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Oct. 13, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:13:11
My Thoughts on DRUGS!
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Hello, everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
Look at me, formal voice.
It is August the 31st, 2025.
And this is uh subscriber-only own donor-only live stream.
And of course, thank you all so much for supporting the show and all of that.
So I did check this morning about when I published a show called There's No Such Thing as Mental Illness.
And in it, I was basically making the case, and this is not to say that suffering is not real.
Of course, the suffering is real, but in terms of it being a chemical imbalance and blah, blah, blah, there was no evidence.
Now, this is back in 2011.
I mean, when did Tom Cruise do his thing?
I can't remember Matt Lauer.
I didn't see that till later.
But anyway, it was a fairly lengthy, almost 50-minute presentation going through there's no physical markers anyway.
So there was this guy on Tucker recently.
And he was saying he was a, I think he's a doctor or something like that, psychiatrist, and he was talking about how they're, you know, they can take the spino fluid from people who are suffering from, say, depression and they can't find a difference in serotonin between those people and uh everyone else.
And the numbers vary depending on who you're asking, but he was saying like a fifth of Americans are on SSRIs.
I know in terms of liberal young women, it's uh crazy just how high the number is.
But uh yeah, the um the number of people on SSRIs is is absolutely staggering.
Absolutely staggering.
I I genuinely, and and the side effects can be brutal.
Of course, none of this is medical advice.
Talk to your doctor, blah, blah, blah.
But I'm just a podcaster, but you know, I I didn't realize.
I I knew that that they kind of hit your sex drive.
I didn't know that they actually hit your um your actual nerve endings, like to the point where you can end up with dead groin.
And uh according to what the doctor said, again, I'm no expert, but it seems like sometimes that doesn't even come back after you've stopped them.
And I I think it was referred to in the Tucker show as a kind of chemical castration.
It's a chemical castration.
That is wild.
That is wild.
And it is um beyond appalling.
And then, of course, he talks about the benzos or the benzodiazepines, fix your problems right away, but the level of addiction is is extraordinarily high.
I think that's what Jordan Peterson got addicted to, uh, which of course he should have known as a mental health professional, I'm sure he did, but anyway.
So the question is, you know, what is what is really going on.
Now, because I'm a responsibility whore, so to speak, that I will always take more responsibility than the situation warrants.
Because for me, let's say I say, well, I'm only 50%.
I'm only 50% responsible for whatever X, Y, and Z. I'm only 50% responsible.
There's a couple of reasons why I don't do that.
Number one is that if you aim for 50%, you're probably only gonna deliver 25%, because you don't know what the maximum is, right?
You don't know what the maximum is.
And so when you say it's 50% of an indeterminate number, you you're just saying I'm gonna deliver less response, I'm gonna take less responsibility.
But of course, if you say, well, it's 50-50, um first of all, it's never 50-50, it's never that even.
And secondly, 50-50 of what?
50-50 of what.
Like when I'm driving, um, I just assume that everyone is drunk and texting and playing video games with their feet and and enraged and having a fight with their wife or husband or whatever.
I just assume that because I don't want to get into an accident, and the more I assume that other people are not going to obey it.
Like if somebody's making a turn signal, I don't assume they're gonna turn.
Like ever.
I never because for me, what is it, waiting an extra five or ten seconds, but because they could change their mind, they could have just left the turn signal on, they could be 90 years old in Florida or something like that.
So I take like 150% responsibility for staying safe while I'm driving.
Because what would 50-50 even mean?
I don't know.
But it would mean that I'd be less careful, right?
I would be less careful.
So when you say, well, I'm only going to aim for 50% or even 100%.
I aim for 150% because that way I don't know what the upper bound of my responsibility is, because I don't know exactly what I'm capable of.
And I also don't know if the other person is an NPC, if the other person is a determinist or something wherein they functionally don't take any responsibility because they're just run by their emotions, or they're run by propaganda, uh, or they're part of groupthink or crowd think, um, and they've never had an original thought of their own.
So for me, when I say, well, I take 150% responsibility, uh, until proven otherwise, right?
Until proven otherwise.
But I don't know if I'm dealing with someone who takes any responsibility whatsoever.
So if I'm dealing with someone who doesn't take any responsibility, who's just an NPC automaton, a propagandized zombie robot, then they're not going to take any responsibility.
So, what does it mean to take 50% of responsibility when someone isn't taking any responsibility at all?
So 50% is like, you know, you when you're young and broke, you you and your friends move when you have to move a lot, you and your friends move.
So you both pick up each side of the couch, right?
Pick up each side of the couch.
Now, I will always aim to pick up the entire couch, because A, I get stronger, I exercise that muscle called responsibility.
And also, because if I'm picking up my side of the couch and the other person doesn't pick up their side of the couch, we're not going anywhere.
And I don't know ahead of time how much responsibility people have.
You mean the people who the people who uh deplatformed me, did they have any moral responsibility?
Certainly in an abstract sense they did.
But in terms of practicality, you know, were they threatened?
Uh were they threatened to be fired?
Uh, were they threatened by some outside agency?
Is their compromat?
Uh uh, or are they just utterly programmed to view that every other position but the far left is outright Nazi and they just they have no free will, they have no moral, they don't have any understanding of uh free speech as a principle, they've never been taught it, and and for most of human history there was no free speech, so it's not exactly like it's an aid-to-nature.
So, did they have any functional responsibility in banning me, or was it an NPC automatic response, either due to internal propaganda, complete unthinkingness, groupthink, or outside pressure?
Well, we certainly know that there was a lot of outside pressure in these situations or scenarios for sure.
So sorry, just a little tickle in my throat here.
Let me just knock off in your ear though.
Right, so uh always always take more responsibility than you think you do, because you don't know how much responsibility you're capable of.
I just aim for maximum and then double it or whatever it is, right?
Because whatever you pull back on, you're gonna end up with with less off, right?
Now with regards to SSRIs, of course, the big challenge is that people are unhappy, and why are they unhappy?
Well, of course, the traditional answer from religion is you're unhappy because you're sinning.
You're unhappy because you're distant from God, you're unhappy because you're living a degenerate lifestyle, you're unhappy because you're a hedonist, you're unhappy because you're living like an animal, uh, and that it's unfitting for the life of a cognitive creature to live as a sort of base uh animal.
So that was the traditional answer.
And even from philosophy, right?
From philosophy, reason equals virtue equals happiness.
You have to be rational.
If you're rational, you can be virtuous.
If you're rational and virtuous, the result will be happiness because you're living in alignment with our moral nature as uh a human being.
So human beings, the only moral creatures in the universe that we know of, and to live a life that is most fitting for you.
To use a muscle in the right way to live in a way that is most fitting for you is going to be what brings you the greatest happiness to live in accordance with your most fundamental nature.
And the most fundamental nature as human beings is universalism and virtue, uh, ethics, and so on, which is used to program and control us all the time.
And so philosophy, uh more ancient philosophy, religion and so on offers you God, virtue, reason, offers you an answer as to why you're unhappy.
You're unhappy because you are not living, assuming you're an adult, right?
You're not living a virtuous life.
You are being dishonest with yourself, you're being dishonest with others, you are pursuing mere sense pleasures rather than more refined conceptual virtues.
Uh you are cowardly in the moral realm, uh, and you are um silencing or suppressing yourself for the sake of conforming with bad people, right?
That was sort of the traditional answer.
That you are vain, uh, that you are greedy, uh, that you cheat people and you cheat yourself, not just materially, but through lies and and other things.
And you thirst for the unearned, you thirst for fame rather than virtue, you thirst for money rather than doing good, uh, and so on.
And not, you know, fame and making money is not the opposite of of virtue and doing good, but to seek for one at the expense of the other.
You uh you're a seducer, you lie to women in order to sleep with them, or with women you lie to men in order to get their resources or or something else.
So you why are you unhappy?
Because uh you are uh a pretender.
You are a pretender in that animals just live for the moment and uh run off chemically programmed preferences and sense data and all of that, they're hungry, they go eat.
They want to have sex, they go have sex.
Uh and uh, you know, they have a drive to feed their children biochemically, so they drive they they feed their children.
So they they're just living.
We wouldn't call them hedonists because they have no particular other option, right?
I guess some single-celled organism that wraps itself around food and then divides we would not say that it's just greedy and insensate and living like an animal.
It's like what's it's a component of an animal.
And so human beings are hedonists not because they pursue pleasures only.
That's not why they're hedonists.
Because animals pursue pleasure, we wouldn't call the animals a hedonist.
We wouldn't call a rabbit um uh uh a bunny whore because it has sex with a lot of various females or males, I suppose.
So uh a human being is a hedonist because the human being justifies the hedonism according to some larger conceptual standard.
So a human being cannot act like an animal because an animal will not justify its own behavior.
Human beings, we we have an absolute compulsion.
You can see this all the time.
Or like once you see this, I'm telling you, man, you can't unsee it.
So beware of the next minute of my speech.
But human beings cannot simply act.
They must always, always, always justify.
Animals don't justify, they just act.
A human being is a hedonist not because he pursues pleasure, but because he justifies it according to a universal standard.
Even if the person is a nihilist, they justify it by saying there is no universal standard.
Right?
So human beings will always act in compliance with an abstract they develop.
And often what they do is act in a hedonistic manner.
The hedonism not being the pursuit of pleasure, excuse me, but the hedonism being the justification of the pursuit of pleasure.
You know, effing bitches is what makes an alpha, you know, according to these gross pick-up artist guys and all of that, Or for uh, you know, these rap songs where the women are sort of glorifying uh having sex for money and and all that kind of stuff.
You've got to show the money and and all of that.
There's a justification, there's a um uh there's a an abstract explanation that makes it rational or good or okay or right or in conformance with some abstract standard.
So uh I mean you see this when the subject of spanking comes up, uh, people justify it.
They don't just say, well, I I spanked because I'm upset and it uh I could take it out of my kids.
No, no, no, no.
They don't say that.
So you can't just act in a violent manner and then just say, well, I just wanted to act in a violent manner.
No, no, no, no.
It has to be justified.
So they have to say, well, spare the rod, spoil the child, and uh if you beat a child, he shall not die, he shall become virtuous and honor thy mother and thy father, and I didn't do it in anger, and uh it spoils kids if you don't, and this modern selfish generation, that gentle parenting has ruined uh blah, blah.
So it's it's they don't just hit, they justify.
And most of what goes on in society is people doing absolutely shitty things and then justifying those things after the fact.
And the justification is everywhere.
Every time you pick up the newspaper, every time they turn on the TV, but the propaganda, all of the justify, justify, justify, justify, justify.
And it can get pretty dark.
Right?
I mean, the the grooming child rape scandals erupting in the UK, or they've been going on in the UK really since the 1950s.
And it's all it was all justifications.
Well, you know, we don't want to focus on the quote Asian men because that will inflame racial tensions, have negative output, it'd be racist.
So justifications, justifications.
It's all uh everything that you see is people doing shitty things and then justifying them, and it's a real circle, right?
So you do a shitty thing, and then you have to justify it.
A woman cheats on a man, well, but he wasn't uh he wasn't giving me attention.
Uh I was lonely.
Uh I tried.
Uh I tried to keep things going with my boyfriend and my husband, but but he just wasn't listening, he wasn't available, he's working all the time, I'm lonely, I'm sad, blah, blah, blah, right?
So that justification just happens all the time.
Even in divorce, right?
You have to say, what's the reason?
And the reason is the justification.
And when you really see this, that human beings act and then justify their actions according to some universal standard, or even that there is no universal standard, which is itself a universal standard.
So human beings act in an impulsive or selfish manner, and it's not selfish until they justify it, acting in a negative way.
It's not negative until you justify it.
Because the justification means that you're gonna do it again.
Right.
That's the problem with the justification.
The justification guarantees repetition, right?
I always said this excuses are always promises of repetition.
So the justification is going to cause, it lubricates the re-engagement of the machinery.
So a woman cheats or a man cheats, and they say, well, my partner was unresponsive, and I was lonely, and we hadn't had sex for a while, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So all of that happens.
And then because they've justified it, it's now going to happen again.
So the traditional answer from religion and philosophy is that you are unhappy because you are doing something immoral.
And the immorality is not the action, the immorality is the justification.
We can't say it's the action because animals act in that.
It's what separates human beings from the animals is our capacity to justify in an abstract moral way or an abstract pragmatic way to justify what it is that is uh going on.
Even criminals justify uh their actions, or maybe even especially criminals.
So the reason I'm saying all this, and I let me just check here and dip in for a sec here.
I want to make sure that uh if people have their calls.
Okay, nothing yet.
Oh, that must be because I'm so gripping.
Fair.
So uh the traditional answer is uh you are happy, you are unhappy because you are disobeying uh virtue, reason, God, uh, and so on, right?
You are imperiling your soul.
And so the traditional answer to people saying I'm miserable is be better.
Be do good.
Stop justifying your corruption, stop justifying your immorality, but do good.
Start doing good.
Start living for others to some degree, at least, uh start stop being stop being selfish, stop using people, stop dehumanizing others by exploiting them for money or sex or career or something like that, and uh be a better person, um love more, have more integrity, be more honest, stop hanging out with low companions, you know, the sort of the Hank Sank, the Henry V and Falstaff, you know, he has to leave false stuff behind in order to be a better person.
He has to stop being a hedonist, so to speak.
So I'm unhappy, okay, be better.
But be a more moral person, be a better person.
But that's um, you know, that process kind of sucks, right?
That process of being a better person becoming a better person.
Oh God, it's horrible.
It's horrible.
I mean, maybe one day I'll go through the whole story if anyone's interested about my transition from a hypocrite to reasonably virtuous, and a complete hypocrite to reasonably virtuous.
Um but it's a um it's a horrible process.
It is it really feels like you're dying.
Really feels I mean, I wrote this when I was, I don't know, like 17 or so.
Uh we must bury ourselves in order to be resurrected.
And it's like, oh, that's so cool and itchy, and it's like, it's a real process, man.
There's a reason why there are so many stories about going into death and being resurrected, like Gandalf goes into death and comes back as Gandalf, the wife, Jesus, of course.
And uh every um tribe has its story of an ancient hero, a great hero who's gone into death, but will return in all his power and his glory in their moment of greatest need and and all of that.
So the idea that you have to die in order to come back to life.
If you strike me down, what was it?
The the old cheesy line from Obi-Wan Kenobi, if you strike me down, I shall return a thousand times more powerful than you could even imagine whatever it is, right?
And so uh you go into death and you return with greater power.
The death of the ego, the death of vanity, the death of hypocrisy, the death of the death of trying to guide your larger life choices by anything other than moral principles, that the death of that, the death of the animal, the death of self-justifications,
the death of self-sophistry, is uh I I mean it's funny because when I was going through that process, when I had insomnia when I was going through therapy, when I was going through that process, oh it was some of the hardest times I've ever gone through.
Not the hardest, but some of the hardest times I've ever gone through.
And it sucks.
And you don't know where you're going to go, because for me, the discarding of my false self, the discarding of vanity, the discarding of the vanity of thinking I could just talk people into being better, those around me, those I grew up with, family of origin issues and 25-year friendship uh issues and so on.
And the idea that I should stop talking about principles and actually live them, and stop being so vain as to think that I could just talk other people into being better, and as an empiricist ignoring all of the signs of corruption around me.
To simply say, I'm going to live virtuously, I'm going to tell the truth, I'm going to be honest.
Oh, horrible, horrible, horrible.
It's uh it's hell.
You die, you go to hell, and if you're lucky, you come back and you get a taste of heaven.
Horrible process.
Now, if I wasn't been, if I hadn't been into philosophy for ten or fifteen years by this point.
And I was uh unhappy and I couldn't sleep and and so on.
And it was a moral revolt.
As my therapist said at the time, your unconscious is in full revolt.
And and rightly so.
Thank you, unconscious, appreciate it.
And if I had not been trained in philosophy and the corruption and falsehood, not of those around me, although there was certainly truth in that, but of myself, the corruption of falsehood of myself,
that I'd been pursuing these values for ten or fifteen years without ever actually bringing them to bear in my own life, and that I could not gain the respect of the corrupt ever, but least of all when I was myself being corrupt.
My only talking about virtues rather than actually bringing them to life in uh i in the world that I lived in and in my relationships.
So if I hadn't been trained so much in philosophy, if a doctor had sat across from me, if I went to a doctor and said, you know, I can't sleep, I'm unhappy, blah, blah, blah.
And if the doctor had said, Oh, well, bro, you just have a chemical imbalance, like this the chemical imbalance in your in your brain.
Your body's not producing enough of this or that, and you know, we can we can fix that.
I mean, if you had diabetes, you wouldn't feel bad about taking insulin, right?
Uh, and and if you had an infection, you wouldn't feel bad about taking antibiotics, right?
If that was what was needed.
So that's the right, that's the I would say the turnoff, but that's the exit ramp.
The exit ramp to genuine virtue and honesty with yourself and with others.
Letting the chips fall well where they may when you speak your mind.
The exit ramp to that is Oh, the chemical mats.
So everyone looks at the supply of corruption, and nobody really looks at the demand for corruption.
Central banking allows the population to believe it's getting something for free, right?
Because the money is printed or borrowed, and then the government pays for a bunch of stuff, and it looks like it's free, because it takes, you know, 18 or so months for the inflation to hit, and then people just blame the shopkeepers for raising the prices, right?
So it is certainly true that central banking government control of currency gives people the illusion that they're getting something for free.
Because the services and and money that is spent by the government is vastly disproportionate to the amount of money being paid in taxes, right?
Well, I mean, taxes really are a um a s uh a form of collateral for multiple borrowings, right?
Which is why the unfunded liabilities, the deficit in the debt is so high.
So money printing deficit, debt, unfunded liabilities, there is this belief that somehow the government is adding value because you pay ten dollars in taxes and get $30 worth of spending from the government.
So it's true, it's certainly true, of course, that central banking gives people the illusion that they're getting something for nothing.
But I think the more interesting question doesn't mean it is the more interesting question, just my view, the more interesting question is central banking corrupting the people, or is central banking a reflection of people's desire for easy answers.
The problem of the poor is a very deep old and ancient problem.
It has to do with IQ, it has to do with child abuse, it has to do with dysfunctions in the culture, it has to do with government schools, like it's a really big thorny and complicated problem.
It's solved by the non aggression principle.
But getting poor people who may not be that smart to actively engage in the non-aggression principle with regards to their own children is not the simplest thing in the known universe, right?
At all.
So it's big, deep, meaty, and complicated.
And it requires the confrontation of some often sinister elements of society, those who are harming children for their own vanity and and not just because they get angry and they hit their kids, or they get angry and they scream at the kids, or they get frustrated and they shake their kids, but also because you know they sexually assault rape and molest their kids and you know other really, really dark stuff.
Society doesn't want to look at one, look at that.
And of course, everyone in life has seen some kid who's being harmed, and they haven't acted.
I I'm I I myself have been, I've done this.
I I'm better now, but I've certainly decided to step over that kind of issue for various reasons, which are not justifications, but and that's mostly in the rear view, but um I think if we're honest, we've all seen signs that children are being mistreated and ignored, or stepped over those those issues.
So is it that well, and of course, it wasn't like people voted to get central banking in.
I get all of that.
There's a whole 1913 uh 1913 uh Edward Griffin issues, right?
Jekyll Island and uh and all of that.
I get all of that.
So it was definitely imposed.
But let's say that uh someone uh drugs you, right?
They they they put a drug in your drink, the question is do you come back?
To be drugged is to be assaulted without a doubt, but do you go back for more?
Does it make you addicted?
So central banking certainly gives the illusion that people are getting something for nothing.
Does that corrupt the people, or do the people participate in their own corruption by wanting something for nothing?
By not thinking about these things, by being greedy, by giving the kind of strategic inattention to these issues that allows their greed and exploitation of the young, the unborn to flourish.
So in the same way, this SSRIs at 20%, it seems again, it seems impossibly high, but I think this is the number that was floated in the Tucker Carlson interview, is 20% of adults.
So are 20% of adults on SSRIs because the industry is corrupt?
Or because they greedily want to grab pills to avoid confronting the immoralities in themselves and those around them.
I'm not saying everyone who's unhappy is immoral.
I get all sometimes you can be unhappy because other people are immoral, and sometimes those other people are in your life and you don't have a choice, right?
Obviously, uh, if you're uh in Ukraine and and you get Russia, you get yanked into a van and sent to the front, you're unhappy.
Um that's not that's not because you're immoral, right?
But because you're enslaved and put in grave danger.
Well, worse than enslaved.
So a lot of unhappiness comes out of corruption.
So if you're unhappy and you go to a doctor, and if the doctor says, well, I've I've met your family, and uh I don't think they're very good people, like I don't think they're very moral people.
And yeah, your father uses a lot of weed, your mother is an alcoholic, and uh it may be that you're unhappy because you're surrounded by severely dysfunctional people, you might want to clean up your relationships before you start taking pills.
Oof.
You know, it it is people's resistance truth.
Now I don't want to let's just say, let me just say, I don't want to get into details, but uh let's say I knew a woman named Jane, and Jane was unhappy, and Jane went to the doctor, and they ran a bunch of tests and so on, and they couldn't find anything wrong with her, like anything.
And uh Jane also was not a very good person.
And the doctor just sort of hinted and said, maybe therapy might be a good idea.
Maybe there's something going on mentally.
And then she, Jane, just made up Jane, right?
Although it's a real person, but it's made-up name.
This person then was incredibly bitter and angry towards that doctor, and he said, Oh, the doctor just said it's all in your head, baby.
And the doctor, in trying to say to Jane that maybe she was unhappy because she was making bad decisions or had some sort of trauma or, you know, and suggested therapy.
I mean, this is this is a battle, right?
This is a real battle.
And it is a battle waged between women and doctors in general.
Women and doctors.
Women are unhappy, uh, they can't sleep, they're gaining weight, and they they go to the doctor, the doctor runs all the tests he can think of, which is not to call doctors perfect, of course, right?
The doctor runs all the tests he can think of.
And then the doctor can't find anything.
And the per the the woman is obviously intense, kind of nuts, talks about terrible stressors in life, fights with her children, her husband left her, and her father is a drunk or whatever.
And the doctor at some point tentatively puts forward the proposition that maybe some therapy or stress management might help get to the root of why she feels tired or sick or unwell or whatever it is, right?
The massive battle between women and doctors that really nobody talks about that it's called somatization or psychosomatic or whatever it is, when you end up with physical symptoms as a result of uh stress or or dysfunction or corruption or something like that, right?
That the the body manifests the corruption or dysfunction or perhaps even downright evil that's in your life or in your environment or in those around you, or maybe even within yourself.
And so there's this monstrous battle between usually male doctors and uh female patients.
And if a corrupt female, and again, this is generalities.
It happens with males and female doctors too, but in general, if a corrupt female goes to a doctor complaining of physical problems, the doctor can't find anything wrong.
Should the doctor suggest therapy, the doctor is at grave risk.
I don't know if you've ever, you know, you tell me in in the chat if you have.
I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you've tried to get a corrupt person to take responsibility for his or her life, but it is a very perilous thing to do.
It is a very perilous thing to do.
So the battle is women say, I went to doctors, they told me it was all in my head.
It turns out I had a real disease.
Right?
That's the female story.
I went to doctors, they said it was all in my head.
Turns out I had a real disease.
And for doctors, it's like, I know this woman is crazy.
I know that she's stressed.
I know that she's, you know, screaming at her children or hitting her children, or or uh, you know, she's whatever, right?
Uh and and so I suggest therapy, and she just completely blows up at me, and you know, it can be it, let's just say it can lead to some pretty horrible places over time.
And that's the battle, right?
Now, don't get me wrong.
At times, women go to doctors, it's absolutely true.
There are times when women go to doctors and they say, I feel unwell.
The doctors can't find anything.
The doctors say, go to therapy, or maybe go to therapy, and it turns out the woman is really ill.
Absolutely, there's times when that happens.
But there are also times when a woman says, Oh, I have, I don't know.
Again, none of this is medical knowledge, medical advice.
I don't know anything about these things as a whole, but, you know, the stuff you hear about fibromyalgia, Epstein-Barr, chronic fatigue syndrome, and so on, right?
There are times when women go to doctors, and the women are tired, sick, unhappy, can't sleep because their conscience is raging at them, and they've done some bad things, or they're surrounded by bad people, or they've made bad decisions, or they're overly stressed because of things that they could possibly change, and they go to the doctors complaining of a physical ailment, the doctors run tests, the doctors can't find anything.
The doctor suggests therapy, the woman goes to therapy and gets better.
That absolutely happens.
That absolutely happens.
Again, there's no way to know for sure, right?
Because a lot of the stuff is kind of anecdotal.
There's no way to know for sure what is the ratio of women who are genuinely ill, the doctors miss it, they suggest therapy.
Turns out the woman's really ill.
Certainly not obvious, I would assume, right?
But I don't know what that ratio is.
I don't know what the ratio is of women who uh complain about physical ailments and go to the doctors, the doctors can't find anything, and it turns out that therapy is the answer.
I don't know the proportion of that either.
But it ain't zero, I'll tell you that.
I mean, just statistically, it can't be.
So when people are unhappy, they used to go to the priest.
And I'm not like not when they've got a big giant goiter hanging out of their neck, or they've got some cyst that's coming, can become inflamed and needs to be lanced, or whatever it is, right?
I'm talking about like people who have insomnia, you know, maybe stress-related headaches or or hypertension, uh, not you know, in terms of like emotionality and stuff like that, right?
So it used to be if you are just unhappy, but you didn't have any obvious symptoms of illness, that you would go to the priest, or you maybe you'd even go to a philosopher, right?
I mean, I certainly have people who call me and say I'm unhappy, and I mean, I I can't I can't think of a time when someone has called me, and I have thousands of examples by now, which is actually not a small data set, but I can't remember the last time someone called me and said, gee, Steph, I'm really unhappy, and there were no moral issues in themselves or those around them.
And having immoral people or amoral people around you is a moral issue within yourself, but it manifests in your social circle, right?
So I think that doctors, it's just a guess, right?
I don't know, I don't have any data, it's just, you know, I have some personal evidence, but anecdotes are not proof, the plural anecdote as you know is not data.
But I think that there's kind of a collusion between the doctors and the patient.
Again, just a out of my armpit theory.
And the collusion goes something like this.
Woman comes in, and I'm going to just use the gendered stereotypes here.
It's not always women.
A woman comes in, she's unhappy.
A doctor who has experience may think that she has psychological problems.
He also knows, probably based upon bitter experience or conversations with other doctors, that if a woman comes in with psychological problems, like you run your tests or whatever, right?
And you can't find anything, if the woman comes in with psychological problems and you tell the woman she has psychological problems, you might be in for a whole world of hurt of hurt as a doctor.
A whole world of hurt that could go on for years and years and years and just make your life kind of unpleasant, right?
So what do you do with the neurotics, the neurosthenics, the hypochondriacs, the somatizing, the conversion disorder?
Like, what do you do with the patients who come in who are unhappy based upon moral or psychological issues?
Well, if you tell them they're immoral or psychological issues...
Well, they the blowback can be extreme and unpleasant.
What do you do?
Well, in comes a pharma rep, right?
And the pharma rep says, Oh, um, so so uh here's what you do, oh doctor.
If someone comes in and they're complaining of unhappiness uh or stress or insomnia or tension or anxiety or whatever it is, and there's nothing physically wrong with them.
Well, they have a chemical imbalance and you can fix it with a pill.
All right.
So the patient being told you have a chemical imbalance, you can fix it with a pill.
And again, these are all just my theories, right?
But the patient then doesn't have to confront amorality, immorality, corruption in themselves or those around them.
They don't have to face their conscience.
They say, Oh, I have a chemical imbalance.
I can pop some pills, and uh it'll be fixed.
Whew.
What a relief.
I thought maybe I'd done something wrong, or there was amorality, immorality, or corruption, or evil in myself or those around me.
Oh my gosh.
What I thought were the operations of a bad conscience, or what could be the operations of a bad conscience, or guilt, uh same thing, maybe.
Uh it turns out it's it's it's just a chemical imbalance.
I thought I was anxious.
I just drank 14 cups of coffee and then listened to two murder mystery podcasts, right?
So what's the collusion?
Well, the collusion, I would imagine, goes something like this.
Again, all theory.
The collusion is something like this.
The doctor doesn't want to confront the amorality, immorality, or mental dysfunction in the patient.
Because the crazier the patient is, the worse their symptoms are going to feel, and the more volatile they're going to be if you tell them that maybe it has something to do with.
I mean, particularly, like if the patient has done some serious evil, right?
Let's just make up a guy named Bob who's uh molested his kids or done some, you know, beaten his kids or you know, whatever, right?
He's stolen at work, he's lied to clients.
He's you know, he's done some some really some pretty bad stuff, or just some seriously bad stuff.
Now, if and and Bob is like unhappy, can't sleep, he's miserable, you know, because he's under full unconscious revolt and can't his conscience is is uh plaguing him, he goes to the doctor, and now if the doctor says you should go to therapy, uh Bob, his instincts are that going to therapy might cause him to die.
Like he might just throw himself off a bridge if he's been like a child molester or something like that, then if the therap, if the doctor says go to therapy, so so then Bob is going to be like, well, if I go to therapy, my God, I mean I can't talk to the therapist about this stuff.
I'm gonna start to uncover my own evil, I'm gonna start to uncover my own trauma, I'm gonna start to uncover the wrongs that I've done, and then I'll be in the humiliating position of having to make amends or apologize, or if I stole 50,000 bucks uh from my employer by skimming or false, uh falsifying my expense accounts or something, uh, then I gotta pay it back and I gotta apologize, I could go to jail.
Like, it's just that's not a path that they want to take.
So give me a pill, Doc.
Ooh, thank God.
It's not because I'm a creepy evil guy, it's because, says Bob, uh, I have a chemical imbalance.
So the doctor, there's a collusion.
The collusion is the doctor just wants to get crazy dangerous, perhaps evil Bob, out of his office or Sally.
And Barb or Sally just want to greedily take a pill so they don't have to confront their own conscious conscience or realize that it's possible that they're unhappy, stressed, miserable, and sleepless because they're surrounded by, involved in, or engaged in evil and corruption.
So to me, it's not as simple as, well, the doctors are just pill pushers.
There has to be a demand for things that aren't enforced, right?
There has to be a demand for things that aren't enforced.
And I think that evil doers in society as a whole way prefer the SSRIs to a robust and detailed moral examination of life.
Are you unhappy because you are corrupt?
Are you unhappy because you've done evil?
Are you unhappy because you're surrounded by corrupt or evil people and you lie to yourself about their virtues?
Are you corrupt because you are sorry, are you unhappy because you lied to yourself?
Are you unhappy because you got involved with the wrong woman and you are staying there for reasons of lust and fear and habit?
Are you unhappy because are you unhappy because you spent the last three years caring for an aging mother who beat you as a child and you've never talked to her about what's happened?
Are you unhappy because you lie?
Are you unhappy because you misrepresent because you justify and you you're a sophist to yourself, you turn the worst argument into a pretend better argument.
Because the chemical imbalance theory, according to all the data that I've read, and again, it's not medical advice, I don't know.
My ass from a hole in the ground with regards to the studies, but from what I've read, the chemical imbalance imbalance theory is not uh true.
And in the Tucker Carlson interview, they were basically saying, I think the guy was saying, well, we haven't they the psychiatrists say, well, we haven't found it yet.
So we say it now, but we know it's there.
Which uh to me would be fraud, um, if you claim that you're solving a problem that you haven't actually proven, uh that would be a kind of fraud.
But there is a demand for these things.
There is a demand to avoid your own bad conscience, there is a demand to continue to be able to lie to yourself.
And lies are popular because people prefer them to the brutal truth.
And of course, in the past, to me, in the past, the quote, SSRIs was this uh infinite forgiveness nonsense that is pushed by some aspects of, in particular, Christianity.
So in the past, oh, you're unhappy.
Uh well, you're unhappy because you failed to forgive people, and this also happens in the self-help movement, right?
This is the equivalent of SSRIs to me in that environment or situation.
Well, you're unhappy, you see, because you failed to forgive people.
Well, well, uh, maybe you're unhappy because you are corrupt or people around you are corrupt.
I don't want to keep repeating myself, but uh in this instance, well, you're unhappy because you it's on you.
You fail to forgive.
You fail to forgive people, you're holding on to a grudge, you're whatever, you have repressed anger, you you haven't dealt with this, you haven't done the deep work of that, you haven't right.
Well, maybe maybe it's moral.
Maybe it's moral.
So in the past, people would be told, or if they say, Well, I'm ha I'm unhappy, and the real reason is they're surrounded by corrupt people, and say, well, uh, it's not because you're surrounded by corrupt people.
You see, the problem is that you've just failed to forgive people.
And if you just forgive people, that's the equivalent of the SSRIs.
You just forgive people, you'll be happier, and it doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
Every answer except moral examination is preferred.
And this is not new.
It's very much facilitated by the state, of course, right?
Because the funny thing is that if you just let's just, and I'll end here, and I'm again happy to take your calls if there's things that you uh want to talk about and so on.
I'm I'm sort of happy to take that.
But I know that I'm talking about a lot of important stuff here.
So I get I get all of that.
But let's look at the basic economics and then I'll talk about whatever you guys want to talk about.
I think it's really important.
So the basic economics runs something like this.
Um moral examination is very cheap.
Popping pills is very expensive.
Right.
So but people aren't even making a rational decision based on resources.
So I have no idea how much SSRIs would cost in a free market.
Well, in the free market, they probably wouldn't be developed because in a free market they'd have to prove their case.
But uh let's say that um your SSRIs are going to cost you a thousand dollars a month, right?
Or like this, like if the government wasn't paying for everything and it wasn't all being shoveled onto the less corrupt through mandated insurance policies and socialized medicine and all that kind of aggressive garbage.
But let's say that you actually had to pay.
So your doctor would sit you down and would say, okay, so uh you're either on a thousand dollars a month, maybe for the rest Of your life, I don't know, for a long time.
And isn't it coincidental that depression often lifts within six to twelve weeks?
And what is it?
How long did they say SSRIs take to work?
Ha!
Interesting.
So if the doctor says to you, okay, so it's going to cost you a thousand bucks a month for an indefinite amount of time, or you can pay 600 bucks a month for therapy, like I don't know, four times a month, 150 a go, right?
And therapy is usually six to twelve months.
So it's 600 a month for six to twelve months, or it's a thousand bucks for indeterminate amount of time.
Well, clearly, therapy is cheaper than the SSRIs.
Now I know that I might be stacking the deck or whatever, maybe the SSRIs would be cheaper or something like that, right?
Or the other thing is, you know, if you're willing to do the self-work, in other words, if you're willing to um, you know, maybe there's some Canadian podcaster that takes calls for free.
You know, not that I'm a therapist, but I think the moral examination I think I can help with.
But you you can read books, you can keep a notebook, you can rigorously examine yourself, you can read philosophy, you can read books on self-knowledge, and you know, maybe, just maybe you can do it for free.
Like, not everybody who exercises needs a personal trainer.
Not everyone who diets needs a nutritionist, right?
And not everyone who's pursuing self-knowledge and moral improvement needs to see a therapist.
So your choices are economically distorted by the incentives to the doctors, right?
As you know, these uh hot young things who pretend to be salespeople but are kind of pill pushers from the pharma companies uh will offer a lot of benefits.
So we're doing a lovely conference out here in Hawaii.
We'll fly you out, we'll put you up, and your family maybe, or whatever it is.
I don't know how it works, but there's a lot of money flowing back and forth, obviously, from pharma sales reps to doctors.
And so the doctors, instead of trying to help people understand that maybe they're wrestling with significant thinking dysfunction or emotional dysfunction that arises from trauma or a bad conscience, like that's a real wrestle, right?
They can just say, here, pills and off you go.
Or they refer to a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist says, rather than doing a foundational moral analysis of the person's life and environment and and social circle, just says, Oh, pills, here you go.
And again, it's largely paid for by the state or insurance companies or whatever.
So it's really the economic distortions are wild.
And the economic distortions are actively diffusing the possibility that people will take the high hard road.
I, when I was going through my um real, you know, dark midnight of the soul, and I know that sounds like a bit of a cliche, but it was a very, very real phenomenon.
Um I it never even crossed my mind.
I knew about them.
I actually had a roommate who was on Prozac when I was doing my master's.
I knew about all of this stuff.
But the idea that I never even I never took a sleeping pill, I never took, of course, any SSRIs or like the idea of going to uh get pills, it never crossed my mind.
And I'm not saying this is some big magic of virtue, but because I had studied for philosophy for so long, the idea that I would take a pill to solve torments of the soul when we live in a pretty corrupt world full of evil people who have near infinite power over us,
the idea that you know, can you imagine someone like the hero of crime and punishment, Russ Koldnikov, that uh uh, well, he'll just he just needs he just has a serotonin imbalance and needs to take some uh some pills.
The moral agonies of the soul that arise when confronting the corruption in yourself and those around you and the world as a whole, that very, very black being rebirthed by a completely acidic volcano vagina, the idea that, well, just pop a pill and it'll all be fine is um to me,
it's an insult to the depth and power of the unconscious of the conscience itself and of the need for moral Improvement and instruction and the battle and barriers that moral improvement and instruction generate in those around you.
So hopefully that makes some sense.
And let me and please, please understand.
Please understand.
I am in no way trying to give anybody medical advice, go talk to your doctor and so on.
I'm just talking about the philosophical ideas or arguments.
All right.
Let me see here.
This is a very gripping show.
Thank you.
And uh of course, tips and donations.
Freedom Ain.com slash donate.
It's very helpful and uh and important.
Yeah, the show number is 2041.
From 2011, 2041, there is no such thing as mental illness.
Thank you.
All right.
Uh let me get to your comments and questions, and I think.
Tom Cruise made controversial remarks about psychiatry, calling it a pseudoscience, in 2005.
I mean, Tom Cruise to me has let's say some issues.
But I mean, where people are right, they're right.
Any doctors or professors have been fired yet for pushing SSRIs?
No.
No.
Thank you.
Yeah, it's funny, I got up this morning, I was going to finish my novel.
Because I'm so close.
I'm so close.
Um, but my daughter wanted to drive me somewhere.
So we went and drove, because she's driving now.
It's pretty wild, man, getting into the passenger side.
Somebody says, I lost all respect for my parents when they justified every evil act they committed.
It's such a shame.
Because honesty and taking accountability is a beautiful thing that commands great respect from others.
But so many people forsake their responsibility to avoid whatever fleeting discomfort that may bring.
Well, but it's it's not fleeting discomfort.
It's not fleeting discomfort.
Uh there are wrongs that you do that are so unrecoverable that it feels like death.
Feel validated listening to you talk about this.
Thank you for sharing.
I also felt like I was going to die unaware it was an intense shedding.
Yes.
Yeah.
So when it comes to shedding your illusions and lies.
Think of the sh a snake that's shedding its skin.
How does the skin feel?
Because the sin the skin goes from living to dead.
The skin is discarded.
Think of, you know, when a rocket goes up and it has these stages, you know, the fuel tank and it just drops it away.
Well, that stage, that empty fuel tank from the rocket that's going to the moon is falling to its death.
Right.
So we all want to be the snake that emerges, but we are the snake skinned.
There's a part of us that is like the snake skin, which is if I'm shed, I die.
And the illusions and the corruptions have a life of their own, and they feel like they're dying.
Someone says, this one hits hard.
I spent many years using convincing others to be virtuous as an excuse for not executing it in my own life, refusing to take the chemical shortcuts is one of the best things I ever did, yeah.
Central bank is a reflection of people wanting easy answers, yes, for sure.
Boom boom boom boom.
Bum bum bum bum blah blah bum.
All right.
This is very fascinating.
It reminds me of your ex-base on anxiety and how it actually serves to help warn you of imminent threats.
People's depression and anxiety is likely caused by immorality in their own life.
And those feelings of unhappiness, other subconscious trying to tell them as much.
But SSRIs bypass that natural reaction, and thereby people become unfulfilled by an unfulfilling life.
Well, and I don't think it's coincidental that the fall of Christianity has coincided with the rise of these, you know, treatments, right?
Because with Christianity, you have a soul that is eternal and responds to virtue, most of all.
But in the sort of mechanistic, atheistic, materialistic view, well, unhappiness, it's a biochemical, It must be something biochemical, and therefore it must be fixable by biochemicals, right?
Unhappiness has to have some physiological basis to it, whereas, of course, it would be the soul's agony of corruption that would be driving the unhappiness in the Christian world, but take the soul out of the equation, and we are just a machinery.
We're just machines.
And if your car is running badly because it has no oil, then just add oil and you're fine, right?
It has an oil in balance.
Just add oil.
So if you're unhappy because you're lacking some hormonal mystery, whatever dopamine or serotonin or something like that, well, just add that and you'll be fine, right?
It's just like a machine.
It's running badly, you just got to fix it.
But the idea that we don't have a soul, but our unconscious is tormented by corruption is very hard for people to focus because they're just looking at the chemicals.
All right.
I have tried to encourage someone to acknowledge their hypocrisy, says someone, in terms of the negative effect.
I don't know why my hands are rubbing.
A little cold.
Uh the negative effect it is having on their life.
It's difficult and they can become volatile quickly.
Yes, yes, yes.
Do you have any book suggestions for therapy work?
Um so um John Gray has good stuff.
Uh I think the sentence completion stuff, stuff which is not just reading, but is interactive.
Uh Nathaniel Brandon, uh, the psychology of self-esteem, I thought was very good.
Uh that was almost like a Bible for me when I was starting out on my self-knowledge journey.
Uh John Gray and uh sentence completion work that Nathaniel Brandon does.
He's got a bunch of books about that.
Uh John Gray has a bunch of books about that.
So if you can't go to therapy, for whatever reason, therapy, I think is the best if you have a good therapist, although God knows what therapy is like these days.
It's more than 20 years since I went.
And I went very intensively.
I I did three hours a week for I don't know, 18 months, and uh I would also spend 10 to 12 hours a week journaling and sentence completion work, and I was just I was all in, man.
And it was really uh one of the best things I ever did in my life.
But do in my view, I would do stuff that is interactive, not just your sort of reading, which is passive.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kork.
These are other recommendations.
No bad parts by Richard Schwartz.
Uh, I actually interviewed him.
Uh he's a um internal family systems therapy, which I think is great.
Uh, these are recommendations from Cepantha.
Uh, I can recommend some, but I'm not gonna validate all of them.
The Body Keeps a Score by Bessel van der Koek, K-O-L-K, No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz, and the Mindful Self-Compassion workbook by Christian Christian Neff, N-E-F-F, Christopher Goermer, G-E-R-M-E-R.
All are quite good.
Just started No Bad Parts recently, but the therapy I do is based on it.
Thank you, appreciate that.
Uh I KPZ, thank you, thank you, thank you.
That is a wonderful uh piece of support for the show, and I I massively appreciate it.
Thank you.
Uh, let me just see here.
I want to make sure if people have.
Uh no chords.
Okay.
No problem.
Uh, I take it as a compliment.
Uh sorry, let me just get here.
The camera shakes as I scroll.
All right, so here we go.
Can you explain why homeschooling is so looked down upon in Europe?
It is barely legal anywhere, and most people I talk to deeply believe that mandated government schools are a good thing, even though they could be better.
What are the best alternatives to leaving the place entirely?
Currently planning to have a firstborn child soon, which would of course be raised peacefully.
Thank you very much for your work.
Homeschooling is so looked down upon in Europe.
Well, so the important thing to remember about Europe is look at uh the new world in Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand, like the what was the new world from Europe.
So the rebellious independent thinkers left Europe.
Starting in the I mean, you know, 18th, 17th, 18th to 19th century.
Everybody who wanted freedom left Europe.
Now, a third of them ended up coming back because they didn't like freedom or it didn't work for them so much.
But the amount of freedom available in, say, America and Canada relative to where you were in Europe is it's incomprehensible to us.
I mean, it was a six-week voyage, and not insignificant number of people would die or the ship would founder or be blown adrift.
Like it was a really, really risky voyage.
And just imagine like how horrible it was in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, France, Germany, Belgium.
Like just imagine how horrible it was in these countries that you would pretty much leave everyone and everything, go out to get your 40 acres in a mule and try and live some kind of free in in some kind of freedom.
So with Europe, who's who's left, right?
So who's left after the energy brain drain of the new world and two world wars?
Who's left?
Well, in general, very fearful, broken, and compliant people.
I mean, what should have I mean, if if the European leaders had any wisdom, which leaders don't, right?
I mean, political leaders almost by definition don't.
Hashtag not so much Trump because he's an outsider, but of course, with the European leaders, what they should have done is they should have said, oh, gee, we're losing our best and brightest to the new world.
So we should increase our freedoms here so we can keep people here.
Right?
Like, I mean, if you're losing all of your like if you're Illinois and you're losing all your people to high taxes, you've got to lower your taxes.
So they should have worked to increase their freedoms.
But I mean, growing up in England is part of the lower class, uh, I can tell you.
I mean, this is one of the things that was going on with these these horror horribles, these horrors inflicted upon British children, like the million rapes and assaults.
Uh a lot of this has to do with just, well, they're lower class, they don't matter.
In England, the lower classes are barely looked upon as human.
It's it's incredibly bigoted.
And so the fact that uh the lower class children are being raped and assaulted.
I mean, can you imagine if it was uh uh happening to the upper classes?
I mean, there would be unbelievable institutional change and outrage, right?
So, I mean, in England, at least back in the day, to be lower class was to be barely categorized as as human and to go to the new because I actually had this experience like growing up poor in England and then coming to the new world, coming to Canada.
Nobody cared.
Nobody cared about the class, nobody cared about my accent, nobody cared about where I'd come from, nobody inquired, didn't matter.
I mean, not saying there's no classism, but it's nothing like there was in England, right?
So who's left in Europe?
Who's left?
Who's left?
Those with initiative left for the new world, those with an excess of both courage and compliance got slaughtered in the world wars.
I mean, who's left?
I mean, the question of when did Europe die is interesting and foundational.
I won't sort of get into it here because obviously it's a massive topic and and so on, but um.
You know, I remember doing videos on the French elections with Marine Le Pen and so on, and you know, you'd have all of these gather to us smoking Frenchmen who have the next golf says, ah, she is all I see, right?
You know, this sort of last tango in Paris crap.
Um, I mean, who's left?
A bunch of pompous, self-important, compliant do-gooders with no empathy for the next generation.
And uh, I'm not even blaming them that much.
That's just who's been left, right?
How do I join to talk?
FDR URL dot com slash live call.
FDR URL dot com slash live call.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
I was married to a therapist, trained PhD says someone, and can say she and the group she hung out were a mess.
I learned and grew more from your work by far.
My brother now went to therapy, said the same thing, your work is priceless.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Uh The FDR URL.com slash live call only works on tablets and desktop computers.
Somebody says, I can vouch for sentence completion.
I've been doing it for a couple of years, and I feel lighter, and my life has changed for the better.
Good.
It was May 2005 that Tom Cruise went on Oprah, says Steve, and got all these hit pieces.
Another jumping on the couch.
Oh yeah.
November 16th, 2005, the South Park released its Scientology episode.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, well, the other thing too, of course, is you know, if people are miserable, it could also be because they're making terrible lifestyle choices.
Right?
They could be drinking too much, they could be not getting enough sleep, uh, they could be overeating, they could be not exercising, there could be any number of reasons that may not be based upon moral blah, blah, blah, but you know, a lot of it may be based on on all that sort of stuff, right?
Uh Steve says, I expect the chemical imbalances seen, which come from poor choices and living without virtue, are nature's evolutionary mechanism designed to ensure the changing of behaviors and moving away from the toxic influences, etc.
Yeah.
If that's true, then avoiding those symptoms by taking medication is about the worst thing you could do.
It reminds me of how people with back pain immediately get prescribed painkillers, which encourage people to carry on doing the things which cause the pain.
That's interesting.
Any plans to make it compatible with DOS?
Are you talking about the call ins?
Yeah, we don't have choice over that.
That's uh um yeah, that's not our technology.
It's not our code.
All right.
Any other last calls, questions, topics, issues.
I mean, obviously I have a lot of stuff that I like to talk about, but we've had a big old chunk of topics going on.
Maybe James, we should look into uh it's been a while since you've done anything on Bitcoin.
Maybe we should look into that as to why it's had uh oh we bit of a dip.
It's funny how it becomes a dip when it goes down, but it's still vastly higher than it was a year ago, right?
All right.
Boom.
Boom boom boom.
All right.
Any other last questions, issues, challenges, comments, problems?
Um any thoughts?
Uh what do you guys think about um releasing this to the general?
I don't want to make it like every show we released at the general pop, but uh given that we didn't have any private calls.
Um back and forths with people who might have released more information because they are uh talking a donor call.
What do you guys think about putting this out?
As uh general stream thing?
Uh hit me with a Y if.
Uh I did see the H1 engineer took all of Elon's X AI source code.
Yeah.
Didn't he fire a lot of white engineers and then the Chinese engineer ran off with all the code?
Yeah.
Very, very sad.
Very sad.
Well, you know, I guess uh I guess people have to learn learn the hard way about in-group preference and uh, you know, uh well, anyway.
It's funny, you know, because when I uh I did business in China uh in the year 2000, I went from an extended trip to Morocco uh for Y2K for like to have something memorable and fun for Y2K, which I did.
And then I went to spend a couple of weeks doing business in China, going around and doing presentations and all that.
Found the Chinese people very nice, very warm, very friendly, uh, and so on.
But those were all people who weren't associated with the communist party, but you know, uh the the and e you know the the communist party has a lot of uh control over the citizens.
I mean, some of the people I think who are doing this uh stealing and and you've got to do this or that, or you know, the stuff that happened in I think it was uh in Winnipeg.
A whole bunch of funky stuff happened over COVID with um stealing uh um pathogens and viruses and so on.
Uh I I don't even know whether people are just making these choices or whether they just have uh too many threats from their totalitarian-ish government.
So who knows, right?
But well, I thanks everyone for your uh support.
Thank you if you're listening to this later, of course, free domain.com slash donate.
Generally humbly and deeply and gratefully appreciated if you could help out the show.
Um again, it's uh it's a tough month.
August, everyone's away and and so on.
So if you could help out, I'd appreciate that.
And uh I do apologize, you know, for you guys who are the donors.
I have been uh uh on walkabout on X for a while.
I'm going to uh return.
Uh I think that the the thrill of X is beginning to wear off quite a bit and having a larger audience while fun is beginning to wear off.
So I will be spending more time with the donors, and I appreciate your patience as I uh I slut around on X and have a complete affair on the core donors.
Um thank you for your patience.
I apologize.
I I will be back.
All right.
Have yourself an absolutely wonderful afternoon.
I will talk to you soon.
And um I can't wait for you guys to read this new book.
Holy crap, it is unbelievably good.
I even by my own standards.
I am outripping and have created the realest people I think I've ever seen in literature.
And I can't it it's physically painful for me to end this book because I've gotten to know these characters so well.
So I hope that you'll enjoy it when it comes out.
Um it is about corruption.
All right.
Thanks, everyone.
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