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Jan. 19, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
38:13
Jeremy Kauffman Versus His Son!
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Time Text
Children's Defiance Battles 00:13:34
All right.
Hi, everybody.
Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
Hope you're doing well.
So Jeremy Kaufman, I think I interviewed him once.
And Jeremy Kaufman wrote, this went pretty viral.
Wrote fairly recently, when one of my children was two, he dropped a carrot on the floor and refused to pick it up.
He was told he would not be allowed to do anything fun or have any privileges until he picked up the carrot.
He refused for hours.
He cried and screamed.
He even napped, woke up and continued to refuse.
His commitment was impressive.
We held fast until he picked up the carrot.
He would receive nothing other than water and basic food to live.
After over four hours, he picked up the carrot and apologized.
It's the longest he's fought us to this day.
Disobedience is a choice of parents.
You get the behavior that you tolerate.
This was his.
He's a free state project guy, so he is a free state libertarian.
So I'm sure that we would have a lot in common.
Perhaps not so much with regards to this approach to parenting.
So let's break it down.
And we will also get into, hopefully if we have time, we will get into the philosophy of why people confess to priests and so on, right?
So let's get into it.
So what does this mean?
This idea that you have this sort of battle of wills with your two-year-old, right?
That's a pretty wild thing to me.
So a two-year-old, now, it's funny because two-year-old could be early to or late to, in other words, the two could be half of your life or a third of your life.
So we'll just say two, two and a half or something like that, right?
But it's a pretty wild thing because for me, the important part is to be curious about what's going on.
Why would a two-year-old not want to pick up a piece of carrot, right?
So children are hardwired to want to obey their parents.
That is absolute basic Darwinian survival, right?
So if a child is running and a parent says stop, then the child will stop in general.
I mean, they're wired that way, because suppose they're running towards some secret hole in the ground.
Suppose they're running towards there's a snake there or a predator or it's a cliff edge or something.
So children are hardwired to do what their parents say.
I remember once with my daughter, she was jumping and I can't remember why there was something risky she was doing by a pool and I said stop and she kind of stopped and half faltered and it was like automatic, like my language caused her to stop because that's how children are hardwired.
It wasn't any punishment, right?
I've never punished my daughter.
So children, I know that's just one example, but we can understand it from an evolutionary standpoint, that children that defied their parents, right?
So the parent knows that the red berries are poisonous and the child has a fistful of red berries, it's going to the mouth, the parent says stop, then the children who don't listen to that die or get sick or have some sort of negative, negative outcome, right?
If there's an animal that the kid thinks is cute, but it's actually dangerous and the kid wants to pet it and the parent says stop, the kid who doesn't listen is less likely to survive the encounter, right?
So children want to obey their parents, and they're hardwired to do so.
So what is it that interferes with that?
Well, children have, particularly boys, they have dual impulses.
Now people can say, ah, but Steph, you have but a daughter.
And that is true.
I have but a daughter.
However, I was a boy and I was friends with boys and I worked in a daycare for years where there were lots of, yes, that's right, boys.
So hopefully this will make some sense.
I'll deal with some experience, but I'll also give you the reasoning behind it.
Hopefully this makes sense.
So boys and girls, I'm just going to talk about boys because this is a boy situation here.
So boys want to obey their parents.
However, the problem is that if boys only obey their parents, then the boys don't learn to think for themselves, challenge authority, become their own people, and thus become attractive to females.
Quality women do not want a boy who is a slave to his parents, who just does whatever his parents want and obeys their parents and never thinks for themselves and never challenges any kind of authority and never steps outside of the box of conformity.
So boys have a dual impulse in that they want, just think of the genetics, right?
Why is the boy saying, no, I don't want to pick up a carrot?
So boys need to go up in the hierarchy to get the most quality females, right?
This is why boys have all this testosterone and ambition and tend to be less conformist and, you know, score lower on trait agreeableness and so on, why we are difficult, why we are exasperating to female teachers and mothers and aunts and like, well, why don't you just do what your father, blah, blah, blah, says.
So in order for boys to be attractive, we are hardwired to climb the hierarchy.
And climbing the hierarchy means displacing the males above us.
It means aggressively, assertively, however you want to do it, we have to displace the males above us.
So to sort of take a typical example from the hunter-gatherer societies, in hunter-gatherer societies, the best hunter gets the best girl, right?
The best hunter gets the best woman.
Let's just, I mean, simplify it.
I know there's more than that, but let's just say.
So the best hunter gets the best girl.
Now, when you're a kid, there is already a best hunter who does not want to lose his status.
However, to get the best girl, you have to challenge and overthrow the best male.
I don't mean physical combat, although it could be that.
But you have to challenge and overthrow the alpha male in order to become the alpha male.
And all boys have this duality that they want to please their parents, and they are also hardwired to defy their fathers in particular.
Of course.
Because, again, if he doesn't defy his father, he cannot rise to the top of the hierarchy and get the best girl.
And what you have, I think what you have going on here between Jeremy Kaufman and his son is Jeremy wishes to stay at the top of the hierarchy, but his son has a deep resistance to the male who's at the top of the hierarchy because the son knows that to get them, oh, genetically, he kind of gets the instinct has evolved, that in order to get the highest quality woman,
he has to overthrow the dominant male in the environment.
So, he will not just take orders.
And Jeremy, of course, is funny because he's a, I think he's a libertarian.
And as a libertarian or as somebody who wants a smaller government or skeptical of political power, he also wants, in a sense, to diminish or overthrow the alpha politicians in the environment, right?
So what's happening is a hierarchy combat.
If Jeremy's son does not resist and overthrow a dominant male, which he's practicing with the carrot, then Jeremy's son, Jeremy Jr., I don't know the kid's name, right?
Jeremy Jr., if Jeremy Jr., let's just say Junior for the sake.
So if Jr. can't overthrow Jeremy, then Junior can't get the highest quality female, and that's bad.
He has also seen his father, I assume, not show a massive amount of deference and respect to male hierarchy because Jeremy is an independent thinker and quite rebellious and so on, right?
So he has seen, maybe he's seen his own father challenge older males, or at least not mindlessly agree with them.
Maybe he's seen his own father challenge his grandfather and so on, right?
Jeremy's father.
And not in any sort of hostile or combative way, but just, you know, whatever, right?
Maybe he rolls his eyes, maybe whatever it is, maybe the grandfather, Junior's grandfather is a bit of a normie and all of that, right?
So I'm sure that Jeremy is a successful entrepreneur and he's got like 250,000 followers on X.
So Jeremy is a rebel.
Jeremy has overthrown a particular kind of hierarchy or at least doesn't take it particularly seriously.
So Jeremy Jr., right, his son, is instinctively kind of inhaling the rebelliousness of his father and looks at his father and says, okay, so successful males do not take orders.
I understand.
Because you want to be, as a successful male in our evolution, you want to be in the position of giving orders, not taking orders.
Because that's all that happened throughout most of human history.
Is some men gave orders and most men took orders.
And the ones who gave orders, the men who gave orders, were the men who had the most power, the most resources, and got the most high-quality females.
So it's kind of funny, right?
So as a male, when you are raising a boy, you have to let him buck the hierarchy, or you're going to break him.
You're going to break him.
You have to let him rebel.
You have to let him buck the hierarchy.
You have to let him disagree with you and win.
I mean, there's studies on mice.
I think Dr. Peterson has cited this too.
But there are studies in mice that if there's an older, stronger mice that's play fighting with a younger, weaker mice, a mouse, if you are cleaning the vacuum cleaner, are you not the vacuum cleaner?
If you are waiting for the waiter, are you not the waiter?
So if the larger, stronger mouse does not let the younger, weaker mouse win at least a third of the time, the younger, weaker mouse will stop playing.
When you are teaching your children games or sports, you have to let them win from time to time.
Otherwise, you know, you know, this ridiculous thing of like the, imagine LeBron James, you know, slam dunking and, you know, power moving his like, I don't know, five-year-old boy or something.
It would be, it would be kind of sad, right?
And my daughter and I will regularly engage in mock debates.
And it's a great deal of fun.
It also has a good kind of intensity to it, which can be positive, usually is.
And she needs to win.
And by the by, she does win.
She is really, really good at this kind of puzzling things out.
So this is the kind of stuff that you miss out on.
So I would guess that Jeremy does not respect the male hierarchy and does his own thing in defiance of older and more powerful males.
I'm just going off the New Hampshire thing and what I remember from the interview.
And I say this with all due respect to Jeremy.
He seems like a good guy.
And, you know, this is just a tweak, right?
So Jeremy Jr. has seen his father buck the hierarchy, refuse to take orders, be annoyed at taking orders and express frustration and also be dominant.
And thus he has pecked his way up through the male hierarchy.
So he looks at his father and says, oh, yeah, you totally have to defy males in order to be successful.
I love dad.
I want to be like dad.
So I'm going to refuse orders.
Because dad refuses orders and dad doesn't like getting bossed around and dad likes to be high up in the hierarchy.
So I'm going to be like dad.
And I'm not going to, I'm going to please dad by not picking up the carrot.
Because dad doesn't pick up the carrot.
Now, I get, you understand that this is how a two-year-old's brain is going to work.
I emulate dad.
I do what dad does.
And you can see all of these things, right?
There's a cute little scene in the movie Jaws, of which there are not a huge number of cute little scenes, where Roy Scheider, as the father, is sitting with his little boy opposite him, and the little boy is copying everything that Roy Scheider does.
Children Mimic Authority 00:06:12
Roy Scheider flexes his fingertips and clasps his hands together.
The little boy tries that.
Roy Scheider crosses his hands.
I think the little boy does that.
Roy Scheider makes a, as Chief Brody, Roy Scheider makes a sort of terrifying grimace of a face, does a good job with it too.
And then Roy Schneider, Roy Scheider's boy in the movie The Kid, does the same thing, which is super cute.
So, I mean, this is what kids do.
They copy, they emulate.
I remember when my daughter had a little accident when she was younger, fell off a scooter, and I described what happened to people.
And then when my daughter was asked what happened, she used almost the exact same phrases to describe what happened.
I mean, this copy-paste, right?
This is how language and culture, right?
To ape is to imitate, right?
And we are bald apes in a way, right?
So the interesting question as a parent is, why is my child not picking up the carrot?
And that's a fascinating question, isn't it?
I think it's a very interesting question.
Now, it's not because my child hates me, and it's not because my child doesn't respect the rules, and it's not because, blah, blah, blah, because, right?
But the question is, so you always look inward as a parent, right?
When your children are doing something, particularly when they're young, when you are pretty much the sole influence, right?
So what you do is you look inward and you say, huh, that's interesting.
My son is not picking up the carrot.
I wonder why.
So you'd have to look inward and you'd say, okay, has something happened in my life that my child has been around?
And, you know, honestly, it can just be overhearing.
It can be tone or whatever it is, right?
Has my son ever seen me question the rules or not want to obey them?
Well, of course he has.
Because you're a New Hampshire guy, right?
So live free or die, right?
So, of course your son has seen that.
So is my son copying me, right?
I mean, things could happen.
And you would also look for something proximate.
So, did something happen over the last day or two or three wherein I said, I don't want to obey these rules.
I don't respect this, you know, whatever person in authority.
It could be a cop or a politician or someone on TV or a president, whatever it is, right?
So, has my son experienced me not wanting to follow rules and defying a hierarchy?
Huh?
Well, of course, he has.
Of course, he has.
It's pretty funny.
I just passed a sign from a butcher that says, We like pig butts, and we cannot lie.
It's cute.
So, of course, he has.
Jeremy, come on, man.
Of course, he's seen you defy authority.
And if I remember rightly, you've had challenges with deplatforming or things like that.
So, yeah, hierarchy has worked against you.
You don't like the hierarchy that's currently in society, and you want to move up in the hierarchy, or if you can't move up in the hierarchy because it's gross and like you want to change it, right?
So, if you grow up in the mafia and you're a good guy, you don't want to move up in the mafia.
Maybe you want to join the police force or somewhere else where you're high up in the hierarchy.
So, Jeremy, my friend, has your son ever been around you when you have either directly or indirectly expressed frustration with hierarchy and wanted to rebel against that hierarchy and not obey the rules?
Of course, he has, friend?
So, he's imitating you.
It's a compliment.
And he's trying to preserve his capacity to defy a hierarchy, to not obey rules, to displease the alpha, i.e., his own father.
Women are not born to surmount their mothers, to defy and overcome and quote, beat their mothers, because female child raising contributions are cooperative.
But males grow up in a strict hierarchy of excellence and win-lose, wherein your desire to win has got to be everything.
I guarantee you, Jeremy, you did not get two quarter million followers on X and whatever else you've got and all the great entrepreneurial stuff you've done.
You didn't get all of that by slavishly pleasing people and never disagreeing or disobeying any suggestions, rules, whatever it is, right?
I mean, I'm sure you've pushed the edge of terms of service, right?
So, boys are hardwired to defy their fathers as practice for defying the alphas in their own environment and to peck and claw and fight and dig and scratch and bite their way to the top of the hierarchy as best they can.
That's boys.
That's you.
That's me.
That's boys.
We have to be disagreeable.
We have to defy alphas, elders, fathers, those in charge.
We have to defy being at the bottom of the hierarchy as children are in general.
And whenever we start, we're at the bottom of the hierarchy.
You start a company, you're at the bottom of the hierarchy of the company.
You start in any sport, you're the worst at the sport, and right?
So you start at the bottom of the hierarchy, and you have to annoy people by elbowing them aside and getting to the top of the hierarchy.
So you've modeled that.
I guarantee you've modeled that.
And so your son not wanting to pick up the carrot is a tribute to you.
Snap, Hierarchy, and Respect 00:15:48
It's a gesture of respect for you.
Can you imagine me getting angry at my child if she said something that was true but could upset people?
Can you imagine?
I mean, it would be crazy.
And I'm not, Jeremy, I'm not calling you crazy, right?
I'm just saying that curiosity is how you get to these things.
You don't just slam down in the hierarchy.
Don't be the government for your child, especially if you're not so pro-political power.
I mean, so now you could say, yes, but you should pick up the carrot.
Like, that's different from defying an unjust hierarchy, blah, It's like, but not to a two-year-old, not to a two-year-old.
So my guess is what happened is the kid dropped the carrot and you were in a bad mood.
Obviously, I don't know.
I'm just telling you how I think it probably played out.
Maybe you had been humiliated.
Maybe you were forced, maybe you got a big tax bill that you didn't expect.
Maybe something happened that had you down in the hierarchy in some manner or in some way.
And your child drops the carrot.
And then you want to reestablish authority because some authority in some manner had been taken away from you, which happens, you know, it happens in life.
And we never hang on to all our authority forever because we all get old and decrepit.
And, right?
So, I mean, whoever's the alpha, I mean, there's the story of King Leah, right?
Whoever's the alpha will not stay the alpha forever because we get old and we get physically weak and we get, you know, less intellectually powerful.
I hear, I've never experienced it myself, but I hear it happens to others, right?
So, yeah, I mean, the peak of our intellectual abilities tends to be in our 20s and early 30s and so on, right?
So something happened that dropped you down in the hierarchy and you saw your son drop the carrot.
And then you didn't ask nicely, hey, bud, would you mind grabbing that?
Please?
You're like, pick up that carrot.
Ooh.
Operation resist authority activated.
Because it's how you say it.
It's how you ask it, right?
I remember I was half kidnapped by a bunch of insurance agents many years ago.
I'll tell that story.
And they took me out all day.
And I went to a whole conference with them and all of that because I didn't have a car and they wouldn't drop me at a subway.
Anyways, at the conference, I remember the guy saying, oh, so yeah, you guys are a bunch of salespeople.
And what that means is you'll do almost anything I ask and absolutely nothing I tell you to.
You'll do anything I ask nicely for and almost nothing I order you to do.
And men, the way that you activate, fight the power, fight the hierarchy, is you give an order.
So you probably turned and you snapped at your son and you said, pick up that carrot now.
And your son, his instincts, right?
This is not at two, we're not making big choices based on abstract ethics.
Come on.
That's not how, as I have a two-year-old, it's all instinct.
It's all memes and biology and instinct and hormones and gut and like it's it's just balls of instincts.
I mean, there's some reasoning going on, but it's not like they have access to any of the sort of abstractions, right?
Not philosophical creatures.
At two, so it's all instinct.
So my guess is what happened is you felt low in the hierarchy, you snapped at your son, pick up that carrot now, now.
And your son was like, oh, no, I don't.
My instincts say to do what dad does and rebel against authority and not take orders, because if I take orders, I can't get high quality females.
If I take orders, it's like being a slave.
It's being very low on the hierarchy.
And I love dad who's higher up on the hierarchy, so I don't want to end up being low on the hierarchy.
So I'm not going to pick up the carrot.
Again, all instincts, right?
You know, the unconscious runs 6,000 times faster than the conscious mind in evaluating these kinds of things.
And so your son is, I'm not, I'm not picking up the carrot because his instincts and his genes and his gut is saying to him, don't take orders.
If you take orders, you'll be a slave and you may not reproduce.
Remember, a lot of men didn't reproduce, and the men who didn't reproduce the most were slaves who were taking orders.
So don't take orders.
That's what his gut, his genes is saying.
Be like dad, be up in the hierarchy, don't take orders.
So I bet you snapped at him.
And it's not a big blame thing.
I'm just talking about the causality, right?
We all snap at our children from time to time, right?
It's not the end of the world, right?
It doesn't have to escalate into a four-hour soul-crushing standoff.
So you snapped at your son, and because he loves you and respects you, and you don't take orders, or at least you don't like taking orders, or at least you'll fight orders wherever possible, he's like, oh, okay, I'll be like dad, and I won't take orders.
So he won't take orders because he wants to be like you and he wants to get access to high-quality females.
So he's not going to take orders.
Because a lot of this stuff is genetic as well.
Like you are fighting genes a lot of times.
Like a lot of personality aspects, a lot of assets, I don't say quirks, but a lot of aspects of personality, they're genetic, hard genetics.
You're trying to bully your son into changing his eye color or his hair color.
It's not going to work.
Well, if I bully my son, he'll be taller.
Nope.
So you say to your son, pick up that carrot now, now.
And he won't do it.
Because his resist authority, don't take orders, survival of the genes, be like dad, all of this stuff kicks in.
And he's like, no.
And then you have a choice.
And you can say, okay, so how would I feel if someone ordered me to do something?
Jeremy Kaufman, pick that up right now.
Like, no, because you're a male.
So you resist orders.
Because you want to be higher up in the hierarchy.
So you have a choice.
If you say, pick up that carrot now, and your son says, no, and you say, oh, okay.
How would I feel if I was just talked to in that kind of way?
If somebody just gave me an order?
How would I feel if my wife said, Jeremy Kaufman, pick up that carrot now?
Or maybe I don't know what his middle name is.
If she triple names him, you're doomed, right?
Jeremy Basil Kaufman.
Anyway, so sorry, I don't need to give him a gay middle name, but that's my middle name.
So there.
So you say, ooh, I was a bit harsh.
I say, you know what?
I'm sorry.
That was really rude.
I'll get the carrot.
I shouldn't have snapped at you.
My apology.
I'm so sorry.
Like, you're right.
Thank you for not obeying me if I'm being snappy, right?
Or impatient.
And again, we all have bad moods and we all can be impatient and snappy.
So, I mean, the important thing in parenting in life is not to be perfect, but just to be honest.
If I had dropped something at school, how would I feel if the teacher said, pick that up now?
Or else, well, of course you'd want to resist.
You'd hate it.
You'd hate being talked to in that kind of way.
That's why I don't tell people what to do.
One of the reasons.
So if you snap at your kid, like I guarantee you, Jeremy, come on.
I guarantee you, you didn't say, oh, bud, you dropped that carrot.
Would you mind picking it up, please?
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
No, it became a thing.
It became an aggressive thing.
It became a hierarchy thing.
It became a dominance thing.
And your son fought like hell.
And you broke that.
And why?
Because you weren't asking questions.
You got to put yourself in your kid's shoes.
If you want your children to have empathy, you need to empathize with your children.
How would I feel if I was two and somebody 10 to 15 times my size gave me a snappy order?
well, I'd rebel too.
So you got to empathize.
How would I feel if somebody with infinite authority over me just ordered me to do something?
How would you feel, right?
So if you are, I don't know, you're going through security at the airport and some agent is like, take that belt off right now.
I mean, you would be kind of annoyed, right?
I mean, you do it, right?
Because you got to get on the plane, but you'd be annoyed.
So did you snap at your son?
And if you snapped at your son and he said no because you snapped at him, then you apologize, of course, right?
Because it's not right to snap at your kid for dropping a carrot.
Just you ask nicely, right?
But you want your kid to be polite and all of that, right?
So you fire off something at your kid, your kid fires back no, and then you escalate your aggression.
And your son's genes are like, okay, well, we gotta, we gotta try and break through this.
We gotta survive this.
We gotta come out.
We can't come out on top because we're two, but we're not gonna come out broken.
Because anybody who's a libertarian who uses size and intimidation to force obedience out of their children doesn't understand a fucking thing about libertarianism.
It's not a philosophy for the state or the government.
Primarily and fundamentally, it's a philosophy for the home.
Because that you can control, quality of your relationships.
You can't control what the government does, but you can control whether you're aggressive towards your children.
And this should not be big news.
Of course, I've been talking about this for decades, right?
That you are the government to your children.
And if you don't like the government ordering you around, don't order your children around.
If you didn't like teachers ordering you around, snapping at you, don't do it to your children.
And if your child has seen you being discontented and unhappy with being ordered around and resisting it, then don't be too fucking shocked if they don't like being ordered around and they resist it.
It's just curiosity.
Hey, you say, pick up that carrot now.
No.
Okay, that's your indication that your child is mirroring something back to you that's important, that they're going through something that's important for you to understand.
My child normally is quite helpful.
Why does my child not want to pick up the carrot?
What a fantastic opportunity to learn about your child and yourself.
What an amazing opportunity.
Like these doors open in relationships where people do things that are surprising.
They do things that are surprising.
And when people are being surprising, that's when you get to learn the most about them.
Because it's an unusual situation.
When I was newly married, my wife is a very even-tempered person.
And once or twice after we got married, she got quite exasperated with me.
That's fascinating because that's not at all her natural state of being.
It's quite far from her natural state of being.
So we had conversations about that and we learned a lot about that.
Wow.
So this is why it is.
That's really interesting.
So your son says no to something.
Great.
Especially if your son is normally quite cooperative, right?
Your son says no.
What a fantastic opportunity to find out why.
When people behave in ways that go against their normal habits, that is because they are experiencing stimuli that is going against their normal environment.
I don't tend to run at full tilt through the woods, but if I'm being chased by a bear, I kind of am right doing that.
So you tell your son, or you are even, and even if you ask nicely, right?
Let's say that I'm completely wrong and Jeremy did not snap at Jeremy Jr.
Let's say that he asked, Hey, hey, listen, you just picked that, you dropped that carrot.
Would you mind grabbing it and picking it up, please?
No.
Okay, that's even more interesting.
See, it's not just interesting.
It's just data.
So what is going on?
Maybe your child has a bellyache.
They're hiding from you because they don't want to upset you.
Maybe your child has a headache.
Maybe your child had a really bad dream involving a carrot.
Maybe, like, I'm not kidding, right?
Maybe the last time your child picked something up this morning, he bumped his head and it really hurt.
Right?
Maybe he saw your wife, he saw his mother give you orders and you defied them and he wants to be like you.
I don't know.
But the problem is, if all you do is muscle and break his will, you'll never know.
You'll never know.
Why does someone say no?
Well, if you're snapping at them, it's because you're snapping at them.
And particularly as a boy, he can't afford that.
Like his genes simply cannot afford that.
Because in the four-hour standoff, which, by the way, is a complete eternity, of course, for a child.
Like at two, four hours is like four days or four weeks for us.
So why was your son struggling so hard?
Well, he was struggling because he wants to have the ability to defy the hierarchy so he can get the highest quality female.
But if he is unable to defy the hierarchy, if the hierarchy wins, if the alpha male wins, then he is a slave.
He can't win against the hierarchy, and therefore he cannot defy the hierarchy, and therefore he cannot get the highest quality females, and therefore he's low on the totem pole, and that's it.
That's it.
And that is now pounded into his mind, his heart, his soul.
Now, I'm not saying irrevocably like it's one standoff, but it's a pretty big one.
And this is why it all went viral, right?
Because most people have had that kind of standoff in the past with parents or teachers or something like that, right?
There's a famous scene in the movie The Breakfast Club where the Judd Nelson character keeps mouthing off to the principal and the principal just keeps assigning him more and more weekend detentions, right?
What do you do?
What do you do?
Where does your son stand in the hierarchy, not just of the family, but of life itself?
If your son cannot at all defeat the hierarchy, if he says no, he doesn't want to do something, he's testing to see if he's a slave or has the potential for being an alpha.
Is he going to take orders his whole life, or does he at least have the chance of giving orders?
And what an amazing and assertive attitude of will to say, I will not surrender.
I will not surrender.
And then what happened?
Well, what happened was his genes said, well, we now have to calculate our best odds of survival and reproduction.
Resisting Hierarchy 00:03:07
Because genes will take low-quality reproduction over no reproduction, of course, right?
Because no reproduction is the absolute end of the lineage for that combination of genes, for your son's genes.
So your son's genes are saying the following: resist, resist, resist.
If you can't win, you have to cave.
Because if your father will not let you exercise any will in opposition to his, then you are going to have to surrender to him because otherwise your chances of survival go down historically.
Because he might not bond with you.
He might not care about you as much.
He might be slower to protect you from predators.
You might get less food because he has less loyalty.
Do not anger your caregiver too much, right?
And this is why it's such an unfair battle between a grown adult and a toddler, a little two-year-old, because a two-year-old can't win.
Can't win at all.
But he'll try.
He'll try.
Is it possible for me to not be at the bottom of the hierarchy?
Is it possible for me to overthrow an alpha, to challenge the hierarchy to blah, Is it possible for this to happen?
If so, I will be one kind of person.
I will strive.
I will challenge authority.
I will think for myself.
I will try as hard as I can to put my individual will and sovereign consciousness into effect.
I will make decisions.
I will defy hierarchy with the support of my father.
In other words, is my father a hypocrite, right?
Because my father defies authority, but he doesn't allow me to defy authority.
And of course, the father can say, yes, but I'm in the right.
The carrot should be picked up.
It's not about the carrot.
Everybody knows it's not about the carrot at all.
But if you break the will of the child and you say, you will never be allowed to disagree with me.
You will take orders.
You will obey.
Damn it.
Okay.
Then you create a different kind of person.
I mean, certainly more of the slave mentality.
And instead of going out hunting, he will just pick up the scraps left over.
He will try to survive not through independent thought and disagreement and disagreeableness.
He will not challenge the hierarchy.
He will just try and find a way to survive by conforming.
And he will be a beta.
And he will not have access to the highest quality females.
And he will not make much money because the carrot is independence and defiance.
And he's not allowed.
So you just end up with a different kind of kid.
And then what will happen is you'll get annoyed at the kid for being too deferential, for being too hesitant, which is something that you have sadly created.
So I hope that makes sense.
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And I'd love to hear your feedback.
Peacefulparenting.com to get the facts.
All the best.
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