Dec. 12, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
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How I Fell In Love! Listener Questions Answered
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Good morning everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
Stephanie Molyneux from Free Domain.
And great questions from listeners.
I will go through these in fairly rapid order and see if we can get some tasty brain calories of high protein philosophy into our mental muscles.
All right.
Serious question.
Can a moral theory qualify as, quote, universal, end quote, if it cannot be expressed as a fully operational test?
One that produces the same judgment regardless of who performs it where or under what incentives.
In other words, is UPB decidable?
So, can a moral theory, if it cannot be expressed as a fully operational test, the same judgment.
So UPB is the antidote to the most dangerous predator in the world, which is not individual bad actors, not individual criminals, but false moral theories that result in wars, that result in genocide, that result in the enslavement of billions of people.
It is false moral theories that are the greatest predators in the world, not individual actors.
And of course, the false moral theories will often try to get you to obey them by making you so frightened of individual actors that you think you need massive amounts of political control to protect you.
And then it turns out, whoops, spoiler, the danger comes from the massive amounts of political control.
The individual criminals were just the boogeyman to scare you into running into the prison planet of statism.
So if it cannot be expressed as a fully operational test, I don't really know what that means, but I'm going to sort of take a guess.
And if it's, you know, here's the thing too, like, if you want to ask a useful question, then you need to define your terms unless they're very commonly used.
Don't try to be smart.
Don't try to be clever.
Don't try to show off abstract language.
You know, my life was forever changed when maybe it was Will Durant or someone who wrote that Socrates never used the word epistemology, right?
No.
So try to speak in common language, so a fully operational test.
It is your responsibility to be clear in your communication.
And even if you and I understand that term, it is a term I then have to translate to the general audience.
So philosophy should operate at a very simple level and a very clear level.
And in particular, moral philosophy.
Now, the reason I say that, of course, is that we teach moral philosophy and we expect little children to be morally responsible.
Don't hit, don't take, don't push, you know, do unto others kind of thing.
So we have moral rules for children and therefore morality needs to be explained to a large degree or at least explainable at the level of children.
So can you imagine saying if your kid does something wrong and you say, well, I don't think your moral theory qualifies as universal because it cannot be expressed as a fully operational test.
You know, one that produces the same judgment regardless of who performs it where or under what incentives.
I don't think that your moral theory, little girl or little boy, is decidable.
Right?
So, and little girl, little boy, if you want your moral theory to be valid, then you need to have an operational test by which two independent observers following your method step by step would reach the same moral verdict in every case, including disagreements about property, reciprocity, and externalities.
You're just going to get that thousand-yard stare, right?
Morality cannot be complex.
It cannot be complex because if morality is complex, then the less intelligent and little children cannot be held morally responsible.
I really, really need you to just grind this into your brain, into your bones, into your bone marrow.
Morality cannot be overly complex because we expect, you know, there's a cutoff around sort of IQ 70 and so on, perhaps below, well, certainly below, but perhaps around IQ 70, where people are not considered morally responsible for their actions.
So we need to explain morality to people way above that IQ 70.
So people with IQ 80, IQ 90, and so on, you know, on average, they need to be able to understand morality.
Little children need to be able to understand morality.
Otherwise, morality is just, I'm bigger and stronger.
I'm going to bully you if you don't do what I want, and I'm going to call it virtue.
You just do what I say because I'm bigger and I'm stronger.
And I'll mess you up if you don't do what I say.
A lot of political control.
But we need to be able to explain morality to people who, through no fault of their own, aren't particularly intelligent.
We need to be able to explain morality to little kids.
And so this stuff is, I'm sorry to be rude, but I'm just trying to, if you want, I get the aggression that's in this, like I understand the aggression.
I understand this gotcha stuff that's in this kind of question.
And I just want to address it directly.
If you're interested in morality, you need to explain it to a four or five or six year old kid.
You need to be able to explain it.
Because otherwise, we can't explain morality to children.
All that happens is children have to obey rules imposed on them by brute force and power.
We've tried that for a million years.
We've tried just telling children, do this or go to hell.
Do this or go to jail.
Do this or be punished.
Get a timeout.
No supper.
Spanking.
How's that working out for us as a species?
Are we hitting peak virtue these days?
No.
It's pretty catastrophic.
So I'll tell you why I know that this is kind of a passive-aggressive kind of gotcha question.
So when people, I mean, I've been an operational test, like I understand that in computer language and so on, but can a moral theory qualify as quote universal?
So I don't know what the quote means around universal.
So if you're going to put air quotes around a word and you don't tell me why, I just assume you're kind of being a douchebag, to be honest, right?
I mean, let's just tell you, I'm not saying you are, I'm just saying it's my feeling and perspective, right?
So serious question.
It's like, so first of all, when somebody says to me, this is a serious question and it's about universal ethics, you don't need to tell me that it's a serious question, right?
I mean, if you think you might have cancer, you go and get a biopsy and the doctor calls you up and he says, this is a serious topic.
It's like, I know, I know it's a serious, like, so don't, so serious question is like, it's kind of an insult, just a little bit to dig, right?
Because it's kind of saying, well, Steph, I mean, you've been doing philosophy for coming up for half a century now.
You've been doing philosophy, but I need to tell you what a serious question is, Steph, because I don't think you know, Steph, what a serious question.
Like, I'm just telling you, this is how you come across, right?
Can a moral theory qualify as quote universal if it cannot be expressed as a fully operational test, one that produces the same judgment regardless of who performs it where or under what incentives?
Now, that is impossible.
That is impossible.
That's like saying a mathematical proof is only valid if everyone gets it right.
So that's not how you judge a logical proposition.
That's not how you judge a mathematical theorem.
In other words, is UPP decidable?
I don't know what decidable means and you're not explaining it.
So when people use non-clear language and don't explain it, that's a power play.
That's a superiority thing, right?
So what happens is people use confusing terms and then you say, I don't understand what you mean.
And they're like, oh, well, it's really quite simple, you see.
It really shouldn't be that hard to understand.
It's a dominance power play.
I always try to make my writing and my communication as clear, engaging, illustrative, entertaining, full of analogies and metaphors to get the idea and the argument across.
I'm obviously not perfect at it, but that's my goal.
That's what I strive at.
And, you know, I had somebody in my calling show last night.
It was Wednesday, December 10th, 11th.
Anyway.
I had someone call into my show last night and he didn't understand what I was saying a couple of times and I said, I apologize, I'm not being clear.
Right, so if I'm trying to communicate something, particularly if it's somewhat complex, and the other person doesn't understand, that's my fault.
That's on me.
It is not the other person who is at fault or has the issue as a whole.
So just be aware of that.
So is UPP decidable?
I think he's saying if people can come up with different answers based upon the same standards, it's not objective.
That's my sort of understanding of it.
So if people can come up with different answers based on the same standard, is it universal?
And of course, the answer is no.
If somebody can come up using the same methodology, if someone can come up with different answers, then it would not be universal.
That's sort of what I'm getting.
And then he says, if so, what is the operational test by which two independent observers following your methods step by step would reach the same moral verdict in every case, including disagreements about property, reciprocity, and externalities?
So then he's going from moral theory to deciding edge cases.
That is not the purpose of moral theory.
Moral theory is to give you a clear definition of universal objective and rational ethics.
If somebody's, a tree is growing a little bit onto somebody else's property, what should be the remedy?
That's for adjudication, negotiation, courts, and so on to decide.
You don't go to a physicist and say, what should I build this bridge out of?
Because that's a job for engineering.
That's specific application of the theories of physics.
I mean, it shouldn't be bubbles or balsa wood, right?
It also shouldn't be made out of the contents of black holes, right?
So you can get some physics in it.
But the purpose of a physics theory is to give you understanding of universal rules and behaviors of matter and energy.
The job of morality is to clearly define moral universals and absolutes.
Their specific application in edge cases is not the job of a moral theorist, right?
So a legal theorist would say murder is wrong.
And then you say, well, there's this edge case where it kind of could be self-defense.
It might not be self-defense.
Depends.
You know it.
It's a, it's a graze, it's like murder is wrong.
Is this particular instance?
Murder is a job for the courts, not the job for the moralist right.
So he's taking edge cases and saying, well, how does your moral theory deal with one leaf of a tree being over somebody else's property or there's an externality?
How much refuse or or garbage can be dumped into a river before it harms people downstream to the point where legal action should be taken?
Right, Well rape theft, assault and murder are all evil, all immoral, all wrong, and UPB proves that and i'll get to that in a sec.
But in in a particular edge case scenario right, take murder.
Somebody was coming at them.
They had reason to be afraid they.
Maybe they could have retreated, but you know, did they, and then they killed someone.
Were they under threat of imminent bodily harm or or grievous bodily harm or death?
You know that that's a case for the courts to decide.
That's not for the moral theory to decide.
Moral theory says this is wrong, this action is wrong.
Rape theft assault, murder are wrong.
As to whether a particular action in an edge case constitutes one of those things is not the job for the moral theory.
The moral theory says, well, if it's proven that it's rape, it's wrong, it's evil.
If it's an edge case with murder or or theft well I, I thought I could borrow my neighbor's.
Uh, I thought I could borrow my neighbor's lawnmower, but it turns out he got really mad about it, it's like.
But who knows right, that's not a job for the moral theory.
The moral theory says rape theft assault, murder is wrong.
Specific instances are to be decided and adjudicated by courts, negotiation or, in the future, these dispute resolution organizations that are a replacement for status function.
So so the operational test is, is this right?
The operational test just, you understand for up, but just do do theft right.
If somebody puts forward the proposition that always get that door slung in my head, if someone puts forward the proposition that theft is universally preferable behavior, everyone must want to steal and be stolen from at the same time, then theft ceases to exist as a category, because theft is when you don't want someone to take your property.
If you want someone to take your property, it's not theft.
Therefore, theft cannot be universally preferable behavior because it requires that it be by the same person, both preferred and opposed at the same time.
So if you had a gps that says go north and south at the same time, that would be impossible to follow.
That would be an invalid direction, couldn't work right.
So that's so.
That's the operational test.
All right, how to co-parent with a woman with intense and violent borderline personality disorder?
Young kids are involved.
Um well I, obviously.
If you want to do a call-in show, we can do that.
Freedomain.com slash call.
But the key thing is over time to subtly communicate to your children, if you have the other man here, right?
So he was a woman, right?
So the important thing here is to subtly, you have to do it subtly, portray to the children over time, particularly after they hit puberty, what it was about your childhood that had you date.
I mean, borderline personality disorder is, just for those of you who don't know, it's one of the worst diagnoses that can happen in mental health.
Right?
I mean, these are the kind of people who, you know, sob for two days.
If they get slighted, they threaten to kill themselves if you leave them.
You know, I love you.
I hate you.
Never leave me.
Like, it's just absolute chaos.
And there's something in your history, and I say this with great sympathy, right?
But there's something in your history that had you be susceptible to dating.
My guess is that you had a very unstable father, probably mother, could be father, just because it's cross-sex.
So you spent your childhood managing the moods of a highly unstable woman, and that's what you're used to doing.
You're used to managing the moods of a crazy woman.
And so when a crazy woman comes into your life with the added spice of sexual access, you just fit into that role.
You know, learning to change from your childhood is like learning a new language.
If learning a new language made you very anxious.
And so changing out of the patterns inflicted on you by dysfunctional parents, if that's what happened, is like learning a new language.
And of course, when you go to a foreign country, which is called adulthood, it's a foreign country from childhood, when you go to a foreign country, your first instinct is to join the expats, the diaspora community or whatever, right?
I mean, there were these Germans who went to Russian, who went to Russia in like the 17th, 18th centuries, and they stayed there for 100, 200 years, never learned Russian, and then they brought back news of what was going on under the Bolsheviks to Germany, which alarmed everybody in the Weimar Republic.
And they just never broke out.
They just stayed in their language.
They stayed in their culture and then fled in the First World War period, 1917, of course, with the revolution.
So when you go to a new country called adulthood from childhood, the temptation is to not learn the tough language of Japanese called mental health and functionality, to not go to therapy, to not do whatever you need to do to break those patterns.
The temptation is, oh, I've gone to Russia from Germany.
I guess I'll just join the German community that speaks German and has all the German traditions because that's way easier for me rather than learning all about Russian and the Russian culture, Russian language, and so on, which is a lot of work.
So we speak the language of our childhood into adulthood.
We join a diaspora of other broken people and let's work.
We work very hard to learn the mental and verbal and emotional habits of healthy people.
Why does a man who hates academia have MA in history in his Twitter description?
Well, a man, a soldier, can hate war and still be proud of having survived it, to take obviously a very extreme and dramatic example.
But no, so I put MA in history because I worked very hard to get that graduate degree.
I took a lot of risks.
I had a lot of opposition.
I graduated long after everyone else because they couldn't decide what to do with my thesis, whether it was genius or completely insane.
They finally settled on giving me an A, whether that means genius or not, who knows.
But I fought very hard to get that degree, and I'm quite proud of it.
And it shouldn't be that hard to get a degree because if you're a free market person and an objective morality person in Canada, this is even back in the 90s, it was not fun.
All right.
This, I think, is the deepest question possible.
Or, I mean, all questions will inevitably lead to this one.
Why should anything exist?
Why should anything exist?
See, the word should is only at the tail end of 14 billion years of existence, right?
So an atom, a carbon atom, doesn't wonder whether it should or should not exist.
A bacteria or a virus or a single-celled organism going through its mitosis or meiosis or whatever they do, does not wonder whether it should or should not exist.
It simply follows the biological imperatives.
You know, that great line about you're in a summer meadow, the birds are singing, the insects are cheaping and chirping and so on.
And you're listening to a lovely symphony of every cell in the universe trying to get laid and reproduce.
It's kind of true.
But why should anything exist?
So should is only the result of non-should.
Should is the shadow cast by non-should.
In other words, atoms followed the natural patterns, the permanent and absolute patterns of matter and energy, right?
The gravity and fission and fusion and orbiting and coalescing into planets and mass and right and holding onto the atmosphere.
And then eventually there was a spark that grew life and so on.
So there's no should until the present.
And the present, I mean, maybe the last couple of thousand years of human history out of the 14 plus billion years of the universe's history.
So why should anything exist?
Should is like one little arm of one tiny snowflake on the top of Mount Everest saying, why should Mount Everest exist?
Well, Mount Everest has to exist in order for the should to exist.
There have to be stable and universal existence with no shoulds whatsoever in order for us to develop the shoulds of questioning things with our giant brains.
So when you say, why should anything exist?
You only exist because there were no shoulds for 14 plus billion years before you.
So I don't think to ask that question makes a whole lot of sense.
If you're only alive to ask why should things exist because there was no should in anything existing, you just be grateful for the gift and I wouldn't question it in particular because you're only alive to question it because there was no should before you.
Is morality objective or subjective?
How do we determine objective morality?
Morality is objective because it is different from aesthetics.
It is different from personal tastes.
It is different from the band you like and so on or the colors that you like or the food that you like.
Those are all personal preferences that cannot be universally inflicted.
Morality is objective because it requires it is involved in win-lose violent situations, win-lose situations of violence.
And as I did on a recent podcast, human beings are the only capacity to have non-violent win-win solutions negotiated through reason and language.
Which is why we are subject to moral rules and animals aren't.
Animals don't have the capacity to negotiate win-win solutions like negotiating a price where you both walk away happier.
Animals don't have the capacity to do that.
Therefore, we don't hold them responsible for doing that.
A lion cannot negotiate with a zebra.
It can only kill it.
So it's win-lose violence.
And so violence is objective and it is win-lose.
And when there's a capacity for win-win, we should choose win-win over win-lose.
I mean, if we want to have objective moral rules.
So the book is Universally Preferable Behavior, a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
It governs the use of violence when violence is appropriate and morally allowed.
Within life, it proves property rights, bodily integrity, the rationality of self-defense, oppositions to rape, theft, assault, and murder, the four great evils of mankind.
And you can get a shortened version of UPB in the last third of my book, Essential Philosophy, available for free at essentialphilosophy.com.
If a woman was raped in the past, should she be honest with the man she's dating?
Well, I think you should be honest.
It is relevant information.
I think you should be honest.
And I think that when you've had something negative in the past, you should be honest about it, but you should also be honest about the lessons learned, right?
This is not to blame women or men for being raped, but it is important to be very careful in this life.
It's very important to be very careful in this life.
Don't go to really sketchy parties in really bad neighborhoods.
Don't drink too much at parties.
Don't flirt outrageously.
Just don't do things that could get you into trouble.
And I know like women are like, well, I should be able to do whatever I want.
And it's like, yeah, hey, sure, absolutely.
And a man should be able to leave his iPhone 17 Max on a park bench in Central Park in New York and come back a month later and it's still there.
Absolutely.
Men should be able to do what we should never have to lock our doors.
We should never have to have any kind of passcode on our keys.
We should never have to have logins for our bank accounts.
We should be able to use public Wi-Fi without fear.
We should take every email in our spam folder with perfect seriousness that maybe somebody in Nigeria did leave us $5 million and we should be able to, like, absolutely.
We should be able to do whatever we want, but we can't.
We can't.
But we can't.
Free speech should mean that a man should be able to go into a biker bar and say that the biggest, burliest biker's mother is a low-down, dirty whore.
Because that's free speech.
He's not harming him.
Yeah, we should be, but you don't, because you're going to get punched.
Oh, but it's wrong.
So I don't know what it is.
Like, maybe it's just because men, like we as boys, grow up at the threat of violence all the time, right?
If you trash talk people, you're going to get popped.
If you're too rough in sports, somebody's going to punch you.
And so we grow up, but so we learn to limit our behavior.
And we say it's right or wrong, good or bad, but we learn to limit our behavior.
And for a man to say to another man, I should be able to go up to some guy who's six foot four, really burly, and say, your wife looks like a skanky, low-down, motherless whore, and not get into any physical danger.
We men would look at each other and say, well, like, what are you talking about?
Like, you don't do that in life.
So again, there are some women and some men who are raped, absolutely no fault of their own, couldn't have been prevented, massive sympathies.
There are people who take risky behaviors.
And the purpose of, you know, growing up is recognizing that you can be in the right and still get completely harmed, right?
I mean, we all have this when we're driving, right?
I have the right of way.
I mean, when I was a bicyclist, right, I rode a bike.
I mean, since I was a little kid, I still have a bike, but I biked, my gosh, I biked all the way to work for like over an hour and a quarter each way to save money on bus fare.
Once I biked all the way downtown, I biked into my 30s and so on.
And when I had the right of way, but it was a car, I stopped.
I don't sit there and say, well, I have the right of way, and therefore I'm in the right, and therefore I should be able to do what I want.
It's like, but what does the right of way do for me if I'm driven over by what's almost invariably a BMW, right?
What's the difference between a porcupine and a BMW?
Well, with a porcupine, the pricks are on the outside.
So you learn to limit your behavior and give way when you're in the right, because you don't want to get creamed.
You don't want to get driven over.
You don't want to get hit by a car.
So if, and I'm not talking about rape in particular here, but if you've had something bad happen to you, then you need to process if you're a pure victim, for sure.
That's very, very tragic.
And massive sympathy for everyone, everyone, right?
But if you engaged in risky behaviors for reasons of trauma or abuse or some sort of self-destructive tendency that comes from something, maybe you got too into the Smiths, I don't know.
But if you had dysfunction in your past that resulted in negative things, bad things, then if you've learned those lessons and you have said, okay, well, this bad thing happened to me.
I think I figured out why, you know, I hate the person who did it and I put them in jail and I figured out why I was engaging in negative or risky or dangerous behavior.
And again, I mean, I don't need to repeat this for intelligent people, but there are people who are with bad intentions.
Any woman who gets sexually assaulted or any man, the person is absolutely evil, should absolutely go to jail, no question, right?
But philosophy is about prevention rather than cure, right?
Philosophy is diet and exercise, not insulin, right?
Philosophy is about prevention rather than cure.
The cure is in the hands of the courts.
So if bad things have happened to you, then you need to learn those lessons.
And if you present bad things happen to me and I've learned my lessons, that is a plus.
Is a preemptive strike, such as the one in the movie Minority Report, convicting a man or woman of a future crime, is that moral?
No, because we have free will.
I got a question from a vegan who asked, why should the question if it's moral or immoral to kill an animal depends on the animal's capacity to understand morality and not just their own?
As someone who eats meat, I don't really know a good answer.
Well, you can't negotiate with animals, and we are meat eaters as well as plant and fruit and just about everything else.
Eaters, I think we probably was an arm that allowed us to eat salted mall, parking lot gravel, but didn't quite make it.
So animals are win-lose predators in general.
I mean, even the cows eat the grass without the grass's permission and destroy every blade of grass.
So animals are win-lose predators, and human beings have the capacity to negotiate for a win-win.
Therefore, that's what we should do because the most foundational foundational aspect of morality, sorry, the most foundational aspect of being human is our capacity to negotiate win-win through language and morals.
We can't do that with animals.
All right.
Should UPB replace religion?
Would it just be a religion for everyone or just libertarians?
Well, I don't know what you mean by replace religion.
Religious ethics have produced the world that is.
So the problem with religious ethics is that you can escape them by not being religious anymore.
UPB, you cannot escape except by being absolutely anti-rational and insane.
So you can say that two and two make five, but nobody's going to take you seriously.
And you can explain to a child why theft is immoral, why theft is wrong, right?
We've got the two words wrong, where the word wrong is used in two contexts, more than two, but wrong as in that's the wrong answer, and wrong is in morally wrong.
When UPB, the two are the same, right?
So you can explain to a child why theft is wrong.
That's not religious, and you can't escape that.
So thou shalt not steal is a biblical commandment.
If you become an atheist, you are no longer subject to that commandment.
Like you might say, well, I don't like stealing or stealing is wrong or it's unproductive, blah, blah, blah, which is ridiculous because, of course, it's productive.
Otherwise, it wouldn't exist.
Of course, it's productive, right?
But it's just me.
You could say, well, if too much stealing is unproductive of society as a whole, but there is no such thing as society as a whole.
Evolution and these sorts of beneficial actions occur at the individual level.
So the problem with religious morality is you can make it disappear by not believing in religion anymore.
But you cannot escape UPB.
You cannot escape UPB.
There is no opt-out clause from UPB.
You can opt out of religious morality, say, well, all morality comes from God.
Well, I don't believe in God.
So what are you going to do?
Well, you're wrong.
You should believe in God.
Well, I don't.
So the point is to create a moral proof that is inescapable.
I mean, you can escape it, of course, if you want.
You can pretend that gravity is not real and jump off the roof of your house, but don't.
But you can pretend.
It doesn't mean you can escape gravity.
People can be crazy and say that two and two make blue unicorns, but they're not sane and they're still wrong and nobody takes them seriously.
So once you have an easy, logical, objective proof of secular ethics, there is no escape.
And particularly since it conforms with thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, and so on in the Bible, that's good, right?
That's good.
You don't want a moral system that overturns our basic common sense of what right and wrong is.
This is an old Aristotelian argument that if you come up with a moral system that proves that rape is somehow moral, you've made a mistake.
It's not, right?
So you've to...
And like if you come up with the physics theory that says a ball held at arm's length, you let go, it should go sideways or up.
Well, it doesn't make any sense.
So you have to have moral systems at accord with our general moral sensibilities and so on.
So, no, UPB should not replace religion any more than physics should replace superstition.
I prefer that people not have a giant opt-out clause.
And really, this is the 20th century, is people opting out of Christianity, and this is wrecking the West.
And you say, well, people should believe in Christianity again, but UPB can be proven the existence of God cannot.
UPB has provable ethics that you can teach to a child.
Christianity requires faith in superior power and has the bribery of heaven and the punishment of hell.
It is an argument from authority.
It is not an argument from philosophy.
So that which we can reason should replace things we're frightened into accepting out of fear of threat and bribery.
Sure.
In the same way, you should want a woman to love you for you and not for your money.
Of course, you're a beater if she says she doesn't, right?
All right.
Many men work a lot of hours or away from home.
Is it quote fair?
See, I don't know.
If you're going to put things in quotes, I don't know what you're talking about.
Like, what is that?
Why would you put, just put each word in quotes.
Is it, quote, fair for them to not spend as much time as possible with their kids when they can be home or to make sure they're being raised properly by their wife?
Not all hobbies, unnecessary projects, sports with buddies in the man cave, etc., because they work so much and kids are the mom's job.
Why do some men leave all the parenting to the mother, then complain that the kids don't listen and turn down bad?
Seems like many men relinquish their parenting responsibilities and blame the women.
I understand working takes you away.
I was a working single mom for over a decade.
But when I wasn't at work, my life was making sure kids had everything and I taught them above their grade level, anything I thought they could understand.
P.S. I'm not talking about sharing housework.
So why do men retreat to a man cave and not spend time with their family?
Well, I mean, obviously, because they're not enjoying spending time with their family.
Either that means that the woman chose to date, get engaged to, get married to, and have multiple children with a man who doesn't like family life and doesn't want to spend time with people.
Maybe he's kind of autistic.
Maybe he's a real introvert.
Maybe he's a solitary soul or whatever you want to call it.
So why would you choose to have children with a man who doesn't want to spend time with family?
Right?
So either he doesn't have the capacity really to spend time with family.
He's easily overwhelmed or highly solitary.
I don't know, whatever.
Like let's just say that's who he is.
So then why would you why would you why would you choose get married, get engaged, sorry, get date, get engaged, get and laugh, but why would you choose to have children with a guy who doesn't enjoy being a father?
Why?
That doesn't make any sense.
Well, I didn't know.
Come on.
Don't tell me.
Don't tell me there's no red flags.
There's no evidence, right?
So that's number one.
Number one is he just can't handle family, doesn't like family, whatever, right?
Like, I don't know how long it would take for me.
I remember I dated a girl in college, her roommate who lived in the smallest room known to man.
Basically, it was like a Japanese airport pod or something like that.
And she played Chinese opera, which to me sounds like the dying cat parade.
And how long would it take for me to learn to truly and deeply appreciate the death meowing of Chinese opera?
Well, probably a long time.
I don't care to.
I have lots of music that I love.
I don't need to reshape my entire sensibilities because God help me if I end up not liking Chinese opera, but warping my sensibilities from my current state to the point where I don't even enjoy the music I like.
No thanks.
So you got married to a guy who doesn't enjoy family life, doesn't like family life.
Well, you shouldn't have done that, right?
It's like if someone vets someone to go into business with, right?
And they have years to vet this person they go into business with, and they go into business to create computer software.
And then they say, oh, this guy doesn't like working.
He hates computers and he hates writing code.
It's like, well, why did you go into business with computer software with someone who hates business, who hates code, who hates software?
Like, that doesn't make any sense, right?
You had years to vet this guy.
You could have gone with any other guy.
Why would you go with this guy?
So that's, you know, that's bad.
I don't know how you fix that.
So that's one.
Number two is why doesn't a guy enjoy spending time with his family?
It's because his spending time with his family is a negative experience for him.
And it's usually not the kids because kids bond very hard with parents and it's very hard to break that bond.
So it's not the kids.
It's you.
So the reason your husband has a man cave is he finds it very stressful and negative to be with you, his wife.
I don't know how to put it in a nice way, but if you want people to spend time with you.
Sorry.
I know it's kind of like I'm wanting you to spend time with me in talking philosophy.
If you want people to spend time with you, you have to make it a positive experience for them.
Again, I'm sorry.
Like if you want your husband to spend time with you, you have to make spending time with you a positive experience for him.
You know, when I was downstairs this morning, I was doing a little bit of work.
My wife was drying her hair, which she's Greek.
It takes four wind tunnels, a jet engine, and a week.
So she came downstairs and I ran up to her, a big kiss, big hug, and a good morning.
I made a joke about something that happened last night and she laughed and, you know, big affection because I want her to enjoy.
I mean, I love her and I want her to enjoy coming down in the morning and seeing me.
I want her experience with me to be positive because I love her and I love being married and I want her to have a positive experience of spending time with me.
I want you to come out of this talk I'm having with a little more wisdom, with a little more knowledge, with a little more insight and all of that.
And I want to get the joy of communicating philosophy, freedomain.com slash donate.
I also enjoy food and shelter, particularly in winter.
So it's win-win.
I want you to enjoy sitting down to watch what it is.
Because, you know, I'm just a talking head in a room.
It's philosophy.
A lot of people find it a kind of dry topic.
So you just have to make people's experience of you a positive thing, right?
I mean, I'm in business.
I was in business.
I've been an entrepreneur for well over 30 years now.
So it has to be, if you're running a restaurant, why aren't people coming to my restaurant?
Because they don't have a positive experience at your restaurant, right?
Maybe the food is not great.
Maybe the food is too expensive for them.
Maybe it's served kind of cold.
Maybe the waitresses are surly.
Maybe the temperature is wrong.
Maybe the decor is bad.
Who knows, right?
I don't know.
I mean, a lot of restaurants that open up new is like, we've got to have everything on the menu.
And it's like, that just makes the food come out slower and means you have to overstock on every ingredient known to man, right?
Generally start with less and ask people for more, right?
I used to do this thing in my software career where I would take away features that people weren't using because you've got to document, you've got to test and maintain the code base, train the coders and all of that.
So taking away stuff is as important as creating stuff.
So, I mean, I would rather do more shows, have more conversations with people than build a big fancy studio which would eat up donations because people are paying for philosophy, not a backdrop.
I mean, that's my general perception.
You can tell me if you think that's incorrect.
But so why is your husband not spending time with the wife and kids?
It's not the kids.
Kids really bond and they, you know, love to usually see the dad and so on.
It's you.
It's you, the wife.
He doesn't want to spend time with you.
And you probably got into this death spiral of you were doing negative things.
He started to avoid you.
So you started to criticize him and nag him and say he wasn't fulfilling his duties and his responsibilities and he wasn't contributing and blah, blah, blah.
So you're in this death cycle of you did some negative things.
He withdrew.
You got anxious and you started attacking him, which caused him to withdraw more.
And that's the only way to stop that is to start sitting there.
I mean, I think, of course, like I think, I think every day, like, how can I have people interact with me in a way that makes it positive?
I mean, you could do, you could watch anyone, you could listen to anyone.
I'm trying to give you maximum benefit so that we both end up in better lives and so on.
So that's what you've got to do in your life.
I think about this all the time.
How can my interactions with someone leave them better off than if they hadn't interacted with me?
That's all.
It's really, really important in family.
It's important in the business world.
It's just important in general.
It's just important in general.
Like if, you know, I picked up some food at a mall yesterday and I was chatting with the woman.
She was kind of bored because it was really slow and all of that.
And, you know, made a couple of jokes and thanked her for the food.
And then I went back afterwards because I threw in the drone the plate out and I said, that was really great food.
Like, thank you guys, fantastic, right?
And it was true.
So just, you know, just little things like that.
Just you've passed by people.
They're a tiny bit better off because you've passed by them.
Just have that as your general philosophy.
And you really can't, you really can't fail in life if you dedicate and commit yourself to people being happier because they know you.
They're better off, even if you've got to tell them grim truths at times.
All right.
Do we have free will or is everything determined?
We do have free will.
Free will is our capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
And we know we have the capacity for ideal standards.
You can choose to conform your behavior to ideal standards or not.
That's where our free will resides.
And you can't argue against that.
I mean, to argue against that is a self-detonating argument.
So if somebody says to me, you don't have free will, everything is predetermined.
They're saying there's an ideal standard called truth, which you should conform to.
So free will is our ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
The proposed action could be verbal disagreement or agreement.
So if somebody says to you, there's no such thing as ideal standards we can conform to, and ideally you should conform to that, right?
That's self-detonating.
What was it that first made you realize your wife was the one?
I mean, I've mentioned this before.
She, when I met her, she worked, she was going downtown quite a bit, and I was working on novels.
And I had some, I don't like to spend that much money, really.
Plus and minus, but I had some sandals that I had chosen to get repaired rather than to buy new sandals.
And I said, oh, I've got to go downtown to pick up my sandals from the repair shop.
And she's like, oh, and this was like very early on in the rating.
She's like, oh, don't sweat it.
I'll be downtown.
I'll pick them up for you.
It's like five minutes out of my way.
You know, women, unfortunately, have been trained to believe that any service to a man is enslavement and a betrayal of the feminine or something like that, right?
So women have become kind of borky and negative, and you can't ask them for anything and so on.
And the reason, as they've become more balky and negative and obstructionist to being of help to others, this is why they've had to post thirst traps and low-cut tops.
And they've got to hypersexualize to make up for not being particularly helpful as a whole, as exceptions.
But I've dated some share of women before I met my wife, and you really couldn't ask them for much.
You really couldn't ask them for much.
Would you mind doing, like if I think of sort of previous girlfriends, and I said, hey, would you mind picking out my sandals if you're downtown anyway?
And it's like well close to where you are.
You really don't have time.
You know, there's just women have, unfortunately, because it's a beautiful part of women when they want to be helpful, just as it's a beautiful part of men.
I want to be helpful to you and to my wife and all of that.
So a woman who was happy to help was and I'm not saying this is true of women as a whole.
I came from a bad childhood and all of that.
So this is not any kind of, but I moved in a world, and I moved in various, I lived three different countries, went to a bunch of different schools and all of that.
So I moved in a world where women were not eager to help or happy to help.
Say, oh, it's got to be reciprocal or, you know, or the man's contributions are erased, right?
I mean, I basically broke up with a woman because we were living together.
I was paying all the bills and she was trying to get something going in a career standpoint.
And she said, you've got to do half the housework.
And I said, no, no, because I'm paying all the bills.
So I'm working 10, 12 hours a day for the household.
So I'm not coming home and doing housework.
This was incomprehensible to her.
So this is so unfair.
And it's like, I'm just not going to.
Like, I don't demand like a thump, thump, thump.
It's like, no, I mean, if you don't recognize my contributions, then no.
I don't want to be in a relationship.
So, yeah, so that instance where she's like, oh, don't let you do you do your writing.
I'll pick it up.
Shocking to me.
Shocking.
And I thought, that's great.
And of course, I'm a reciprocal guy.
So I try and do my best for people and assume it comes back, which is why I've never done ads.
And I don't charge for my books, hand out everything for free, because generosity generally begets generosity.
So in the past, I'd be very generous to people.
And I remember funding a girlfriend's entire project, which was quite expensive.
And then I asked her to proofread one of my novels.
And she's like, I just don't feel motivated.
And that was somehow my fault.
And it's like, okay, so you can't date takers without being taken, right?
You can't date exploiters without being exploited.
And so when my wife was sort of eager and happy to help, like my masculine desire to provide and protect just came up like Mount Vesuvius, but hopefully with better outcomes to the local households.
But yeah, I mean, and so that competition of who's more generous, who helps the other person more, is a beautiful, joyful upward spiral.
And so just be nice.
And sexual access is not compensatory, not compensatory.
It doesn't compensate for personal bulkiness.
makes the relationship.
It has an egg timer on the relationship, so to speak.
So thank you for those questions.
Really do appreciate them.
Please check out peacefulparenting.com for the free book.
Please check out shop.freedomain.com for your tasty philosophy merchandise.
And I love you guys so much.
Thank you for giving me the immense privilege, which I take very seriously and very humbly to bring philosophy to the world.
I hugely love these questions.
not only even, but especially the douchey ones, because that helped points out passive aggression, which I sometimes have myself as well.
So I'm not lecturing from any guru like, oh, I can't believe people are ever petty and passive aggressive.