thought about this one a lot because, okay, so she had gotten divorced, separated.
I have an older half-brother.
He's 13 years older than me.
And this is, you know, I mean, a typical boomer thing, right?
You know, immediately, you know, all these, you know, broken homes.
And that was essentially how my brother had grown up.
And so that had happened.
She, she kind of struggled.
I mean, she actually, she was a, you know, did basically some programming while working as a secretary in the law office in the 80s, right?
And so she was productive.
She was intelligent.
And, but, you know, she, she had a tendency to not recognize that.
She had a tendency to kind of play stupid a lot of the time, which I'd always picked up on.
But, you know, she, yeah, I mean, so she was living as a single mother.
She eventually met my father at the law offices.
And my father is a, yeah, I mean, my, it definitely has some issues, you know, kind of going on there.
And yeah, I mean, I'd definitely say that she, that's basically when we had talked about it, you know, we kind of touched upon why some of the decisions were made regarding me and yeah, setting me off to live with, you know, these sort of weirdos and the things that had happened there.
I think we're drifting a bit from your mom here.
So let me put forward a general hypothesis and, you know, get comfy, get comfy, and we'll sort of see if this lands with regards to your mother or not.
But I'll put forward a general hypothesis.
Of course, you can let me know what you think.
So we're all born out of control.
We have no control.
You know, I mean, when we're babies, we can't even control our bowels, our bladders, and so on.
We can't even really control our limbs.
You can see kids when they first figure out that their arms and fingers are their own and they're all quite fascinated by this.
But we're born helpless with a great thirst to control, to control our body, to control our limbs, to control our environment, and so on, right?
So being born helpless with a almost bottomless desire to control ourselves and our environment, right?
That's why kids love to pick things up.
That's why kids love to learn how to roll, how to walk, how to run.
They're thrilled with all of that because all of that indicates control.
Now, there's a phase in infancy where the only way you can gain any kind of control is to control others.
This is sort of very early, early infancy.
And of course, we all know what this is, if you've ever been a parent or been around.
Babies, the babies cry.
They get angry.
They get frustrated.
They get unhappy.
They cry.
And through that process, what they do is they control others.
And that's how they end up getting what they want.
So your baby is hungry.
Your baby can't say anything, of course, right?
So what does your baby do?
Your baby cries.
And then you bring your baby some boob milk, some food, whatever it is, right?
Your baby is uncomfortable because it's gassy.
Then your baby cries and you put it on your shoulder.
You pat the baby's back, you burp the baby, and so on.
So there's a phase in our development where the only control we have is controlling others.
We have no self-control.
Now, of course, the purpose of all of this over time, the goal, the idea behind it, is to shift from controlling others to controlling the self.
So a kid is thirsty, and as soon as the kid can figure it out, and with the encouragement and tutelage of the parents, then the kid learns how to turn on the tap and get a glass of water or whatever, through the filter or whatever it is.
So then the purpose is if the child is thirsty, the child does not complain.
The child goes and gets his or her own glass of water.
Now, in terms of acquiring things, children don't have money in general.
So when they're little and they want something, all they can do is ask their parents for it.
Express a desire, ask their parents, you know, maybe why and maybe complain, maybe whatever, right?
But the kid wants something and the parents have to provide it because the kid doesn't have any money, right?
And then, of course, at some point, the kid gets an allowance, the kid can save his or her own money, or the kid gets a job.
And so the purpose of life is to go from getting other people to manage your emotions to learning how to manage your own emotions.
We all need control, and there's two choices in this life: you either control yourself or you control others.
And controlling others is a very early and immature.
It's not immature when kids are young, of course, right?
It would be like calling a baby short.
But we either control ourselves or we control others.
Now, if people feel helpless, then they can work on their own feelings of helplessness and figure out how they can have more control over their own feelings of helplessness.
So, of course, everybody's had the situation, you leave some kid unattended for five or ten minutes, you come back and there's a mess, right?
Or, you know, the kid is carrying a tray, they want to do it themselves, the tray falls and there's a big smash, right?
Now, you feel probably, certainly most parents would feel, you know, frustrated and helpless, maybe a little angry, right?
At the kid making a mess or dropping the tray full of whatever, right?
And then you have that choice.
And the choice is, do I let go of my feelings of frustration and anger?
Because that is just part of the learning process of being a kid is you're going to drop things and make a mess.
And it's actually kind of funny and it doesn't matter.
And you sort of think, you think, you know, when your kid is away at university, how much, you know, how much would you give to have them back being a little toddler dependent on you learning how to carry a tray?
Like you, you take a bigger or longer term perspective on these issues and you let go of the anger and the frustration.
So just tell me, I just want to check in with you and see if this makes some kind of sense so far.
Thank you.
All right.
I'll generally go with a yes if you're not at your mic, which is fine.
Okay.
So control yourself.
I was just trying to mute and unmute it because I didn't want you to get feed.
It's making sense.
Okay, good.
So your mother, it sounds like your mother is full of frustration and is not able to manage
her own feelings of frustration or helplessness or something like that.
And therefore, she made the very dark choice to control her children and maybe perhaps her husband too, rather than control her own feelings, right?
So how many siblings did you have or how many kids were in the house?
So my older brother, he's 13 years older than me.
So he was basically, I mean, by the time I started going to kindergarten, he was already in college.
And then I have a younger brother who's about three years younger than me, three and a half years younger.
Okay, so you have a mother who's got a slob of a husband and two, I'm sure, joyfully chaotic boys on her hands, right?
Yeah.
And so she is going to come home.
Maybe she's had a difficult day.
She comes home.
She looks at the place.
She looks at the house.
And she's really frustrated, right?
Because she comes home and there's a mess.
And, you know, a lot of women cannot relax in a mess.
Men, we don't particularly care.
You know, just brush things off the couch and have a nap or whatever, right?
But there are a lot of women who cannot relax when the place is a mess.
Now, evolutionarily speaking, we can understand that because, you know, when we evolved without, you know, these big houses for foundations and everything sealed and so on.
And so when we evolved, a mess could hide bacteria, it could hide some sort of illness, it could hide insects, it could hide mice.
So it's kind of tough for women to relax in a mess, because a mess is a state of potential danger, if that makes sense.
So women generally, they come home, they want to relax, the place is a mess, and they get upset.
And, you know, we can agree or disagree with it, but it's a fairly common, if not downright universal phenomenon.
So, I mean, it's the same way that a lot of women can't go out into public without doing their hair and their face, and men, we don't particularly care, particularly if we're married.
So I think that your mother, like all parents, has the choice.
And the choice is the carrot or the stick or self-control, right?
Carrot, stick, or self-control.
Self-control is, you know what, I chose to marry a guy who's a slob.
That was my choice, my issue.
So I'm just going to have to live with the fact that he's kind of a slob because I chose him, right?
So you just kind of have to deal with that, right?
And, you know, my wife is a very cleanliness-focused and tidiness-focused person.
And what that means is that if I'm having a chat with her, she's often, you know, wiping something down or folding something or ironing something, and she just keeps the place beautifully.
And I really do appreciate that.
It's a wonderful place to live.
But am I going to sit there and say, oh, you shouldn't be wiping down the counter, you should just be listening to me, right?
I mean, this is who I chose to marry, and there's wonderful benefits to it.
So I'm not going to have some big complaint situation going on.
So your mother comes home.
The place is a mess.
Now, she has carrot stick or self-control.
Self-control is to say, okay, the place is a mess.
I've got three males in the place.
Males do lots of wonderful things, but often detailed tidiness and cleanliness is not top of the list for them.
That's just the deal, right?
So I'm not going to get too upset.
I'm going to manage my own feelings of frustration.
I'm going to have self-control rather than control others, right?
Now, if you don't have self-control, then you end up having to control others.
And there's two ways to control others, the carrot or the stick, right?
And the carrot is trying to patiently explain to people all the positives of tidiness and encouraging them and enthusiastically making a fun game out of making things tidy so they don't get post-traumatic stress disorder from all of that.
So tell me if this, I just want to make sure again, this is making sense so far.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
So your mother did not choose self-control and she did not choose the carrot.
She instead chose the stick.
And the stick is, I will make your life progressively more unpleasant until you do what I want.
I will storm around.
I will stomp around.
I will yell at you.
I will humiliate you.
I will bully you.
I will be cold to you.
I will be exasperated.
You know, I'm so tired of that, right?
All this sort of stuff.
And you can, of course, you gain compliance and rebellion.
This is what the stick does, right?
It gains compliance and it gains rebellion.
And I would imagine that in your heart of hearts, you're probably still rebelling against this.
Which is it's not that you have internalized the value of cleanliness or tidiness.
It's that you're doing it, in a sense, because you're made to do it.
You're doing it because your mom, in a sense, will get mad.
You're doing it because you have to, to appease to something like that.
And so when you're going up the mountain, that's entirely yours.
But when you are looking at tidying up your place, that is not at all entirely yours.
What it is, is leftover appeasing mom with no respect.
And so you resist it.
You fight it, as men in general do, right?
Men, you know, if you have the aggressive stick-wielding mother figure, then you really can't make independent choices as a male.
Because the stick-wielding mother figure, the purveyor of negative experiences until compliance is achieved, that situation is emasculating.
You are then dominated by the aggression and abuse of a destructive mother figure rather than internalizing the virtues and values of, say, tidiness and cleanliness.
So I would imagine that those are the differences, that in one situation, you were bullied and not respected, and your mother was exercising a toddler-like lack of self-control.
And in the other situation, it's generating spontaneously from within yourself, like the hiking and the walking.
And so you embrace it because it does not have the shadow of maternal aggression hanging over the situation.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, it's making a lot of sense.
A lot of sense, Steph.
And if you look at the difference between the things that you enjoy doing, if you look at those differences, those are things that are generated from within yourself that were probably never subjected to the aggressive mother stick.
And if you look at the things that you resent, if you look at the things that you push back on, if you look at the things that you procrastinate and postpone, it's because you were forced to do them via hysterical, as you said, hysterical levels of aggression and verbal abuse.
And so you would grudgingly do them in the past, but the resentment and the resistance continues to this day.
Thank you.
Now, if that's a reasonable identification of the problem, then the question is, as it always is, identifying a problem is one thing.
But what we really want, right, is a solution.
Is that fair to say?
Yes.
Yeah, that was my next question as well, you know, what do I do with that?
Because, no, sorry, I don't want to cut you off.
Just that, well, I mean, as much as I've pondered these things over the years and everything, I just have to admire your ability to make things just very crystal clear.
That's why I do what I do.
So I'm glad it's working and helping.
I appreciate your feedback.
Okay, so then the question is, well, what do you do?
What do you do with this?
You know, it's one thing to have an insight.
It's quite another thing to give it legs and have it do something of value for you.
So the way that I think we approach these issues is we say, my mother, oh, sorry, I'm getting kind of an echo here.
If you could mute.
So we say, my mother does not own tidiness.
My mother does not own tidiness.
Tidiness is independent of my mother's aggression.
Because of course, if you continue to allow your mother to own tidiness, then all you can do is react.
You can't actually make choices because all you're doing is reacting.
It's sort of like having a prison job, right?
If you have a prison job called being the dishwasher, then you probably or may have kind of an aversion to, you know, kind of doing dishes for the rest of your life, right?
If you have that kind of job.
But, of course, that doesn't mean that you should let all of the dishes pile up in your house to the point where you get, you know, a furry sink.
That's not the answer, right?
So the prison doesn't own dishwashing.
Your mother doesn't own tidiness.
And reacting to tidiness as if it is exclusively your mother's domain is not a very valid or helpful approach because it then surrenders objective territory to your mother's immaturity.
Right.
So it's kind of like, you know, the making the bed question.
You know, most domestic women, my wife included, views the making the bed question as, well, yes, you make the bed because it's pretty and it's nice and you pile up all the pillows and, you know, it's kind of hard to argue.
It is very pretty and it is very nice.
So I have no objection to it.
But it wasn't my particular habit when I was younger to make the bed, right?
And that's because, of course, I had to make my bed when I was in boarding school.
And because, of course, I had to make my bed because my mother would get mad if I didn't and all that kind of stuff, right?
But that is to say that the making of the bed is owned by the negative people.
And that cedes a huge amount of objective territory to the land of the bullies.
And you're no longer evaluating the action itself or the thing itself.
You are merely reacting to all of the previous bullying, if that makes sense.
And that means that you're not free.
You're not free to evaluate, say, being tidy in this context.
You're not free to evaluate that in and of its own terms.
You're not free to look at it objectively.
You are only reacting to prior aggression.
And, I mean, that is going to be a habit, and we all have that habit, and it's not any big criticism to have that habit, but it is not objective.
It is reactive.
And of course, the degree to which your mother owns definitions, tidiness is abuse, right?
To have a neat place is simply to appease a crazy, aggressive woman.
The more that your mother owns of your definitions, the more your childhood continues forever and ever.
Amen.
And the less you own your own soul, adulthood, mind, and environment.
You have to constantly take back territory from prior abusers.
I mean, in general, it spreads.
You know, the prior abuse spreads because there's always some trigger or something that's going to make you react.
So it is a process of reclamation, right?
So you've had an invader who took over half your city, and they'll take over your whole city if you do nothing.
And you have to, you know, go street by street, house by house, and expel the insurgents, so to speak.
And if you don't, then you've just lost half your city, and over time you'll lose even more because you're in a state of retreat.
So if you were traumatized over tidiness, what you want to do, in my opinion, is take back the fucking territory.
Take back the territory.
Don't cede the cathedrals, the fountains, the streets, the malls, the plazas, the houses, the hovels, the shacks, the tent cities, whatever.
Don't cede an inch to the enemy.
So you tidy up saying, I'm reclaiming this house.
And you go to the dentist saying, I'm reclaiming this street.
And you exercise and eat well saying, I am now reclaiming this suburb.
And you don't let the abusers own the definitions because then they're in control of your soul and all you're doing is reacting.
Does that make sense?
Absolutely.
Absolutely makes sense.
Yeah, it's a process of like reclamation.
That's all.
Yeah, just step by step, just we're going to improve everything that I guess was turned into a negative.
I'm sorry?
No, that I guess was turned into a negative.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tidiness was turned into compliance with your mother's hysterical aggression.
And that's not what tidiness is.
That's just a weapon that she used so that she didn't have to exercise self-control.
She was stuck in the toddler phase of, I'm upset, other people have to fix it.
And if they don't, I'm just going to escalate until they damn well comply.
I mean, that's a very early, primitive, pre-toddler stage of development.
And, you know, whatever, I assume bad things happen to your mother when she was the baby and a toddler probably got her stuck in that stage.
And I say stuck, you know, she probably still had some free will, but maybe not by the time you came along.
But yeah, all of that stuff is not, you can't cede that territory.
You can't cede basic self-care to your mother's aggression because then she wins, right?
And then you don't get to perform That basic self-care of tidiness or whatever other things would be in that category.
You don't get to perform that stuff.
It's sort of like, you know, I mentioned dentistry earlier, right?
Like if your parents, you know, never took you to the dentist, well, you should go to the dentist.
If they kept taking you to the dentist and terrifying you about your teeth, the rebellion against that is not to stop brushing your teeth, but to reclaim the definition and look at what is good or virtuous or valuable.
Look at that rather than react to prior trauma and avoid, right?
I mean, we do have to embrace that which has hurt us so that we can reclaim the streets and return the activity to a state of objectivity.
So of course, you know, you had years and years and years of your mother yelling at you for being messy.
So then when you think of tidying something up, your mom is still yelling in your head.
And this is not any criticism for you.
It's true for most of us, certainly true for me sometimes.
So yeah, mother's still yelling in your head.
But the best way to evade and escape that kind of stuff is to look at the value of the activity itself and say, it doesn't matter whether my mother yelled at me or not about these things.
What matters is, is tidying a good thing?
And I would argue, of course, in general, it is.
It's more hygienic.
It's easier to find things.
You lose things less often.
People can come by kind of at a moment's whim and so on.
So I would say that that would be my approach is try, do it anyway, you know, recognize that it's going to be triggering and then reclaim the definition by judging the activity as good or bad, regardless of the history.
Does that help at all?
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, and as you even mentioned, my mother's voice, there was a time within the last couple of years that I really was doing some deep cleaning.
And it reminded me another thing that my mom would say was, you know, the emotional manipulation, right?
Of, well, don't you love mommy?
And I heard her voice in my head saying that, I mean, very recently while I was doing cleaning, you know, and it's like, yeah, I probably don't need, yeah, I mean, exactly like you're saying, Steph, is just to, I mean, look at, look at things on their own objective merits as to why you would do something versus letting that type of rebellious attitude towards it take hold.
Right.
Okay.
Good.
Well, I hope that helps, and I hope you'll keep me posted about how things are going.
Yeah, we'll do, Steph.
I really appreciate you.
And thank you for writing that book.
That was a great read to have up there.
Oh, I'm glad for that, too.
I appreciate that.
All right.
I will take a moment.
If people wanted to give me their thoughts, I'm certainly happy to answer any questions, any objections or issues, whatever might be working for you.
If you want to unmute, I would certainly be happy to hear from you.
Let me just see here.
Why do I make sure I don't miss anyone?
All right.
See here.
Do I have a topic?
Do I have a topic?
What kind of question is that?
Of course I have a topic.
Can I ask a question?
Yeah, that's what we're here for.
Go for it.
Yeah, I've noticed a lot of times that when I've gotten into relationships and I try to introduce women to your content or stuff like that, they just seem to have an issue with it.
And it sucks because sometimes they might share conservative values, but they just like they're always like, oh, the way he talks about women or this or that.
It seems like it's a big issue.
And I just have, you know, it causes a lot of issues in the relationship, obviously, like once we get to that point.
Okay.
So give me a breakdown of one of those situations.
Yeah, this was like a couple of months ago, but it was with a girl I was dating and we were listening to one of your shows and it was about just like some of the abuse that I think it was a call-in show and I was talking about a guy who had abused, been abused by his mom.
And, you know, I can't really recall the specifics.
I should probably be more prepared next time I ask a question, but it was this, it just seems like anytime there's criticism against women, there's like this, it seems like they have to defend them or like, you know, they can't divorce themselves from that.
And I just don't know how to really, you know, kind of explain that, hey, it's not you, it's some women.
And if you're not a part of that category, like what he's saying isn't really applying to you.
Okay.
So if you could pretend to be, just so I can sort of get a sense of it, if you can pretend to be the woman, let's just have this sort of mock debate and what would she say?
Like, like you listen to this guy, like, he's such a misogynist.
You know, like, he doesn't understand that women have to, you know, have a lot of societal expectations placed against them.
And they can't, you know, he's just, he's, you know, he holds them to an unfair level.
Okay.
So tell me more about what you mean.
Well, you know, like, you know, his criticism of the mom, like she was a single mom, she had a lot to deal with.
And, you know, it's just, it's unfair.
Like he doesn't know what it's like to go through that, to be a single mom.
And, you know, he's attacking this lady like she's doing, you know, she's doing the best that she can.
Now, that's, that's, I mean, it's interesting what you're saying.
Like, genuinely interesting what you're saying.
So, is your principle that you should not judge people if you don't fully understand their circumstances?
Yeah, I think it's, you know, like you shouldn't judge people so quickly.
I think you should give people grace.
Okay.
But isn't it fair to say that you're judging Stefan very quickly?
You know, I think I'm just pointing out what he's already doing.
So I'm using the same, you know, the way he's criticizing her, you know, it's the same, I'm holding him the same standard.
Well, no, I don't, no, I'm not sure I quite understand that because, I mean, you are judging Stéphane Molyneux without knowing much about him, right?
I mean, for instance, did you know that he himself was raised by a single mom and therefore might, and most of his friends were raised by single moms, so he might have some kind of insight that is valuable, that is valuable based upon his own experiences, if that makes sense.
So he has like, you know, an issue with his mom, and so that's why he's like angry against women.
I just don't understand like the words he uses seem so like aggressive.
Well, but now you're saying that his, because he has experience, his perspective should be discounted.
I'm not sure.
I mean, again, I'm happy to hear the case.
I'm not quite sure I follow it at the moment.
I just don't think he knows what it's, you know, the difficulties it is for a woman.
Like he's not a woman and hasn't had those experiences.
So, you know.
Okay.
So are you saying, if I understand this correctly?
And again, I really appreciate you talking about this.
Are you saying that a man cannot understand the struggles of a woman and therefore should not say things?
Yeah, like I think, I think he should, you know, give women respect and realize that women, you know, society has gone against them for a long time and they've had a lot of issues.
And especially as a single mom without a man to be there or to have his side of the burden, like I think it's just really unfair.
Okay.
So but is it the case that women should not be judged because men don't understand them, but you are judging a man.
But who are you to say that you can understand a man's perspective?
In other words, men should not criticize women because one sex cannot fully understand or even partially understand the struggles of the other sex.
So men cannot judge women.
But would it not also follow then that women should not be able to judge men because you haven't understood a man's struggle or history?
I think at this point they would just kind of repeat the same arguments.
Okay, repeat the same argument.
Let's do that.
You know, I just, you know, like everybody has their own experience, so we shouldn't like really judge people until I just don't like him because he doesn't.
No, no, but you, but you, but you, hang on, but you are judging.
The first thing you said was he's a misogynist.
That is a very strong negative judgment.
And listen, I have no problem with you making that argument or making that case.
Maybe he is a misogynist.
I haven't seen it.
But I'm not sure that it makes a lot of sense to say we shouldn't judge people until we truly understand them or we've walked them out in their shoes or whatever it is.
And then you listen to 20 minutes of one guy's show and you say, you know, he's an evil misogynist.
And again, maybe there's something I'm missing.
I'm totally happy to be schooled on this.
And maybe there's something obvious that I haven't seen.
I just think that like it's not going to be like, I don't think we're going to be able to agree on this.
And I just don't want to like listen to the show because I just don't, I don't think we have like the same values.
And I just.
Well, I'm not.
Listen, you never have to listen to a Free Domain show ever again.
That's totally fine.
That's totally fine.
Of course, right?
I'm just trying to puzzle out.
And, you know, again, I appreciate your patience with me as I try and sort of sort this out.
Maybe I'm having a slow brain day or something like that.
Maybe my brain is not braining today.
But if you say we should not judge others, particularly those of the opposite sex, but you listen to 20 minutes of a show and, you know, fairly savagely judge Stéphane Molyneux, I'm just trying to understand what makes it different.
Like, why are you able to judge somebody of the opposite gender when you've had 20 minutes experience, but somebody who's like Stéphane Molyneux, who's, you know, was raised by a single mother, his friends were all raised by single mothers, who grew up in single mother environments in three different countries.
He's done a lot of research.
He's interviewed psychologists and experts and so on.
Why is it that you can jump to a very negative conclusion after 20 minutes?
But Stéphane Molyneux, with decades of lived experience and research and presentations and data and expert interviews and so on, is not able to come to any conclusions.
Well, I just think that the stuff that he says is going to lead to like violence or bad things.
And like, if I don't listen to him or I don't think people should listen to him, like that's not going to cause harm.
Like, you know, he's going to say stuff that's going to make men think that like it's okay to be mean to the women or something.
Sorry.
So now it's not just that he's a misogynist.
It's that his arguments or his perspective could lead to like real world negative consequences.
Is that right?
Yes.
Okay.
Now, do you think that single mothers are at all responsible for being single mothers?
Well, they're responsible, but the men have more responsibility because they're not even there.
So the men have more responsibility.
Okay, so what percentage responsibility do you think?
I don't know about percentages, but I just know that like at least the woman is there taking care of the child.
Sorry, is it like 50-50 or something else?
Well, I think because the guy isn't there and he's not shouldering his responsibility, that it's because he's to blame more for the situation than she is.
So I don't know, like, you know, 70-30, you know, okay.
So, the man is 70% responsible and the woman is 30% responsible.
Is that right?
Yeah, because he's not there in the situation.
Well, at least the woman's trying to take care of the kid, at least.
Okay.
Now, do you think that women, and again, we're not talking about any sort of sexual assault or rape here, which is a very, of course, a very small percentage of these kinds of things.
But do you think that women choose who they have sex with?
Yes, but like men also choose.
Like, not every woman can be with every guy.
Like, sometimes if you want to have a partner, you know, you have to, you don't have the best choices.
Well, but women do choose who they women do choose who they have sex with, right?
For the most part.
I mean, yeah, if it's not rape.
Right.
I mean, we're not talking about that, right?
And that would be a different situation, I think, fair to say, completely, right?
So is it, do you think, do you think that women have any responsibility for choosing men who are going to stick around?
But they don't know.
Like, you know, when you meet a guy, you don't know if he's going to stick around or not.
Like, you might be nice, and then once you're pregnant, he just decides to leave.
So do you think that there's no such thing as red flags or sort of anything like that?
Is that right?
And again, you could be right.
I'm just trying to understand your perspective.
And I mean, they can pop up, but you don't always know.
Like, sometimes when the situation comes up, somebody tells you that they want a kid and then suddenly they don't want to be there.
Okay.
Now, if the woman marries the man, or if she is married, then she would have particular rights and so on to get resources, right?
Yeah, but people don't get married these days anymore.
And, you know, it's not old-fashioned like that.
Well, I mean, but if the woman says, I'm not going to have unprotected sex with you if we're not married, then she's not going to become a single mother, right?
Right, but like, then you're just not going to be with anybody because in our culture, like, that's how people are.
So you're saying that no man is going to want to be with a woman if he's not able to have unprotected sex.
Yeah, like they want to know what it's going to be like.
Like, what if you don't have sexual chemistry or anything?
Well, no, no, man, you're tired of sex.
You just, you know, you have protected sex, right?
You just, you could have forms other than intercourse, condoms.
I mean, there are 17 different forms of birth control for women.
So in terms of getting pregnant, and, you know, I know birth control fails, but that's rare.
So women have a lot of options when it comes to not getting pregnant, right?
Is that fair to say?
I mean, certainly compared to like historically.
Yeah, but you know, like sometimes it doesn't work.
I know, but that's very rare.
Or you forget it.
Let's say you have two forms of birth control.
Or if you just have non-vaginal intercourse, then you're not going to get pregnant, right?
No, you won't get pregnant without intercourse, yeah.
Okay.
So is it your view that men have so little affection and respect for women that if they can't rawdog it, they just won't be with a woman?
Like the only thing they're really there for is procreative or unprotected sex.
Is that right?
Well, you know, it depends.
I mean, some guys, you know, will put something on, but some don't.
I mean, I think it just depends.
But I think people want to have sex in some way, yeah.
Okay.
So even though women can, I mean, there certainly are red flags for men, right?
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Like if he has like a baby mama.
Yeah, if he has a baby mama, if he doesn't have a job, if he's not in school or any kind of education or training, if he has got a terrible relationship with his own mother, perhaps, if he's got a really bad family, if he's, you know, got maybe a lot of tattoos or, you know, is aggressive even in the dating scenario.
I mean, there's tons of red flags, right?
And listen, I mean, just so you know, I hold men accountable when they date against pretty obvious red flags too.
So there are red flags.
Are they 100%?
I mean, they're not zero, right?
They're not 0%.
So I guess that's my question, because it's interesting.
And I do find this, and I really appreciate having this conversation.
Like, I do find this really interesting.
Because in my experience and understanding, men, sorry, women say they want to be equal to men, right?
Yes.
We want equality, right?
Now, the same women, and again, I'm maybe missing something here, but it seems like the very same women who say that they want to be equal to men will judge men very negatively, usually very quickly, and then say that men should not hold women accountable because women are victims.
So I think what Stéphane Molyneux is trying to say, I can't read his mind, right?
So I don't know for sure, but I think what he's trying to say is women have some responsibility in who they have sex with and who they procreate with.
Now, you can say women have no responsibility or, you know, men are just liars and manipulators and hound dogs and all this kind of stuff.
So you can say all of that for sure.
But the problem is, then you're saying that men should be held responsible For what they say, even if it's a bit of a snap judgment, but women should never be held responsible for what they do.
Right?
So, is it, I mean, I'm sure you know the data about negative outcomes from single mother households, right?
That single mothers, you know, we can have sympathy for the situation for sure, but single mothers tend to have some fairly significant difficulties raising happy, productive children.
Yeah, it's very, it's very hard.
That's why I don't, you know, I feel like we should give them more credit because we talk about single moms.
What about like absentee fathers?
Why don't we talk more about them?
Well, but we do talk about them all the time.
I mean, men being blamed for not sticking around to raise their kids.
We've talked, we've got the whole phrase, deadbeat dads.
You know, we literally throw men in prison for not paying child support.
It's the only time you can have a debt and end up in prison.
There's no debt as prison except for men not paying child support.
And we have.
We've railed against men, deadbeat dads and absent fathers, and we've railed against them for at least 50 years or more.
And yet, and yet, it is the women who choose to have unprotected sex for the most part.
Now, if women say they want to be equal to men, and in general, it is men who want to have sex and women who say yes or no to sex.
I mean, they've done these studies where some guy goes into a there's a man and a woman in a hotel bar, and you know, a couple of attractive women come up to the men and offer him their hotel room keys, and most men will say yes, and attractive men go up to women, offer them their hotel keys, and most women will say no.
So in general, men, you know, we kind of hardwired to pursue sex, and it's the women who say yes or no to sex, and in particular to procreative sex.
So you rush very quickly to a negative judgment of Stefan Mollen, you calling him a misogynist, which is quite a heavy term.
But he's criticizing, or rather holding women responsible for who they choose to have procreative sex with and bring actual human beings into the world, knowing, as most people do these days in particular, that single mother households are negative for children on average as a whole.
So you have harsher judgments for someone who's pointing out something that's bad for children than you do for the women who are actually creating, to a large degree, those situations that are bad for children by having procreative sex with unsuitable men, men who aren't going to stick around and be fathers.
So just from my perspective, you have a very snap-harsh, negative judgment of a guy pointing out a problem, which is single motherhood and its effects on children.
You have a much more negative judgment against a guy pointing out a problem than the women who are actually having procreative sex with unsuitable men at the expense of, on average, their children's future security, stability.
But yeah, like in that situation, like the woman gets pregnant, right?
And then the guy leaves and she's choosing to at least have the kid.
Like she could choose to have an abortion or something like that.
And like then she'll get called out for having an abortion or she'll be called out for having the kid.
Like either way, she's kind of screwed.
Well, but the solution is to not have procreative sex with irresponsible men, isn't it?
Yeah, I don't, I just, I just don't.
I mean, women can't be incapable of saying no.
I'll give you an example, right?
You just said no to Stéphane Molyneux, right?
Like, you said no to Stéphane Molyneux.
You rejected Stéphane Molyneux, right?
So women are certainly capable of rejecting men and saying no to men, right?
So if I say, I, as a man, I say, let's listen to another Stéphane Molyneux podcast, you would say, no.
Even though I would be a good father, and by the by, Stéphane Molyneux has been a stay-at-home dad.
His daughter's going to be 17 this year.
He's been a stay-at-home dad and has stuck around.
And if you've heard the shows they've done together, they have a really great relationship.
So he actually is a good father despite having grown up with no father or a bad father, which is kind of the same thing.
So it's interesting because you have said no to Stéphane Molyneux, who actually is a good father, but you're saying that women, what, can't say no to men?
I mean, you've just proved in this conversation that you can say no to two men, me and Stéphane Molyneux.
So of course women can say no to men.
And do you think that women should have less sex or less procreative sex or hopefully no procreative sex with unsuitable men?
Because it didn't used to be the case that there were all these single mothers around.
So do you think that it would be better for the children if women refrained from having procreative sex until they were in a stable relationship with a man who shows every indication or evidence of sticking around?
Would it be better for the children if women did that?
Yeah.
Okay, so wouldn't it be good to encourage women to do that?
Now, is it possible to encourage women to have children with more suitable men without pointing out the problems or the negative things that occur to children when women have sex with unsuitable men, i.e.
the men who don't stick around?
In other words, can you encourage people to do something better without pointing out that the opposite choice is negative?
Can you encourage people to quit smoking without pointing out that smoking is bad for you?
Can you encourage people to lose weight without pointing out that being overweight is bad for you?
Can you encourage people to pursue a positive without saying that the opposite is a negative?
It's kind of tough.
I mean, this is how we say to kids, right?
You study for this exam or you're going to get failed.
You might even get left behind a grade or something like that, right?
Pay your taxes or you're going to get in trouble or, you know, obey the law, or you're going to get arrested, or don't speed, or you're going to get pulled over and get a fine.
Like, we generally do encourage a positive with reference to a negative.
And it's kind of how we raise kids, right?
Do the right thing, or you're going to get in trouble, or whatever it is, right?
Don't steal or, you know, you're going to get in trouble and so on, right?
So in general, I guess the question is, is it possible to try to get women to have procreative sex with more suitable men without pointing out the negatives that have occurred when women have children with unsuitable men?
Well, you know, I see your point about women being more selective, but I just, I feel like the women who already made bad decisions, like, do we have to put more, you know, like weight on their shoulders that they're already carrying?
Like, you know, I think you're right.
Like, we shouldn't, you know, encourage that behavior.
But like, I feel like we're just making it worse for the people already in that situation.
So if somebody has made a bad decision, we shouldn't reference it.
Well, I think I just think it's not good.
I don't know.
Well, but you are referencing Stéphane Molyneux's quote, bad decision to criticize single mothers in this case, or as you say, to be a misogynist.
You are referencing his bad decision and condemning him quite heartily, but that's all in the past as well, right?
Yeah.
So you are willing, eager, I would say almost.
You are willing to reference someone's poor decisions in the past, which in this case would be, you know, Stéphane Molyneux being a misogynist or criticizing single moms or something like that.
So you are very willing to criticize people very harshly for their past decisions, but then you say, when it comes to single mothers, we should not criticize them for their past decisions.
So again, I'm a little baffled as to the mechanics here.
Hey, Stefan, I think you won this argument in my mind.
I think not just one, but I think you explained it very well.
And I really appreciate that.
I feel like maybe halfway through the conversation, they probably walk away upset and then call later and be like, oh, sorry, I got upset or something.
But I see the logic and it was very, very well.
And I hope if I ever deal with that again, I can certainly chase it down.
And I feel like at the end, if the woman isn't able to reason that way, she's probably not a good choice.
Well, if she's just reactive and emotional and can't behave or debate or reason in any kind of logical manner or say, oh, you know what?
That is kind of a contradiction.
I think I see where you're coming from.
I don't have a good answer for that.
Let me sort of mull it over.
I mean, nobody has to have sort of instant answers in the moment or anything like that.
But I think you do want to probe for logic with women you date.
And if they just have sort of this, I don't know, blind sympathy for women, hostility to men, female in-group preference, and they're kind of like just programmed NPCs with all of this, you know, hyper empathetic, pathological altruism stuff, then probably is not the wisest decision to give your heart over, if that makes sense.
Yes.
Thank you, Stefan.
You're very welcome.
You're very welcome.
All right.
Well, I'm afraid I'm going to stop here, but I really do appreciate, of course, everybody's lovely, lovely time today.
What a great pleasure to chat with you all.
Honor and a privilege.
If you find the shows, the conversations useful and valuable, I would very much appreciate your support at freedomain.com slash donate.
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All right, let's love everyone.
Thank you so much for dropping by.
We will see you tomorrow night.
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