Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - THE TRUTH ABOUT SMALLPOX BLANKETS! Twitter/X Space

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Oct. 10, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:11:16

THE TRUTH ABOUT SMALLPOX BLANKETS! Twitter/X Space

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	Yes, yes, good evening, everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	8th of October 2025, a sminch and a shave and a hair past 7 o'clock.
	And you know, I I'm also wanted to thank you guys.
	I always want to show my appreciation because holy crap, do you guys do some great stuff, great questions, and uh you can't be a great batter without a great pitcher.
	I mean, that's a bit more adversarial than but you you know when when I was in acting school, also known as life, but when I was in acting school, it's really tough to be a better actor than the person opposite you.
	If they're bad and wouldn't, and I remember doing a scene from a long day's journey in tonight with a Chinese girl when I was in high school.
	No, no, it was and sorry, it wasn't long days journey in tonight, it was a glass menagerie.
	These details matter in the story.
	And I just remember her uh Kirstan Martha, you know, Christian Martha.
	And she, you know, gave it her best, but she didn't really speak English and certainly didn't have the cultural history to understand, you know, what he was uh talking about and all of that.
	Uh, Tennessee Williams, Tom, as he was known.
	So it was kind of tough to be a good actor.
	On the other hand, when I was at the National Theatre School, don't you know?
	Um, there were some better actors than me, I'll tell you that.
	And doing scenes with them was a marvel.
	Like you really can not be better than the person you're working with or your audience.
	And Freddie said I sing about as well as the audience wants me to.
	Freddie the M. So had a great speech yesterday because people were talking with me about Bitcoin, and it's really important for me to thank you for this.
	And of course, I've done all of these call-in shows, thousands of call-in shows over the last uh almost 20 years.
	And those call-in shows have brought me to some heights of insight along with the other person.
	It's not like they're just propelling me up like they're firing some circus cannon and putting me into the stratosphere.
	But the conversations, the openness, the directness, the challenges.
	Uh again, I would really recommend Surviving a Narcissist, which is a show that just went out yesterday.
	If you've got selfish people in your life, and pretty much don't we all, or at least I used to, uh, getting uh understanding where they're coming from to sympathize with people who don't have sympathy, to have empathy for the people with for people without empathy is a real challenge in life.
	But if we can master that, if we can master that, my gosh.
	We might just save everything.
	All right.
	So thank you.
	Thank you, thank you, thank you.
	Well, what are we going to chat about tonight?
	Well, what you want to chat about, of course, right?
	You can ask away.
	You can ask away on uh X. You can type stuff into the chats on the other various platforms.
	I will type here.
	James, I'm sure we'll have a look at X and see if there's anything good coming in from there.
	So I'm happy to chat with you all.
	And you know what?
	I have a topic, but I am nothing if not Bendy.
	I'm very bendy.
	So let's bring on a caller.
	Let us bring on a caller.
	And oh caramello.
	Caravaggio, caramello.
	What's on your mind if you want to unmute?
	I'm beyond thrilled to hear.
	Hey Stephen.
	Uh pleased to see you again.
	It's Marcos Paulo Candeloro from Brazil, a political journalist.
	Uh how are you doing?
	I'm well thanks.
	How are you doing?
	I'm fine, thanks.
	I was reading yesterday about democracy.
	Uh may we discuss it a little bit.
	Sure.
	Uh Plato said uh the democracy.
	It's a ironical movement, uh tyrannical system.
	Uh when he described it, uh Atkins was uh ruled by uh an elite.
	Uh uh Athenian citizens, uh which was a minority uh at the time.
	And he saw it as a degenerated uh government because the people who was in the power uh they didn't uh uh ruled for their well the the the well-of the people uh they ruled for their own interests uh adapting that to the uh to the more uh uh the modern democracies.
	Would wouldn't we live in in uh the tyrannical uh tyrannical regime because we live in the in the dictatorship of the majority.
	Uh the 51% rules, the other 49%.
	Uh so if one side wants coke uh and that side is 51%, the 49% that likes Pepsi has to drink coke.
	Anyway, so uh wouldn't that uh wouldn't be that a form of tyranny?
	Well, it is, of course.
	So there are two significant barriers, I think to democracy.
	So the first barrier is imagine that there's a company a company called sorry, a country called Cocistan.
	Cocistan, not Kakistan, Cocistan.
	And it's run by the corporation Coca-Cola.
	And let's say that Cocistan, Coca-Cola also has a monopoly on all the education.
	Now, what is Coca-Cola, the company going to teach the students about Coca-Cola, the beverage, in its monopoly Coca-Cola's schools.
	Well, it's going to teach them that it's a fun beverage, it's really not bad for the teeth.
	You know, just brush your teeth, maybe limit it a little bit, but it's really associated with a great time, and uh they'll never gonna do the experiments where you drop the corroded penny into a a bottle of pop and and see what it does.
	You're never gonna get the truth about Coca-Cola from the Coca-Cola company, if it runs the education system, right?
	So I remember when I was in Daycare, there used to be in Don Mills, I don't know if this still is probably isn't, but there used to be a Coca-Cola bottling plant.
	And I worked there in summers, and we would take the kids like all day, we'd take them all over the place, the Center Island and and uh to the CNE and uh to Canada's Wonderland and things like that.
	Which had just opened.
	And back, you know, when they had uh like real dinosaur exhibits, yeah, I'm making an old guy joke.
	Well, I still can't, while I still remember how to make a joke.
	And I remember uh all of the kids came in and we did a core a tour of the Coke bottling plant and so on, and then we sat in uh um a fairly small auditorium where they had an A V set up, and the A V setup, they started playing the Coca-Cola commercials.
	And the kids all enthusiastically jumped up, danced and sang along, and I just remember, you know, this sort of hand-rubbing executive of the Coca-Cola company just like they know all of our jingles, mission accomplished, we have implanted bubbly sugar bomb brain into the uh into the kids.
	And I mean that was just commercials, right?
	So the problem with democracy is the government's first thing they do is try and take over the educational system.
	And once they take over the educational system, they don't teach you any uh principles that would limit the expansion of power.
	They don't teach you about economics, they don't teach you about the law, they don't teach you about government really, uh, and they certainly don't teach you anything about freedom, they don't teach you about the true nature of the state, the one thing that differentiated it from all the other social entities, that it has a legal obligation to initiate the use of force.
	This is something that presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama have uh talked about, so don't shoot the messenger, uh, literally, please.
	So when the governments take over the educational system, they will fill you full of nonsense propaganda and garbage, like smallpox blankets.
	You know, we'll we'll get to that uh in a sec, because I've been having that debate on uh X. So that's the one thing you just won't get any information that's useful to you as a voter.
	You know, what is it that they say uh uh, hey, is there any way that public school could teach me anything about the economy or how money works or interest rates or how to do my taxes, how to fill out a job application.
	No.
	Lava is also magma.
	I'm sorry, go ahead.
	No, no, uh uh was just telling that here in Brazil, absolutely nothing.
	You say it is teach it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, nothing.
	So, in in a system which is founded on the fact that the ignorance of the law, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
	They won't teach you anything about the law.
	At a system where you are voting on the coerced movement of trillions of dollars, they won't teach you smack about the economy.
	They won't teach you smack about morality or philosophy or the coercive nature of state operations.
	They won't teach you the freedom movements, they won't teach you anything about anything.
	You'll get mitosis versus meiosis.
	I remember doing a presentation in grade nine about why planes fly, right?
	Because they have more bulge on the top of the wing than on the bottom, still remember it, and therefore it's there's a lift.
	There's a lift to it, right?
	Why planes fly?
	I mean, that's cool.
	That's nice, but that's hobby stuff.
	That's not important stuff.
	And you'll get and of course, values have to be stripped out of education as it gets more and more multicultural because whatever you say is going to offend someone who believes something different.
	So this is why you can't get values or morals-based education.
	It just all gets emptied out.
	I still remember OAT, opposite angle theorem.
	I still remember triangle inequality.
	Oh, was it gonna be triang triangle inequality theorem?
	No, because that would be T I T. No, no, no, it's triangle inequality relations.
	And it is all just that's absolute errant nonsense.
	I remember learning I remember spending a month learning how to do long division in algebra, something my brother was very helpful at helping me learn.
	Algebra long division.
	How long how how many times have I done algebraic long division since?
	Zero.
	Zero.
	I remember nothing of value from school because I already learned how to read and write before I got to school.
	You could say it taught me some basic math.
	Okay, yeah, fine, whatever.
	But about 99.9% of supposed information that is fired like a canon into your brain in school passes through you like you've got a severe case of Delibelli.
	So it's all nonsense and noise, a humiliation ritual taught by statistically the dumbest people around, the least intelligent people go into education as a whole.
	And you learn you learn nothing.
	I mean, for example, uh, look at 1984, right?
	1984, not the year, but the book, written in 1948, he just flipped the numbers.
	Almost found it odd that George Orwell's adopted son became an agricultural implement salesman in the outer Hebrides or something like that.
	But anyway, I remember reading his wife's biography for some reason, along with Churchill's mother's biography as well.
	But anyway.
	So 1984 was literally taught in schools, and it did nothing.
	Animal Farm 1984, I don't think they're taught anymore, but then what did they do to prevent any of this?
	No, nothing.
	Don't teach any parenting.
	Of course you can't, because if you teach good parenting practices, the kids are gonna go home and say, my teacher says you're a bad parent.
	Your phones blow up and you get drowned, Robert De Niro, Brazil style in red tape.
	So that's number one.
	Number two, uh, as to why, why it can't work.
	I'm sort of having this argument, uh debate, a civilized back and forth of ideas on X regarding uh gold and intrinsic value.
	So let me tell you something, my friends.
	I know it's going to rebel against you, you're gonna rebel against it, it's gonna stick in your core sideways like a bone-erekt mackerel in your craw, but there is no such thing as intrinsic value.
	No, no, no, but food has intrinsic value.
	Nope.
	It doesn't.
	There's no such thing as value in the thing itself.
	Value is what you want.
	If you're a chubby chaser, you like girls with uh a little bit more horizontal than vertical.
	If you prefer your girls' pickup sticks thin to the point where you're hugging three garden rakes with a bra on, then you don't like that.
	The fat has value to the chubby chaser, the skinny has value to the rake hugger.
	Gold has value, intrinsic value.
	Nope, no, it doesn't.
	It really doesn't.
	Because I mean, there's countless examples of this when Europeans came to the new world, I guess the old world for the people who've been there for 17,000 years.
	They came over from the Straits in Siperia, they settled and they got mad at the people who settled after.
	But I remember being in Alaska some years ago, and I was actually it was pretty wild, just by the by, sorry for tangenting a bit, but uh uh a straight line is torture to me, and hopefully not to you.
	But we went, uh my family we went on a hike uh in the Alaskan uh outback, and there was a guide who took us along, and he was in the army, and his knees were shot, and he said, Yeah, buy and burn, right?
	They just stuff you full of painkillers, and it doesn't matter what you what happens to your physique afterwards, and a number of army guys have known with bad backs, bad knees, and uh shoulders and other kinds of things is pretty tragic.
	And shockingly, even though it was kind of the middle of nowhere, he knew my work, so we had a really nice chat about that.
	But he was telling me the story, which I'm sure you've heard from other people before, which goes something like this.
	Well, the Europeans came to Alaska, and there were natives living in Alaska.
	Now they weren't the Inuit, because they were way further north, but there were natives living in Alaska.
	And the Europeans occasionally would see some lovely shiny metallic chunks sitting around, and they'd say, What's that?
	said, Oh, well, we called it whatever they called it, right?
	Pilatus.
	And the Europeans said, What?
	Just lying around?
	They're like, yeah, you know, we think it's pretty.
	Sometimes we we uh put it by the fire so we can see the flicker, but you know, most of it just stays in the river.
	And they're like, what?
	What do you mean?
	Okay, can you take me to where this river is that has all of this shiny metal in it?
	That would be excellent.
	And so the natives took the Europeans to the rivers, and they were carpeted in places with gold.
	The gold had no value to the natives, can't wear it, can't eat it, they don't have a trade or an economy, they don't need the divisibility and fungibility, and they don't need the portability and all the other Aristotelian things that make a currency worthwhile.
	It was just some yellow rocks.
	That's it, just yellow rocks.
	And when I first explained this to my daughter, I said, So imagine that we find out that in the universe, the most highly sought after collector's item is an orange leaf from a maple tree.
	And she's like, Well, they're everywhere.
	And I'm like, Well, yes.
	They we don't care.
	We just let them rot and fertilize the next round of trees and plants, and we just let them rot.
	And we view them as an annoyance to be raked up.
	But let's say it was the most like the absolute tulip holland mania that people would come from all over the galaxy just to get one of these leaves.
	So the natives didn't care about the gold.
	And the Europeans did.
	I mean, another example, and I won't give you more than one, because we don't more than two, we don't need more than two, it's a smart bunch.
	Another example is uh oil.
	Before the internal combustion engine as a whole, oil, if you drilled, it sucked.
	Well, yeah, you sucked it out.
	It was like, oh man, there's oil here.
	That's no good.
	We can't get through that to get any potential gold or copper or iron or whatever, right?
	This sucks.
	Our plants are gonna taste all greasy.
	So we don't want so they would just drill somewhere else or maybe try and drain out a car.
	It was just a waste product.
	It was just a waste product.
	And that's it.
	But when there's a big demand for oil, Pauly soil.
	Pauly style, what do you do that, right?
	Yeah.
	Yo.
	So when there's a big demand for oil, then suddenly you drill for oil, and if you get oil, you're thrilled.
	And if you don't get oil, you're sad, whereas before, if you got oil, you were sad.
	You didn't get oil, you were thrilled.
	And that's that's the way that it is.
	No intrinsic value.
	You say, oh, but but what about water?
	We need water to live.
	Does that not have intrinsic value?
	Not in and of itself.
	If you're dying of thirst in the desert, you will give your entire life savings and possibly your left kidney for a bottle of water because you're gonna die otherwise.
	You'll give everything.
	If you've just had three bottles of water and you're waterlogged, you will pay nothing for an additional bottle of water.
	So there's no value in the specific bottle of water.
	Now, it's true, you say, ah, yes, but people food, people need food to live.
	That's true.
	That's true.
	Except well, there's two examples of this.
	If you're severely anorexic, you will eat very little food because you have body dysmorphia.
	Number one.
	Number two, what if you're a you're on a hunger strike?
	And refusing food has value to you because you're going to hopefully achieve some political goal or aim or raise publicity for X, Y, and Z, and you're on a hunger strike, and therefore not having food is a value to you.
	There is nothing you can find out there that has value baked into the atomic structure.
	The substance and physical properties and physical laws do not produce value.
	They do not produce value.
	And the reason that that's important is that if you think there's such a thing as objective value, that opens the way to central planning of the economy.
	Well, I know what people I know what's valuable to people.
	And so you end up with a push economy from totalitarian central planners, saying, well, I know what's best.
	You don't.
	You don't know what's best.
	You don't know what people want, you don't know what people value.
	If we knew what people wanted and valued, then whoever knew that would end up owning most of the known universe because they'd be able to predict the prices of things based upon people's future needs and preferences.
	You don't even know what people want and need in the present, in the absence of a free market price system.
	A free market price system is a telepathic view into the sum total choices of everyone in the world, or at least to the degree to which it is a free market.
	It's an incredible thing.
	It is a free mechanism by which you know what people actually want.
	Not what they say they want, you know, everybody can say they want anything, but what people actually tangibly materially skin in the game want.
	If there's a shortage of copper in a particular area, then the price of copper gets bid up.
	And because you see, oh, the price of copper is rising over there, I'm gonna ship some copper over there, and then it pushes the price back down.
	It's pull based upon people actually rolling them up and slapping down those dollar bills on the counter.
	People are actually trading dollars or some unit of currency, and price is an incredible mechanism by which you know what people actually want.
	Not what they say they want, but what they actually want.
	So the reason I'm saying all of this is that democracy can't work because the government is supposed to do things you said for the good of the people.
	They don't know.
	Get ready, I'm gonna be loud.
	They don't know smack about what the people want.
	They don't know smack about what the people want.
	And even if they knew, they wouldn't care.
	Countless studies have been done showing that there's virtually zero correlation between what people want and what those in power do.
	I mean, they'll promise you some stuff for sure.
	I mean, they'll promise you stuff.
	Hey, baby.
	I'm gonna put on some Barry White.
	We're gonna lay down.
	I'm gonna oil up your clavicle, leave you little pools of seduction there.
	I'm gonna chew a little bit on your ear, and I'm gonna give you everything you want, baby.
	Oh, I came, I'm gone.
	Bye.
	Peace out.
	I'll tell you anything you want.
	But there's no obligation by which you can get what you want.
	If you vote for Bob, Bob makes all these promises.
	Well, Bob doesn't have to keep any of those promises.
	What's the price?
	Sheila Cobbs?
	Was it Hamilton?
	Said she was going to get rid of the GST.
	Or she was going to resign.
	And then I think people pressured her with all of this sort of stuff, and then she ended up just I think she quit and then just ran for election and won again.
	But not the musical, but the uh Steeltown in um Ontario.
	So let's say you go up to some politician and say, hey man, you gotta do what I want, because I voted for you.
	The politician doesn't even know if you voted for him because voting is anonymous.
	So there's absolutely no way for you to enforce anything whatsoever.
	I mean, you can't get a frickin' cell phone without a contract you sign in your children's uh blood.
	But people can make all of these wild promises to you and not do it, and what can you do?
	What can you do?
	You have no reco- Oh, but you know, in a in a couple of years we could re-elect them.
	Well, not if they import people who can vote for them, then you don't matter at all, do you?
	So, yeah, it's um it's really sad.
	It's really sad.
	So the issue of education is corrupting, and the issue that nobody knows what people want in the absence of a price system, and a government is the opposite of a price system means even if they did want to do what was best for society, they would have no idea.
	Because the only thing politicians can know is what people are currently yelling about.
	Which means that small concentrated organized groups of people can make a whole lot of noise, right?
	They can make a whole lot of noise.
	And the price it's different from the price system, because with the price system, you don't just go out and protest and wave a sign and get mad and and and yell and and all of that and shoot at times, but with the price system, you're actually putting your own money down so you know what people actually absolutely want.
	But the the political system is the opposite of the price system.
	It relies on noise and hysteria rather than actual tangible exchanges of value as in the price system.
	So uh I'm not a fan.
	Uh well, it's I mean, uh it was um uh Churchill who said uh democracy is the worst system that has ever been tried, except for all the others.
	But he also said that uh children like democracy uh only takes uh uh regular conversation with a regular elector.
	Yeah, the bet the best cure for a faith in democracy is ten minutes conversation with your average voter.
	Yeah, I agree with that.
	I mean, so I mean it's it's one of these things that rather than saying which system, which begs the question that there is a quote system that can work, rather than saying which system, why not just say why system?
	What why?
	Why do we need why do we need a system, right?
	Why do we need a system?
	It's sort of saying, well, which prison should I put you into?
	How about no prison?
	How about no prison?
	Just a thought.
	Just a thought.
	All right, is there anything else that you uh wanted to mention?
	Uh uh in this case, uh uh.
	Shouldn't we look to what Donald Trump is doing in America with the Secretary of Education, decentralizing the education to the to the state and uh we've uh good will uh uh open open the the head uh let left letting the power to the states to define what should teach or
	not to their children uh would wouldn't be federalism uh a better answer to to this issue that you would.
	But there is no, sorry to interrupt, but there is no answer.
	You say, okay, let's say you could maybe way if you want, you get rid of the department of education and the control of education returns to the states.
	So I mean that's where it started, so what's gonna stop it from just going back to the government again?
	You know, there's this boring not you, right?
	There's this boring cycle in history where everyone's like, man, crime is out of control.
	We've got to arrest people and put them in jail.
	Which you do, at least under the current system.
	And then they arrest people and they put them in jail.
	I mean, it's been a 99% reduction in murder rates in El Salvador, because Bukele is just well, putting people in jail.
	And so they can't be out there killing people.
	And so everyone's like, well, we've got to put people in jail.
	Crime is so bad.
	And then, you know, this really boring thing happens that people are like, wow, you know, crime is is not really an issue.
	Uh, we probably have too many people in jail, right?
	And I remember, what's it, 60 minutes?
	An amazing show.
	An amazing show, 60 minutes, because somehow they managed to cram three hours of lies in only 60 minutes, which should not be physically possible, but they they grep and winwrett and zip it all the way uh back down for that.
	But they do this thing where it's like, well, three strikes and you're out, and this guy, he just all he did was he he stole a piece of pizza, this poor black guy, and he went to jail for the rest of his life just for us uh right.
	And then, oh let the criminals out.
	Oh my god, criminal crime is so even if you were to say, well, it's better to have it uh education at the state level, well sure.
	But still imposed on everyone at the state level, and there'll just always be this movement as long as they're the government to centralize power.
	People like power to be centralized because they have um less accountability.
	So if you're the local town mayor and you do something wrong, you live in that community, and people get mad at you.
	They ostracize you and they nag at you.
	Like the old WKRP where the um Johnny Fever was saying that the garbage men who were on strike and weren't getting paid well should just take their garbage and dump it on the mayor's lawn, and they actually did it and he freaked out.
	It's like, oh, people are listening.
	I get that weird feeling sometimes too.
	I hope there's people listening.
	Yeah, I think so.
	So uh the local town mayor, but then you know, you go to the the county, you go to the state, you go and the the ultimate is to go to Washington, DC, or to Ottawa or or London or the Houses of Parliament, because then the people that you're screwing over, uh they're not part of your community.
	They they can't ever track you down and and so on, and uh your power is too wide and diffused for any particular individual to call you out.
	So there's always this move to take power away from the local community and put it in its wide and abstraction and as heightened and distant a layer as humanly possible.
	So even if you say, well, it's better uh for the states, like no, they'll but the movement is always towards more and more abstract.
	You know, imagine you're mad at what the UN does, right?
	Which, you know, I guess you should be, or could be.
	So you're mad at what the UN does.
	Okay, what are you gonna do?
	What are you gonna do?
	I'm watching the Sopranos at the moment.
	What are you gonna what are you gonna do?
	So the EU Parliament, for example.
	The Portuguese people are mad for uh a decision made in in the EU parliament.
	What can they do?
	Absolutely nothing.
	Right.
	Right, right.
	Okay, so uh I appreciate your call and uh it's lovely to hear from people in Brazil.
	And again, thank you for uh thank you for your very kind interest in uh Le show.
	Uh sorry, I lost my It's so bizarre having to do I should get a bigger phone.
	I'm sorry.
	Thank you for having me.
	You're very welcome.
	I appreciate it.
	All right.
	I can't believe we've got to run this whole international philosophy conversation on a tiny phone.
	I should get a bigger phone, because it doesn't work on an iPad.
	I should get a bigger phone, but I don't, because I hate spinning.
	That would require prying some money from my incredibly s um uh a spendthrift.
	Uh spendthrift hands.
	Not cheap.
	Not cheap.
	All right, so uh if you want to uh have any other comments, questions, I'm happy.
	I want to talk about smallpox.
	So you may have heard this inevitable leftist Marxist Zin-based blood libel about the white Christians and it goes something like this.
	The White Christians came to America.
	Plenty of fun in America.
	And you know, they they deviously took smallpox infected blankets and handed them out like Halloween candy to the natives, thus driving a massive mortality rate and a genocide and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	You know, it's one of these words that gets used.
	Um well, anyone who can deploy that word.
	Genocide has a lot of power.
	Um racist, I think is losing its power because it got even though in the 1940s the uh communists openly said, hey, you know, if anyone gets in the way or gets too annoying, we'll just call them racists and drive them from public life.
	We'll just call them fascists and racists and white supremacists, and even though they say this stuff, people are like, wow, maybe he is.
	Anyway.
	So the colonists just gave the natives all these smallpox blankets as a bioweapon and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Okay, so where does this come from, other than the fever dreams of Marxists who want to turn people against each other and um demoralize the population?
	So there are two references to the British giving items infected with smallpox to the natives.
	Both of them are in 1763, during the Pontiac Rebellion.
	I think the cars got mad, and came from the fighting at Fort Pitt.
	Right.
	So this is your critical thinking.
	I assume that everything I have been told is a lie.
	I just assume that everything I've been told, and certainly everything I was told as a kid, is an outright filthy Marxist lie.
	Well, anything a Marxist says in our filthy Marxist lie.
	So the first thing I'd say is I remember getting this nonsense when I was in uh university.
	I remember having ferocious debates, and I'd say, oh wow, 1763.
	Um Quick question.
	When was germ theory developed?
	And as it turns out, it was more than one hundred years later that they finally figured out that it wasn't foggy air, it wasn't what they called miasma, it wasn't the humorous, it wasn't blood uh blood, it was, you know, these tiny little bugs in the air.
	So if they didn't even know what caused illness, then how could they know how to spread it?
	Now, of course, the counterexamples are Legion, which is there are lepros colonies, they isolate the lepers, uh, they're uh they they fired uh plague victims during the Black Death into towns that they were trying to uh take over.
	And one other that I I can't recall, but that's sort of these these counterexamples.
	And oh yes, that that when people had uh the plague or something, they would lock them in their houses, they would quarantine them, they would burn everything they had, and and so on.
	Right.
	So they had a vague association, but there was certainly no germ theory.
	The other question, of course, is okay, well, how long does if it doesn't work, if it doesn't work, it didn't happen.
	Right.
	If it if if it doesn't work, it didn't happen.
	I mean, you might charge someone who runs up and tries to shoot someone and the gun jams, or they forgot to load it with any bullets.
	Or they miss and harm sh shoot fine uh like uh harmlessly into a tree or something.
	I mean, they didn't kill the guy.
	I mean, you would charge them with something or whatever, but they didn't kill the guy, right?
	So how long does smallpox live on blankets?
	Not very long.
	How would smallpox get from blankets into people's bodies?
	Well, it would have to be some sort of so you'd have to take the blanket within a couple of hours and rub it against lesions, for even for it potentially to work in infection.
	So the first reference comes from the diary of William Trent, June 24th, 1763.
	Oh, good.
	He actually wrote something, so I get to do annoying Brit voice.
	Which I know for some of you it's just my voice.
	But let's just say I'll go a little further.
	The British were under the sea under siege at Fort Pitt.
	They had attempted to parlay with two Delaware emissaries from the indigenous population, uh, but negotiations failed, and they were sent away with items that the British knew were probably contaminated with smallpox.
	Trent wrote, out of regard to them, we gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the smallpox hospital.
	I hope it will have the desired effect.
	So despite not knowing German theory, it does appear that they understood that materials could be contaminated.
	Now, this first instance was during a battle, and the hope was to weaken the attacking forces.
	Now in the entire scope of the conflicts between the colonist settlers and the indigenous population of America, which lasted hundreds of years, we've got what do we have?
	Two blankets and one handkerchief.
	Now, please understand, this guy also could have been deranged.
	I mean people believe lots of crazy things.
	I once knew a guy who believed that a forest was talking to him, and if he'd written it down, would we say, so this guy could have just had a bizarre belief that this is going to just wipe out the population?
	Even so it wasn't necessarily a general or general, a a widespread belief.
	So remember, people believe I mean, there are people in the current era in the current time who believe in the flat earth.
	If all we had was those writings, oh my God, people in the twenty first century believed in the flat earth.
	So this guy anyway, so the other reference are a series of letters between Sir Jeffrey Amhorst and Colonel Henry Bouquet.
	I'm not saying he was gay, but Hank Bucket's Henri Bouquet.
	In July of 1763, Amherst and Bouquet were leading reinforcements to Fort Pitt, and the letters contained discussions of tactics.
	Amherst Bouquet, July 7, 1763.
	Could it not be contrived?
	I'm sorry, I'm gonna ruin my voice, but what the hell?
	Could it not be contrived to send the smallpox among those disaffected tribes of Indians?
	We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce that my mama.
	All right.
	Bouquet to Amherst, July 13, 1763.
	In response, Bouquet wrote that he would try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care, however, not to get the disease myself.
	So to inoculate To inoculate is not to infect, but rather to use a vaccine to prevent said illness from manifesting in a harmful way.
	Amherst to Bouquet, July 16, 1763.
	I will meet you with the disco of gabe No kidding.
	Amherst approved the plan, replying, You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method you can serve to extirpate this extra hyperbal race.
	I should be very glad.
	Your scheme for hunting them down by dogs could take effect, but England is a two-cade a distance to think of that at both something.
	Uh that's it.
	That's it.
	Two blankets and a handkerchief and two people talking about it while at war.
	That's it.
	I mean, it wasn't like the Europeans just jumped off the boat and shoved smallpox blankets up the nose of the natives.
	It was a specific tactic undertaken potentially, I mean these guys disgusted about dispout it, by several men in battle.
	I mean, that's warfare.
	Biological warfare is nothing new.
	The Mongols were known for hurling the corpses of those who had died of the new Taylor Swift out sorry, had died of the plague into the towns and cities they laid siege to.
	Overall historians generally agree that this is the only well documented instance of such an attempt by British colonists, although its success is debated.
	Smallpox did spread among tribes in the Ohio Valley in 1763, 1764, but the disease was already circulating in the region via other vectors, and trade routes and other warfare, and it's unclear if the blankets directly caused the infections.
	The material may have been too old or ineffective.
	So you give the the you give the two blankets and a handkerchief, and um maybe they use them, maybe they don't, maybe they spread something, maybe they don't, seems unlikely.
	But who knows, right?
	Also, without a doubt, so one of the things that that happened with regards to the natives and smallpox, and of course, the colonists, the whites gave the natives uh smallpox, the natives in return gave the whites syphilis and smoking, which has an even higher body count, even though smoking is more voluntary.
	Although syphilis um is not if you don't know that people have it, or if you're raped.
	Uh and it's that the natives uh fled and and took and spread the smallpox with them that way.
	Oh, James has given me a note.
	When did he give me this note?
	One minute ago.
	Inoculation is introducing a disease to a person in health.
	So that applies generally as well as to vaccines.
	Oh, okay.
	So when they say inoculation, they mean infection.
	Okay.
	Hey, I I appreciate the crusty old English clarification.
	Okay.
	So yeah, so the the natives uh ran and spread uh away from the Europeans, and sometimes, sometimes what they would do is they would buy weapons from the Europeans, and they would go to spread uh to settle scores with other tribes further inland, and because they had smallpox, which can have a ten to fourteen day incubation period as far as I know, please check.
	Um but they would trade to get get guns and other uh weapons, and then they would go and want to destroy other tribes inland, bringing the smallpox with them, and that's one of the ways in which it spread.
	It's not to blame anybody, because nobody knew what the hell uh how the hell it was spread anyway, at least in any particular germ theory detail.
	And the other thing that happened was the uh natives would sometimes loot the bodies to look for things, the bodies of both the Europeans and of the other natives, and they would loot the uh bodies, dig up the graves, loot the bodies, or loot the equipment.
	Oh, look, uh everybody died here.
	Let's grab all the tomahawks and the teepees and so on, and that's how they would get um or you know, and now I said it doesn't last for long, but if they just came across it, they could get it that way.
	So some scholars like Elizabeth Finn and Philip Ranlett argue the incident fits into a broader pattern of colonial violence, but was not a widespread strategy.
	There are no confirmed earlier or later cases with similar documentation, although oral traditions among some tribes references disease-laden gifts and unsubstantiated claims exist for other periods, such as during the American Revolution or 19th century westward expansion.
	It's also worth noting that William Trent's journal was first published in 1892 and attributed to him in 1924.
	Excerpts from the Anne First Bouquet correspondence was published by Francis Parkman in 1851, with the full documents microfilm for preservation during World War II.
	Now I've mentioned this story before, so I'll keep it brief here.
	The guy who first began to suspect, hey, you know what?
	I've kind of noticed that when the surgeons finish with disease-laden babies, toddlers, and children, and then go immediately to cut open and rummage around in the guts of people when they go from handling diseased and dying children to rummaging around in the guts of people, infection rates seem to be very, very high.
	And like, even if you survived the horrible, horrible, horrible um anesthetic operation.
	I don't know if you've ever had one of those.
	Uh I remember once I had to have a uh a little cyst.
	Well, actually it wasn't that little at the time, and there was no anesthetic, and it was like, well, that'll get your attention.
	I literally had to ask the guy who was working on it to just like, okay, hold on, let me breathe a little here.
	Okay, go ahead, because it was you have to lie still.
	And again, that's totally minor, but it felt like he was and I also remember when I was a kid, uh, I was uh in the Don River uh hiking and and fishing, and I stepped on obviously something sharp, and I ended up going to the hospital, and uh I really they really didn't Freeze enough because it really felt like I was getting my leg amputated to to sew up.
	They were just going real deep, real deep, real deep.
	And I remember being kind of chatty and jokey going in at about the age of twelve and not quite so chatty and jokey coming out.
	So those are like two little brushes with like non-anesthetic quote operations or and you know, it's it's rough.
	It's rough.
	So even if you survived a non-anesthetic operation, the the fatality rates from infections were sometimes, you know, 30, 40, 50%.
	So some guy was like, hey, you know, um, got this new stuff from soap.
	Let's try washing our hands.
	And of course, he was ridiculed, he was attacked, he was undermined, he was like he ended up being put in an insane asylum.
	He was and this was in the 19th century, and it wasn't really until the early 20th century that it became a relatively accepted uh practice.
	And naturally, of course, he got no compensation.
	Because he was dead.
	Why was he dead?
	Because he was beaten to death by an orderly in an insane asylum where he'd been placed for the absolutely mad idea of washing your hands between handling a disease-laden dying person and putting your hands in the intestines of a new person.
	So and it was I think Charles Dickens was going to become a doctor until he observed bowel operation on a child.
	Uh, and he was like, uh, maybe not, maybe not.
	All right.
	So uh it is nonsense.
	And to me, it's always wild that um leftists and you know, howardzin, there's rumors, whatever I am Marxist.
	But when leftists quote this kind of stuff, which is really vague and obscure, and who knows, and it's like, oh no, your entire blood libel against all the colonists is two blankets and a handkerchief.
	Wow, that's you know, and then they'll say, Oh, but you know, the big black book of communism, a hundred million people dead.
	That's just an exaggeration.
	Literally, I've literally, and you I did a debate with two communists uh back in the day, and you get this this kind of stuff from people.
	Ah, that's an exaggeration.
	It's like you're all hanging your hat on two frickin' blankets and a handkerchief, and yet, well, you know, the hundred million dead, uh that's uh it's exaggerated.
	It's absolutely mad.
	And you you can't I mean, what can you do?
	What can you say?
	You can't see, can't do or say anything to people who are that out of reality.
	All right, I will get to you in a moment.
	Katie.
	Katie.
	All right.
	The Bitcoin, let's chat.
	All right.
	Steph, do you think Bitcoin is going up?
	It's just or is it just the dollar crashing?
	There is movement in the gold price too.
	Uh yes.
	Well, people are kind of freaking out about the dollar on the dollar.
	So I think that's certainly happening.
	How do we promote an anarcho-capitalist society in this era where people resent capitalism?
	Well, uh, that's from X, so you just have to ask people to define their terms.
	I had somebody who had uh taken his education in Hawaii, who got um he didn't know that Aztex eating children was wrong, but he sure know he sure knew that it was highly offensive for me to ask for definitions.
	So this is just a shortcut.
	This is just a shortcut.
	Don't waste your time, my friends.
	Don't do it.
	I say this is a guy who spent three lifetimes debating with people.
	Now, on X is a different matter.
	I'm not trying to change people's minds to what I'm debating with because I don't really think there are many minds to change.
	There's some, but not many.
	But it's just an example.
	Uh a counter-arguments for others.
	So um just ask people to define their terms.
	What is capitalism?
	Uh private ownership of the means of production?
	Okay.
	Well, what does that mean?
	Right?
	I mean, a woman is a means of production.
	It's how you make another child.
	She has private ownership of the means of production, at least I hope so.
	Otherwise, she's some gore-based sex slave.
	So just ask people, um, capitalism sucks.
	Oh, what is capitalism?
	And they'll always end up talking about corporatism, crony capitalism, uh, corporations that fund the government in return for preferential legislation.
	So, but that's not capitalism.
	Capitalism is a private property and free markets.
	That's all it is.
	And and we love capitalism in the dating market, right?
	Can you imagine?
	If you were to say, well, you know, this dating for your own self thing, that hasn't really worked out.
	People aren't very happy.
	People aren't getting married, and the birth rate is crashing, so the government is going to assign you a mate.
	Hey, man, if men can get drafted to go to war, women can get drafted to have children.
	There's no point going to war if nobody's bothering to have children afterwards.
	Might as well just have been lost.
	So people would be outraged.
	So the capitalism is just taking what we accept as the good in dating, which is people should be able to date who they want and be responsible for pluses and minuses of that.
	And they should not be forced into who to date.
	And if it's particularly effective with women, right?
	Even though some of them seem to have this handmaiden tail, pin me down daddy fantasy, but that's a whole other matter.
	But it just ask them to define their terms.
	All right.
	Somebody says, oh, whiplash.
	A couple of months ago I cut ties with my father.
	I'm sorry to hear that.
	It was so hard.
	It took me 36 years to do it.
	I did it because I couldn't function with the constant pain the relationship brings to my life.
	Some time ago you said that if you have people in your life that don't care about you or want you to fail, it will set you back.
	It turns out that for me you were right.
	I'm sad that I've given up on the relationship, but I have so much more confidence and self-regard not having my weekly weekly call with him.
	Um I really don't want to nag or correct you.
	So please take this with all the respect that can be imagined and all of the sympathy that can be imagined.
	Um you've not given up on the relationship.
	You've accepted that there isn't one.
	A relationship is a two-way street where people take as much interest in you as you take in them.
	You know, it's like if you get fired, this is an old George Costanza joke, right?
	If you get fired and you keep showing up to work, and then they finally escort you off the property, would you say, well, I guess I'm just leaving this job?
	It's like, no, there's no job.
	You got fired.
	And if there isn't reciprocal interest and compassion and concern and curiosity and affection and love and and all of that desire to really get to know you and and help you in life, it's not a relationship.
	You know, there's not that many people who can actually have a genuine connected, equitable and mutual relationship.
	Not that many people.
	It's kind of sad.
	So you haven't given up on the relationship.
	You've accepted that there is no relationship.
	Because if you're in a relationship with someone who cares about you, they would rather hurt themselves than hurt you.
	And if people regularly hurt you, and you've told them and they keep doing it.
	All right.
	James says, I have too much stuff in my house.
	I'm looking to shift a bunch of it out.
	If I can't find people who want it, I will pay somebody to haul it away.
	No intrinsic value.
	Right.
	Intrinsic value, we I talked about this uh a show or two ago.
	And thank you for uh call us.
	I see you there, I'll take you in a sec.
	But No, you know what?
	Think of old photographs.
	The old photographs that mean a lot to you, what are they gonna mean in two generations?
	People won't even know who's in the photographs.
	So what's the intrinsic value of these photographs?
	All right.
	Let's go with somebody new.
	Carrie, I'll get you in a sec.
	Cat.
	K A T squiggle squiggle squiggle.
	These are all the glasses, so you don't get too many denish to Susa fish eyes.
	Thank you for the tip.
	You can, of course, tip on the app you can join the community at free domain.com slash donate.
	All right, cat, are you with us?
	Or am I gonna go with okay?
	Cat cat cat.
	Catarusa.
	Yes, no.
	You know, I know I'm just gonna kick this person and then they're gonna show up.
	All right, well, let's try bringing Kerry in.
	And you can unmute and tell me what is uh on your mind.
	Yes, sir, going once.
	Going twice.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Sorry, I hit the wrong button.
	Good evening.
	Don't start it with a cliche females in tech thing.
	I won't have it.
	I just won't have it.
	I'm just kidding.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	This might be a little off topic, but I was thinking about racism and how we're we fear people that look different than us or have a different culture than us or talk different than us.
	Okay, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	I mean, everybody looks different from us, right?
	I mean, am I am I supposed to be afraid of a guy with a better tan or more hair?
	I mean, people look the shorter, taller.
	What do you mean by you you mean skin color?
	I mean um what do you mean by look different from us?
	Yes, I like skin color or people like um Well, here's here's my question.
	Okay.
	So do you think that back in more tribal days that it was an instinct that's maybe carried over where we weren't afraid of people that looked like our tribe, but if somebody new came in that looked different or talked different or had different culture than us, we automatically feared that as a survival yes.
	I mean, certainly we evolved around people who looked just like us.
	I'm sorry, I know I just said that there's variations.
	But in the general tenor of things, you know, if you're around Iron, if you're in Ireland, there are people around who look kind of Irish.
	If you're in Sub-Saharan Africa or the Aborigines in Australia or whatever, right, you're going to have a particular kind of look.
	And this look even is in the class system.
	Of course, I was in the lower class in England and welfare and all of that, and there were certain kinds of people around.
	Then when I went to boarding school and I was around more upper-class people, they have a certain kind of look to them as well.
	And you know, the the royal family doesn't look particularly like your average soccer hooligan, who's, you know, kind of bloated and beefy and all that kind of stuff.
	And there's I think it's near Wales, there was a guy uh they they genotyped his ancestor and built how he looked from like generations in general, like 30 generations ago or something like that, and it's still the same uh friendly barkeep and so on, and you think of something like The Hobbit um or or the Shire in Lord of the Rings that people just kind of look the same.
	So when you encounter people who look dissimilar to you for most of human history, given that it wasn't trade, it was usually conflict-based.
	So I think when we are around people we who who look very dissimilar, we have a concern that is sort of hardwired into the base of our brain that this could be a conflict situation because of course for most of human history it was.
	Now there was a small number of people, of course, who would would do trade and go on all that.
	But um I mean, even trade is challenging.
	Because if you're doing trade within your own community or tribe, you know all the rules, you have the same ethical background and so on.
	If you're doing trade, you know, with some spice merchant from India or someone from China selling tea or whatever, uh you're gonna have a whole bunch of different things.
	I mean, I remember in the year 2000, uh I spent just before the year 2000 in Morocco, and then I spent one night at home and I flew out for a couple of weeks doing business in China.
	And I remember I would go out to the marketplace and I would haggle uh for things that I wanted with people, and we would pass a calculator back and forth.
	And they would put in a number, I would clear it out, I would put in a number.
	But I was perfectly aware that, you know, if I had any kind of issue, I wasn't gonna be able to go to their court system.
	Like I just gave them money and they gave me stuff.
	If the ta is the stuff turned out to be bad or wrong or you know, whatever, uh then uh I had no recourse.
	So it's a bit more tense than if you're you know, if if I buy something from a store uh in my neighborhood, I can take the item back if you had the return policy or whatever, but uh if it's somewhere far away and I don't really have any access to understanding how things work and and so on.
	And I remember once being in Mexico, and this is when I was being a jerk.
	I didn't know it at the time.
	But when I was in Mexico um many years ago, I took a bus from where I was into town, and it was a dollar.
	And then on my way back, they charged me three dollars, and I was upset because I thought they were taking advantage of me because of my gringo skin, my white skin, and I wouldn't pay uh three dollars.
	And I I was, you know, like no, it was a buck to go in and he was trying to explain something to me.
	I didn't speak Spanish, everybody was mad at me, but I just got off and I wasn't gonna pay the extra money.
	And then I talked to a friend of mine about that, and he's like, oh no, it is that way.
	It's a dollar to go into town, and it's three dollars to come out of town.
	And I was like, oh.
	So then I took out, because I'm you know a little fussy about this kind of stuff.
	It's my conscience.
	I took out two dollars and I handed it to the bus driver of the next bus, and I said, I owe you this because, because, because like I'm the kind of guy I returned uh something to an electronic store not too long ago, and I realized I'd forgotten one thing.
	I drove all the way back and gave it to them because I don't want to return something without returning the one thing that is important for it.
	So it's just a bit more stressful.
	So I think I agree with your assessment.
	Um, what do you think?
	Yeah, I think humans, you know, intellectually we've evolved, but I think that's still there, just at a on a animal instinct basis, you know, just to protect ourselves from something we don't we don't feel comfortable with.
	Yeah, recognize.
	I certainly think if you've been, and I'm I'm sure most of the people here they have been in situations where you're in a very foreign culture and you're in a very foreign environment, and you just more alert.
	You're because you don't know what's I mean, if I've never been to Japan, but if I were to go to Japan, uh I would love to, you know, meet up with listeners and chat.
	I'd have to study quite a bit of the culture ahead of time to know what was admired or not admired, so I didn't say, hey, that's a lovely vase, and then oh my god, he's got to give me the vase because that's tradition, and I don't want the vase.
	And so you'd have to study things, but you'd be on alert.
	You would not be as relaxed.
	And you know, it's just one of the challenges is social trust gets eroded in multiculturalism because people don't know all the other rules.
	And you can't possibly learn, you know, if there's 30 different ethnicities or 30 different cultures or 30 different or 20 different religions or 10 different whatever, you're just not gonna you're not gonna know all of those rules, so you just stay home.
	It's just too it's just too complicated.
	I mean, if if you have it's funny because I remember also when I was a kid, um I I picked up a bottle and I threw it, because it was fun to throw things and break them.
	And there was a woman who saw me do that, and she marched right over and she said, You've got to clean this up, you cannot leave this here, people are gonna cut themselves.
	And she was, of course, completely right.
	I was like, I don't know, seven or whatever, just wandering around the neighborhood with some friends, and we broke some glass, and she's like, you gotta pick this glass up.
	Now she did, you know, she gave me some gardening gloves, and I had to pick them up and and throw it out.
	And she was completely in the right.
	But one of the reasons she felt comfortable doing that was it was a completely white neighborhood.
	There was one Indian guy in my boarding school out of like 500 kids.
	And he was actually my friend.
	So if it's some other language, some other culture, some other religion, you don't know what the standards are, you might just let that let that lie.
	Like, oh, I don't know, it's gonna be complicated.
	They're not gonna understand what I'm saying, maybe they have a different standard or whatever it is, right?
	So um even just general social enforcement tends to diminish or decline uh in in that kind of situation environment.
	So I think you I think you have a very good point.
	Thank you.
	I think I feel I'm I'm being dismissed.
	By me?
	I'm kidding.
	I do.
	I think I think you're done with the topic, is that right?
	Yes, thank you so much.
	Okay, I appreciate that.
	Call me.
	I feel like I'm in the dating world, and it's like, I like you more than you like me.
	No, I appreciate that.
	I'm just kidding.
	Thank you, of course, for um for great comments.
	All right, if there's anybody else who has anything, now's the time.
	Now is the time.
	Of course.
	Oh, I have my own topics.
	Yeah, Dave Smith had a lengthy interview with Nick Puentes.
	Nick Fuentes.
	Which is really interesting as a whole that he would do that.
	All right.
	Uh what did I have here?
	Yeah, just sorry.
	Yeah, if there's anybody who has any questions, comments.
	I have one or two topics.
	Uh Erin Pitzi has died.
	Um she was very old, and she had a very productive but stressful life.
	Death threats, bomb threats.
	I did an interview with her, which we are I think we're in the process at the moment of remastering it and getting a transcript because it wasn't available when I was um back back then.
	But it's a brave thing that she did.
	She opened up the first male shelter for victims of abuse and received absolutely horrendous blowback for it.
	It was just appalling.
	So uh here's something that I found interesting.
	R/marriage.
	Woman says, I'm on unpaid maternity leave.
	My husband still expects me to pay half the rent.
	Is this fair?
	Should I do this for the whole thing?
	Yeah, because I don't want people to think it's me, right?
	In case it's snipped.
	My husband earns four times more than me.
	I earn 68K.
	He earns children 80K.
	Our rent is 2.6 K per month.
	We've been splitting rent 50-50 since we moved in together before we got married.
	Mildly punchable.
	A little bit.
	Oh well, we'll go on.
	The arrangement did not change after we got married, and now that we have a baby, with me having zero income, so I'm relying on my personal savings.
	I say personal because we don't have a joint account.
	We're currently looking for a house, and I'm also expected to contribute for the deposit.
	Seventy-five percent of my total savings.
	Is this fair?
	What is the best way to approach this?
	Sorry, entirely punchable.
	I have to stop that before I whack myself at Norton style.
	All right.
	So what could be happening?
	What could be happening?
	Well it's provoked a fire storm.
	It's not exactly a fire storm, but it certainly has provoked some debate or discussion on X. So my husband earns four times than me.
	I earn 60K, he earns 280K.
	Now, somebody does not make 280,000, which is still a pretty good salary, it's a very good salary.
	Somebody doesn't earn 280,000 by not knowing value and exchange.
	He's not an idiot, he's not exploited, he's not taken advantage of, he knows how to negotiate for a fantastic salary.
	So my question always, sorry, uh Killindl, if you want to try back in, I'll take you in a sec.
	But so he is providing four times more than she is.
	So what does she do in return?
	I don't know.
	It's why is this a tough question?
	Why is this a tough question?
	Because if he's providing four times the income, and then she's on unpaid maternity leave, which means she has no income, so he's providing infinity more income, then what is she doing in return?
	And this is something that I've always, always, always thought of in my relationships.
	And the moment I found a woman who did understand that you have to provide value in return, you're not you're not a baby, you're not a toddler, you have to pull your weight.
	The moment I found a woman who understood that and appreciated that and lived that way, I wifed her up, and we've been married happily for almost a quarter century, and many more, hopefully decades to go or to come.
	So what does she do in return for all the extra money?
	Now my guess is, I don't know, obviously, but my guess is that what she does is nothing.
	I'm not saying she doesn't do anything, but what she does is she's like, well, we both work the same amount of hours, so you have to do half the housework.
	And this guy's like, okay, hang on.
	So I you're happy for it to be entirely unequal in terms of income.
	But you want me to do 50-50 housework.
	Frack no.
	Men don't work that way.
	Men don't wire that way.
	It's particularly successful men, successful men don't look at bad deals and say, Seems good to me.
	That's great.
	I'll love it.
	I'll do five times the income and half the it's not happening.
	It's not happening.
	Now, I would guess, it could be wrong, of course, but I would guess that this woman is also demanding that he share child care duties.
	So he's providing all of the income at the moment, and I bet you she's saying, Well, you have to get up every second time the baby cries, and you have to get up every dice, and you have to do this, and you have to do that, and you know, uh and then when he comes home at night, she like hands the baby over and goes has a bath, or she uh, you know, she she leaves him with the baby on the weekend so that she can go and do other stuff, and so he's gotta do all of the income and half the baby stuff.
	Now, maybe he loves spending time with his baby.
	I know I did, so that's fine.
	But maybe she's also demanding that he do half the housework and half the baby care, and uh half the you know, but all of the outside stuff, like all the mowing and barbecuing and and repair of things the other day.
	I just it yesterday.
	Yeah, but yesterday, my wife and I were doing uh outside work, and I did the majority of it.
	Now she does the majority of the inside work, so I have no problem with that.
	It's fair, but I had to do a bunch of the uh outside work, which is fine.
	But if he's gotta do the majority of the outside work and half the baby care and half the babysitting and uh half the uh the the housework and so on, and and she only does her own laundry and he's got to do his own laundry.
	He's like, where do you provide more?
	She says, Well, I had your baby.
	It's like, no, no, no, no.
	That's that's not that's not a thing.
	A baby is not some giant gift that that excuses you from having to do future labor.
	So his brain is calculating and saying I'm paying all the bills.
	What are you doing more of?
	In the past I was paying 4x the bills.
	What are you doing more of?
	What are you doing more of to benefit?
	I mean, look, uh I don't know, uh people are just baffled by this.
	I know you guys aren't, but people are just baffled by this.
	Like when I was starting up a software company and we were going for investment, some investors gave us more money than others.
	I mean, we started the whole business with 80k, which Canadian, Canadian, like monopoly money, Canadian tire money.
	Actually, I knew a friend, I had a friend many years ago whose brother went through a bunch of brothels in Thailand on Canadian tire money, which is like money you can only spend a Canadian tire in Canada.
	So I was appalled.
	Shocking.
	Terrible.
	So when you invest in a company, it's called sweat equity, right?
	So let's say that I need $50,000 to start a company.
	And let's say somebody wants to give me $10,000 and someone wants to give me 40,000.
	Then the guy who's giving me 40,000 gets four times more equity than the guy who's giving me 10,000.
	And I get some portion of equity for the work that I've already put in.
	But if you are Ooh, look at that.
	I did four times.
	I guess it's w it worked, right?
	So if you're putting in four times the money into an investment, and then somebody says to you, well, you get 20% of the company for 40 grand, and you also get 20% of the company for 10 grand, they'll be like, no, no, no, I'm putting in four times.
	I've got to get considerable, I've got to get more back.
	So it's a strange thing.
	All right.
	Hassan.
	What is on your mind, my friend?
	If you want to unmute, I'm happy to hear your thoughts, comments, criticisms, issues, corrections, whatever is on your brain folds.
	Come on, man.
	You can do it.
	I feel you can.
	I feel you can.
	Oh, you're at an echo.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Yes.
	I'm just asking what what are you talking about?
	Okay.
	Well, I appreciate you dropping by.
	But um maybe you don't speak English.
	This is really for people who speak English and people who can follow stuff.
	So just want to uh make make that note.
	Very strange that people would call up and say, Oh, you're running a show.
	Hey, what are you talking about?
	I'm gonna explain it to you.
	So and I don't think I'm that hard to follow.
	Um I try to I don't say dumb it down because it's a very smart audience, but I tried to be as clear as possible.
	Um Is this this person luring me in again?
	No, not that person.
	All right.
	Kill something something if you want to unmute.
	I'm certainly happy to hear what you have to say.
	Hello.
	Yes, uh, if you can speak a little closer, I can barely hear you.
	How is that?
	Uh that's better.
	Yeah, what's on your mind?
	So I used to uh think about debating atheists, and I used to come at it with the ankle.
	Sorry, you're still very quiet.
	I I I it's not some I can sort of vaguely hear you work, uh but I just the audience can't.
	And I don't want you to turn up because they're gonna have to turn up your volume, turn down my volume and so on.
	So can you hear me better now?
	I'm like right on the bottom.
	Yeah, okay, that's good.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So the question is, can you get something from nothing?
	Aaron Ross Powell Well, I mean, that's a very loosely defined question.
	Can you be a bit more specific?
	Aaron Ross Powell I'm thinking of in the context of creation and reality.
	Like in in all of existence come from nothingness.
	Well, not according to physics, right?
	So according to physics, matter can't be created or destroyed.
	It can only be transferred to energy and back.
	So you cannot have the spontaneous creation of things according to the law of conservation and sort of basic physical reality.
	So no, you can't get something from nothing.
	You can assemble new things, like you can make a house out of a bunch of bricks, but that's not making something from nothing.
	That's transforming materials into a different use scenario.
	But yeah, I would certainly accept that you cannot get something from nothing.
	See, I was I was asserting that very idea to atheists, but then I I stopped mid-sentence because have you ever like studied the flower of life before?
	No.
	All it is is a series of concentric circles, which the circle is representative of nothingness in the zero at math.
	What do you think the first number made was?
	Sorry, what do I think the first number that was created?
	Aaron Ross Powell The first number that was created.
	I'm not sure numbers are created in that way.
	I mean they're not created the same way that you would build a house.
	I would assume that the first number that was conceived of was one, not zero, because that's uh a bit of a uh foreign idea to a lot of people.
	I would wager it's I would argue that it's zero.
	Because that would be an empirical thing, right?
	Like you would look representative of nothingness.
	I'm sorry.
	It's representative of nothingness.
	Okay.
	I I agree that zero represents nothing.
	Okay.
	So that's that's an equivalence for what preceded creation.
	Aaron Ross Powell Well, but human beings don't experience nothingness, right?
	Right.
	So human beings don't experience absence.
	I mean, even if you walk through a doorway, you can st like if I fan my face here, I can still feel the breeze against my face, even though, you know, obviously if I try to put my head through the monitor, you're gonna get kind of a thunk.
	So even if you walk, you know, you walk through a doorway.
	I mean, it's funny because if if you really get sensitive to what's going on in your body, you just realize how much reality processing is going on.
	Like even if I walk through a doorway, I get a slight breeze.
	And you know, when I lift weights, I can feel uh the motion of the breeze on my arm hairs and things like that.
	So while we we don't really know what absence is.
	Like even if you say, well, if I'm uh floating in a bath or a swimming pool, I feel an absence of gravity.
	Yes, but you feel the support and sloshing and liquidity of the water.
	You really can't experience nothing.
	I know that the Zen people are like, well, try and quiet your mind and so on.
	It's like I don't want to.
	My mind is a lot of fun.
	So I don't think that we can hang on.
	I don't think we can experience nothing, which is why it took a while for people to come up with the concept of zero as a number.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	Well, I wouldn't debate that, but we can we can experience varying degrees of separation from what is true nothingness.
	Like we can understand an empty box, an empty vessel.
	Sure, but we also know it's not empty because when we put our head in it, we can still breathe.
	Well, that's not always true, because you can create a vacuum, and we understand that.
	We can make vacuums and we do that.
	Okay, so hang on.
	Hang on.
	When we're talking about the evolution of ideas, how could people create a vacuum in the past?
	Well, a vacuum with air is is not much different than a vacuum of any other substance you want to pull out of a vacuum.
	No, no, I'm talking about ancient history.
	How did people create a vacuum.
	I mean, creating a vacuum is quite a complicated thing, right?
	Because you have to have airtight seals, you usually have to have compressors to pull the air out, and nature abores the vacuum, so something else is always trying to get in, and they didn't have any experience of space, of course.
	So how would they have a vacuum in the past?
	I'm not arguing that they had vacuums necessarily to the extent that you're imagining it, but a vacuum could be defined very loosely where it's not at the scientific level that you're talking about.
	Okay, so I I'm not sure you're debating it good faith here, to be honest.
	Okay.
	No, no.
	So let me tell you what my objection is, and you can tell me if I'm being unfair.
	So you said an empty box, and I said.
	But you can put your head in it and still breathe.
	And then you said, but you could create a vacuum.
	And I said, but we're talking about the origins of numbers, so how would they create a vacuum in the past?
	And then you said, well, they couldn't create a hang on.
	And then you said, well, they couldn't create a vacuum like they do in the present, but you were rejecting my argument that you would know the box isn't fully empty because you could still breathe with it by saying they could create a vacuum.
	And I said, Well, how could they create a vacuum in the past?
	And then you just kind of dodge that.
	So I didn't bring the vacuum thing up out of nowhere.
	I brought the vacuum.
	Hang on, I brought the vacuum thing up to respond to a point of yours.
	And I feel like you're just moving the goalposts or shifting the conversation to avoid what I'm saying.
	We've tangentially moved from the conceptualization of nothingness and we use the number zero to demonstrate that.
	But my point of concern was never really talking about the nature of numbers as much as trying to discern whether or not you can actually get something from nothingness and the flower of life.
	Let me go for a minute and actually get to the point you're doing.
	It's rude because I will mute you.
	I've actually let you mute you.
	I will mute you.
	It's rude.
	So the way that it works here is you actually have conversations.
	So if you say, well, you don't get to know what you're doing.
	No, no, the conversation last week too hard.
	I'll just kick you in.
	I'll just kick you.
	Yeah, it's just it's just rude and it's bullshit.
	And and don't do that.
	Like if if you want to have a mature conversation with someone, don't do that.
	Right?
	So if you say, well, people have the idea of uh nothingness, and I say, well, well, but they get that idea.
	Well, an empty box.
	Yeah, but it's not they know it's not empty, they can put their and breathe.
	It's like so that's a rebuttal to the idea that people in the past could directly understand, right?
	So if you're gonna say zero is the first number, then you have to have an idea of absence.
	I made this whole case that every time you move, you feel things, the air, the pressure, you know there's things around you, uh, and so on, and you can't i eliminate gravity without floating, which means you have the water.
	And so I'm trying to sort of argue that you can't get the sense of nothingness and uh you're just not addressing that point.
	And uh you know, I just this is and I appreciate the person calling in.
	I'm glad you did, because it's example it's it's important to listen to people.
	So if you make an argument and somebody else rebuts it, you don't get to just ignore what they're saying and continue with your point.
	That's fucking rude.
	Right?
	I will not be a non-participant in a conversation when you ask to have a conversation.
	Like I'm just not gonna do it.
	And nobody with any self-respect would.
	So if you're gonna say, well, I believe that zero comes from our experience of absence and so on, and I make a case that you can't really experience absence, and then you just go on with your points, I'm like, I I don't play that way.
	I don't do it that way.
	I don't if you are gonna engage me in a conversation, what I say has to have some effect on you.
	Otherwise, you're rude and selfish, and I will not sustain it.
	I will not do it.
	And I I recommend strongly to people, trust your instincts.
	If you're talking to someone and that person is not listening, and this sounds like the guy, probably is not the same guy, but he sounds like the same guy who came in before who uh was the ought the is aught guy.
	So yeah, if when I point out I said, listen, maybe I'm being unfair, but this is my experience, and he just, you know, escalated and blah, blah, blah.
	And it's like and then he says, Well, we're off course.
	It's like that's another thing that's really it's really rude.
	And I don't know where people get off like I'm a philosopher with 43 years experience debating.
	You don't get to tell me that we're just off course.
	Because then you're saying that that's my experience.
	Now you can say I feel off course.
	Okay, that's fine.
	But don't talk for me.
	Don't use this we bullshit.
	Because it's not we.
	I know exactly where I am in the conversation.
	I know exactly what I'm rebutting, and I know exactly the argument that I'm making.
	Doesn't mean I'm right, but I know what I'm talking about.
	And then if people come along and say, well, wait, you know, you hear this all the time.
	Well, I I think we're talking past each other.
	It's like I'm not.
	You can tell me your experience.
	Don't you dare tell me my experience.
	Well, I think we're on a tangent.
	No, we're not.
	You might not follow what I'm saying, but don't tell me I'm being tangential.
	That's rude.
	Anyway, so I appreciate that.
	It's a it's a good example of like just don't get involved in that bullshit.
	All right.
	Shepard, what is on your mind?
	Yeah, I I just I hopped in here.
	Um great to meet you for first time kind of uh listening to the conversations back and forth, and I saw Bitcoin as a topic too.
	So I think a good question would be to you, and I think it's kind of a little bit different for everybody, but but what is value to you in terms of I I guess let's start with money or greater currency.
	Aaron Ross Powell Sure.
	I mean there's a good definition from objectivism from Ayn Rand where she says that a value is that which we which one aims to gain or keep.
	And so a value is something that you want, and the only way it can be measured is if you take empirical tangible actions to achieve it.
	So if somebody says, Well, I want to be a screen writer.
	It's like, okay.
	So that's you that's your stated goal or value to become a screenwriter.
	But if you never actually write, nobody's going to take you particularly seriously.
	So as an empiricist, what I do is when people say, I want, I want, I want, I'd be like, okay, are you doing anything about it?
	Is it just a desire that you're saying, or is it something you're actually in with the goal of pursuing?
	So we've probably all known someone who's like, well, I want to lose weight, I'm gonna lose weight, and they never actually change their diet or exercise.
	They don't lose weight, right?
	So uh uh a value is something that you want to achieve, a goal that you want to achieve, or an object or something that is that you want to achieve if there's some girl that you like, then you would hopefully ask her out, find out if she's single, go ask her out, and then woo her, and hopefully she'll woo you back and you can have a great life together.
	But a value is something that you are acting in the pursuit of.
	I don't consider stated goals a value.
	Like somebody says, Oh, I want to get a job, and they never apply for any jobs.
	It's like, I don't believe you want to get a job.
	I think you're just saying that.
	So to me, a value is somebody is what happens or what I accept when somebody makes active takes takes action in the pursuit, consistently takes action in the pursuit of something that they want to achieve or keep.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Um I I agree with your version of what value is.
	And then sorry, and then let me sorry to interrupt you, but let me just ask you this in your life.
	So, what is a value that you are in pursuit of at the moment, other than wisdom in this conversation, hopefully.
	But what is your value?
	What what what is something that people would look at you and say, uh, this guy really values X?
	What is X for you?
	So I I I guess I I think it's slightly changed over time as the world keeps progressing.
	I I think for me it's time and how to best spend that time while we're here.
	Um, no, but that's that's that's too abstract, right?
	So you can't have a value called time unless you want to buy a watch.
	So what is it specifically that you want to achieve, let's say, over the next six months?
	So you go six months, you look back and you say, okay, well, I achieved that, so that was good, or at least I tried my best.
	Maybe I didn't succeed, but at least I tried my best.
	So what is it, let's say, over the next six months that you would like to achieve?
	So what is it, let's say, over the next six months?
	I would say being able to further my education is a value I like to achieve it.
	And when I say that specifically, I'm trying to be able to maximize the value of the time I've already spent within my current employment to be able to spend time to better value on the degree I'm currently pursuing.
	Okay, so your goal is to improve your education over the next six months, right?
	Correct.
	Okay.
	And where would you say that goal is in your priorities?
	Is it number one, number two, number three?
	For me, it's probably number three right now.
	Okay.
	What's number one?
	Number one would be spending time with family.
	Okay.
	And what's number two?
	I'm not trying to trick or track the other stages.
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	I I it's it's great thought provoking questions.
	Um and I think that's why I asked my initial question with um like I I saw the term Bitcoin, which I think is interesting because I think it's a reorientation of how to value time because it it lets you kind of store your time in a non-uh debasable product that is very fixated because uh with the current monetary system, you can't correctly value your time because it's a consistent yard post.
	Um Productivity can be mismeasured or misshaped or become can become a misnomer um coming where it's at.
	So beautifully put, by the way, but sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	So it it's kind of um I th that that's where it's like okay, it's like first is like okay, I'm just trying to hit that element to where maybe I can get to that second order level question that you're getting at is I'm trying to figure out the first order.
	Uh-uh, um and that that's where I it really those top road question.
	I haven't really thought about that intensely because I'm I guess I'm more of just the cat trying to catch the mouse.
	Right.
	Um I mean the cat trying to catch the mouse is not dreaming of the mouse, but actually pursuing it, right?
	So yeah, so I would say a value is something which you act in an empirical measurable way to achieve, and usually in some kind of consistent way.
	Like if my goal is to become better at tennis, I need to go out and take lessons and get better at tennis, and and if my goal is to be a musician, I need to actually practice.
	And so uh that that's uh you have to differentiate it from dreams or wishes or fantasies or or something like that, right?
	So uh that would be my definition of value, and it is subjective.
	Now, of course, values are uh in a hierarchy, right?
	So you cannot achieve values if you're dead, right?
	So so in order to have values, you need to be alive.
	So uh your your first order of value is to stay alive, right?
	To to eat, to drink, to get rest, to uh avoid violence or danger or things which could get you killed.
	So once you have maintained life and you are in some relatively stable environment, you can start to look for this is sort of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
	You can start to look for more abstract and long-term uh goals.
	So uh that would be my definition of uh value.
	And was there a reason why you were asking me for the definition of value?
	What's the value in my definition of value to you?
	Yeah, i i it's more of a very interesting to your point, seeing what people values it's seeing where they kind of fit in in turn in terms of uh the uh I won't say good society, but but individuals as a whole.
	Um maybe because I I I find it uh pressing all the different types of um I won't say mischaracterizations of values, but to get to your point, where does your day-to-day fit in your maslow's hierarchy of needs once you meet those needs,
	like where do you begin kind of spending that time um um and and that's kind of where I kind of are I don't want to talk in a circle or snake eating a snake, but uh well what you do best with that time and how does that define value?
	I I know it's a little bit all over the place there, but that's my main point.
	So what I do best is to me conditioned by the long-term goal of what is the best, uh the best morally, the best in terms of virtue, the best in terms of effectiveness, and so on.
	So I had a goal, of course, the promotion of the non-aggression principle.
	And in order to promote the non-aggression principle, I did my usual business thing, which is to say what is the biggest market we can actually enter?
	There's no point having a big market you can't enter, and there's no point having a small market, you can enter.
	What is the biggest market that we can enter?
	Right?
	So looking for the biggest market you can actually affect or sell into led me to if I want to promote the non-aggression principle.
	What is the biggest violation of the non-aggression principle that we can do the most about?
	And it's not that hard to figure out that that is uh spanking or aggression against children.
	So that is uh the most prevalent violation of the non-aggression principle.
	Uh there is uh studies out there that uh mothers hit children like 17 times a week.
	Uh and uh and that's just smacking them that doesn't even include sort of verbal aggression and so on.
	And so uh we can do something about that because it's possible to not hit your children, right?
	So that was sort of my example of that.
	So is that the most fun thing to do?
	Nope.
	It in fact is not fun to do at all.
	Uh sometimes because uh you get call called all kinds of crazy horrible names when you promote the non-aggression principle because parents hit children because they like to hit children, or they prefer to hit children uh rather than the alternative.
	So when you say what you're doing is wrong and immoral and bad, uh they get kind of mad because you're taking away their aggressive drug of choice.
	But it is the most important thing to do in the world.
	So sometimes it's not just what I'm best at.
	Sometimes it is what is best for the world as a whole, and I'm sure you have the same thing.
	So that there's sort of the balance between what you like to do and what your conscience likes you to do, right?
	Because you're my conscience is pretty fierce.
	I was talking earlier about how I paid $2 extra on a bus in Mexico because I'd underpaid, because I thought I was being ripped off as a white guy, and uh so on.
	So I can't be happy if I've done wrong.
	And so for me, what I'm best at, what I want to be best at is being happy, and if I do wrong, I can't be happy.
	And so I uh have to do that which is best for the world, in in part selfishly, so that I can be happy.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, so in terms of uh and I'm gonna kind of kick off because there's reading a little bit more of a profile.
	You it seems like you're um very well said in philosophy.
	Um do you find yourself uh more towards trying to find the golden mean for Aristotle when you're kind of looking at these major frameworks?
	Because that's something I kind of struggle with is like, hey, from a utilitarianism standpoint or uh distributive justice or maybe in a cant framework, I kind of always find myself more looking towards an Aristotle like, hey, like you have to be clutonous to a certain extent, right?
	But if you're overly gull gluttonous, um it's kind of gonna throw maybe your whole golden compass out of whack.
	Um so how kind of you look at that in terms of your framework?
	It's a great question.
	So the Aristotelian mean referred to challenges in which extremes tend to be bad.
	So let's take, for example.
	Taking responsibility in your own life.
	So if you take no responsibility in your own life, that's bad.
	However, if you think everything in the world is your responsibility, that's also incorrect, right?
	There's a balance between the two things.
	If you want to exercise, if you don't exercise, if you want to be healthy, if you don't exercise at all, you're not going to be healthy.
	If you exercise too much, you're going to get injured, which means you can exercise less.
	And so there's a sort of sweet spot.
	If you eat too little, you starve.
	If you eat too much, you get fat.
	So the Aristotelian mean is when the extremes are negative and therefore you have to navigate the middle.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	So would you have to say that?
	Sorry, I'm not finished.
	I just want to make sure I make sense.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	So I mean, Aristotle himself basically said the Aristotelian mean does not apply to murder, right?
	Well, we don't want too little murder, but we also don't want too much murder either.
	So with the Aristotelian mean, it's when you're navigating situations where the two extremes are negative and you've got to find some balance in the middle, and also when there's a changing scale.
	Uh so the exercise that you can do when you're younger, there's not a lot of 80-year-olds who do wind sprints because you know you're kind of old and creaky and so on.
	And like 90% of people never sprint after the age of 30, which they should, but anyway, so but Aristotle didn't mean, and neither would I to say that, well, you don't want to punch your girlfriend too little, but you don't want to punch your girlfriend too much.
	Like just don't punch your girlfriend.
	That's a black and white issue.
	So when it comes to morality, rape, theft, assault, and murder, I will oppose those 150% and take no quarter, right?
	There's no good rape, there's no good assault, like initiation of the use of force.
	And that's a black and white issue where there's you you always oppose it.
	However, in the sort of navigation of things in life.
	I mean, if you look at when you negotiate with uh an employer, well, you want to be paid a billion dollars a minute for uh playing video games, and they want to pay you zero for being incredibly productive, right?
	So obviously those two extremes aren't going to happen, so you have to find something in the middle where there's a non-moral negotiation to be had.
	But with morality, there is no compromise.
	It's black and white.
	Aaron Powell Yeah.
	No, no, no.
	I just don't disagree with anything you put there.
	Um I guess I find myself to your point using it as like a second order effect, may maybe applying a comp framework and then to your point um for the really greachy sacks.
	Uh more apply that Aristotle.
	Um to that end.
	Um but that's all the questions I have, sir.
	Thank you.
	All right, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	And uh welcome back anytime.
	Free domain.com.
	And don't forget to follow me on X. All right.
	Who have we got here?
	Uh Case.
	Did we Are you on my case?
	Did you we did we talk before?
	We can close it.
	We did We did talk before, sorry, I got like uh muted out.
	We talked about religion or something like that.
	Um but I uh Wait, sorry, did I mute you?
	Did we have a conflict?
	No, no, no, we never had a conflict.
	Okay, sorry.
	I don't remember.
	I remember the last guy who's I think crabbing about me now on X, but that's fine.
	Okay, so sorry, how can I help you?
	No, I've we've never had a conflict.
	I've been a big fan for a long time.
	Okay, but nice to meet you.
	Yeah.
	And I I we we've talked once before, but on a different account I had, it got deleted anyway.
	Um I have more of like a personal question.
	And it has to do to like I'm growing up real quick backstory.
	I never really wanted to have a family.
	I started listening to you.
	You've kind of enlightened me to that and inspired me in a way, like I want to be a father.
	And I I like the peaceful parenting method.
	You've kind of defined at least articulated it for me.
	I hadn't heard it anywhere else.
	And combination, I kind of grew up on a farm, so I have like you know, I've raised raised some animals, I did some animal husbandry, so I have like basic grasps of like resource allocation and like, you know, important things families need, whatever.
	Um I saw your tweet yesterday.
	Um maybe it was about mental illness, 80%.
	Uh 70%.
	I'm I'm just rereading a book by it's actually I think the cousin of Sasha Barron Cohen, and it's called the uh the science of evil, and in it he points out the twin studies have shown that say borderline personality disorder, which is one of the worst diagnoses around, is 70% genetic based upon sort of twin studies.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, thanks for thanks for clearing that up.
	But um and I I haven't watched uh The Truth About Divorce yet.
	Um I watch all your stuff.
	I haven't had a time to watch it.
	But I I kind of grew up in a divorced family.
	Uh I know like all the pitfalls, and I'm like I'm desperate to avoid it.
	Um, now more personal territory.
	I I'm I've known a woman for 20 years, and we've been hitting it off great, and recently we got engaged.
	And then I encouraged her to get off like psych medications.
	And uh a couple weeks later, and she's like having anxiety attacks and mental breakdowns.
	And uh and she, you know, to be fair, she was always talking about getting off it anyway.
	And for the year did she sorry, did she get off it with the advice of her doctor, or did she just do some cold turkey scenario?
	No, cold turkey scenario, totally.
	And listen, I I I the last I'm the last person on the planet to give medical advice, but uh to me, if you're going to change your medication, please, Lord Above, talk to your doctor.
	This stuff can be really challenging to get off.
	And uh you may need to taper, you may I don't know.
	Because again, I'm not a doctor, but uh I don't I think it's fairly safe to give medical advice, which is sort of talk to your doctor about about these kinds of decisions.
	I'm not I understand you're not a doctor.
	Yeah, yeah, but but I just I mean that would be my so she she just went cold turkey and that's it, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	But I guess I guess that's a larger question, right?
	So she decided to go back on it, has to re-establish relationship with her psychologist list stuff.
	Um I guess I guess the larger question is like you know, from your gut instinct is is the mental illness that's kind of clearly inherent.
	Is that like a non-starter?
	Because I I you know I haven't watched your recent stuff, I don't know if you've covered it.
	I always wondering your opinion.
	Yeah, so I mean, borderline is very hard to treat.
	You know, there's There's lots of people who are mental health professionals who are like borderlines.
	Oh no.
	Because you know, they call at three o'clock in the morning threatening to kill themselves if you don't talk to them for three hours.
	You know, that's sort of an anecdotal stuff that I've read.
	So it's pretty tough to change that kind of stuff.
	There are people who have significant personality disorders that can kind of mellow over time.
	They I mean I don't know if they just wear out or something like that, but they will often be a little bit less intense when they get older, but still, you know, much more intense and you know, high low than the average population.
	So it depends.
	You know, if somebody's kind of a bit depressed or a bit down or has dystymia or whatever it is, you know, we're not all perfect, that kind of stuff.
	But if somebody has one of the more extreme personality disorders, you know, narcissism, psych you know, psychopathy, uh, antisocial personality disorder, uh, borderline and so on.
	Uh again, I can't tell you what anyone should do, and I certainly can't diagnose anyone, but I can tell you that I wouldn't.
	Uh I wouldn't date.
	And I wouldn't even be involved in in the person in the person's life.
	And listen, as you know, genetics are not destiny.
	There's a lot of it's not like 70% of people who have particular genes will be borderline.
	It means that that 70% of the contribution is genetic.
	But that still gives you a 30% to work with, which is quite a big deal, right?
	So I can have as much sympathy as can be imagined for people who suffered a lot as children, and I think that these kinds of dysfunctions in the mind arise out of significant child abuse.
	And a lot of dysfunctions in the mind, as the old saying goes, uh arise out of the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
	People who would rather take drugs than go through the pain of processing uh a bad childhood.
	And a lot of people with a lot of extreme mental disorders have had, you know, childhood rape.
	Uh uh, I I remember remember meeting a woman once whose father had passed her around to his friends as uh an object of uh pedophilia, uh just just absolutely wretched and appalling stuff that goes on in the world.
	That you know, when you see that kind of stuff, it really does change who you are, realizing the depths of depravity and human evil that uh people are capable of, particularly against children.
	So I can have a lot of sympathy for sure, but I would not choose to hitch my wagon to to that kind of a person because the sympathy doesn't heal them.
	They often if they particularly if they're older and have a history of you know, sheer chaos and so on, they are somewhat out of control of their state of mind.
	They tend to be very impulsive and not overly filled with conscience or regret.
	They tend to be very sort of very highs and very lows, and so on.
	And uh uh I can't fix what I didn't break, and I can't fix stuff that has gone on from early childhood into say twenties and thirties.
	And it is very hard to make people better, even for professionals.
	So you think of really extreme personality traits, they can be put into an asylum, even sometimes against their will.
	And with all the medication and all the therapy and the complete control over that person's environment, they can't fix them.
	And so the idea that you or I or anyone sort of in the outside world can make these people uh better is a very dangerous uh to me, at least it's again, it's just my particular opinion.
	It's a very dangerous delusion.
	Because then they'll say, you know, well, i if you loved me more, and so on, it's like, but that's that's not the answer.
	It doesn't.
	It doesn't work.
	It doesn't because in order to be loved, you have to be virtuous, and it's tough.
	And virtue requires consistency.
	And it's tough to be consistent when your emotions and impulsivity are all over the place.
	So yeah, I personally would not.
	Uh but of course, uh it's everyone's choice for themselves.
	I'm sorry, and that's sort of a pointless thing to say, but you know what I mean.
	Aaron Powell No, I I like that last point too about being able to provide the love.
	And like, you know, and and I don't want to get too anecdotal on a waste of time.
	But in this particular case, there's no extremes of abuse.
	I've known her for 20 years or so, and and it it really and and she doesn't get abusive with me or we don't get abusive towards each other.
	It's very it's very soft-spoken, very sweet girl.
	She just gets insanely depressed and shuts down for weeks at a time.
	And you know, like you kind of hearken back to the last conversation, you you the What is it, Aristotle's Golden?
	I never heard that before, but falling somewhere in the middle and trying to make the best of of it without hitting the extremes.
	That's kind of what I was feeling like.
	But I I was just kind of wondering from your personal experience if you would even bother with someone who who even had a little bit up and down.
	And they're not sure.
	Well no, I mean think we all have a little bit.
	Yeah.
	I think we all have a little bit up and down.
	I think that's I think that's fine.
	But do you want to have kids?
	Oh, definitely.
	Okay.
	And is she, if you've known her for 20 years, is she of the age where she can have children?
	Aaron Powell Oh, yeah.
	We're both still pretty young.
	And uh we're both very healthy.
	Okay.
	So the reason that I'm asking you, of course, is that you choose who you date, assuming that you want to have kids.
	You choose who you date on the foundational understanding that your future children get the deciding vote.
	In other words, if your future children, out of all the women you could know, would your future children choose this woman to be their mother?
	Would they be overjoyed at your choice for them?
	the question.
	Yeah.
	During good circumstances, yeah.
	And for over a year at Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So there's no under good circumstances.
	Good circumstances being medicated.
	Well, no.
	Well, I mean, what why did she want to get off the medication?
	Aaron Ross Powell Because things were great.
	We were happy.
	I had never really known her.
	I've known her for twenty years, but I'd never known her off medication personally.
	And she was like, I think I want to get off this shit, because like we're talking about having kids.
	We don't want to have a kid dependent on whatever it is.
	You know, that's a that becomes a factor too when moms give birth, do breastfeeding.
	Um those medications play a factor.
	And so we were both, you know, trying to live healthy lifestyles.
	Like, okay, well, if we're going down this road, we should probably eliminate that medication you take every single day.
	And like to me, I I never really was too close to mental illness.
	And I feel like I've been through enough trauma and I've worked through it naturally without medication that I just assume everyone can.
	Has she done talk therapy?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And her talk therapist gave her the meds.
	Um, although that's the psychiatrist.
	I again I don't know where you are, and you don't have to don't tell me, but my understanding is that psychologists cannot.
	Um psychologists cannot prescribe.
	That's a psychiatrist's job.
	Yeah.
	I'm I guess maybe the answer is no to talk therapy, but I mean, you know, we like pray together and stuff.
	She she's she's very tries to be good and is aware of like you know, moral rights and wrongs, even though we don't have philosophical discussions, it's just very second nature.
	So there's good in there, but she's like consumed by darkness, you know.
	And what does that mean?
	She's consumed Okay.
	And again, you don't have to get into any details, but I uh am I wrong in assuming that her childhood was pretty bad?
	Actually, yeah.
	She she I I grew up she grew up on the rich side of town.
	That doesn't mean that the childhood can't be bad.
	I I know I don't know.
	But I mean as far as physical abuse, the extremes no.
	Maybe there was neglect from a father who wasn't there because he was working all day long, but the no divorce, no obvious trauma that like, you know.
	Okay, but hang on, but you said neglect.
	Uh uh I mean if I had to assign anything that that would maybe be the best, but not neglect is like I'm hungry, meaning like I miss dad because he's running a giant company.
	Aaron Powell Okay.
	So what's her relationship with her mother like?
	Oh uh relationship with parents is very good.
	Family is very good.
	She's good reputation.
	It's just when when things uh well, you know, now that she's offered medication, she's she's like, I I can't stop thinking about killing myself.
	I can't stop thinking about it.
	Okay, like I'm sorry, sorry to be a nag, but please don't laugh.
	I'm sorry.
	Like it's that's that's really that's quite shocking.
	So when she's not on the meds, she's suicidal?
	Not actively.
	It's more of like a she's thinking about it.
	She said she said she can't stop thinking about suicide.
	Well, okay, so like I mean, we've had this conversation, whereas like I think any intelligent person, if their life gets hard, has to factor that option.
	That's just always been my opinion.
	Like, easy has as can anyone honestly say like when things are the worst they've ever been, you know, like well, if I if I wasn't here, I wouldn't have to do it.
	Okay, hang on, hang on.
	So but you've got two standards there.
	One is when life gets hard, and the other is when it's the worst it's ever been.
	Now those are two two very different things.
	Fair.
	Yeah.
	Well, I I mean I see the distinction.
	Um I I guess, you know.
	Um I mean, I'm I'm not in her head.
	I talked to her about it.
	Aaron Ross Powell So would she have to be, and again, this is you would know more about this than I do.
	Would she have to be off her meds when breastfeeding?
	Uh the the specific medicine we we looked into it, at least according to Grok, there is potential for uh for baby absorption through breast milk.
	Also, babies born dependent more.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So gee, I wonder if her mother took it.
	Anyway, it doesn't doesn't matter.
	But okay, so do you want the woman who's off the meds to be the mother of your children?
	Because she'll need to be off the meds for if she needs to be off the meds.
	Again, I don't know, but if she needs to be off the meds for the recommended 18 months of breastfeeding, and then you maybe have uh another kid and then she's got another 18 months or whatever it is.
	So she'll need to be off the meds if I understand you correctly, or it might be better for her to be off the meds for uh uh uh three years during two rounds of breastfeeding or four and a half years if you have three.
	Correct.
	Okay, so is that a good plan?
	I don't know.
	Yeah.
	I mean, uh I I kind of thought this is what we might end up I I guess I just needed to hear it from you.
	I respect you.
	I'm happy to do that.
	Well, no, I mean do you do your kids?
	Would your kids choose a woman who may have to be off her meds and if she is off her meds can't start thinking about killing herself.
	Would your children say of all the women you could have children with, she's number one.
	Probably not.
	But okay, so then I go back to my kind of warp sensibility.
	My parents were mostly absent depressed drugs, and I wouldn't have chosen them, but I wouldn't replace them, if that is a valid consideration.
	Sorry, what do you mean you wouldn't replace them?
	I'm not sure.
	I'm not disagreeing with you.
	I just don't quite follow the thought.
	Aaron Powell Yeah.
	I mean, like I had a I had a rough shake at it growing up.
	Things were things were rough.
	And even today, things are rough.
	These people aren't really functioning.
	And uh I care for them.
	I never wish ill upon them.
	And and like part of me is fond of my rough upbringing because it led to other little opportunities.
	Um, a lot of times when I'm with my friends, I notice that I'm a couple degrees more efficient with like using my hands because I grew up digging ditches, you know, versus them on Xbox all day long.
	You know, and so it's like that's I mean, come on, that's that's a bit of a cope, right?
	You think so?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I I appreciate those.
	No, because listen, you you can you can dig ditches and be loved.
	I I didn't say I wasn't loved.
	I didn't say I wasn't loved.
	I mean I mean I mean actually from a peaceful party.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Slow you roll, because you're just running past stuff here that I need to pause on if you don't mind.
	Yes, sir.
	Okay, so you said your parents were uh druggies?
	Uh yeah.
	Okay.
	Uh were they violent?
	Not really.
	No.
	What do you mean, not really?
	I mean, have you ever robbed a bank?
	Well, not really.
	What does that mean?
	Uh I found twenty dollars before the ATM.
	No, um I mean like I wasn't like abused, I wasn't physically beaten up.
	I think I remember twice, maybe I was smacked.
	Okay.
	So were they neglectful?
	Uh did they did they neglect uh your health and uh security and safety and food and health care.
	I mean, were they neglectful in that way?
	Aaron Powell Uh maybe to some standard, you know, maybe maybe to a low bar.
	But I mean I was never Wait, so they were drug addicts and also responsible parents?
	Uh yeah, well, like uh uh what is that productive alcoholic and drug, yeah, functionality.
	Yeah, fun functional alcoholic.
	But um okay, so I mean I don't want to get too too off course, but this might tie into your uh relative divorce video that I haven't watched yet.
	But in America, in the place I grew up, uh in the 90s when my parents got divorced, my dad had to pay my mom $400 a week for both of our kids.
	He couldn't do that.
	And his option A, your wage garnishment, so you work, money's automatically gone.
	Option B, you go to jail.
	Option three, you leave the continent.
	So he left the continent.
	And uh you know, he he was chef, you know, may in the 90s, you know, making zero dollars.
	So I've resented him for that for a long time.
	Aaron Powell Sorry, but did he so he left the country and did he send money?
	Uh yeah, he would he would send some material support.
	But he would always he didn't want the divorce, though.
	He was like, I love your mom.
	I wish we were back.
	My mom was gonna bloodthirst you with a lawyer.
	And so your father married the wrong woman.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean that that's what I'm talking to you about.
	Because that's your pattern, right?
	Definitely, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So what the way that I work is that love is our response to virtue.
	It's how we feel when we're in the presence of virtue.
	So what are the virtues that your parents manifested that would cause you to love them?
	Virtues that parents manifested.
	Uh not much.
	There was a lot of hatred.
	There was a lot of you know, kniving.
	I just kind of um love unconditionally.
	Um, no.
	I mean, you you can bring that theory somewhere else, but not here.
	Because there's no such thing as unconditional love.
	I mean, uh other than you know, babies or whatever, like like that they don't have to earn your love because they're babies, but but you want them and they're cute as heck.
	So yeah, we don't do we don't do unconditional love.
	Uh uh are you a Christian man?
	Is that where it's coming from?
	Yeah, uh more or less I I'm not you know, like officially sanctioned or anything like that.
	But uh certainly Jesus is not a fan of unconditional love.
	Uh he did forgiveness.
	You know?
	I know no, no, no, no.
	Jesus Jesus said forgive if the person repents.
	Yeah, ask for forgiveness.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, and earns it doesn't just ask for it, but earns it with some sort of repentance.
	Right.
	How do you um earn forgiveness to an adult?
	You know?
	How do you what?
	How do you uh for bad parenting get forgiveness uh Well they ha ha let's say has your mother apologized to you and made amends for the bad decisions she made over the course of the divorce and for leaving your father in the first place if he wanted to continue to work on the marriage?
	No, not really.
	She uh still badmouths and stuff.
	But they does invite him for uh Christmas now.
	So still wait, she's still badmouths your father?
	A little bit, like in a petty way.
	To you.
	Yeah.
	Oh yeah.
	So that's shitty behavior.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Okay.
	But she's like a shitty person, you know.
	Okay.
	So how do you love a shitty person?
	Uh well, I think that's setting a good example and what do you mean?
	No, that that's not another.
	To be the person that I want her to be.
	What is that answer?
	Setting a good example to who?
	To her.
	So you've known her for how long?
	Uh my whole life.
	Okay, so 30, 40 years?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Has it worked?
	Yeah, I mean, a little bit by bit, you know.
	Uh, because I used to so here's the thing, I would raise it.
	She hasn't even apologized.
	Well, well, hold on one second.
	I was raised by her, so I used to behave like her.
	I would gossip and was promiscuous and stuff.
	And it took finding someone like you to kind of define why those things were bad.
	And because I didn't have any adult amount of things.
	So let me let me appeal to your greed here.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So you want a good wife and a good mother for your children.
	Yes.
	So what's your favorite female name?
	Vanessa.
	Vanessa.
	Vanessa, very nice.
	Very nice.
	Not Vixen with three X's in the middle.
	Okay.
	So Vanessa comes along and she's virtuous, courageous, honest, direct, moral, good, right?
	Yeah.
	And then she meets your parents.
	Does she want to spend the next 40 or more years in the proximity of your parents and have them help her raise your children?
	Probably the answer is no.
	The answer is absolutely not.
	Yeah, but I'm secure.
	Like I I've my own place.
	I make enough that we don't really know.
	Listen, and you are a guy.
	You're thinking like a guy.
	So you're thinking of a woman as an individual.
	That's not how women think.
	Women judge you by the company you keep, particularly your family.
	Because while you're off working, doing your thing, putting your 60 hours or 50 hours or 40 hours a weekend.
	Women are programmed to say, okay, so I'm going to be spending a lot more time with this guy's mother at times in my life and his father than him.
	In the same way that if you were interested in Vanessa, and Vanessa had dysfunctional, mean, mouthy parents, and she said, well, we're going to spend all summers with them, all Thanksgiving, all Christmas, it's going to be at least four months a year.
	Would that be a factor in you marrying her?
	Uh maybe somewhat, but I I can kind of consider that.
	Like, no, no.
	What do you mean, maybe?
	I don't spend a lot of time, I don't spend nothing.
	Dysfunctional, volatile parents.
	Yeah.
	I could deal with it.
	I don't I don't I don't judge people based on let me just pose this to you for one second, because I've never heard anyone talk about it.
	I think I like to take credit for this one.
	But having the wrong answers to a test is better than having none of the answers to the test.
	I don't know what that means.
	That's way too astral.
	Well, think about it for a second.
	Like if I give you a list of the wrong answers, as I said, these are the wrong answers.
	You know this now, right?
	So don't do these things.
	That's kind of how I view my life.
	I had the wrong answers.
	I I could view these people that were dysfunctional, low IQ morons, and be like, all right, clearly they're not happy.
	Don't do anything they're doing.
	And that would be a good thing.
	Okay, but if if they're all wrong, see, I'm afraid you did fail the test.
	I apologize for being a jerk, but you did kind of fail the test.
	So the correct answer to Vanessa's crazy parents is like, I can't put my children through that.
	I can't have dysfunctional crazy people around my kids.
	Remember I said, what did I say?
	I said choose who you date based upon your future children getting the deciding vote.
	And I said, you're gonna spend four months, your family's gonna spend four months a year with crazy people.
	And the correct answer is forget what you can handle what's best for your kids.
	Do your should your kids be exposed to that.
	I wouldn't expose my kid to the kids.
	Okay, so that's your answer.
	And so you you just because you grew up with parents who were a little on the selfish side, it sounds like you're not used to people thinking about what's best for their kids and putting their kids' needs first.
	I mean, obviously, because if your parents put their kids' needs first, you and your siblings, they wouldn't be druggies, right?
	Yep.
	Okay.
	So you're not used to putting children's needs first and foremost, and I sympathize with that.
	I'm not faulting you or anything in that way, and I'm certainly not trying to say anything negative towards you, but it's just kind of a fact.
	Like I grew up, my parents didn't speak Japanese, so I don't speak Japanese.
	And your parents don't speak putting kids first.
	So it's hard for you to process.
	So you look forward and you say, okay, so um if Vanessa has dysfunctional, mean, crazy parents.
	A, I don't want that in my life, and B, I can't have that in my children's life.
	Because let's say there's another woman named um Sammy who doesn't have really nice, productive, healthy, normal, mature, loving parents.
	Wouldn't that be better for your family?
	Definitely ideal.
	You strive for the ideal.
	Right.
	So the problem is when you have your parents in your life and you haven't cleaned up the relationship with them, Vanessa is not gonna date you.
	Uh well, so the I mean, like, people I interact with can see like, oh, this is a crit clearly a crazy person.
	It can juxtapose that with me, like, yeah, your parents are a little fucked up.
	Uh like and I demonstrate value in a bunch of different ways, like not being abusive, being able to be a good provider, and then like uh an intelligent person can deduce from that, because you're still I'm sorry to be annoying.
	You're still failing to do.
	I don't think there's annoying.
	Why will see you're just putting yourself forward.
	You're the only person that Vanessa's gonna judge.
	Vanessa is gonna look and say, this is the influence that's gonna be impacting my husband, myself, and our children.
	She's not gonna date you because of that.
	Aaron Powell So I don't introduce people to my parents lightly, uh, maybe in the past, you know, 15 years of one of the person.
	Yeah, well, I don't so I kind of preempted this.
	I'm like, listen, I don't have a good relationship with my family.
	They're a little whack, you know, you make your decision, you know, and so kind of we go in there with that.
	I I get what you're saying about kids, you can't really like that.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	So the woman that we're talking about now who's on and off the meds and on again, does she know about your dysfunctional family of origin?
	Oh, yeah, she she met them.
	We grew up together.
	Um she's not about them.
	She's met my mom before we were kids.
	Does she think that they're going to be a good influence on your children?
	Um, I I I know please don't call this coke.
	But I mean, as far as like raw parenting, my mom is a good parent, like wants to be a grandma.
	She is a grandma.
	She she's stable now and raw parenting.
	I don't understand.
	But if you put the word raw in that doesn't know what is she like a cat, you're not going to be able to do that.
	Well, I mean, like, you don't want to go to her for existential philosophical device advice.
	But being like, oh, clean up the poopy.
	Don't get more than hang on, hang on.
	So she was Was it just your father who was on drugs or was she on drugs?
	Uh she's functional alcoholic.
	He's amazing.
	Okay, so she's an alcoholic, and she busted up your family and trash talked your dad for decades.
	Oh yeah.
	So please don't tell me good parent.
	Come on.
	Come on.
	No, no, come on.
	That that's that's not a good nuttiness to my audience.
	Well, I mean, I I guess I'm trying to say as far as like a visit once a month, it's not going to be this disaster.
	You know, it's not like there's um a drunken orgy going on that I'm taking my kid to.
	And I don't spend a lot of time around these people because of that, and they know that.
	You know, I I've taught I've asked them about this.
	I've been like, wait, so give me the straight answer on the divorce.
	Let's talk about the circumcision shit.
	What's going on here?
	So they they know my stances on all this stuff.
	They they know I have gripes and I keep a distance actually.
	You know, I I show up for Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday, you know.
	And so, but how often do you guys talk?
	Well, when she needs something, when he needs something.
	I don't have to surprise.
	It's usually like, oh, can you fill up my car tire?
	Or do you do you like your parents?
	Uh yeah.
	I mean Okay, so if you like them, why don't you talk to them?
	Uh well, like like I like my boss, I don't talk to that guy, though.
	You know?
	Sure you do.
	You talk to your boss on every day, I assume.
	Well, I I talk well, I mean, no, not really.
	He's kind of a couple degrees past me.
	But for for I mean somebody's got to give you instructions at work, right?
	Somebody's gotta have a standard, they've got to review you, they've got to approve raises.
	I mean, you you interact with your boss, right?
	Yeah, yeah, as needed though.
	You know, we we don't go shoot the shit, talk about hot girls at the smoke pit, you know.
	I'm not saying that that would be your topic.
	Okay, do you have friends that you like that you don't talk to?
	Yeah, well, now that I'm engaged, you know, we've kind of been doing engaged stuff.
	And I'll be right back.
	I missed the part where you were engaged.
	I'm sorry if you mentioned that.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	We we got kind of light engagement.
	Uh what?
	Like, um, you know.
	You're like king of caveats here, man.
	What is a light engagement?
	I mean, like, you know, I'm not into the like engagement photos, those row around on the beach stuff.
	It was kind of like a copy of the case.
	But you proposed and you set a date to get married.
	Yes.
	No, not no date to get married, just proposal.
	None of these.
	Is she in her 30s?
	Uh yeah, early 30s.
	Okay.
	So you don't have a lot of time.
	Yeah, that's a factor.
	So why haven't you got a date?
	When did you propose?
	Uh July.
	July.
	Yeah.
	July.
	September, October.
	So three months ago, two, two, three months ago.
	Yeah.
	Oh, well, I mean, if it if it matters, we've had a spiritual wedding already, and we haven't done the legal stuff yet.
	So, do you consider yourself married?
	Yeah, she she calls herself my wife.
	Okay, good.
	All right.
	So you're married.
	I guess, yeah, you know.
	I mean, well, then we this has been a debate.
	Do we care if the Democrats judge says we're married, or does it just matter to Jesus?
	This is a debate at the dinner table, but um Yeah.
	For for most of the people, okay.
	So sorry, my my my apologies.
	I thought that you were asking whether or not you should date the person, not I mean, you're already married, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, well, we're not legally married yet.
	Okay, I understand.
	I understand.
	But but you're married.
	She calls herself your wife.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	Got it.
	Well, I I would, you know, personally, I would say it's well worth being honest and direct with your parents.
	Because I think that you withhold from them the possibility of salvation if you don't confront them on the wrongs they did and ask them to apologize and make restitution.
	Because that is going to be they're better in the Christian universe.
	Are your parents better off if they admit their fault and apologize and make restitution?
	Okay, so uh again, it's a little anecdotal, it's a little personal, but I forgive.
	Sorry, I'm just asking.
	No, no, I'm I'm asking theologically.
	Theologically, yeah, you you're supposed to give forgiveness and seek forgiveness.
	Okay.
	So if they don't even particularly know what they did wrong, aren't you withholding from them the possibility of being forgiven and of erasing the sin?
	Uh they know what they've done wrong.
	I've forgiven them.
	Um no, but hang on.
	Again, you're opposing Jesus then because Jesus says that people have to uh make amends.
	They have to repent.
	Right.
	So now we get down to like uh semantics almost.
	Like they say sorry.
	My my dad will be like, I'm so sorry for your childhood.
	And I'm like, okay.
	Like mocking.
	I forgive you.
	Huh?
	Like mocking you?
	No, no, no.
	Like this has happened since I was since before the divorce.
	There's all these traumatic episodes of parents crying, apologizing.
	And I'm like, I don't give a shit.
	Like at this point.
	Sorry, I'm I'm getting a little bit more.
	No, it's fine.
	I don't care.
	It's fine.
	But but uh at some point, you know, what in early teens, I was like, you people aren't helping me.
	I'm not gonna let you hurt me.
	And I I took my control of my own life, you know, and I jettisoned.
	And I've never asked some birth things since I was like 15, maybe.
	So I'm proud of that now.
	You know, and uh I'm I I kind of stand on that.
	Like I don't need you people.
	Uh I'm I'm involved insofar as you uh we have a parental relationship.
	I wouldn't chill with you at the bar.
	Okay.
	Have they repented and made amends?
	Well, uh that was kind of my original question.
	What do amends look like?
	Um I guess I guess better before.
	Whatever whatever has you be okay with what happened and not have any problems with what happened.
	Have they repented and made amends?
	Like if I borrow your car and I ding your car, I've at least got to fix your car, right?
	I don't just hand you back the car and say, well, you gotta forgive me.
	It's like, I bet you fix my car, then I'll forgive you, right?
	So have they apologized and accepted and acknowledged the hurt that they did and worked hard to make amends.
	Amends could be going to anger management, it could be going to therapy, uh, it could be uh helping you out in some particular projects free of charge.
	It could be anything that that is gonna make you feel better, taking 100% ownership for all the bad things that happen, not blaming each other.
	Right?
	There's a lot of m maturity that goes on in making amends.
	It could be any combination or other things, but it's something really substantial that makes you feel a whole lot better.
	Uh the nothing they could do.
	There's no I don't need anything from it.
	There's something that's there's always things that people can do.
	Okay, so like theologically.
	I uh I forgive them because I hated them.
	Bro, you you you're bouncing around here.
	No, I'm gonna do that.
	No, no, you asked me, hang on, hang on.
	It's getting a little annoying because you asked me what could they do?
	And I just gave you a whole list and you just blew right past it.
	Well, forgive me.
	I forgive you.
	No, but but seriously, right?
	Like because you you said, well, what could they do?
	And I just gave you a whole list.
	Have they knowledge that you you you I mean I I mean like none none of those things are material to me.
	I and they go into therapy for them, I I could care less.
	Going, I I don't need help with projects.
	If I did ask, I one time I I fucked up my bathroom floor and I called my mom and she showed up with a mop and mop the whole bathroom without any hesitation whatsoever.
	So I was like, cool.
	But uh like if I if I needed something, they would actually provide it.
	I I try to make a point not to ever ask for anything from these people.
	And uh I'm not mad at them.
	I I they're flawed humans.
	I was flawed, I try to be perfect, I'm not perfect.
	And I forgive them for not being perfect.
	I don't want to put my family around them super close quarters.
	I get embarrassed by them, even around friends and stuff.
	Okay, will they have any authority with regards to raising your children?
	Okay.
	So they really won't be around your kids much.
	So they'll be around for yeah, holidays or whatever, but I mean it authority.
	But you won't they wouldn't babysit you.
	Would you leave your kids alone with them?
	My mom for a couple hours at a time, no problem whatsoever.
	She'll give them cake, you know, play little games with them.
	She's good at that.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, um, sounds like you've got you've got a plan.
	Sounds like you're set.
	Uh obviously, congratulations on your mostly wedding.
	You're mostly.
	And I I really do appreciate the conversation.
	I've I've sort of made my case, and you've got your perspective.
	It doesn't sound like you're budging.
	I'm certainly not going to budge, but I really do appreciate the conversation and I've really enjoyed the back and forth.
	Uh yes, sir.
	Thank you.
	Have a good night.
	Thanks, man.
	I appreciate that.
	And thank you, everyone.
	Free domain.com slash donate to help out the show.
	I just got a really uh nice uh nice message, actually.
	Very nice.
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	Uh I gotta let me find it here.
	Uh oh yeah, I got a nice message, somebody said.
	Uh I wrote a novel some time ago called Just Poor.
	Somebody said, Just Poor was one of the best novels I've ever read, in the same vein as Dostoevsky or Ayn Rand.
	I very rarely read fiction books anymore, so I'm not really qualified to write a review, but here's a tip and gave me a little tip for the book, and you can get that book for free at freedomain.com slash books.
	All right.
	Lots of love, my friends.
	We'll talk Friday night, and don't forget, Sundays are for donors.
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