All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 10, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:31:03
When to Give Up! Premium Livestream
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
All right.
Hi, donors.
Hello, donors.
Hello.
Hello, babe.
So, hi, donors.
Thank you so much for your support.
Freedomaine.com slash donate.
If you'd like to help out a little bit more, it would be greatly appreciated, but don't worry about that today.
Too too much and happy to take callers and happy to have topics.
You can type the question into the chat.
Oh, FDRURL.com slash live call.
Let's do some Freddy Mercury vocal warm-ups.
All right.
So you want to type questions in.
Just, and I'll go over here to callers if you want to call in.
Happy to take your calls.
So I had a question.
It came out of a private call.
So of course I do these private calls, freedomain.com slash call.
I do these private calls.
I won't get into any specifics because, of course, they be private.
Army mateies.
So the caller wanted to know how do you sort of detach from people that you're trying to save?
What are the standards?
What are the criteria?
Now, I did say to him in the call, look, I'm not going to charge you for giving that answer because it's a good general question and answer to have as a whole.
So I'm going to answer it here.
And I said I would answer it here Sunday, but I guess this goes out for free to you guys.
But so how do you, so there is, of course, the Christian argument that we all have a soul that within us is a good person, no matter what, even within the most depraved, degenerate, violent, vicious, whatever, there is a good soul that cannot be erased.
And in a sense, you just need to access that good soul.
The analogy that I've used over the years is, you know, if you're a smoker, you snort asbestos, whatever, you do stuff to damage your lungs.
Well, that's bad for your lungs.
And your lungs get corrupted, they get harmed, and, you know, you're going to get, I don't know, emphysema, COPD, lung cancer, whatever it is you're going to get.
Now, there are no healthy, pink, lovely lungs buried in your body.
Like, there's no magical ritual or chant or incantation that can replace your corrupted lungs with healthy lungs.
Of course, if you think that there is such a ritual, you'll be much less likely to take care of your lungs because you believe that there is.
Was it Andy Kaufman?
I don't think he was a smoker, but the comedian.
He got, I think, lung cancer or something like that, even though he wasn't a smoker.
And he went to various healers who were supposed to fix his lungs, make his lungs better.
And I think as far as I can tell, it was mostly nonsense.
And he died, of course, from all of that.
I probably shouldn't throw my glasses away.
Let me just, I was like, oh, that's in the way, because I'm going to need to see the callers and the questions.
So one of the things that draws us into trying to help people is the belief, which trickles down to us from Christianity, that there's a good person in there somewhere.
We just need to find the right magical spells to access this person.
And I dare say most of us here, most of us here are, you know, reasonable people who change our minds based upon rationality and evidence.
And so it's easy for us to say, well, I listen to reason and evidence, and therefore I just have to find the right combination of words and maybe money and I don't know, maybe sexual activity or romance or lust or love or fun or, you know, I just need to find the right key and lock.
And of course, there are people out there who are kind of subtly cruel who will hold out the possibility or the opportunity of fixing them just to get your time, resources, care, and attention.
This is particularly true among attractive women as a whole.
So most people, most people can't be fixed.
And I mean, I'm sure we've all understood this over COVID, right?
People went totally federal over COVID.
I still, I mean, to me, it's kind of incomprehensible how people are just going about their lives as if they didn't go full fascist.
on the unclean called the unvaccinated.
I mean, it was absolutely horrendous, brutal, horrible stuff that went on.
And people are just continuing on, like their conscience doesn't bother them.
Now, I get everyone's kind of hovering over this chasm, which is why they get so tense when people bring it up.
You know, most people are literally 30 seconds away from moral collapse.
Like if you just, you know, tell them the truth about the corruption that they support, most people are 30 seconds or a minute away from moral collapse, and they kind of go through that stress and that tension.
That's their lives.
It's one of the reasons why people are so tense and volatile.
You can see this if you're on X, taking on the question of the topic of spanking.
You know, people with a good conscience don't need to invent new words or new phrases for hitting children.
They don't need to say, oh, it's a light tap.
Oh, it's a little smack.
Oh, it's a, you know, physical discipline.
They're just hitting your kids.
You're hitting your kids.
That's all.
They don't need to make up new words if you're comfortable with what you're doing.
So you have to look at yourself as like a doctor with triage, right?
So triage, you know, there's people who are going to make it without immediate attention.
There are people who are not going to make it even with immediate attention.
And then there are people who won't make it without immediate attention.
And it's the third category you spend your time on.
The people who can be stabilized and, you know, they can be dealt with later.
They're still going to live.
The people who are just bleeding out and going to die no matter what you do, you let them die.
And the people who are going to die without immediate attention, that's where you focus your immediate attention on, right?
I think we all understand that as a whole.
And so that's what you do.
Like, we don't have an eternity of time in which to screw around with pouring resources down a bottomless well because of the opportunity cost.
Like so everyone that you, every single person that you try to help who is unhelpable is 50 people, 25 people, maybe 100 people that you don't help, right?
So if you imagine like there's been a terrible accident or bombing or something like that, and you've got 100 people coming in with sort of various ranges of injuries, if a doctor spends eight hours on someone who's just absolutely going to die, then all the other people don't get helped.
And he's actually causing more.
Even if he were to somehow miraculously save that one person, he's still down, you know, 20 bodies because of that.
And knowing when people aren't going to be savable is really important.
And how do you know that?
Well, they don't admit when they're wrong.
I did a role play the other day in a private call in with someone who just would not admit that they're wrong.
And I'm sure you've dealt with this sort of stuff, right?
I mean, I did a debate this morning with a fellow, and I'm glad that he did it.
He's mathematically very skilled, and he wanted to take issue with the rather ferocious debate I had on Friday about whether two and two make four.
And he said, two and two might not make four.
You're wrong, Steph.
And then later on, he said, yes, it's true that two and two do make four and didn't notice, right?
Didn't notice the contradiction.
I mean, if I come at someone hard and it turns out that I'm wrong, I owe them an apology, particularly if it's in a public space, right?
Like if I say to someone, you're wrong, you're ridiculous, it's foolish, or maybe even you're corrupt and so on.
If I'm wrong, especially if the person is identifiable, it's not just some anonymous account.
If I come at someone hard and I'm wrong, I owe that person an apology.
So if you disprove something that someone says, and they don't admit fault.
They don't apologize if they came at you hard, and they don't thank you for helping them correct an error, but they just change the topics, move the goalposts, hang up, vanish, despawn, whatever, then the person can't be helped.
I mean, we need to reward the people who are rational and not reward the people who are anti-rational.
So I will put time and effort and energy into correcting people.
And someone on X the other day came at me hard.
He said, he said, you said that he didn't know that two and two make four.
And he said he was 99.999% certain.
And I said, but then he doesn't know.
He says, it's a probability.
It's a probability.
If I say, I think we're heading north, I don't know that we're heading north.
However, if I say we're heading north, I know 100% that we're heading north, that's certainty.
If I say, I'm really sure, not totally sure, then I don't know, right?
Knowledge is 100%.
That's syllogistical reasoning or deductive reasoning versus inductive reasoning.
And if somebody takes inductive probability reasoning and applies it to deductive, 100% reasoning, then they don't know.
They don't know.
I think, you know, all men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
I'm 99% sure that Socrates is mortal.
It's like, well, then you don't know.
You don't know.
And so I pointed this out.
I mean, obviously in a shorter way.
And he just kept on moving, kept on, went another topic or whatever.
And you have this all the time.
I have this all the time.
It's wild.
It's like the people who just talk in my ear when I'm trying to make a point.
Now, it is certainly true, and I accept this, it is certainly true that I interrupt people for sure.
I will interrupt someone if they're going on a long ramble with no intellectual content.
I will interrupt someone if they have misstated my viewpoint because there's no point, right?
If I say two and two make four, and then they start to say, okay, look, you just admitted that two and two make five.
I'm going to interrupt them because there's no point letting the conversation continue.
You know, like if a friend of mine is supposed to drive somewhere and he takes a right when he's supposed to take a left, I will say, even if he's talking, I'll say, bro, we need to turn around.
You're just going the wrong direction, right?
So it does happen.
But when I'm in the middle of making a point, and I know it's a good point, of course, I mean, I'm pretty experienced with this kind of stuff, and people start talking in my ear.
It's wild, man.
I mean, the sort of back and forth of normal conversation seems to have been kind of lost.
So yeah, if it happens all the time, somebody will come at me hard.
I'll make a counter-argument and they don't reply to the counter-argument.
They just change the topic.
That in general is someone that I would not spend any time or effort or energy into correcting, right?
I mean, if you were coaching someone, tutoring someone in math, and they made a mistake and you corrected them and they didn't acknowledge the correction, but simply moved on to another problem, you wouldn't think that your tutoring was doing very well or that they were learning very much, right?
All right, let me get to, again, I'm happy to take callers.
We don't have any callers yet, but we also have the live chat.
Questions, comments, issues, challenges.
All right.
Good morning from San Francisco.
Baby Dew in two months would not have happened without you.
Thanks for your guidance and encouragement, Steph.
Fantastic.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Existiert, thank you for your support.
He says, hey, Steph, I just wanted to voice my appreciation of your Twitter spaces.
It is very helpful seeing how you deal with midwits and sophists.
We can have nice conversations in our rational bubble here on locals, but if we want to have debates in the real world, we mostly run into people like that.
Chris says, definitely it blows my mind when someone doesn't acknowledge their error at all.
They seem to be in a complete state of nature.
I barely know people, says Viper, who apologize for wrongdoing.
Yeah, it's wild.
Somebody says, Zymph.
Hey, Zimph, nice to see you.
It took me far too long to realize that most people's reaction to being wrong is to double down, gaslight, lie, etc.
Yes, that's very true.
It's very true.
And it is quite tragic, of course, right?
Sorry, every time I touch the screen, we get a little shake here.
A little shake.
People keep on worrying.
Yeah, it is interesting to be back in the public space.
I read a book many years ago called Respect for Acting.
And it was talking about the amount of prep that goes into being a good actor, the amount of work and so on that goes into being a good actor.
And it was, in a sense, a demand for respect for acting.
It's not just getting up there and imitating or faking or whatever it is.
Like there's a lot of work that goes into it.
Some friends and I watched the movie called The Verdict with Paul Newman.
And queen goddess Charlotte Rampling and a whole bunch of character actors, you know, character actors drive me nuts because I, oh, where have I seen this one person before?
And it's like vague, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, so and I was reading about the making of the movie.
And the movie, in the movie, Paul Newman plays a drunk layabout dysfunctional mess of a lawyer.
And Robert Redford actually was going to star in it for a while, but he kept changing the script to make the character more likable, saying people can't relate.
You know, Robert Redford has a bit of a waspy pathological need to be liked, I think.
And Paul Newman, when he first showed up to play the character, he it was, there were no sparks.
It was competent.
It was decent.
And the director said, look, man, you're going to have to embrace the dark side of this character.
Like, you're just going to have to embrace the dark side of this character.
The movie is not going to work.
And then the next time they did the rehearsals, he said it was fantastic, but that all translated well to the screen.
Was it David Mammet who wrote the script?
And the script is mostly okay, except the ending is really, the final speech is really, really terrible.
Anyway, so respect for acting, Paul Newman had to do a lot.
And he said, Paul Newman himself said, you know, I pour all of this work, all of this background story, all of this prep and rehearsals, I pour it all into these characters.
And I pull off the roll of a lifetime and all people can talk about is how pretty my eyes are.
Because, yeah, I mean, he did.
Bro had some pretty eyes.
And respect for acting.
You know, people, most people don't think that they can just get up and be a movie star.
Most people don't think they can just get up and be a rock star.
Most people don't think that they can just go be a surgeon.
Most people don't think that they can just go be a mathematician or a chess grandmaster or whatever.
And yet everyone thinks they're a philosopher.
Man, it's rough.
And one of the things that I want to do, and I'm in the process of doing this, of course, I have an ambivalent relationship to Twitter, if you're at all curious.
And again, if you have questions or comments, I'm certainly happy to hear.
But just while I'm waiting for those to come in, you know, with Twitter, obviously I like doing big numbers, and that's kind of fun.
You know, a seven plus million view tweet is great.
Of course, my numbers have collapsed ever since I annoyed the atheists and now I'm annoying the people who hit their children.
So it's just a constant process of getting rid of people.
So, you know, everybody likes to chase the big numbers, but at the same time, it's quality over quantity.
And it's funny because, of course, you want to be encouraging with people who are learning philosophy.
But the people who come in and think they know how to philosophize, that they know how to do philosophy with no reading, no training.
You know, like there was an atheist who said about my UPB proof.
I put a very, very short proof.
I was really inspired.
I read this in a Paul Johnson book called Modern Times about a masterful 255 word explanation of the theory of relativity.
And so the good thing about Twitter is it does really challenge you to compress your arguments.
So I brought UPB down into 280 characters or less, which is not the easiest thing.
I spent like an hour on that tweet.
And I posted it and then I tweeted and said, you know, I had, you know, over 7 million people view my tweet about asking atheists, why don't you lie?
And they didn't answer in any rigorous philosophical fashion, right?
Oh, negative outcomes, and I feel bad, blah, blah, blah.
Just hedonism.
And so I proved that they didn't have, well, I pointed out that they didn't have rational arguments about telling the truth.
And since they don't believe in abstract Christian ethics and they have yet to develop a system of secular morality, it's all just hedonism.
Well, I don't like to lie.
It's too complicated to lie.
I have to remember too much to lie.
I get negative consequences from lying.
That's all just hedonism.
And they completely gloss over and ignore the fact that there are countless people in the world who get massive benefits out of lying.
Anyway, I want to rehash that argument.
But an atheist, I pointed out that atheists did not have any convincing arguments regarding rationality.
And then I gave them a convincing argument regarding rationality, and not one of them came back and said, oh, that's really interesting.
Or I see what you're getting at.
Or I think that's good, but here's my problem.
Like, completely ignored it.
Right.
So I said, well, why are you not immoral?
And they had no answers.
And I said, okay, here's your rational proof of morality.
And they don't care.
They don't care.
They're not like dying people in a desert looking for a drink, right?
They don't want virtue.
They don't want ethics.
Atheism is a psyop to have people wander off the field of battle between good and evil.
That's all it really is.
It's very sad.
I didn't really see that when I was younger, but it's pretty inescapable now.
Anyway, so one of the atheists said, your proof was not convincing.
Your proof was not convincing.
Which is pretty wild when you think about it.
That's a wild statement.
And again, just pure hedonism.
I did not go through the emotional conversion experience called being convinced because that's not how philosophy works.
That's not how rationality works.
Saying that something is not convincing is saying I have not gone through the emotional experience of being convinced.
I mean, that's even more faith-based than religion is, certainly Christianity.
And no problem with that.
People don't, this is why I've always used not an argument.
People don't even know what an argument is.
People quote this back to me all the time.
You know, not an argument.
And like 1% of people use it correctly.
And I can't even remember the last time that somebody used that phrase correctly.
Not an argument.
It's not an argument, right?
I mean, if someone thinks that they're good at chess and then they think that rooks can move diagonal and bishops can move in a straight line, say, no, that's not a valid move.
Oh, that's not a valid move.
You don't know how to play chess.
That's not a valid move.
That's not a valid move, right?
I will work hard to bring to the world respect for philosophy.
And sometimes that means being harsh, right?
So when people, and this is a debate that I had this morning, I got up a little early this morning, and there was a fellow who wanted to, he's an expert in math, and he wanted to talk about my two and two make four argument.
And yeah, I mean, if you can't be certain that two and two make four, I wouldn't listen to you on anything.
Because two and two make four is actually a restatement of the law of identity.
Like if you were, and I mentioned this in the call, if you were at a dinner and your elderly father said, can you pass me the salt shaker?
And you pass him the salt shaker and he says, oh, good.
Thank you for the salt shaker.
And then 30 seconds later, he says, this is not a salt shaker.
This is the opposite of a salt shaker.
You would think that he had some sort of dementia, right?
There's something really wrong with his brain.
But that's people who violate the law of identity.
There's Something fundamentally wrong with their brains.
I'm not going to let that pass.
And I'm certainly not going to let that perspective out through my channel to the audience.
Thank you for the tip.
I appreciate that.
All right, so let's go here.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
All right, let's see.
Yeah, the movie was, the movie was good.
All right.
Do you still read fiction?
If so, any suggestions?
Well, it's funny, you know.
The Harry Bosch guy, I can't remember his name at the moment, the guy who writes the Harry Bosch novels.
And was he the Lincoln Lawyer guy?
Something like that.
I find those odd because it's fairly simplistic but enjoyable writing.
It's good plot twists and all of that.
So I'll sometimes listen to him when going to sleep.
Right now, my wife is reading Anna Karenina.
Sorry, I don't mean overly pretending.
It's not Karenina, Karenina, by Tolstoy, of course.
And I've tried Tolstoy a whole bunch of times.
I really have.
In the same way, I've tried Dostoevsky other than The Brothers Katamasov and Crime and Punishment.
I don't have any luck with his novels.
I actually downloaded the entire Fyodor Dostoevsky collection, like 240 hours.
And I've tried The Idiot a number of times.
I've tried The Demons a number of times.
I've read through notes from the Underground, but I just, it's too much description of what people are doing and not enough of what people are actually doing.
It's all like, well, Count Orloff went to so-and-so and had a tough affair, and then he was sad, and then he gambled for a while.
And it's like, can I, I don't want a summary.
It's like an AI summary of a book.
So I'm listening to Anna Karenina, and there are sort of these flashes of really interesting stuff, but it's not vivid enough for me.
It's not descriptive enough for me.
And on the other hand, it's a little dull, so it's actually good to fall asleep to.
So as far as fiction goes, yeah, I'm going through Anna Karenina at the moment.
I'm trying to think of the last novel that I read physically.
It's been a while.
It's been a while.
So, all right.
JP says, Steph, one thing that has been bothering me about the whole Epstein thing is that people were more upset at being lied to than the children who were abused.
I could be wrong.
So many years ago, I think it was here in Canada, I think it was, and again, sorry, this is off the top of my head.
So when you go into any kind of intelligence work, right, they ask you about all of your all the skeletons in your closet, like all the bad things that could be used against you and blackmail and so on, right?
And then they put all of this, I guess, at a file.
And many years ago, I think the Chinese got into the Canadian files regarding this, right?
And then it would be like, okay, so the whole thing is pointless now.
The whole thing is pointless.
Because now they have all of the compromat on everyone.
So they can just blackmail and threaten everyone.
But of course, it doesn't matter, right?
It doesn't matter because they just keep going and pretend that they have some sort of security agency.
And the Epstein thing, you know, I just don't think people, you can't handle, like, they can't handle the truth.
They cannot handle the truth about what's sort of at the root of the Epstein stuff, right?
People don't want to look and say, well, maybe the people who we've ensured our protection are actually co-opted by other people, right?
So that's not good.
All right.
So, so much gratitude for you, Steph.
Thank you for letting us watch your brain work.
Oh, I appreciate that.
I did a show on the is aught dichotomy because it's been bothering me.
I know that the answer that's in Essential Philosophy and UPB, the book, is good, but it never felt 100% airtight.
I want, like, stuff has to be airtight regardless of the agreement of the other.
And it's very good.
I mean, it's 100%, but there's some wiggle room.
I know that sounds odd, but it's, or to put it another way, it's 100%, but it was confusing to people, and therefore they felt that there was some wiggle room.
And so I worked for like an hour on this problem, and I did it live.
Like, I didn't have the answer.
I was like, I need to revisit this.
And I worked through it, and here's my thinking.
And then I composed various tweets in my mind.
And this is sort of my process of going through stuff.
Normally, I'll present to you the cake, but here I wanted you to see the, I'm vaguely hungry, what are my ingredients, and what can I make?
See the whole baking process.
So, I mean, I think it's interesting.
I love making of stuff myself.
I mean, I even read Making of Jaws when I was in my early teens.
So, all right.
All right.
Hyperlink says, I find folks just want to be quote right, the right one or the person who solved the quote problem and try to cope themselves into some main character status.
Yeah.
Yeah, I did.
I did also the argument that came out of one of the spaces was that to intentionally inflict harm on people is the immoral.
And again, it feels convincing, it feels like it should be right, but you know, it's not.
And so, working that out, I actually did a whole, I did like a 40-minute show, and then I realized later, oh, I missed a part.
So, I did another 15-minute show and put it in at the end, and all of that.
So, it just goes, it just goes on, and it's hard to solve these things.
And you just have to be patient and persistent in this kind of stuff.
Yes, the show is 6047, Healing the Is Ought Dichotomy.
You should check that out.
Thank you.
All right.
In one of the recent spaces, you talked about how we shouldn't be holding back our generosity.
I would like to ask: if a man who wants to date a woman is giving her resources, not just money, but favors, et cetera, what's the difference between showing generosity and pandering or simping?
Well, the difference is the length of time that you do it.
Right?
So, on a date, you know, plan the date, pick her up, drive her somewhere.
You know, you can certainly offer to pay.
And let's say that she accepts your offer to pay, right?
So, let's say the woman is like, oh, thank you.
I appreciate that.
That was a wonderful dinner, blah, blah, blah, right?
Okay, but then you look for reciprocity.
Because, you know, let's say you spend $100 or $200 on the date.
Well, that's a whole lot cheaper than getting married and divorced and losing half your stuff, right?
So if she's not reciprocal, right?
Because there's some people in whom being generous begets generosity.
And there are other people with whom generosity begets complacency, entitlement, and exploitation in return, if that makes sense.
So it is the length of time in which you are generous.
So simps just keep throwing resources at women in the hopes that maybe they'll get some date or something like that.
And so it really is the length of time that is the issue.
This is not the ideal interface, is it?
No, it is not.
All right.
Let me just go back down here.
Bleh.
Bleh.
Yeah.
All right.
colors Any developments with the caffeine versus drugs argument?
Thank you for reminding me.
Thank you for reminding me.
So I think for me, I mean, caffeine, I love the taste of coffee.
You know, I don't, I have, I have two cups of coffee a day.
I mean, caffeinated.
I'll still have a couple of decafs, maybe, if that's sort of where I'm at, because I want to be able to go to the dentist and have the dentist say, Do you drink coffee?
So, but I don't find that caffeine changes who I am.
It doesn't give me hallucinations.
It doesn't change my emotional state.
In fact, if I have more than two cups of coffee a day, I just feel kind of jumpy and jittery and it's not particularly good.
I've also gone without caffeine at times, and it's no particular problem.
I remember a friend of mine in theater school was quitting caffeine.
It was just having blinding migraines.
I don't know how much Roe drank, but it was quite a bit.
So if you're going to say anything which changes your Mental state or anything that affects your body, well, then oxygen and food and water, they're all drugs.
But I think if you are pursuing something to change your emotional state or to change your sense perceptions, that I think is a big problem.
I don't find that if I'm without caffeine, that I'm particularly different.
I just like the taste of it.
All right.
Do you have any thoughts on neuro-linguistic programming as a therapy?
I really don't.
As far as I wouldn't even be able to tell you much about what neuro-linguistic programming is.
So I'm afraid you've hit a knowledge limit that is quite considerable on my screen.
I posted this about, you know, if therapists don't have morality, it's all just enablement.
How do we as viewers provide value to you other than donations?
Well, yeah, don't poke my sore spot.
So there's just on Discord, you wouldn't know this if you're just on locals.
But I've asked for a lot of feedback on my novels.
And I have a whole, there's a whole section which is novel feedback.
And it's empty.
The novels is tough, right?
And I can read you.
Actually, I have a chapter that I thought was really fun.
You know, I want the new book that I'm working on.
I'm about, I'm probably close to three quarters done.
And for me, it's some of my best writing and certainly the most vivid characters that I have developed.
And if you don't have a lot of questions or comments, I'm happy to read you some.
But the novels are a real high wire act for me because when it comes to philosophy, I get a lot of feedback.
I get debates and comments and so on, right?
Particularly with X. But with the novels, I do feel a little bit like I'm dropping them into a void, which is, you know, I put a lot, poor heart and soul into those books, and I obviously think that they're very good.
And then I sort of put them out there and they just kind of drop into a void.
And yeah, so that's not super fun for me.
So that would be helpful.
And of course, just talking about philosophy as a whole with people is great.
All right.
All right.
Recently, I listened to podcast 4742, Alcohol is Killing Me.
During the conversation, you spoke about your deplatforming and the benefits of it, including that a smaller crowd is more conducive to having intimate conversations.
You delivered a fantastic speech towards the end about not putting on a show and being authentic, akin to the Me Plus concept.
I found it quite interesting and great listen considering your recent return to Twitter.
Oh, thank you.
With caffeine and nicotine, there is more predictability with a person's behavior, I suppose.
Yeah.
Stefan, do you ever feel mentally drained since you joined Back2X?
Yeah, I mean, there certainly is some emotional response to X, which is I haven't had, you know, prickly, anti-rational, vainglorious, shallow people in my life for like five years.
So going back to that world is interesting.
It's also fascinating to see how the landscape has changed, like with the bullying stuff.
And again, I know it's not scientific.
You know, I pointed out that children who are spanked are six times more likely to be physically aggressive with their peers.
Now, physically aggressive is not self-defense.
And people are like, well, good.
Kids should be, you know, and so the landscape has kind of changed quite a bit.
People are much more aggressive.
People are much more desperate.
They're much more impatient.
And I'm not saying all of those are negatively bad things, but it is pretty wild.
So I have not had that kind of stuff in my life, that kind of resolute, volatile, immature, anti-rational stuff.
So remembering that it's out there and in some ways has even grown.
And it's funny because in some ways the Overton window has shifted enormously.
Like now I see inspirational quotes.
It's all like, even if your family's toxic, you don't have to see them, right?
And this is not controversial.
People don't get called cult leaders.
So that's really radically changed.
IQ stuff is a conversation that Has radically, radically changed.
And of course, we had a lot to do with all of that.
And so it is pretty wild to see how much progress has been made in many areas and how much other areas have kind of fallen back, which sort of makes sense.
Is your how to find a good therapist presentation still useful?
Has the landscape changed too much?
I don't know.
I would have to listen to it back.
I couldn't answer that.
Stefan, what are your thoughts on young kids on medicine for anxiety and depression?
Yeah, again, I mean, again, this is, you know, I'm certainly no expert.
None of this is any kind of medical or psychiatric advice.
But the chemical imbalance theory has not been established, right?
Because a lot of psychiatrists will say, well, you wouldn't feel bad for being on insulin, would you?
And you have a brain imbalance and you're just taking medicine to fix it and so on.
And I don't believe any of that.
Honestly, I don't believe any of that because there's no blood test.
You know, draw my bloods, draw my blood, show me the numbers.
Show me the numbers, right?
If there's a chemical imbalance, you should be able to show me the numbers, right?
If you go to get your testosterone levels checked and your testosterone is low, they can show you the numbers.
If you go and get your cholesterol checked, they can show you the numbers, right?
So if there is a medical issue with a chemical imbalance, they should draw blood and show you the numbers.
But they can't and they don't, right?
So for mental health issues, I'm a big fan of peaceful parenting and philosophy as a way to resolve those, right?
All right.
Let me just go and check here.
Unfortunately, I can't check on the callers without losing.
Okay, that's fine.
Somebody says, I'm not an atheist.
I don't hit children.
However, I might have some dark sides that I should confront.
I look forward to being offended if that is what it is.
If that is what it takes to face my shadow, it will not cause me to go away.
Okay.
Why do you think so many young kids have suicidal thoughts?
Is it true?
Well, I think certainly COVID blew social trust out of the water.
COVID is going to produce a very skeptical, which is good, but also nihilistic younger generation.
The COVID era and in particular the aftermath of the COVID era is an absolute inflection or turning point in our society because young people do not believe any authority or experts anymore.
You know, I can't imagine what it would be like if I'd have been in high school.
You know, for me, getting out of the home was essential in high school, you know, having jobs and going to school.
You know, I was on, gosh, cross-country team.
I was on the tennis team.
I was on water polo team, swimming team.
I did debates and so on.
And I had, at one point in high school, I had three jobs, of course, all part-time, and participated in soccer and baseball and just did a lot to get out of the house.
I can't imagine being locked in the house for a year with my mother.
Like, I can't imagine.
It would not have gone well, to put it mildly.
And so the children, of course, were told, well, you're at risk of this deadly disease and you've got to stay locked in and you can't have school.
You can't have sports.
You can't have a prom.
We're going to put sand into your skate park.
You can't walk on a beach.
You can't swim.
You just can't do anything.
And I mean, that turned out to be, I mean, children were not at risk, right?
And because, you know, again, I believe that it was engineered, the virus is engineered.
So because the virus is engineered, there was no point having any lockdowns because lockdowns are, well, we don't want to accelerate the adaptation of the virus to infecting humans, right?
But if the virus was already engineered to infect humans, you can't do anything about it.
You might as well just open up and let it go through, Right, in my opinion.
So for young people, they don't believe the media.
They don't believe experts.
They don't believe scientists.
They don't believe the World Health Organization.
They don't believe the CDC.
They don't believe the teachers.
They don't believe the parents.
And not so much because everyone got things wrong, but nobody's really admitting.
Like there haven't been any big specials from the media, let's say, saying, okay, we got this wrong.
What did we get wrong?
How do we get it wrong?
And how can we fix it better?
And now, for my generation, it was, you know, the Bill Clinton stuff with Monica Lewinsky, and in particular, the Iraq War, where it's like the media just spouted off all of these horrible lies, got half a, or contributed significantly to getting half a million people killed.
And they don't, there's no circle back.
They just move on to the next topic, move on to the next topic.
So it's pretty wild.
And I think that there's a certain amount of despair as a whole.
All right.
Thank you, Joy.
I appreciate that.
Sepanta says, when I talk to people about the fact that I don't see my father, I prepare for an onslaught of, well, he's your father.
You have to see him.
Families, everything and the like.
However, that's like 5% of the people I come across.
It is pleasantly surprising.
Yeah, that's true.
Any thoughts on how to preserve children's ability to process truth/slash reality while also raising them in the church?
Well, I suppose you'd have to divide it into faith versus reason, into theology and philosophy and science.
Chris says, if one has a tendency to self-erase because they had to do so to survive during childhood, what would be the top one or two things you would do to counteract this in terms of the mechosystem?
Interesting.
Interesting.
Well, I would say that, and I have said this, for the ecosystem elements that protected me from my mother and my father, I would say, thank you so much for your service.
Please keep me posted if anyone else is like that around.
We're going to be around good, healthy, reasonable people, but I need you to scan for the, you know, you're always welcome.
You know, I'll try and keep you safe by not having crazy people in our lives, but I will need you to scan for this kind of stuff.
Right.
So thank them for their service and tell them that you'll keep them safe and then tell them to listen to them if they say anything that is difficult.
All right.
How do you approach, how did you approach screen time with Isabella?
Well, I suppose two things.
One is to join in with her.
So, you know, she's into a game called Dragonvale.
So I would sit and watch and, you know, we collect the gold together and talk about the dragons and how to breed them and all that kind of stuff.
And we got back recently into a game called Rocket League, which she is much better at than I am.
Her spatial reasoning skills are like off the charts.
And so we'll play those.
She doesn't really play any other games.
She's graduated from Minecraft.
What else did she play?
Not much.
So she does, I mean, she texts with friends and all that kind of stuff.
So all that, I'm not going to sort of interfere with that because I don't consider that negative screen time.
She doesn't really like watching movies.
And so she's out of that phase.
She doesn't really watch any shows.
So her screen time is, you know, some homeschooling stuff and texting with friends.
And I don't have any particular issues with that.
So one, you know, join in with your kids in what they're doing.
And number two, you know, just figure out what they do that's more enjoyable, right?
So my daughter really enjoys going for walks, right?
So I'll say, let's go for a walk, right?
And then she's not on her screens and she enjoys those conversations and all of that.
So you're just in competition, right?
All right.
How do you know that young people don't trust the institutions?
Not skeptical, just curious.
I mean, I don't have any particular data other than kids are pretty skeptical to begin with, particularly teenagers, and they got really shafted over COVID.
And nobody's apologizing and nobody's taking any ownership.
And nobody's saying, hey, we're sorry that we took a year or two away from your life for things that didn't turn out to be true.
So I miss Izzy's podcast with you.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Thank you, Abel.
I will let her know.
All right.
Thank you, C. Marsh.
I appreciate the tip.
Plenty of science can mesh with religion.
Depends on how you define God.
If he has to operate inside a set of rules of reality, even if greater than the ones we know, reason doesn't have to conflict food for thought.
I mean, sure, but the degree to which God would be bound within the rules of reality is the degree to which he would be a material being and therefore not God in the traditional sense.
All right.
All right.
Any other questions, comments, issues, challenges?
Whatever is on your mind?
Yeah, walks are great.
Walks are great.
You know, a lot of getting older is realizing that supplements just aren't going to give you really the energy of youth.
And my energy is pretty good.
But, you know, there's all of this.
Well, if you take this supplement, you know, your energy will increase and so on.
I know Mike Cernovich was kind of keen on those and all of that.
And I take a couple of supplements, but yeah, when you get older, it's like, you're just a little more tired.
I mean, I'm pushing 60 and I just don't have exactly the same energy I had.
Still pretty good, but I don't have exactly the same energy I had when I was 20, of course, right?
So, so yeah, walking is good.
It's good exercise for when you get older.
And I remember looking like, wow, I was like, could I wear it down your knees?
And it's like, no, no, because apparently it causes cartilage to be maintained and all of that kind of stuff.
Would you let your kids play with other kids who are spanked by their parents?
I don't.
I mean, I wouldn't really be with, I wouldn't really be around families that spank their kids.
So that wouldn't really be an issue.
Of course, you know, I mean, it's not like everyone my daughter ever spends time with.
I do a full background check.
Somebody says, I have an avoidant attachment style in romantic relationships.
I've been too critical of her body, repeatedly stepped over her boundaries, and generally not been a good support system for her.
How do you suggest I become a more securely attached lover?
So I have an avoidant attachment style.
I've been too critical of her body, repeatedly.
So, I mean, bro, again, I don't know how old you are, but the purpose of romantic relationships is to pair bond so that you can have children.
Like, all of this, like, well, I've done the boundary thing and I've overstepped this and I've criticized her too much on that.
It's like, I mean, the purpose of the car is to be driven, not to be criticized, not to be endlessly fixed, not to be tinkered with.
The purpose of a car is to get you from A to Z. And the purpose of romantic love is to get married and have children.
So I'm not, it's not for you to fix people.
It's not for you to get sex.
It's not for you to get validated.
It's not for any of those things.
It is for getting married and having children.
So if you're not in pursuit of all of that, then I'm really not sure what you're doing in the relationship.
Again, can you share some of your new novel?
I was wondering if anyone would ask.
I certainly can.
A new novel coming out soon.
I don't know about soon because I've still got to rewrite.
I'm still going to do my rewrites.
Are you familiar with the fourth turning?
I am not.
All right.
Yeah, I'm happy to read a chapter if you, because I don't think we have any more calls.
I don't think we have any calls today.
No.
We don't have any calls.
I'm happy to read a chapter.
I'm also happy to answer more questions.
It is your show, my friends.
It is your friends.
Just hit me with a Y if you would like me to read a chapter of the book.
As it is, I can read something that's funnier, if you like.
At least I think it's funny.
Just wait for the feedback here.
Would love a new chapter?
Okay.
Yeah.
Oh, the chapter of the sauna was great.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
Let me boot it up, baby.
Boot it up.
All right.
Let's get here.
So this, let's do a chapter.
So this is, I'm taking a group of young people from teenage years into their 50s and showing how all of the decisions that are a problem later on in their lives arose from bad decisions they made at the beginning and didn't correct.
That's the general thesis of the novel is that.
So this is a let me just open this up here.
So this chapter, I actually just wrote this two days ago.
This chapter is following a woman named Helen, right?
This is about a woman named Helen.
And this is 20 years after the beginning of the novel.
So the novel started when she was 20, and now she is, in fact, 40.
And let me just get to the beginning of the chapter.
And this is chapter 17.
Thank you.
Let me just answer these questions.
All right, have you had any miraculous healings or spiritual awakenings?
No, no, nothing like that.
All right.
Chapter 17.
Helen swore she would not cry as she drove home.
It was her birthday tomorrow.
The big 4-0.
She had forgotten it completely for the moment.
She felt rage against the wipers that never cleaned the goddamn window.
She held the lever, spraying washer fluid uselessly over the sunlit, dusty insect graveyard that obscured her view.
When she was a child, she used to look at the road and tilt her head to fly the double dots on the glass as if they were the wingtips of an airplane.
For almost a year, Helen would lean her sickened head against the glass in the back seat as her parents bickered constantly in the front, turning away from their nagging, venomous profiles, watching the light and dark slide over the car as they drove past the blue sky, green trees, and grimy buildings carved with verbal filth.
She would daydream that lobster-handed space aliens had taken over the earth, and the flickering light and dark were the eons of liberation and tyranny.
As her parents wrestled for endless control over each other, their marriage, and occasionally, terrifyingly, the road itself, so did Helen imagine mankind struggling for freedom from crustaceans in giant helmets.
And on a sunny stretch of highway, where only the skyscraping lampposts occasionally barred the sun, the darkness invisible in a blink, it was easy for Helen to believe that final liberation had been achieved, and the helmet halo lobster lords had been banished forever.
But then, one late afternoon, Helen opened her eyes to the car being swallowed up by a black tunnel.
And there were no parents in the front seat, only lobster claws holding the steering wheel, and strange chittering sounds as the giant insects argued, probably about the best way and place to eat her alive.
And then Helen had woken screaming from her dozing, and her parents immediately started arguing about who had upset her more and why, and just listen for once, and how dare you!
And I never said that, you liar, and you always, and you never, and on and on.
And Helen realized suddenly that she dozed because oblivion was heaven compared to bickering.
And being unconscious was paradise compared to the senseless operations of her scalding senses.
And she strove to doze again, to escape the endless hornets' nests of words in the front seat.
And she had a vivid dream, vision really, of Princess Diana, sweeping into a black, shiny car with a bullet-headed security man and that creepy, swarthy man, and seeing that flawless skin stretched still tight over perfect bones,
her whirlpool of coffee hair bouncing slightly as she closed her eyes, and the racing, screaming flash bulbs circling her car, her mind, her eternal future as a blinding sun, forever at the center of petty asteroids flogging her chemical images for fiat currency,
a white captive in a desert slave auction, haggled over by fat, greasy men with oily foreheads and beads in their beards.
And Helen vividly pictured, saw even, in skin cell detail that her waking eyes could never hope to deliver, Princess Diana's love of the pillar that would bisect the car and shred her flesh from her bones.
Because to be beautiful and haggled over was exhausting.
And the fundamental exhaustion was having to go along with the endless lie, the lie that she was interesting for some reason other than her looks.
And both her parents were very attractive, and all it got them was bickering everywhere they went, and a little girl in the back seat who yearned for a quick death.
Because dozing was better than waking, and death was just super dozing.
Helen was fascinated by wounds and death.
She craned her head to identify Roadkill.
She sat up late among the bodies of the fallen, watching gory movies during sleepovers.
She would sneak medical textbooks from a friend's house and sit in the bathroom paging through elephantine legs and tumors and eye surgeries and goiters and sebaceous cyst lancing and feel prickles of horror that sometimes felt like the only reason her heart had to keep pumping.
And when her friend Amelia showed her, showed her a slender metal nail she had pushed through the ball of her thumb.
Her friend Amelia, who listened to King Kurt and Echo and the Moneyman and Joy Division, and never wanted to be in a room alone with her older brother.
When her friend Amelia showed her the emo drama and deep cave help bellow of cutting yourself, Helen stood on a precipice.
Knowing her own frail alabaster beauty, she felt merged with Amelia's thirst to destroy whatever the lying world called beautiful.
And Helen felt like a priceless work of art bought and sold to dodge taxes and fund crimes.
And that liberation from evil regrettably meant destroying whatever evil called beautiful.
Because whatever evil lusted after always fed crimes, and to sacrifice goddesses starred evil of power.
And Helen did toy with self-harm.
But a strange anger, so different from Amelia's bottomless despair, possessed her.
And rather than destroy herself to spite liars, she would become a flawless siren in order to rule over this serpentine world.
So she turned to obsessive exercise and an eating disorder, and cultivated a sunny personality, and complained about tummy eggs, and kept mountains of stuffed toys on her bed, and lost her virginity to a sweaty, desperate quarterback among the stuffed animals,
feeling very much like a stuffed animal herself, but kept herself spiritually pure for a steady alpha that she only met at Wassega that blinding day on the beach.
In her Car, pushing forty, Helen felt another one of her rocket stages falling away.
This had been happening more and more.
Her scant breasts drooped.
Her knee skin began to sag.
Fine lines radiated from her eyes.
She had regretfully given up laughter years before.
And her belly protruded no matter how many sit-ups she did.
Robert was getting grey and craggy and had developed cold robot crease lungs along his cheeks and wore his extra weight with bulk and authority.
But she was fighting her plumpness with desperate losing attrition.
If she lost weight, she slept poorly, which put haunted shadows under her eyes and ironed her facial skin into aging paper.
If she gained a little weight, youth filled her face out somewhat, but she got neck cricks checking out her cellulite in the mirror.
Her son's skin was like cream, hers like dried beige paint.
Robert aged well.
Helen just dried out.
And battle lines had hardened between them.
Robert had no respect for his wife's career.
He did not roll his eyes, but he never asked questions or drilled into her difficulties.
He never felt the need to woo her boss the way she had to woo Peter.
His needs always came first.
And yes, damn it, he did make a lot more money.
But life was about more than money, Robert.
Yeah, sure, I'll believe that when you stop spending Helen gritted her teeth, staring at the hypnotic flashing of a car, BMW, of course, that had its signal on but refused to change lanes.
She refused to rehash marital arguments in her mind.
They led nowhere.
And what was the point of trying to win an argument with a skilled lawyer with almost 15 years of experience?
Trying to beat Robert in her mind inevitably led to her fantasizing about beating him with a spatula, which alarmed her by both alarming and exciting her.
That little these words had only been spoken once, but Helen heard them all the time now.
That little career of yours, that little project, that little paycheck, that little meeting.
Helen's job was a vain hobby to Robert.
She knew that.
She also knew that she couldn't torture that admission out of him.
Another occasional fantasy that required high, shiny boots, a swinging light bulb, a dingy basement, and a much younger body.
Just to tell me the truth, she would purr, straddling him and kissing his wounds as he wept blood and submitted.
Helen blinked and shook her head suddenly as if chilled droplets had hit her inner ear.
Bez, her boss, had summoned her first thing that morning.
He was an Iranian, no, no, Persian, he always said, who was as smooth and subtle as a Japanese bullet train.
Irresistible, as all truly certain people are, he had been brought up in the garment industry, sewing by candlelight even as a child, before being scooped up and transported to Canada at the age of nine.
Obsessive and fastidious, he dressed to absolute perfection and lined everything up on his desk at perfect right angles.
Helen would mess with his crossword pen from time to time, changing its angle slightly, but it was always fixed without complaint or comment.
He was friendly in that certain manipulative Middle Eastern manner, calling people my friend and shaking their hands slowly with both of his and doing them favors and remembering their wives' birthdays, And was not beyond calling someone boss in particularly tough negotiations.
And he was a servant to them and controlled them that way, by making their vanity dopamine dependent on his respect and submission.
Bez was very successful, of course, and flirty in a way that never quite made it to HR, because he had a swarthy, intimate, pirate air to him that women preferred to complain about only to each other, rolling their eyes and touching their collarbones rather than to the cold-eyed Karens in HR, who lived only to buzz-kill whatever threatened to be enjoyable at the office.
Oh, that's just Bes being Bez, they would murmur.
He insisted on first names at all times, and would not even answer to Mr. Ahmadi, simply staring into space until the magic syllable was uttered, which unlocked his sparkling eyes, good graces, and grandiloquent gestures.
He had no trace of an accent, even when upset, his inflection never faltered, but he had veered more towards British phrases than coarse Canadian A's and Yaz and Aboots.
His son was a hockey player, and Bez would shout from the cold stacked metal pews Good shot as if his son were blasting away at Skeets on a Scottish moor or languidly playing a three-day cricket match.
Helen, thank you.
Yes, thank you for joining me.
Bez smiled that morning as Helen entered his office.
See, that was the sort of thing you could never get Bezon.
Joining me.
It was flirty.
Everyone knew it, but he seemed so innocent that the liberal women, all the women, it seemed, felt a slight flutter of attraction, but just told themselves they should be tolerant of his turns of phrase because he was an exotic immigrant.
How are you?
Can I pour you a coffee?
I have new beans from Somalia, exquisite on the tongue.
Helen almost laughed at the image of Bez in a sultan's outfit, spoon-feeding her Somalian coffee froth.
He was hospitable to the point where you felt you might need a pregnancy test.
I'm well, Bess.
Helen flicked her hair back.
No coffee, thanks, though.
She opened her notepad, yellowed paper leather-bound that Bez had gifted her after picking it up at a Renaissance fair his daughter dragged him to.
She had to shred her notes every night before going home.
Bez sighed, settling back in his leather chair.
Ah, but this will not be needed, he murmured, waving his hand.
Her senses alerted.
Helen had the urge to undo a button on her blouse.
She shook her head almost imperceptibly.
It has been nine years since we got together during the day.
He interlaced his fingertips.
Bound together in this mission to reclaim the old ways of dressing and being.
You're philosophical this morning.
You should see me late at night.
That is when I am truly philosophical.
He leaned forward suddenly.
But I am sad today, which I now regret telling you because the news is about you.
Helen blinked.
Me?
Bez between his teeth.
Ah, you know, the business world is full of it is hard to say, but it needs to be said, I think.
We have to make money, but the mission should underpin all that.
Money is the means to the mission.
My late father used to tell me about the old days, the old ways in Iran before the revolution.
He laughed softly.
The women had legs like giraffes, gazelles, and the men dressed as if for job interviews every day.
He leaned forward, further miming eating.
My father would shave and wear a tie every day, even Sundays, after church, and eat like this, because he hated any mess on his clothes.
Bez laughed.
My mother used to say that if my father were to be shot, he would be more troubled by the hole in his clothing than the wound to his body.
And I do love this civilization represented by this office.
It may be a losing mission to fight against his lips curled.
Casual Fridays and business casual.
But it is a fight worth going down for.
You cannot really say a harsh word in fine clothing.
Women don't nag in wide-brimmed hats.
Have you ever seen a child running wild in a restaurant if he and his parents are well dressed?
Fine clothes are the soft skin of civilization itself.
They remind us to be more than animals.
They approach the platonic, the angelic, and to have thoughts and actions worthy of a apparel.
You know, I once spent a day in sweatpants as an experiment, and ended up eating a whole bag of Doritos and wiping my hands on my behind, sorry to say.
I went from man to animal in a single day, Bez shuddered.
Never again.
I would sleep in a suit if I could.
It would give me more civilized dreams.
Helen nodded slowly.
She quite enjoyed his ramblings.
She got paid either way.
Bez sighed deeply.
And you have been, Helen's ears pricked up past tense.
An intimate part of that mission.
You have a flawless clothing sense and a magnificent way of displaying those clothes.
You are a credit to Apparel, yourself, and me, of course.
I love the clothes, of course, to the degree that my wife long ago gave up on jealousy.
But I am rambling and being a coward.
Helen said nothing, her heart was pounding.
How is Robert?
Well, he's good.
And his career?
I saw him in the paper three weeks ago.
Yes, Helen never said yeah around Bez.
He's going from strength to strength.
Excellent.
And the boys, how is your lineage?
They are well, strong?
Yes, thank you.
Good.
Good, that gives me some peace.
Bez sighed again.
I tried my best, Helen.
It is all these damnable computers.
Bez was the only person Helen had ever heard use the word damnable.
You have always talked to travel agents, hotel clerks.
You put me on a conveyor belt from strength to strength.
I hope you have always felt appreciated for that, Helen.
Helen swallowed.
I have, thank you.
So, of course, there are all these new websites and programs for scheduling and managing appointments.
It was my daughter that told me the Minx.
Why are you so old-fashioned?
She keeps wanting to know.
Bez leaned forward conspiratorially.
She wears sweatpants when I am not home.
I see it when I come home early.
I would rather she were he waved his hand.
No, that is a thought unworthy.
The tweed forbids it.
But these vendors keep pestering me, and they presented to the board last month.
And we have a little Iraqi who has run all the numbers and made all the promises, and we don't need ten support agents.
Bez always calls her an agent.
We only need two.
Am I Yes.
Let go, I am sad to say.
Bez got up and started making a coffee using the small gunmetal machine on his desk.
Even if you don't drink it, indulge me for making it.
Eight of us are going?
Well, I should not speak of the others, of course, but your math is spot on.
But Bez, it's been ten years.
You dress, Robert.
We've socialized together like countless times.
We go to Vegas.
I've you know I've constantly been poached, recruited, I've never even looked at another boss.
I know, I know.
This is like a breakup.
But Robert is doing well, and you have recruiters eyeing you from the wings.
This should give us both comfort.
Helen was about to speak, but Bez Held up his hands.
It is a sad day, my friend.
I love the numbers in fashion, but not in business.
But we all answer to someone.
I have these bean counters.
They say we can save a million dollars a year.
That is a lot.
I hate translating people into fabric, but that is a lot of clothing.
Two stores in good locations.
And if we do not take this money, it is lying on the table.
Others will, and do better over time.
And then we are all on the street, and bad clothing takes over, and we all get buried in sweatpants and Doritos.
I cannot lose the mission without a fight.
My dear Helen, and I did fight for you.
And you know that I did.
But I also have not helped you by making you write everything on paper and avoid computers.
But I have seen so many lawsuits, and I am in the downward slide of life.
So everyone knows that you have no computer skills, which is my fault.
And the new hires, well, they are less than half your cost.
And I have to get a cell phone.
It is a tragedy, but But perhaps this liberates you to do even more with your life.
I have been most selfish over the years, Helen.
I have kept you for reasons of great affection.
We both know that you could rule the world, like your namesake of old, instead of trailing after me in Vegas and reminding me of my obligations.
I always try, I got this from my father as well, to look at problems as opportunities.
Why not start your own company, Helen?
You are more than capable, or take an MBA and rule some kingdom.
Why should Robert have all the He pushed the tiny coffee cup forward and shook his head?
No, no, no, no, I will not speak anything against our good friend Robert.
Helen, how is your heart, my friend?
The swarthy kindness, the gentle directness, caused Helen's ice people heart to sweat sudden sorrow.
I'm shocked.
Sad, it's a lot to take in.
Yes, yes.
And perhaps you can take some time to enjoy your children before they flee the nest.
The teenage years are like the toddler years.
You have to watch everything.
And Robert is doing well.
This could be a good time to reassess.
Ah, but I hate that I'm giving you advice.
It could be seen as me believing that you cannot think of these things yourself.
Bez's soft voice trailed off, his dark chocolate eyes narrowing slightly with medieval concern.
He sat in stillness and patience.
Helen took a deep breath.
When is this when does this all take effect?
Bez spread his hands expansively.
Ah, the computer beasts are all ready to go.
We don't need you to stay and train anyone.
We have a generous severance, of course.
Though I lost the big war, I won this much.
You can slay if you want, but there is no real need.
Take the time, take the money, reassess, regrow, re align.
Think of this as liberation, my dear.
Helen felt a sudden anger in her chest.
Rage, almost.
She had a sudden urge to fling the tiny, hot, frothy coffee cup at Bez's perfect beard.
My dear, repeated Bez, drawing back slightly, you are upset.
Helen took a deep breath, fighting for self-control.
Scraps of useless protests flew through her mind, falling unspoken from her lips like tossed baby birds bouncing down a cliffside.
I don't know what to say.
Bez nodded.
She could see immigrant tales of hardship and opportunity forming in his throat, but somehow for once, he restrained himself.
Again, I am sorry.
No, it's it's I just need a moment.
And some privacy, I fear, said Bez decisively, the steely CEO soul emerging in a flash.
He stood and crossed his office to the ornate door.
Take the room.
For as long as you need.
Use my phone if you need to.
Bez closed the door.
With relief, Helen could see, or imagine she wasn't sure which.
Stung by a sudden compulsion to move, Helen stood up, walked around the desk, and settled Into Bez's plush chair, scowling at the residual warmth.
She pictured dictating to a younger version of herself, bringing her along, grooming her, sharing secrets and gossip.
She imagined men filing past her desk, wanting and promising and betraying her in equal measure.
She imagined having a beard and balls and a hairy carpet chest and assuming control without having to manipulate or be attractive or and here her imagination faltered and a sudden lump formed in Helen's throat.
Who am I without my looks?
She had sailed into Bez's employment on charm and humor and his obvious appreciation of her looks.
The women who worked for him referred to themselves as his harem.
Helen was called the first wife.
Men appreciated a pretty face.
This was not a sexual risk for the most part, although one manager had to be fired after literally stalking Helen and taking pictures of her inside her home.
She had the power to please men, to raise their status and thus their income, and for this she had been paid mightily too much.
This had always been a risk.
She was paid to be pretty.
Her subsidy was fading, and she was falling back to the position of having to compete with, to compete with younger women.
Was this the source of her rage?
She was certain that the two new women were younger, prettier, and thus conveyed higher status.
Helen was no longer a hot young thing, but a sort of faded auntie.
Her pay was no longer prestige, but charity.
Who am I without my looks?
Well, I can still be a trophy, but my boss would have to be like 90 or so.
The image of Anna Nicole Smith arose in her mind.
And Princess Diana, of course, for the first time in years.
Who defers to me when I am fading?
What is a watercolor worth after a day in the washing rain?
Ah, it was too pathetic.
Too poetic.
She wasn't a fractured statue or a stained ball gown.
She was just aging.
Replaceable.
Mortal.
So that's my chapter.
That's my chapter.
I'm quite pleased with Helen as a character.
And I find Bez quite hilarious myself.
I love the fact that he'd spent a day in sweatpants and ate a whole bag of Doritos the moment he got out of his fine clothing.
So that's my chapter.
All right.
Let's see here.
what have you got to say Somebody says, I don't know if you remember me asking you about how to cultivate grit and resilience in my daughter.
And we got to the bottom of the fact that I wasn't honoring my husband's approach and leadership in that regard.
I've since apologized to both of them and rectified the behaviors.
Daughter is blossoming.
Husband is very happy in the change with the change as well.
Just wanted to thank you for your guidance.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate that.
BMW, of course, LOL.
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you for subscribing.
Well, hopefully he pays a very generous severance package.
Yeah, this is great.
That scene with Helen in the car reminded me of my trips in the car when I was a kid.
I was so immersed in that little passage.
It's like I was actually reliving those memories.
Oh, thank you.
I appreciate that.
I get the reaction.
Your writing is so incredible, says someone.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Your fiction writing is beautiful.
I'm not sure why, but I find it hard to read books in digital Or audio form.
I still listen and love them, but I would love to be able to have physical copies one day so I can go back to them often.
Oh, thank you.
That's really great.
100 out of 10.
I will need some healing after this again.
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I appreciate that.
Yes.
Well, thank you.
That's great.
Yeah, it's a very different style of writing for me to work so deep in individual characters.
This is not an action movie.
These are character portraits.
What I'm trying to do is dip into important moments in people's lives.
You know, most we can all think back of this like really, really important days where we sort of had to make big decisions or something like that or something really big happened to us.
And so I'm trying to sort of laser in on the pivoting moment days.
And so I'm very, very pleased with the way the book is coming.
And it's a very different, I've never written a book like this before.
Also, in this manner, where I'm just really sniffing my way forward with instincts.
I just have a, this is important, and try to write the chapter and see how well it all hangs together.
So I'm very, very pleased about all of that.
All right.
Any other questions, comments?
Whatever is on your mind?
Wow.
Thank you.
Oh, you're welcome.
I'm glad that you guys enjoy it because, you know, the book will go out for free, I'm sure, and this is part of what you're funding.
And, you know, this is the kind of stuff for me.
I write the kind of books that I would most like to read.
All right.
Fantastic.
It's tragic when one is valued for their veneer rather than who they really are.
Are the insect and crustacean metaphors about the veneer or exterior rather than substance?
So the crustacean metaphors, it's in inhumanity, and Helen is very much out of the orbit of her parents.
They are as distant from her, while just being in the front seat, as lobsters are from people on the land.
They are as distant and foreign.
It shows the crustacean analogies are a total lack of connection to parents.
The total lack of connection to parents leads her to overvalue her own looks as a means of gaining value.
Because if your parents like you for who you are, then your prettiness is important or nice, but it's not foundational.
But she has no connection to her parents at all, which is why she views them as crustaceans, which is, I mean, it's about as foreign a thing as you can get from humanity.
Not only do they live underwater, but they are utterly foreign in terms of physiology.
Like they're not like monkeys or giraffes, which is closer.
So that is just showing the absolute distance that she has.
And when she says humanity is ruled over by crustaceans, she means that she has no connection with her parents who were in charge of her life.
All right.
The characters you've presented so far are so relatable.
I appreciate that.
Thanks.
You make me value the celestial truths of my faith so very much, lest I be owned by earthly treasure that I can use.
I'm glad that helps.
The childhood scene of the car where she wishes for perpetual unconsciousness is a great preparation for the scene with her boss, too.
Oh, that's interesting.
Tell me more.
I hadn't made that connection, but it's not like the writer always knows what's going on because it's an unconscious process.
Crustaceans and insects are just like humans.
True.
Good metaphor.
Though they might not be any worse as rulers than those we have now.
Yeah, that's true.
At least they can't be pedos, right?
So I'm just waiting for James to get back with his explication of what I am doing.
And I've written one of the cruelest scenes I've ever written.
I won't do that one now, but maybe we'll do that next weekend.
But I've written one of the cruelest things I've ever written.
Just absolutely vicious.
Maybe being back on Twitter is helping me with cruelty.
Thank you.
All right.
Let me just see here.
Yeah, I'm trying to be as relentlessly naturalistic as possible, and I'm trying to show that the characters are all bound into their early childhood stuff.
And because they don't deal with their early childhood stuff, it dominates and dictates their adult lives, and thus they recreate the messes they were trying to flee from.
All right.
Let me just double-check here.
Zoom out.
There we go.
Okay, good.
I didn't have any callers that I was missing.
That is all right.
All right.
I'm not sure if James is typing or not.
But anyway, James, you can sort of tell me if we can't get this in here.
See with her boss.
Is it because she's helpless with her boss too?
She's helpless and powerless with her boss.
Any suggestions on practicing active listening?
You have to be egoless.
So don't think about what people are saying.
Just focus on what they're saying.
I'm trying to express this.
Sorry.
Well, her parents are pretty and end up in hell.
And because they end up in hell and are selfish and trying to dominate each other, they're used to dominating the world with their attractiveness, her parents.
And then they end up trying to dominate each other, but it doesn't work because they're in an intimate relationship.
And so then Helen grows up.
Well, the only value that she has is looks.
And that causes her to get trapped in an underling position.
She's the secretary to a CEO of a garment company, as you can tell, right?
Do you know if you will make fiction books available in physical form one day?
I mean, it certainly could happen.
It certainly could happen.
And listen, I mean, if any of you want a project, I'm happy to give you the source stuff if you want to get the books set up for printing.
I'm certainly happy for that as a whole.
But it's not something that I'm going to focus on because the cost benefit is not worth it, right?
So if I do a show, I can get some donations.
If I do a private call, I get paid for that.
But I don't really think I would make much money.
And we've been down this road before if you've not been around for a while.
Oh, yes.
I've been down this road before of making physical copies of books.
It doesn't really work out.
Wishing for this myself.
Yeah.
I mean, when we first moved to Canada, I lived with my, I think he was a half-uncle in Whitby.
And they had a dog, a collie.
And I would dream about being that dog.
I would love to be that dog.
Dog just got to lie around and didn't have to go to school and didn't have to change countries or find new friends.
It was really blissful to think of being that dog, just lying in the sun and getting fed and running around and rolling and stuff.
And I remember talking about this in therapy.
My therapist said, oh, there's a movie, My Life as a Dog, where not being yourself, not being human, not like, I didn't want to die, but I envied the dog massively.
And I was sort of trying to translate that.
I do have a sort of time problem in that I don't think she would be a little girl.
I don't think she could be 40 and a little girl when Princess Diana died, because Princess Diana died, what, 27 years ago?
So I don't think she'd be 40 and a little girl when Princess Diana died.
So I have a little bit of a time issue with that.
James says, and if you spend too long there, you wake up to things being too late.
Comes back in a rush.
She has this realization after her beauty is gone that she no longer has that value.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, I always want to write warnings against beauty.
I always want to write warnings against beauty because beauty is such a power and it is so intoxication.
No better life for an animal than a pampered house cat in a home with an older woman.
I suppose, yeah, except you still don't get to go out and fight and chase mice and have sex and make kittens and all of that.
So it's a zoo animal situation.
All right, guys.
Well, listen, I'll stop here.
I forgot to eat today, so I should probably go and get some food in.
And do appreciate everyone's time.
I did a show this morning, which was a debate with a math expert on two and two make four.
Wild the stuff that I get to get into in life.
But thanks again.
I will, of course, express my deep and humble and grateful appreciation to your support as a whole.
And I don't know.
Do you want to make this public?
We didn't talk about anyone's private stuff.
Do you want this to stay private?
Do you hit me with a P for private and P for public?
Hit me with an N if you would like to keep this private for donors only or whether you think this could go out to the audience as a whole, as a general show.
Hit me with an N if you would rather keep it private.
Hit me with a Y if you're okay with it going public.
I'm just curious.
It's your show, basically, because you're donors.
So I leave it up to you.
Let's just get LeFeedback.
Yes, public.
Yes, public.
Public is fine with me.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Okay, well, I will get that.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate that.
And have yourselves a glorious evening.
Of course, we're back next week.
Same bat time, same bat channel.
Lots of love from up here, my friends.
Take care.
I'll talk to you soon.
▲
Export Selection