Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - The HELL of Hedonism! Twitter/X Space

Feb. 2, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:46:30

The HELL of Hedonism! Twitter/X Space

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Boomers and Cultural Hypocrisy 00:14:58
	Well, good morning, everybody.
	It's Ephemerneux from Free Domain.
	And I hope you're having a lovely morning.
	I hope life is treating you well.
	You are treating it back well.
	And of course, I'm happy to take the calls.
	I'm happy to chat with the folks, the people.
	But I had a little thing to start with.
	We can get to some Bitcoin stuff if you're interested in a little bit.
	But I was trying to sort of figure out this morning, like it's a sort of fundamental question to people who want to improve the world.
	Why is the world so hard to improve?
	Why is it so hard to get people to just think, reason, be curious?
	Now, of course, culture has to be fairly stable in order for a civilization to develop.
	Values need to be developed and inculcated or inflicted in the young.
	And there has to be a certain amount of stability, like evolution, right?
	The body needs a certain amount of stable genes.
	It also needs a certain amount of random genes in order for evolution to occur.
	Too many random genes.
	You just get thalidomide babies and too few, and you get a stagnant creature that no longer evolves.
	And this is part of the patience of those who've wanted to undo Western civilization in particular for, I mean, arguably thousands of years, hundreds of years, whatever you want to call it.
	But I think it comes down to error, falsehood.
	It comes down to lies.
	So why are, for instance, the boomers so vain and touchy?
	Why do they not take responsibility for the mess that they have somewhat created, somewhat participated in, but certainly influenced?
	And people say, ah, yes, but boomers are quite conservative in many ways.
	And it's like, yeah, but they still didn't conserve.
	and the conservatism of the boomers hides a deeply predatory nature.
	See, when I was a kid— Oh, those many moons ago.
	So when I was a kid, there were huge numbers of movements.
	Oh, my gosh, everywhere you looked.
	Movements, movements, movements.
	It's like Scottish bowels after a night of Indian food.
	And, you know, zero population growth was a huge movement.
	Feminism, huge movement.
	Environmentalism, huge movement.
	Socialism, huge movement.
	The bringing of food to Africa, huge movement.
	And they were very, activist.
	And, of course, even now, the boomers are very activist.
	And if you do something that the boomers don't like, they will organize very strongly, right?
	There's lots of sort of great power society for the aged and so on.
	They will organize.
	They will leap into action.
	They will do everything in their considerable power to get politics in particular to sway their way.
	And like most ideologues, boomers are immune to feedback.
	I mean, so one of the strange things about ideologues that they were very hysterical, like about five minutes ago, about global warming.
	And now, well, not so much.
	I remember when I was little, all the boomers lecturing me.
	Well, I shouldn't say the boomers weren't lecturing me when I was little because I was at the tail end of the boomers.
	But as I got into my teenage years, I was lectured about being financially responsible.
	Don't spend more than you make.
	And at the same time, of course, we all saw the national debt growing like this blood-soaked tsunami on the horizon.
	The personal responsibility, social greed, social exploitation, political and economic exploitation.
	So the boomers are activists to the core.
	Now, again, I understand when the boomers started in 1945, so they were 21 when I was born.
	So this is where you just saw this activism all over the place.
	Marches and protests and civil rights and help out every ethnicity along the planet.
	And they were just highly, highly activist.
	And yet, never for their own culture, never for their own people, never for their own culture as a whole, never for their own countries, really.
	I mean, seeing the boomers go from protesting violently the Vietnam War to cheering on the Ukraine war, the Russia-Ukraine war, is a massive exercise in baseless, bottomless, pathological hypocrisy.
	So you get people to believe things that aren't true.
	And the problem is, and this is the case for all of us, I'm not picking on the boomers, but it really seems to have hit the boomers hard with fewer excuses, I think, than most other generations.
	But if you get people to build their lives on a lie, such as, you know, the old tend to financially exploit the young, right?
	This is one of the tenets of Marxism, that the more powerful tend to financially exploit the less powerful.
	Socialism, Marxism, social welfare, and so on.
	And the boomers were the biggest voting bloc in history and remain so, particularly as they age.
	And I don't think it's ever occurred to them, or at least very few of them, that as the most powerful people in society, they are horrendously exploiting the young.
	Because the boomers wanted the government to pay for a whole bunch of stuff and didn't want to pay enough taxes to cover the bills, so that's where the debt comes from.
	And the boomers are using the power of the state to extract their pensions from the young through force.
	And they grew up all these lefties.
	And I find this horribly incomprehensible.
	I can understand not wanting to admit that you've become a bottomless hypocrite, but they don't even seem to be remotely aware of it.
	We were owed these pensions, we're owed this healthcare, we're owed all of this stuff, we paid into the system.
	It's like, but you didn't, because if you paid into the system, where's the debt from?
	Where's the national debt from?
	Why are there all these hundreds of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities?
	I mean, if you have a $10,000 credit card debt and you don't even pay the interest, do you get to say, well, why are you guys handing me?
	I paid you, but not enough.
	That's sort of the point.
	That is sort of the point.
	So you give people values and then you seduce them with the opposite, which makes them hypocrites, which makes them impossible to reason with.
	You should never use your power to exploit people less powerful than yourself, unless it's pensions and healthcare and keeping your homes vastly overpriced so the next generation can't form families.
	I mean, that's even worse than the worst caricatures of capitalist exploitation that they were fed as children.
	Because if it's capitalist exploitation, at least you can go to a different country, company.
	Sorry, I'm crossing my wires.
	You're hired by ABC Incorporation.
	You can go to XYZ Incorporation.
	You can move towns.
	But countries or tax farms, it's very hard to leave.
	So they're worse than the greatest villains they were taught about as teenagers, as children.
	Everything for the environment.
	Got to protect nature's scarce resources.
	Well, debt pillages them, as does mass migration, taking people from low-carbon footprint countries and putting them to massively high-carbon footprint countries and subsidizing them to boot, is horrendous for the environment.
	They don't care.
	Because it keeps the housing prices up, I suppose, right?
	So if you just get people to believe lies and then bribe them to the opposite, you sow this wound or this cyst or this tumor of hypocrisy.
	And the problem is that when people build their lives on lies, it's almost impossible to back down.
	It's almost impossible to back down.
	How do you do it?
	Your job has been based on a lie, particularly if you worked for the government.
	Your parenting has been a lie on so many different levels, such as you inflict values on your children that you don't follow yourself.
	Your marriage has been a lie, and that you claim to love each other for your virtues, but you cannot base virtue on a lie.
	Therefore, the virtues are hollow, defensive, hypocritical shells of touchy self-praise.
	Everything about you is based on falsehood.
	Now, the falsehood generally shows up in the next generation, which is why the boomers are vain and Gen X is cynical.
	I've said this before.
	Grade seven, grade, I think it's probably grade eight.
	The teacher was talking about the glorious pensions that awaited us at the end of our working lives, and half the class, I mean, mostly the males, were just laughed at him.
	Bro, it's a math class.
	We can do the math.
	There's not going to be much left.
	And whatever there is that is left will be worth very little.
	The numbers were high in the Weimar Republic.
	The value was low.
	So how can you look back over the course of your entire life and say, I believed lies and I did wrong?
	I've never seen anybody do that.
	You hear stories of people with great regrets when they're old, but I think it's mostly a myth.
	I'm sure there's the occasional person.
	But I think it's mostly a myth.
	Because I don't know how people would get out of bed in the morning with the full conscious knowledge that they had not just done wrong.
	Individual criminals do wrong, but they had enthusiastically participated in the destruction of their entire civilization.
	It's one thing to say, oh, I shouldn't have had that affair.
	I shouldn't have shacked up with that Filipino maid or whatever, you know, personal mistake.
	Oh, that was terrible.
	Okay, very few people will do that.
	But that's just wrecking your family, your family.
	Your civilization continues.
	And the patience, like the patience of people who sow these kinds of lies, knowing that it will take 50 years to bear fruit.
	Amazing.
	You know, when I was in the business world, a sales cycle of 30 to 60 days was long.
	Sometimes it took months to make a sale.
	Can you imagine working on a sale for 50 years?
	Starting as a salesman in your 50s and then passing that sales job to your children and then maybe to your grandchildren to see it finally bear fruit.
	Amazing.
	Amazing.
	So I've really tried over the last day or two to sort of put myself in the mindset of people who did that kind of wrong.
	I can't imagine how it could be possible to admit that to yourself.
	Because to admit something to yourself is to claim that you have a self.
	But if you're a leaf on a stream, a dust moat, or a dandelion fluff in the air, and any way the wind blows, NPC social metaphysician second-hander, you don't have a self to talk to because you are a well-bribed, corrupted conformist.
	And of course, this is all the more appalling.
	And maybe this hypocrisy is common throughout history, but I can only talk about the stuff that I've experienced directly.
	But it's even more appalling because of the number of times that I was told to think for myself and don't follow the herd.
	And my God, if everyone was jumping off the CN Tower, would you jump off the CN Tower?
	I was told to fiercely resist peer pressure, even if it cost me popularity, even if it cost me everything.
	You got to stay away from brute consensus, man.
	Leads you off a cliff.
	You got to think for yourself.
	You're responsible for yourself.
	You don't get to say, well, everyone else was doing it.
	No, no, say the boomers.
	You have to think for yourself and you're 100% responsible and you can't blame consensus and you can't blame what everyone else is doing.
	And they loved all these Serpico shows, right?
	Sorry, that's an old movie reference, but they loved all these shows, man, where some guy was heroically fighting the system, man.
	Just bucking the trends, going his own way.
	Clint Eastwood style, Dirty Harry, Serpico, gritty people who push back against the status quo.
	Heroes of individual thought who don't give a tinker's cuss what other people think they go their own way.
	And I suppose they imagined that this was them.
	But that's kind of like art sliding in a soul to an empty shell of a mind.
	And they lived through the media, they lived through the TV.
	They worshipped iconoclastic non-conformists, people who fight the power.
	And I suppose deep in their mind, it's sort of part of the hypnosis, but deep in their mind, maybe they thought, well, I guess someone like that is around me, because the brain doesn't really differentiate media that well.
Imagining the Most Moral Person 00:06:36
	So, yeah, someone like that is around me.
	That must mean I would be like that, because someone like that wouldn't be around a total conformist.
	So they leeched.
	They imbibed imaginary courage and felt that it flowed to them as well through a contact high, I guess.
	And so they did a call.
	This is partly from something I read on X about the debt.
	But also, it was partly a call I did last night, which would be out at some point.
	It's a public call.
	And it was a guy whose mother was 66, and he still had big significant issues with her.
	I mean, he's in his early 40s.
	She's 66.
	What can be fixed?
	What possibly could be fixed?
	What would it mean?
	And he wanted to get married.
	And what I said to him, which I will, I think it bears repeating, but what I said to him was, bro, it doesn't matter what you think of your mother anymore.
	It did 25 years ago, 30 years ago, 35 years ago.
	But it doesn't matter what you think of your mother.
	I said, what's the only person that it matters what they think of your mother?
	And he couldn't get it.
	And I had to tell him.
	I'm sure you guys get it, because it's easy when it's not you, right?
	Or me.
	So I said, as I'm sure you know, I said, no, no, the only opinion about your mother that matters is the opinion of your future wife.
	Because your mother is your past and your wife is your future.
	So getting out of this two orbiting sons, well, I guess one son, one mother, getting out of this navel-gazing regard of relationships that really only mattered 30 years ago or 40 and saying, it doesn't matter what I think of my family when you want to get married.
	What matters is what my future girlfriend, fiancé, wife, the mother of my children, it matters what she thinks of my mother.
	And for women, it doesn't matter what you think of your father.
	It matters what your future husband thinks of your father.
	So we are born backwards, boats against the tide, born ceaselessly into the past.
	It's a fantastic closing line from a fairly mediocre book, The Great Gatsby.
	Mistakes, lies, get people to build their life on lies.
	They can't change.
	They can't change.
	I mean, I think that we all have kind of an original self or an original identity.
	But if we, you know, after you built your house, you can't move it.
	You have to choose where to build your house.
	Because after you build your house, you can't move it.
	And because you are the house, you can't move.
	I mean, I used to wonder sometimes.
	Sorry, Brian, I see that you want to talk.
	I used to wonder sometimes why it took a while to get my personal life going as an adult.
	I mean, professionally, artistically, I think I was doing well.
	Had a good job, a good career as an entrepreneur.
	And things were going pretty well.
	But I felt kind of in a loop in my personal life.
	I mean, I had relationships, but they never quite made it to the ultra, to marriage, kind of what I wanted.
	And in hindsight, it's because I had not applied philosophy to my personal relationships.
	I had not viewed how everything looked from the outside.
	To invite someone into your life is to invite them into spending a whole lot of time with your parents, I guess a little less time with your grandparents, with your siblings, with your friends.
	Do they want to join your crew?
	Think of the most moral person you can imagine.
	This is a very useful exercise for me.
	Think of the most moral person that you can imagine.
	And then imagine that person joining or considering joining your family and friend group.
	Think of the most moral person you know sitting at your family at Thanksgiving or Christmas, Easter, anniversaries, birthdays.
	Imagine the most moral person you know.
	This is even more powerful, but imagine the most moral person you know visiting your house or your apartment or your flat when you were a child.
	What would they see?
	How would they see your parents treating you?
	Imagine.
	Imagine the most moral person you know being able to travel through time and see how you were treated.
	If you were treated well, wonderful, if you were treated badly.
	Imagine that they see the days, the weeks, the months, the years, the decades that you were treated badly.
	And then you say, hey, we're all getting together this Thanksgiving.
	Come along.
	What would they say?
	This most moral person, because you want to love and get married to, the most moral person.
	That's the best security for marriage.
	So that's how to build for an actual future.
	So I don't think that people are going to change.
	I don't think they have anything to change to.
	I think asking old people who've never really thought and have perfected the musculature of defense and who have no original self left to appeal to, I mean, it's like asking people to jump out of an airplane when they think everything's fine.
	No, no, the plane is going down.
	It's bad.
	Everything's fine.
	The captain is assuring me everything's fine.
	You're a crazy person who wants to get me killed.
	All right.
	Let us get to caller Brian.
	I like that.
	Philosophy show, and we've got an anagram for brain.
	Brian, if you want to unmute, I'm all ears.
	You are muted at the moment.
	All right.
	I think Brian has either wandered off, he's AFK, or, alternatively, Brian is having technical issues, which I don't think actually, I think X is pretty good for that kind of stuff.
Cascading Risk Hiccup 00:06:46
	Rumble still has a couple of hiccups, it seems.
	But yeah, if anybody else wants to talk, that is certainly fine.
	Happy to hear.
	I do have some thoughts.
	You may have noticed, if you are at all in the crypto market, or, let's say, the stock market, you may have noticed, you may have noticed a little bit of a hiccup in your portfolio recently.
	So I think it's fair to say that it is a crash.
	It is, in fact, a crash.
	And, oh, that's interesting.
	Okay, let me just, oh, there we go.
	So.
	So, Bitcoin experienced a sharp decline on January 31st, 2026, that's yesterday, dropping below 80,000 US, reaching lows around 75 to 78 in some instances, representing a roughly 7 to 10% fall over the past 24 hours from levels near 84,000, capping off a seven-day overall decline of 13.6% from around 90,000.
	This erased significant value from the broader crypto market, with total liquidations exceeding $8 billion and the global crypto market cap shedding up to $220 billion amid amid thin weekend liquidity.
	The main drivers behind this drop include a combination of macroeconomic policy shifts, geopolitical risks, and market-specific pressures.
	Here's a breakdown of the key factors based on recent reports and discussions.
	So the price drop of Bitcoin, other cryptos didn't just happen out of nowhere or in a vacuum.
	The stock market, especially tech stocks like Microsoft, took a huge dive on Thursday.
	Crypto-related stocks also took a big hit as well.
	So there was a nomination of Kevin Worsch as Federal Reserve Chair.
	President Trump's selection of Warsh, viewed as a hawkish figure, favoring monetary discipline and potentially higher interest rates with reduced liquidity, has spooked investors.
	This is seen as bearish for risk assets like Bitcoin, as it could limit easy money flows that fuel speculative investments.
	Also, of course, if I mean, Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation for a lot of people.
	And if Worsh ends up tightening the money supply, inflation will go down, which would make Bitcoin slightly less attractive, of course, for people who are trying to flee inflation.
	In the past, Walsh has spoken positively of Bitcoin in 2021.
	He called Bitcoin the new gold for people under 40.
	In July 2025, he said, with every passing day, Bitcoin is getting new life as an alternative currency.
	So, Walsh favors monetary discipline is likely to raise rates.
	His nomination in the short term can be expected to pull money out of more volatile assets.
	Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, escalating conflicts, including reports of U.S.-Iran strikes, explosions at Iran's Bandar Abbas port, and broader regional instability have triggered a risk-off sentiment.
	Investors are rotating out of the volatile assets like cryptos towards safer havens such as gold, amplifying selling pressure.
	And of course, every time there is talk of war, people pick up military-industrial complex stocks.
	U.S. government shutdown.
	A partial federal shutdown began on January 31st after funding lapsed, halting non-essential operations and pausing legislative progress on crypto-related bills like the Clarity Act.
	This has added to uncertainty, draining momentum from potential regulatory clarity and contributing to broader market unease.
	The Clarity Act, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, is a bipartisan effort designed to set clear rules for digital assets, define Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight and bring order to market structures.
	As crypto is treated differently under different circumstances, generally to maximize its taxability.
	U.S. Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded substantial net outflows exceeding a billion dollars in January alone, including over 800 million on January 29th to 30th.
	This has reduced spot demand with institutional selling and deleveraging, exacerbating the downside.
	The sell-off is indicated as the major driver of the 13.6 weekly decline of Bitcoin.
	So, of course, there are all of these financial advisors out there.
	Oh, I've had some history with financial advisors, but let's not get into it right now.
	I don't want to end up screaming myself hoarse first thing of the day.
	But, yeah, people have all of these financial advisors and the financial advisors are generally bleating sheep herd panicking, mindless NPC drones of a giant financial echo chamber.
	So, someone says, ooh, Bitcoin's going to go down, or oh, there's all this uncertainty.
	We've got to get out of high-risk assets and so on.
	And so, everyone says to their clients, I'm going to have to move you out of the high-risk assets.
	And also, I mean, they do have regulatory stuff.
	Like, if people say, I don't want super risky stuff, if the stuff gets volatile or is perceived to be volatile, you know, maybe you have to move them out.
	I don't know.
	I'm not an expert in that kind of stuff.
	But it's just a bunch of people saying Bitcoin's going to go down.
	And therefore, Bitcoin goes down.
	It's a bunch of people say, well, risk factors are up.
	And the Klingon is in charge of the Fed.
	So it's just a bunch of panic herds.
	Cascading liquidations and broader risk aversion.
	Over $1.6 to $2 billion in long positions were liquidated across exchanges, creating a feedback loop of forced selling in low liquidity conditions.
	Right.
	So people are saying, look, if the stock goes down or if Bitcoin goes down this much, you have to sell.
	And then other people have positions slightly below that, which the price keeps going down.
	So there's a whole bunch of cascading triggers.
	This is automatic selling to limit losses.
	And of course, you see these, I mean, pretty plaintive messages on X of some people like $5 million, 10 years were completely vaporized.
	So this alliance, this drop alliance with weakness in equities and tech stocks, as well as a fear reading on sentiment indexes, pushing investors away from risky assets.
	These factors have compounded in a volatile environment with Bitcoin breaking key technical supports and sentiment turning bearish.
	While some analysts, the potential for a rebound, if tensions ease, the immediate outlook remains cautious amid ongoing uncertainties.
	So it's nothing foundational to Bitcoin.
	It's not been hacked.
	It's not been taken over or anything like that.
Investors Struggle 00:06:25
	All right.
	Raynard, if you want to unmute, I'm all ears.
	I can't not hear.
	I heard the beep.
	Yeah, there you go.
	How are you doing?
	Good.
	How are you?
	Thanks for taking my question.
	Sure.
	My question is, and maybe it's a question combined with affirmation or reassurance, is what is the point or the purpose for people or individuals to just pursue virtue and deferring gratification?
	I'm thinking of like an example of, say, a college friend of mine who we finished with debt.
	And I paid off my debt after 20 years.
	And over the course of his life, he's traveled, drove Teslas, did all these different things.
	And it was really a struggle.
	And you see people, I mean, I know you don't want to compare your weakness to another person's strength and the vice versa, that sort of thing.
	But you have eyes, you can see, and people are enjoying themselves.
	And why take the harder path when other people are just having an easier time in life?
	Sorry, I just misunderstood something there.
	It's a great question.
	So did you say your friend traveled and drove Teslas while you had it tough?
	Because I wasn't sure who was who.
	Well, my friend, my roommate from school, we finished up.
	I finished up with about $120,000 in debt and he finished with eight.
	And after 20 years or so, I'm finished, but I think he owes, I don't know how this is possible.
	I think he owes might be 60 or 70,000, which I don't know how that's possible.
	Wait, he went $80,000 to owing almost $80,000.
	$80,000.
	Yeah, yeah.
	No, he owed $80,000.
	$80,000.
	Okay, got it.
	Yeah, I've started with $120,000.
	Yeah.
	While he started with 80, I'm finished, and he owes 60 or 7 after 20 years.
	Right.
	So over the course.
	Yeah, if you're just paying the minimum and you get a high interest rate, I mean, you could end up paying, you could end up owing more.
	Yeah, but you think about, you know, now I'm 52 and you always hear these stories here or there or old high school friend passed away, this person passed away, this person is sick.
	And I'm saying to myself, man, you know, or just people who are disciplined and working hard and making sacrifices.
	And if something happens, maybe you didn't really live life.
	And other people are living their lives, enjoying themselves, and they just don't care about the debt and things of that nature.
	They're just having fun while I'm deferring gratification.
	And it's just like, why, why do it?
	Where people are taking the easier path while, you know, either, I wouldn't say struggle, but choosing a difficult or more difficult path.
	Why not just have a more self-focused, self-serving life?
	What's the point?
	Right.
	No, that's, that's a great question.
	And working hard and paying taxes is one thing if your taxes are going to sort of, you know, I don't know, police and courts and roads.
	You know, I don't think the government should be doing any of that stuff, but at least that's one thing.
	You know, I think one of the things that has really broken the work ethic in America, and I'm not criticizing that, I just think it's a real thing, is, you know, all of the fraud and waste that has been uncovered.
	I mean, with Elon Musk's Doge team, Department of Government Efficiency, and with the citizen reporter who's exposing hundreds of millions of dollars in these frauds, Somali daycare frauds and other frauds in Minnesota and so on.
	I think people are looking at that and saying, I'm working for this.
	I mean, you see these posts on social media where people are saying, hey, I just got my tax bill.
	I owe, you know, $10,000 to Ukraine and $20,000 to daycares in Somali.
	And sorry, Somali daycares in Minneapolis.
	So people are cynical about that.
	And that is very tough.
	That is very tough.
	When people feel that they are working for scammers and thieves and fraudsters and NGOs with socialist or communist leanings, I mean, it really does.
	It really does interfere with the old work ethic or the desire to work hard, pay taxes, and so on.
	So recognizing all of that, I have to sort of put that aside because, of course, you and your friend were making these kinds of decisions long before these frauds and corruptions were brought to light.
	So tell me a little bit about your life and your friend's life as far as you know it.
	Well, we're both dentists.
	We were roommates in school.
	And, you know, he's never had children.
	So I know that our lives are different.
	I have three sons.
	Two of my sons, when they were born, they had a, what we call it, they had a cow soy protein allergy.
	So there was no free breast milk.
	There was no semilacino enthymil.
	I had to buy an expensive formula named EllieCare, which is an amino acid-based formula because their bodies couldn't metabolize regular protein.
	So we had to break it down to the amino acid level.
	And it was about $1,200 a month with that formula.
	My kids had about seven surges between the two of them.
	And the pediatric urologist didn't take insurance.
	So I had to pay for the surgery.
	That sort of thing.
	This is through Irene, Sandy, COVID, running a dental practice.
	You know, so our lives are different.
	But, you know, and it's not just him.
	I just use him as an example.
	But I have several friends or you hear stories of people who didn't pay their student loans back.
	I think some people were able to escape during the Biden, during the Biden administration and had their loans forgiven.
	Friends with $100,000 to $300,000 in debt wiped away.
	And, you know, I paid off my debt, paid off my practice.
	And, you know, it wasn't easy.
	And, you know, you just sit back and whether it's that or just other situations where people are traveling, having a good time.
	And I listen to a little bit of stoicism as well.
Student Loan Forgiveness Dreams 00:08:30
	And there's a guy named Ryan Holliday and he has a book called The Obstacle is the Way and that sort of thing.
	And sometimes when the going gets tough, you just sit back and you say, wow, this is really tough.
	It's really tough.
	And other people seem to be enjoying themselves.
	And I can sit back and tell myself that, well, I have pride in myself.
	I was able to do these things on my own and I did things the quote unquote right way.
	But it just seems like a lot of people are still winning.
	And I'm not saying that I'm losing, but it's tough.
	And I'm just trying to figure out, or, you know, is there a pep talk or a philosophical mindset that just helps you block that out and continue to pile away?
	Right.
	Right.
	The fact that fools prosper is a common frustration of the responsible.
	And by prosper, that means sometimes they become wealthy.
	There's an old show, I think, of some of the 90s called Seinfeld, which had a character named Kramer.
	And Kramer was a goofy doofus with no responsibilities, no marriage, no kids.
	And at one point, he says, I'm going to baseball fantasy camp.
	And one of the other characters says, baseball fantasy camp, what is he talking about?
	He sleeps with whoever he wants to.
	He doesn't have a job.
	He falls us backwards into money.
	His whole life is a fantasy camp.
	And there's that frustration that when you're working hard, the ant and the grasshopper, sorry, to minimize it, but it's a famous story, right?
	That the grasshopper plays around all summer and relaxes and seems to be having a great time.
	And the ant is assiduously gathering food for the winter.
	And the problem is, let's call it, give a name to your friend who's not his, it's not his real name.
	We can just call him Bob.
	Bob, okay.
	So, Bob, if Bob was frivolous and foolish, one or two winters would take care of Bob for you in terms of like he wouldn't make it, right?
	But because we live in this weird fiat currency made-up money system, people like Bob can just get free money, free food, free, you know, they can be subsidized.
	They can just move along.
	If there was, I guess you graduated, of course, a couple of decades ago, a rational lender would not let someone go this long without paying them back.
	Because as you get into your 50s, mortality goes up and debts are generally wiped out in mortality.
	And so they say, you've got to pay it back.
	And if you don't pay it back, we're going to garnish your wages.
	I mean, that's what would happen in a rational economic system.
	And basically, fiat money turns the harshness of northern winters into, for people who want it, into the lazy indolence of the tropics.
	So it is very terrible.
	I mean, people who save for their retirement, well, other people don't save for their retirement, but just get free money.
	So, or free healthcare, or people who take care of their health are paying through the nose for people who don't take care of their health.
	And it's frustrating.
	And this wouldn't happen in a rational society.
	In a free, rational society, people who don't take care of their health would be charged very high insurance rates.
	And people who did take care of their health would be charged very low insurance rates.
	But because of the Obamacare and socialized medicine, everybody has to pay.
	So the transfer of money from the responsible to the less responsible is the foundational feature of government.
	Because responsible people, we don't really need the government.
	Irresponsible people need the government and they use it to prey upon the more responsible.
	Now, this is a slightly different situation with your friend Bob, because I assume he's a pretty successful dentist.
	So he's making some good bank.
	He's making some coin.
	And what does he do?
	Like you have a wife, you have three kids, that's a lot of work.
	Maybe your kids are older and grown now, in which case you have a little bit of a pause before they start, you know, maybe getting engaged and married and having kids and so on.
	But what does Bob do with his time?
	He does a lot of traveling.
	I guess he has different hobbies, flying drones, brewing his own beer, and I guess dating different women.
	Has he ever been married?
	No.
	Never married, no kids.
	He kept his hair, didn't he?
	Yes.
	There you go.
	It's always a sign.
	Yep.
	It's always a sign.
	Okay.
	Is he a good-looking guy?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So he's not going to have kids, not in his 50s.
	So his life, as far as I understand it, has been largely composed of working in order to pursue his own pleasures.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, yeah, we can look at it that way.
	Yeah, sure.
	No, no, I don't want to look at it some way.
	I mean, obviously, he does dentistry, dentistry.
	I love dentists.
	I love dentistry.
	Every time I go to my dentist, I thank them for not being in the middle ages.
	It's a beautiful set of technology and amazing stuff.
	So he's, you know, he's doing some good in that he's helping people with their teeth and all of that.
	So, but, but he's doing that largely to fund his own hedonism, right?
	Correct.
	Okay.
	Now, in general, there's sort of a bell curve of this kind of stuff.
	So there are some people who take the frivolous route and it doesn't work out for them at all.
	They take this sort of frivolous travel, no responsibility, sleeping around kind of stuff, the eternal early 20s lifestyle.
	And it doesn't work out for them at all.
	So what happens is they get injured, they get sick, they lose their money, something happens, and they've got no one.
	And life is every day is a dice roll.
	And the longer you live, right, the higher the stakes get in the dice rolls.
	So for some people, it doesn't work out.
	And it's pretty obvious that it doesn't work out because something, something bad happens.
	And when that something bad happens, whether it's illness or injury or some financial issues, they get audited or whatever.
	It turns out that things aren't well.
	So for some reason, something happens that interferes with their capacity to pursue this sort of mindless hedonism.
	And that happens with increasing frequency every year you live to the point where it's going to happen for sure.
	Everyone gets old.
	Everyone gets sick.
	Everyone dies.
	Now, he's still in his 50s.
	So, you know, if he's taking care of himself, he's still in pretty good health.
	He can do that kind of stuff.
	It's quite a bit different when you're in your 70s and 80s, right?
	So what happens to Bob?
	And let's say he hangs onto his money or whatever it is.
	What happens to Bob when he gets into his 70s and his 80s with his lovely hair and gleaming white teeth?
	What happens to Bob when he gets old?
	Do you think?
	It'll probably be tough for him because he doesn't have kids to help him out when he's older.
	And he may not have, if he doesn't get married, he won't have a wife.
	So things will be tough.
	Potentially will be tough for him.
	Well, or he may get married, but the woman would marry him largely for his money.
	And so he's not going to be taken care of because anyone cares about him.
	I mean, if you've ever been single and sick, I mean, I'm sure, I mean, you're married, right?
	So, so what happens?
	What does your wife do when you get the flu or you get sick or something?
	Oh, tea, soup, check on me.
Caring Through Illness 00:03:41
	How you doing?
	Can I get you another pillow?
	Can I do anything to make you more comfortable?
	Do you feel like some soup?
	I'm happy to go out and get anything if you've a funny thing that you want to eat, some pickles, you know, so you're taken care of, right?
	Right.
	If you've ever been sick and you're alone, it's kind of a miserable affair.
	And that's what awaits people.
	Infirmity, aging out, sickness.
	I mean, I don't know what people are thinking.
	So, Bob's parents, are they still around?
	Just his mother.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So, his father, did his father have a lengthy illness or did he get taken out quickly or how did that go?
	It was rather quickly, actually.
	I had a heart attack and just passed away quickly.
	Okay.
	And that certainly happens.
	Heart disease, heart attacks, this thing is the number one killer.
	Cancer is the number two, if I remember rightly.
	And cancer is kind of a slow roll.
	I mean, maybe not so much post-COVID, but it's kind of a slow roll.
	I mean, even Scott Adams had what, seven months or something like that, or eight months.
	And his was pretty rapid.
	So, yeah.
	So, I mean, you are not well.
	You are not well.
	And you're not well for a long time.
	And you've got no one.
	And you ain't doing traveling.
	And you ain't doing dating.
	You're just kind of home.
	And, you know, it's something I never thought about when I was younger.
	But on the rare occasions when I'm alone, I'm a bath guy because my skin is very dry.
	So I need to put like moisturizer in the bath and so on.
	So I think about this on the rare times when my wife and daughter are away or doing something and I'm getting out of the bath or, you know, I'm like, I have to be careful.
	And it's not because I'm particularly infirm or anything like that, but if I fall, I slip and fall, then what?
	I'm home alone.
	I mean, many years ago, I tripped over an open dishwasher and tripped and cut my hand very deeply.
	I was carrying plates.
	And my wife was there and she bound me up and called the hospital, called the ambulance, and I went and got all stitched up and so on.
	I mean, if I had been alone, I could have let out.
	I mean, there's a certain practical element to marriage that is really important and becomes more and more important as you age because you want to have that bond together and all those memories together.
	And you want to have someone who really loves and cares about you so that you can help each other through the fading, wobbly, sickly years and years and years of life.
	You know, grow old together is the dream.
	You're not getting that from a girlfriend unless she's just there for the money, in which case, it's a gross way.
	It's a gross way to live.
	I remember many years ago, I had a call with a woman who was dating an old guy just to get his house when he died.
	And I said, it's a pretty sad way to end your life straddling a NASGOL for real estate.
	And that is kind of sad.
	So, you know, right now, you have, I mean, I guess you've largely passed the responsibilities and so on with your children.
Balancing Fun and Responsibility 00:05:11
	And he's, yeah, he's out there.
	He's having fun.
	He's enjoying himself.
	And it looks fun.
	And maybe there's something to be learned from that with regards to you.
	Do you could you stand more fun in your life?
	Does he have anything to teach you about enjoying yourself more?
	Oh, could I learn anything from?
	I do feel that I have a decent balance.
	I do enjoy my family.
	So I'm okay in that regard.
	Over time, there was a brief window of time where travel, elective things just wasn't a possibility with surgeries for the kids and all the responsibilities.
	But as the debt has fallen off, I've been able to enjoy myself a little bit more.
	And hopefully that will increase.
	Right.
	So, yeah.
	So, I mean, he's still probably 10 to 15 years away from the bill coming due.
	Okay.
	I mean, everyone who's a drinker who quits drinking looks at the party across the street where everyone's having a blast and drinking their asses off with envy.
	Everyone who quits smoking.
	A friend of mine quit smoking once and he said they should put warnings on movies where people are smoking.
	You know, hey, if you've recently quit smoking, do not come to this movie and watch the character, you know, like a giant cigarette on the screen the size of a torpedo.
	And so they look at the people still smoking and there's a certain amount of envy.
	People who are losing weight look at the people enjoying fried chicken and cheesecake or whatever monstrosities they're eating with some envy.
	So when you are practicing self-discipline, it is easy to look at people who are not practicing self-discipline or not making those sacrifices with envy.
	And that's not the end of the world because again, self-discipline is part of the Aristotelian mean.
	Too little self-discipline and you're lax and hedonistic and frivolous.
	Too much self-discipline and you're a buzzkill and you don't ever have any fun and you're a Calvinist or something like that, right?
	Pleasure is.
	It's all of the devil, right?
	So you need something in the middle.
	And oftentimes when we envy somebody else, it is in part because they do, that's why I was asking about your friend.
	Like, do you have too little fun?
	Because if you're looking with envy at a friend who's having a lot of fun, maybe that friend has something to teach you about you having fun.
	There have been times, you know, a lot of the people that I used to work with, or I wouldn't even say I got started because, you know, like I had them on a couple of times or whatever it is.
	They've been on pretty big venues like Tucker Carlson and so on and on other places like Bill Maher.
	And, you know, part of me is like, you know, it could have been me.
	It could have been me if I'd stayed away from certain topics.
	It could have been me.
	And is there some envy there?
	Yeah, for sure.
	For sure.
	I mean, I'm happy with the choice that I've made, but we are never 100% certain where we are on the Aristotelian mean.
	Like when, because it changes over the course of your life, when you're younger, when you're younger, you should take more risks.
	When you're older, you should take fewer risks in general.
	And so it changes.
	What is risky behavior when you're young?
	Risky but acceptable behavior would be completely foolish when you're older.
	Like nobody who's 70 should be doing parkour, right?
	Or whatever.
	So we're never entirely sure.
	You know, have there been people that I've worked with in the past who have managed their careers in terms of numbers and exposure, who have managed their careers better than I have?
	Absolutely.
	I would say almost all of them have done better than I have in terms of number and reach and I assume income and things like that.
	So, but of course, you know, I have to remind myself that the purpose is to aim at the truth, not to aim at numbers in the here and now, because the two are often in opposition.
	And also, that other people have different life circumstances than me and so on.
	So, anyway, so it is important to check where we are on that bell curve.
	And that's why I was sort of asking if maybe you envy this guy because he has more fun than you, and you could stand some more fun.
	So, yeah.
	So, the last thing that I would say, though, is that, and travel in particular is interesting because travel is expensive, and travel is something that looks fun, right?
	I mean, especially if you're huddling in the midst of winter and you see some, you see Bob doing his selfies from Aruba or something like that, and you're like, oh man, I could shovel the driveway, and bro is out there surfing in Aruba.
	And yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, I'd rather be surfing in Aruba than shoveling a driveway in Canada, for sure.
Consistency in Hedonism 00:09:59
	But let me ask you this: Do you think it's possible to be loved if you're a hedonist?
	Could you be loved if you're a hedonist?
	If you live for pleasure and don't take on responsibilities and are frivolous.
	Oh, no, no, not at all.
	No.
	Okay.
	And I mean, I happen to agree, but why not?
	To be involved in a relationship with someone who's hedonistic, that would seem to be a person that is very self-focused and self-serving.
	And then you don't really have an adequate exchange.
	And it's not a loving relationship.
	It's just you're with a, I don't want to say selfish person, but it's just, it's not much of a relationship.
	And then there's no love.
	I think that's well put.
	I'm so sorry.
	I cut you off at the end there.
	What did you say?
	Yeah, so there's no love.
	It's not an exchange or give and take.
	So I don't see how that would be possible.
	Right.
	And this is particularly true for women.
	So for women, the essence of love is trust.
	Because women, through sexual activity, as you know, with, I mean, imagine if, I hate to even use this as an example, but imagine if you had said, hey, man, this formula is way too expensive, $1,200 a month.
	I'm out of here, right?
	And let imagine, imagine that you had gone to open a scuba shop in St. Kitts or something like that.
	I mean, it would have been a complete disaster for your wife to have three children, two of whom needed very expensive formula, if I remember rightly.
	And so, of course, you never would have done that.
	But if you had, your wife would have been in severe financial difficulty, to put it mildly, right?
	So a woman needs to trust a man.
	And then the question is: well, what is trust?
	Well, trust is when somebody's behavior is consistently predictable.
	Now, is a hedonist's behavior consistently predictable?
	It's consistently predictable in the sense that they're thinking about themselves, I guess, and having fun.
	That's about it, I would say.
	Well, if he's like leaping all over the place to travel and dating a different girl each week, the only thing that's consistent is the inconsistency, because hedonism is following the pleasure of the moment, which means that it's not like a bird flying south for the winter.
	It's like a fox chasing a rabbit.
	It's just, or the rabbit running away from the fox.
	It's just darting all over the place.
	And so trust is when you are willing to sacrifice immediate pleasures for consistent virtues, which we all have to do.
	We all have to do.
	I mean, monogamy, right?
	You get married and you say, okay, that's it.
	You and me, romance, sex, physical affection, that's it.
	Rest of her life, right?
	One person, one person only.
	And, you know, if you're a reasonably attractive man, I'm sure that there are other women who cross your path who are attractive.
	And, but you say, well, no, I'm not even going to look twice because I'm married and I love my wife and so on, right?
	So you have consistency there.
	If your wife is moral and honest, then obviously she's not going to sleep around and she's not going to pass off some kid as yours and so on, right?
	So love for women in particular is founded on trust.
	Trust is founded on predictably positive behaviors, which is the opposite of hedonism because it has to be positive for the other person, whereas hedonism is I'm only focused on what is positive for me.
	I like this girl.
	Okay, I'll date her.
	Oh, I don't like her that much anymore.
	Okay, I'm going to dump her.
	Oh, I'm feeling kind of restless.
	I'll just take off to Aruba.
	Oh, I'm a little tired of Aruba.
	I think I'll head back and work on the practice for a while.
	Right.
	So it's whim-based.
	I'm not saying he's obviously became a dentist, so he's got responsibilities and all of that.
	But a woman cannot love a hedonist because a hedonist does not sacrifice his pleasure for the good of another.
	For the hedonist, the motivation is pleasure.
	And pleasure, by its very nature, fades, right?
	You know, this is called the hedonic treadmill, right?
	Which is, I'm the happiest guy ever.
	I won $10,000 in the lottery.
	I'm thrilled.
	I'm happy.
	And then, you know, three days later, you're kind of back to normal, right?
	And the only sustainable pleasures or the only sustainable happiness has to do with virtue, because if you pursue hedonic pleasures, then what happens is whatever happiness you have in your new pleasure will diminish.
	And that's sort of by design, right?
	That's how we got out of the caves and into skyscrapers.
	It's like, hey, I'm really happy I have a cave.
	And then, you know, three days later, this cave sucks.
	You know, it's, I'm going to build a hut.
	And then you build a hut.
	It's like, this hut is the greatest thing ever.
	And then three days later, man, this hut sucks.
	And, you know, then eventually you get bricks and concrete and mortar and steel girders and all of that, right?
	So we're designed to achieve happiness with an increase in dopamine.
	And then we're no longer happy with it.
	And that's natural, right?
	Because a kid is very happy when he learns how to roll over a baby.
	A baby is then very happy when they learn how to crawl.
	And then they're very happy when they learn how to stagger around and then walk and then run and then ride a bike and then ski or whatever it is, right?
	So, but people who go skiing, they don't spend 40 years skiing the bunny hill, like this is the easiest hill.
	They want more challenging hills.
	They want to stretch their abilities.
	And so the problem with hedonism is it will always lead to discontent.
	I don't know if your friend is this kind of hedonist, but there's some hedonists that are kind of predictable.
	Like, oh, I just met the greatest person.
	I just met the greatest woman ever.
	She's perfect.
	She's wonderful.
	She's flawless.
	And then like a month later, it's like, oh, you know, she's kind of boring.
	And, you know, whatever it is, like this massive enthusiasm followed by this.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Maybe not.
	Yeah, maybe not a month, but maybe six months, seven months, nine months.
	Yeah, I've seen that pattern.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, for sure.
	Sorry.
	Yeah, you're right.
	Actually, the high of new romance generally is enough to get married and have kids, evolutionarily speaking.
	So, yeah, the high of new romance is, yeah, right, about three to six months.
	Or I met the, I found the greatest place to go vacation.
	It's fantastic.
	It's perfect.
	It's wonderful.
	And then, you know, a year later, it's like, yeah, I'm done with that place.
	It's kind of boring.
	You know, I've been there, done that.
	You know, that's what hedonists, right?
	Been there, done that.
	And so the problem with hedonism is you will always end up with dissatisfaction.
	And then you have to go in search of a new stimulus.
	And that's not the case with marriage.
	I don't find myself periodically dissatisfied with my marriage.
	I love my marriage and it's consistently great.
	So that's another issue with hedonism is that you can't be loved if you're a hedonist.
	And this is one of the reasons why hedonists, because they don't have a steady supply of love, which is what makes us happy, they don't have a steady supply of love.
	So they have to keep chasing the dopamine.
	It's like a drug.
	Hedonists, in a sense, are drug addicts because they don't get a consistent supply of happiness through love and commitment and connection and trust and all of that kind of stuff.
	So sorry for the long speech.
	Does that make sense to you?
	Oh, it makes perfect sense.
	Yeah, thank you.
	And so if you were to compare a difficult day of yours to some heroin addict who just got high, you'd say, well, that guy's in perfect bliss and I'm miserable.
	It's like, but his is a roller coaster and yours is more of a steady state.
	And in general, if you sort of put all of these things together, chasing dopamine in the absence of love and commitment and virtue, because nobody looks, people look at the hedonist with envy, and we all do it.
	I mean, you're not alone in this.
	We all do it for sure.
	People look at the hedonist in envy.
	You know, every man, if he's honest, has looked at, I don't know, Leonardo DiCaprio when he gets slightly tubby in between movies and he's cavorting on a yacht with some other, you know, 24-year-old model.
	I mean, every man, I think, if he's honest, looks at that and says, you know, that would not be the end of the world.
	That would not be the end of the world.
	Because, you know, every man has that instinct or that sort of R-selected stuff.
	So every man looks at other people with envy when they are displaying their material success, their, you know, the hot young girls that they can, sorry, now Epstein files are out.
	The young women, should say young women, the young women that they're cavorting with, and so on.
	And, you know, I assume that there's a part of every man that has that R-selected capacity.
	And, you know, yes, to be a movie star, to live on a yacht, to constantly date 24-year-old supermodels.
	Yeah, I mean, I think I would find that unbearable inside of 24 hours, but we look at that.
	And so from time to time, and that's not the end of the world because sometimes we need a little bit more hedonism, a little bit less responsibility.
	I mean, I wake up and, you know, sort of outside of my family, I'm like, okay, what can I do that would be the best thing for philosophy today?
	As opposed to what could I do that would be super fun for me today.
	Now I enjoy philosophy, but I feel a bit of a weight of responsibility that I'm, I wouldn't say constantly struggling with, but it's a challenge because it feels like, well, I could just go and do something fun.
	But what about philosophy and the world and the future?
	You know, all of that.
Exploiting Women's Hopes 00:14:14
	So that's a balance, right?
	And it's always a balancing act in life, unless you're a complete narcissist, which, of course, I'm not saying you or I are, but if you were a complete narcissist, then all you do is pursue your own pleasures and all of that.
	But that does come at the cost of being loved.
	It comes at the cost of really anybody caring about you.
	Why would somebody really care about a hedonist?
	Because the hedonist only cares about themselves and their own happiness.
	I mean, how many girlfriends would you estimate Bob has had over the course of his life?
	Girlfriends, not many.
	They've always been just brief relationships, but girlfriends for a period of a year or so or longer?
	Never.
	None.
	There's just been, you know, or there might be women that, or a particular woman that he might vacillate between, you know, they're together and then they're not.
	They're together and they're not.
	Just companionship when he travels, that sort of thing.
	But I don't, a girlfriend, he hasn't really had a girlfriend in quite some time.
	He deals with a lot of women, but no girlfriend.
	Okay, so how many women would you estimate?
	I mean, I know we're pulling out our armpit.
	Estimate in the past 20 years or 20.
	I don't know.
	Okay, so he's had 20 girlfriends in from 33 to 53, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, so let's go back, you know, let's say another 15 if he's doing one a year.
	So that's 35 women that he's dated or had as a girlfriend or had some sort of sexual relationships with, right?
	Now, I'm sure that there's a bunch scattered in there in his travels as well, right?
	Okay.
	Now, do you think that the women, I don't know if you've met any of his girlfriends, but do you think that the women he's dating want to marry a good-looking, successful dentist?
	Yes, they do.
	I would imagine they would, yes.
	Okay.
	And I don't know if Bob has ever shared any of his dating strategies with you, but does he say, I'm never getting married.
	I don't even really care about you.
	I just want to use you for sex or companionship or something like that.
	It's just going to be fun.
	It's for sure going to end.
	I'm never getting married.
	No, he's never said that.
	Right.
	Do you think that in part he's dangling, consciously or unconsciously, the possibility of marriage to these women?
	I would say if he's doing that, it would be more on the unconsciously side.
	It wouldn't be a conscious thing that he's doing.
	Right.
	Do you think that Bob is aware that the women would want to marry him because he's good-looking and successful and wealthy?
	Yes, I'm sure he's aware of that.
	Okay.
	So if a woman wants to marry you and that's why she's dating you and you will never marry, do you think that you should tell her that?
	Yes, you should.
	Okay.
	And to your knowledge, Bob does not tell the women that.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So Bob's lifestyle is exploiting, to some degree, is exploiting women's hopes and using them for sex and companionship.
	Yeah, when you put it, well, yeah.
	Now, do you think that Bob, if you, I mean, he's, I guess obviously he's still relatively young.
	He's relatively happy.
	It's still funny to think of 53 as younger than me, but yeah, it is, right?
	So he's still relatively young.
	He's still relatively happy.
	How much unhappiness do you think that he has caused in the 35 or maybe 40 women that he's dated over the years who wanted to marry him?
	A considerable amount, potentially.
	I mean, have you ever, I mean, I suppose the hedonists, it's funny, you know, the people tend to go out of their lives with barely a ripple.
	You know, oh, you know, I'm not seeing her anymore.
	And she just kind of fades.
	Have you ever been around or known a woman that he's broken up with or been there past the breakup?
	No, not since school when we were together.
	Now we're in different states.
	But the women now, it's just sort of, you'll tell me about them.
	Half of them are most of them, I don't meet them.
	I haven't met.
	So they come in and go, I don't really know their emotional state once the relationship ends.
	I don't know.
	They're gone.
	Right.
	Well, let's follow them down the sluice gates or whatever it is, the holes in the floor that he pours them into after he's done with them.
	So he's good looking, he's wealthy, he's fun, and all of that.
	And women flock to him.
	And does he date women younger at his own age?
	Probably not older.
	Mostly younger.
	Mostly younger.
	Okay.
	So if we look at the net of it all, he's, you know, plus five units.
	Let's say, I don't know, one to five, right?
	So he's dating some woman.
	Let's just do some sort of rough math here because I think this is sort of important as a whole, because how we act accumulates in our unconscious, whether we, you know, like it or not, we have a record of what we do.
	Like you can say to yourself that smoking is good for you, but your lungs know no different, right?
	So let's say he's dated, we'll make it conservative, 35 women, and this has given him plus three in terms of happiness.
	So 105, 105 units.
	Now, the 35 women who've dated him all get dumped, which I assume is minus seven because he's a wealthy guy, if that makes sense.
	Okay.
	So they're not likely to find a guy like him, right?
	Right.
	So he's got 105 happiness, but it's cost women 245 happiness.
	So he's created two and a half times the misery.
	I get this is all back of the napkin stuff.
	But women who date a wealthy, successful, fun-loving guy who takes them on exotic vacations and so on, like that's that's crack for women, right?
	That's that's dopamine for women.
	And most of the women would be sleeping with him in the hopes of getting married.
	Okay.
	And so when he breaks up with them, there is considerable levels of unhappiness, if not downright bitterness, in his wake.
	Because men are better hardwired to sleep around than women are for, you know, obviously, I don't need to even mention it, right?
	Because obvious evolutionary reasons.
	The male investment is very low.
	The female investment in reproduction is ridiculously high, right?
	And for a man, it's like, I don't know, two hours if you're staying 20 minutes for everyone else.
	But for the woman, it's like the rest of her life and, you know, 20 years of massive investment in children.
	So men are better suited to sleep around.
	And of course, men would regularly die off in wartime, and then the tribe would have to be repopulated.
	If half the men die, the tribe can be repopulated.
	If half the women die, it can't, right?
	So this is why men protect women and men are disposable.
	We know all of this sort of stuff.
	So he's hardwired to be able to sleep around, and women are not.
	And this is why women are very cautious about sex with strangers, but men are like, sounds great, saddle up, right?
	They've done these studies.
	So he is to some degree exploiting biological differences through a falsehood.
	And he is through his looks, which he did not earn, and through his money, which he did earn, but he didn't earn the capacity to make that kind of money because to be a dentist, you have to be smart.
	And IQ is largely genetic.
	So he did not earn whether he kept his hair or not.
	That's just the luck of the draw genetically.
	And so a lot of what he's got, he did not earn.
	And he's using his inherited gifts to exploit women by dangling what they want the most, which is a wealthy, good-looking husband who's fun.
	And I'm sure he's got charisma.
	Hedonists do have charisma because they don't have any responsibility.
	So they appeal to the fun-loving side in all of us.
	So he is creating a far more unhappiness than the happiness he's extracting.
	And also, if he doesn't say to the women up front, listen, I'm an eternal man-child, I'm never, ever getting married.
	Like, that's not going to happen.
	I'm not going to get married.
	I, you know, I'll whine you and I'll dine you.
	What was it?
	Kevin Samuels had a memorable phrase when he was talking to some woman who said, well, I can get dates from men.
	He's like, oh, yeah, I'll date you, girl.
	I'll date you.
	You're cute.
	You know, I'll take you out for a nice steak dinner.
	I'll take you back to my place.
	I'll blow your back out.
	And then I'll put you out on the street and never call you again.
	Some sort of memorable phrase like that.
	And so he is dangling the potential for commitment, which he's never going to make, in front of women to get them to date him, to sleep with him, to travel with him, and so on.
	And then they get a lot of status, right?
	And this is unfortunate for women these days, right?
	Because women are very status-focused as a whole, but particularly these days.
	So do you follow him on social media at all?
	Do you see any of his sort of photos?
	No, I don't.
	No, I don't.
	Okay.
	But if you did, right?
	So the way that it works for women these days, it's quite tragic.
	But the way that it works for women these days is, you know, the woman is posting selfies on a yacht with her wealthy, handsome boyfriend.
	And what do all the other women say?
	Well, the other women are probably jealous or envious.
	Oh, you're so lucky.
	Oh, he's so good looking.
	Oh, my gosh.
	Where are you?
	Oh, we're in St. Bart's.
	He flew me down here for the weekend.
	We're having a blast.
	And they do that duck face with the tequila shots and the, you know, the water skiing and just, you know, they're showing off, right?
	They're evoking envy.
	They are, right?
	I mean, and so the women are kind of hedonistic in that way as well.
	And so everyone's having a blast, but because of the hedonic treadmill and the restlessness of our dopamine seeking apparatus, it ends.
	And then, and then she's not being flown down to St. Bart's for the weekend of water skiing and scuba diving and sex and selfies and all of that.
	No, no, no, no.
	Now she's back at her job, right?
	Right.
	And now the problem is her needle has changed of what she expects.
	And now if some ordinary guy who's average looking, or maybe above average, whatever, right?
	But, you know, if your friend is good looking and wealthy and fun and frivolous and so on, well, the frivolity is something that women have always been warned about, but nobody wants women about frivolous men anymore.
	But let's say your friend is like, in terms of desirability, let's say there's a woman in her early mid-30s and he's wealthy and good looking and so on.
	Wouldn't he be like a 10?
	Yeah.
	So he's a 10, right?
	And so the woman has got a hold of a 10.
	And then he just kind of fades out.
	He moves on.
	He, whatever, right?
	And then she's tormented.
	She's tormented because she had it all.
	She had the perfect guy.
	She had so much fun.
	He's so good looking.
	Everyone envied her so much.
	And then he just kind of moves on.
	He just stops texting, stops calling.
	And she'd probably be a little obsessed with him because we tend to bond with the highest number we can get, right?
	In terms of sexual market value or dating market value, whatever you want to call it.
	And, but then what's happened is she has now got in her mind that this is the kind of guy she can get.
	So then, when some guy on her level who will actually commit comes along, what does she say?
	She's not interested.
	Right.
	Hey, man, you can't fly me out to St. Bart's for the weekend.
	You're not.
	Is he tall too?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Oh, no, tall, full of hair, wealthy and hedonistic.
	Oh, yeah, this is this is destructive catnip.
	He's a drug for women.
	So, yeah, some ordinary guy comes along who would actually suit her and who's willing to commit to her.
	And she says no, because she is she has Bob as her standard of what she can achieve and attain now.
	Now, something went wrong.
	She said something, but she won't do that next time.
	But she'll figure it out next time.
	But this is what it's like if somebody spends six months paying you $200,000 a year in salary.
	I guess you'd add $100K.
	Can you go back to $50K a year?
	Yeah, it's hard to go back.
	Yeah, it's hard to go back down.
	So I wonder about some of these women.
	Are they damaged in the long run in the sense that if they have a sense of pride and they were bragging to their friends and they just cannot do the downgrade?
Complicated Choices 00:09:36
	So they would just prefer to be by themselves moving forward.
	Well, Bob is Bob is always single-handedly killing the birth rate.
	Okay.
	Because he's giving women a sense of who they think they can get, but they can't get.
	So this is why in traditional Western societies, there was no sex before marriage.
	Because you have to like the person.
	You have to like the person.
	So if there was some woman that Bob was approaching and she said, hey, you know, you seem like a great guy.
	Let's let's hang out for sure.
	But I'm not doing sex till we're married.
	Right?
	Would he fly her out to St. Bart's?
	Of course not.
	Right.
	Right.
	So women subsidize their access to Bob with sexual access.
	And then from the high of, look at my cool boyfriend, we're here we are on a jet ski and so on, right?
	And then they go from that to Bob ghosted me when he was tired of having sex with me.
	And again, I'm not speaking about Bob in particular because I don't know Bob.
	I'm just talking about this general pattern as a whole.
	So then they have to go back to their regular lives.
	And then every guy they meet, they compare to Bob because they think they can get Bob.
	I mean, imagine if you held a million dollar or a $5 million winning lottery ticket in your hand and then you dropped it down the sewer, you couldn't get a hold of it, it vanished, it dissolved, or whatever it is, right?
	Imagine how tough it would be to go back to work.
	Yeah.
	So Bob is causing a lot of damage.
	And that's what hedonists do, is they cause a lot of damage to people.
	Now, these women are adults.
	I get all of that.
	I get that.
	But we are still deeply programmed mammals.
	And women are programmed to respond to someone like Bob, biologically programmed.
	Again, it doesn't mean they don't have free will, right?
	For sure.
	I mean, we're biologically programmed to seek out sugar, salt, and fat.
	That doesn't mean that all we eat is sugar, salt, and fat.
	We still have to have some self-discipline.
	But women are fundamentally untutored in these things these days.
	And women are also taught to be hedonists.
	And they're both hedonists.
	And hedonism destroys the birth rate.
	Because one of the first things that you said to give me evidence that you weren't a hedonist is, I have three children, right?
	Because children are the opposite of hedonism.
	I mean, they're a great deal of fun in the long run and all of that, but you have to make a lot of sacrifices to have children in the short run.
	You have to sacrifice money and sleep and travel and options and so on, right?
	And sex and all that.
	I mean, that's sort of natural.
	So it's fine and it's a good thing.
	But hedonism and the birth rate are inversely correlated.
	The higher hedonism goes, the lower the birth rate goes.
	And then these women, after he moves on, these 35 or 40 women or more, or less or whatever, right?
	But this couple of dozen women now are going to have a very tough time pair bonding with a regular guy, with an average guy.
	So if he's a 10, let's say she's a seven or an eight, but she gets sexual access automatically adds two or three points to a woman, right?
	So an eight can become a 10 with sexual access.
	Even a seven can become a nine or a ten with sexual access.
	And so with sexual access, they think they can get a 10 guy, but they can't.
	And so, and deep down, they know this, right?
	So then they become bitter.
	And then, and then they don't want to have sex with a guy.
	They're like, well, the last guy, I think he just used me for sex.
	So I'm not having sex with the next guy, right?
	And then you have women in their 30s saying, well, we need to wait six months with a guy.
	Who knows for sure?
	They didn't wait six months with Bob.
	Correct.
	The guys in the guys that they're dating after Bob are looking.
	I think I lost you still there.
	Pictures of you and Bob.
	Okay.
	So don't talk to me about this, you know, born-again virgin stuff.
	Right.
	So that's also negative.
	That's also negative because it completely overcomplicates their future dating scenarios.
	They are primed for a guy like Bob, but they're bitter about having been used for sex.
	They're also humiliated because, you know, when they've said, oh, I've got this great guy, look at me, water skiing in some parts.
	And then, hey, where's Bob?
	Oh, I, well, that kind of ended.
	And, you know, then it's like, oh, you know, like that, the high then becomes the low.
	And then the bitterness sets in.
	Hey, I think Bob is just using me for sex.
	You know, whatever, right?
	And so the bitterness sets in, which makes it, you know, then they're pair bonded to a 10, but they can only get a seven.
	And they then have a complicated relationship to sex because they subsidized getting a 10 with sex, but they don't want to do that because they want to be loved for who they are.
	It just messes people up as a whole.
	And it's very, you've got to think of these, you know, so Bob, you know, he's sailing along and so on, but you've got to think of these, you know, 35 or 30 or 40 women.
	What's happened to them after Bob?
	And that's where the real price of hedonism shows up, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
	Yeah.
	And the last thing I'll say is that with regards to financial irresponsibility, well, let's say that Bob doesn't pay his bills for whatever reason and he's able to get away with it in some way.
	Well, that just shifts the cost to everyone else.
	It just shifts the cost to everyone else.
	And think of all the people who are having struggles because Bob's not paying his bills.
	And think of all of the men who have to date Bob's leftovers.
	I'm sorry, go ahead.
	Well, that lends itself to the original question.
	When you see someone who gets off the hook financially, why not just join them and do the same thing?
	Because we have one group, the responsible subsidizing the irresponsible.
	Why not just join the irresponsible as opposed to doing the quote-unquote right thing?
	Why do it?
	Well, okay, let me ask you this.
	If you were to say to your wife and your children, I'm going to be irresponsible.
	I'm not going to pay my bills.
	And I'm going to let the taxpayers, which is the next generation, which is you kids, foot the bill.
	How would they look at you?
	They wouldn't like it.
	They would think I was crazy.
	Well, not just crazy, but they would say, that's not good.
	Right.
	Like, Dad, if you don't pay your bills, we just get taxed more.
	That's what your kids would say, right?
	And then your kids would also say, hang on, hang on, dad.
	Wait a second.
	For 20 plus years, you've been telling us how important it is to be financially responsible and to pay your bills.
	Did you disavow all of that?
	Were you wrong about all of that?
	I don't understand.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So you would lose love for the sake of some money.
	Money can't love you, as you know, right?
	Money can't take care of you.
	I guess you can pay people to take care of you when you get old.
	Maybe that's Bob's plan: I'll just pay for some nanny to move in and wipe my butt when I get old.
	But that's, you know, there's no love in that.
	And there's no caring in that.
	And, you know, she can quit anytime.
	And there's no continuity in that.
	And that's just kind of a sad thing, right?
	So, yeah.
	So the reason why you don't just join the parasitical and irresponsible people is you want to continue to be loved.
	Okay.
	And you want to continue to have self-respect, right?
	Okay.
	I mean, could you really say to your patients, hey, man, because I'm sure you get a couple of, I would say, dead beats, but people who can't pay or don't pay or won't pay.
	And, you know, you'll, you'll say to them, you got to pay your bills, man.
	I mean, I gave you a full, I took your wisdom teeth out.
	You got to pay for that, right?
	And how are you going to say that to patients if you're not paying your bills, right?
	I mean, you just have to become kind of hypocritical and or you have to lie to yourself.
	It all gets kind of complicated.
	It's just not worth it.
	It's just not worth it.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, that was put together rather nicely.
	I appreciate that.
	Yeah.
	Sorry for the long answer, but it's a very, very big question.
	And of course, it is foundational of the philosophy, which is that's kind of what we battle is hedonism.
	And some of the hedonism is things like people, they don't want to, they don't want to pay the price for their own bad behavior, right?
	So, you know, one of the things that happens in the healthcare industry is that, you know, sex addicts get subsidized all the time, right?
	So people who get STDs or get women pregnant or these kinds of things, right?
	They get subsidized all the time.
	People who don't work, people who don't take care of their health, people who are lazy, people who are inattentive, people who don't, you know, like women who are sailing into their 30s and 40s, still single and so on.
	Well, I mean, they've just never read anything that disagrees with them.
	And so, but we have to subsidize all of that, particularly when they get older, because they sure as heck aren't going to save enough for their retirement.
	So, yeah, we are facing a lot of hedonism in society, which is generally fueled by these terrible fear currency stuff.
	So, I appreciate the question, though.
	Really, really, really do appreciate that.
False Gods and Truth 00:15:01
	And thanks for calling in.
	Yeah, thanks for the answer.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Alexikov, Alex.
	What is on your mind?
	Do not forget the unmuting.
	It says you can speak, and I believe it.
	Going once.
	Going twice.
	Hello?
	Yes.
	Hello?
	You're back.
	Hey, sorry about that.
	Yeah, there's a delay between, I didn't actually hear you kind of like send the last guy off.
	So I just kind of.
	But anyways, sorry about that.
	No, not your fault.
	If it's a tech issue, don't sweat it.
	What's on your mind?
	I was wondering.
	I called in a month or two ago and I was asking about religion.
	And I was wondering, I mentioned something about the Ten Commandments about how, you know, you've got like don't steal, don't murder.
	And those are obviously good ethical principles in line with UPP.
	And then I mentioned like maybe, you know, the first commandment, don't have any gods before me is doesn't really apply.
	And then you had said that you think that the first commandment, you had a different interpretation of it.
	And I was wondering if you could expand on that as well as the rest of the commandments.
	If sorry, the settlement, you mean thou shalt have no other false gods before me?
	That's right.
	Yeah.
	Do you remember what I said a couple of months ago regarding that?
	It was kind of by the by.
	And I think it was something along the lines of you kind of thought that it was kind of like, you know, I guess it was along the lines of, you know, being in line with reason and evidence and not necessarily I generally get the idea.
	So hopefully this doesn't contradict what I said before, but I think my general answer would be something like this.
	So thou shalt have no false gods before me.
	So with regards to what we should do in life, we are at war, unfortunately, for better and for worse.
	And the at war is principles and approval.
	And it is a philosophical and social and biological war.
	So if we do not get approval from the tribe, we cannot survive.
	We are social animals.
	We are dogs, not cats.
	So we need the approval of the tribe in order to survive.
	And in particular, we need approval of the females of the tribe, because if no female is going to mate with us, we don't survive.
	So we need to please the females, which is why propaganda always targets women.
	Because when propaganda targets women, men have to fall in line, right?
	You see all these women on X.
	And I know that this is not their outliers and all of that, but they're all don't, you got to dump your MAGA boyfriend.
	You can't sleep with a conservative.
	Oh, I like this guy.
	I found out he was a conservative.
	Like, ew, give me the ick.
	And so if we don't get the approval of the tribe, we die.
	Our genes die.
	Or we physically die.
	I mean, nobody feeds us.
	Nobody protects us.
	Nobody cares for us.
	We're ostracized, kicked out, abandoned, living in isolation.
	And even if we survive the course of a natural lifespan, our genes die.
	So those people are all weeded out.
	So we need the approval of the tribe in order to survive.
	However, getting the approval of the tribe means lying our asses off.
	This is the emperor's new clothes, right?
	Oh, what lovely clothing.
	So in order to get the approval of the tribe, we have to lie.
	And this is where acting comes from.
	This is why we have the ability to act, right?
	So actors are just really, really great liars.
	So we have this challenge.
	Thou shalt have no false gods before me.
	Jesus represents, of course, very, very many things.
	But Jesus represents dying in order to spread morality, which is unfortunately quite common.
	It's quite a common martyrdom throughout human history, that the moralists are killed, but in the killing of the moralist, like stamping on a fire, the embers are scattered and cause more fires.
	It's the ultimate, I don't mean to diminish Jesus, but it's like the Streisand effect, right?
	Like Barbara Streisand had a picture of her home online, demanded it be taken down, and then it was shared and became much more famous and popular.
	Nobody had really seen it until she tried to take it down.
	And therefore, the attempt to suppress causes more spreading of the idea or the argument.
	I myself have not chosen martyrdom to spread.
	I think Charlie Kirk.
	Well, something else.
	Charlie Kirk did not choose martyrdom.
	Charlie Kirk took risks, but he did not choose martyrdom.
	He did not walk to his own execution.
	Charlie Kirk did not take a stance that he knew would get him killed or would most likely get him killed.
	He was out there doing free speech and he got shot.
	Jesus knew that by proclaiming himself the Messiah, he was likely to be ostracized or killed.
	So I wouldn't, I mean, we can say that Charlie Kirk is a kind of martyr to a cause, but we can't say that he voluntarily pursued martyrdom in the way that Jesus did.
	Right.
	If that makes sense.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	Yeah.
	Charlie Kirk was a great guy, and I certainly don't mean to diminish his work or his courage or anything like that.
	But to me, technically, martyrdom is when you know ahead of time that it's going to happen.
	Yeah, he probably would have, if he thought he could dodge the bullet, he probably would have tried.
	Whereas Jesus knew he was going to die.
	If somebody had said, there's a shooter up there and he's got his sights on your head or neck, then he would have left, I'm sure, because he's a father and so on, right?
	So, and also, you know, he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day and so on.
	Discretion is the better part of valor.
	Whereas Jesus knew ahead of time that this was almost certainly going to get him killed and he went ahead.
	Anyway, to me, that's a slightly different situation, which is maybe a bit of a technicality, but I think it's important.
	So, yeah, so in order to survive, we have to lie, but we hate lying.
	Because lying, being forced to lie, is a mark of low status.
	Like the king can say whatever he wants.
	It's all of the courtiers who have to lie.
	This is the story of King Lear from Shakespeare, of course.
	So thou shalt hold no false gods before me.
	Jesus is saying the truth is more important than life itself.
	I think, listen, I obviously don't want to speak for Jesus, but that's sort of my interpretation of the story, that the truth is more important than life itself.
	And we need those shocks to the system from time to time, because everybody falls into conformity, particularly when things are relatively abundant in society.
	people just fall into conformity and they don't pursue the truth anymore.
	And then society goes more and more out of focus until it gets conquered by another tribe that is a bit more, I mean, it's the Athens versus Sparta thing.
	The Spartans were very disciplined and they put the good of the collective far above the happiness of the individual.
	All right.
	So I think we're back.
	Did I come back?
	Oh, yes.
	Can you hear me?
	Yes, I just lost connection for some reason.
	No worries.
	So, yeah, Jesus was saying that the truth is more important than mortal life.
	And for philosophers, we always have to gauge that relationship.
	If you tell too much truth, you will probably get killed.
	And there are tons of people who are killed for speaking the truth.
	And everybody has to weigh this very complicated relationship that we want to speak the truth.
	It's humiliating to be forced to lie.
	But society and its violence and coercion and ostracism has far more immediate power than the truth can have.
	And so the truth, of course, what Charlie Kirk spoke was in general the truth in many ways.
	And the truth didn't stop the bullet.
	Socrates spoke the truth, at least in terms of his skepticism.
	The epistemology of ancient Greece was pretty bad.
	And the sophists were lying about claiming to know what truth and justice and virtue were.
	And so he spoke the truth and he got killed.
	And again, we can sort of go through the sun is the center of the solar system.
	People got killed for saying that it was.
	And so, yeah, we have that challenge.
	And Jesus, I think, very unequivocally said that the truth is more important than life, than staying alive.
	And of course, if it's a big question, if Jesus had not been martyred, would we have Christianity?
	I kind of doubt it.
	I kind of doubt it.
	And so the spread of Christianity, which I think has done an enormous amount of good in the world, was facilitated by Jesus being tortured and dying on the cross and then coming back to life as people believe.
	And so because he was perceived to be the son of God, his morals have spread and it's the largest religion in the world, though, not doing too well at the moment as a whole.
	So I'm sorry for that long answer, but thou shalt hold no gods before me is when it comes to the battle between conformity to escape death and telling the truth, which in a sense allows you to live forever because the truth is accepted by future generations.
	We now would never imagine putting someone to death for saying the sun is the center of the solar system.
	And so you get to live forever if you tell the truth, but often it costs you your life in the moment.
	And this is how society has advanced.
	And now they just kill your income and your reach, but not you directly.
	So sorry, go ahead.
	Well, I was wondering, there's two other commandments.
	There's don't take the Lord's name in vain.
	And then there's keep the Sabbath holy.
	The rest, four through 10, seem to just be ethical principles that rational people would understand, at least with UPB.
	But I do wonder if your take on the First Commandment there has a bit of an overlap with seventh, or pardon me, the sixth, pardon me, sorry, the eighth, don't bear false witness against your neighbor.
	It sounds like you're saying that the first commandment boils down to, you know, tell the truth and don't lie.
	But isn't that the eighth commandment?
	Don't bell or don't bear false witness against your neighbor.
	Well, so don't bear false witness against your neighbor is don't lie about important matters of legality and morality, but that follows from the first.
	So the first commandment, thou shalt have no other false gods before me.
	Well, it means that God is commanding you to tell the truth.
	So why would you tell the truth if you could just disbelieve in God?
	This is one of the problems I have with religious ethics is that you can escape them by just not believing in God, which is what atheists have done for thousands of years.
	It's like, oh, all morality comes from God.
	Okay, great.
	Then I can just reject morality by not believing in God or make up whatever I want.
	Whereas UPB cannot be rejected except by rejecting reason and evidence completely.
	There is no escape from UPB except madness, like genuinely being deranged and saying that square circles exist and two and two make blue manatee.
	So in order to accept the rest of the commandments, you have to say God comes first because these are God's commandments.
	This is what you must do to be moral.
	And so why would you say, well, I have to avoid lying if you didn't believe in God.
	So that's why it says you can't have any other false gods before you.
	Because, I mean, if you don't have God and you don't have UPB, all you have is hedonism, right?
	To pleasure, which is why people, oh, for the good of society or society functions better or people are generally happier or utilitarianism or pragmatism or the net joy in society.
	It's all just a bunch of hedonistic calculus.
	And it's generally pure nonsense because hedonism is a subjective standard and people can claim that happiness is going to occur to them if they do X, Y, or Z.
	And how are you going to fight that?
	Hedonism doesn't give you any morals.
	But sorry, what were the ones that came right after the first one?
	Because I wanted to mention something about those two.
	You mentioned them just in passing.
	Yeah, the second commandment, don't take the Lord's name in vain.
	The third is keep the Sabbath holy.
	Right.
	So don't take the Lord's name in vain to me if I transfer that.
	And by the way, I've done a whole show with Dr. Duke Pesta on the Ten Commandments.
	Oh, I'll have to look that up.
	Yeah, you should check it out.
	We'll put it in the show notes.
	But it was a really great show.
	I remember doing a whole lot of research to do that show.
	But do not take the Lord's name in vain.
	To me, what that means is don't pretend to be virtuous for the sake of personal gain.
	So if you're a con man and you say, well, trust is a virtue and you should trust me because that's virtuous when you're in fact using the virtue of trust in order to rip people off, that would be to use morality for corrupt ends, to use the guise of morality for corrupt ends.
	And so to me, taking the Lord's name in vain would be pretending to respect the authority of the Lord, but using it for corrupt purposes.
	And most of the evil that is done in the world is done under the guise of virtue.
	So I think it would be something along those lines, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, actually.
	Okay, good.
	Good.
Drift and Moral Inventory 00:04:55
	Is there anything else that...
	Well, I would be curious what you would say, you know, remember to keep the Sabbath holy on the Third Commandment.
	I would say the Sabbath holy.
	So in the busy work of life, we often forget to think virtuously or philosophically or morally.
	We don't take stock of our lives as a whole.
	And I mean, this is, I think this is everyone.
	I certainly would put myself in that.
	Sorry, let me just mention here the Philosophy of the Ten Commandments is a show I did April 25th, 2018.
	And the show number is 4068.
	So you can just go to FDRpodcast.com and you can do a search for show 4068, the philosophy of the Ten Commandments, which is a show I did with Dr. Duke Pester.
	So I just wanted to mention that.
	So as far as keep the Sabbath holy, I would say that that has to do with make sure that you carve out time in your life to think about your life rather than just live it.
	You know, because we all get involved in the day-to-day, right?
	And we all get focused on staring down at the next step on the treadmill.
	Oh, I got to do my taxes.
	Oh, I got to renew my insurance.
	Oh, I have to get the water heater fixed.
	Oh, I have to go buy some light bulbs.
	Oh, and look, those are part, that's part of life, right?
	I mean, we've got stuff to do, right?
	The only way to avoid that is live in the woods and then, well, I guess you have even more chores, right?
	So we all, all of us, have a treadmill and we stare at our feet going step to step.
	I think that it would have something to do with take at least one day of the week and think about your life and what you're doing and why you're doing it and what the purpose is and whether you're doing good or whether you're exploiting people, like have a review, which is kind of like the confessional in Catholicism, right?
	Which is, you know, have a moral inventory.
	I mean, have a moral inventory and make sure that you check whether your values are good and whether you are achieving them.
	Are your morals good and are you achieving them?
	Because there's a drift.
	And the drift comes from hedonism, which is part of our life as well.
	The drift comes from our need for approval.
	I was having a debate with somebody the other day about whether Christianity has largely become the approval of the congregation rather than following the word of Christ.
	And I think a lot of that has come into Christianity.
	Generally, when you get too much female influence, you end up with this kind of conformity.
	You end up with this kind of, am I approved of?
	Do I fit in?
	Do people like me?
	Because women tend to score much higher in trait agreeableness, which is they want people to like them and they want to, and men tend to fall a little bit more iconoclastic in pursuit of truth, right?
	And so Christianity, I think, has largely become, do I get the approval?
	I can't, I mean, I went to a whole bunch of churches and saw a whole bunch of sermons.
	And it was all very nice stuff about being thoughtful and kind and forgiving people and so on.
	But there was no fire and brimstone.
	So it was all for women and almost nothing for men.
	There was nothing really about fighting evil and taking risks.
	It was all about being nice and thoughtful and considerate and forgiving.
	And, you know, I mean, it's not the end of the world, but it's just, it's too female to last.
	So, yeah, so I think that the Sabbath thing is like, take a day where you really do think about your life and your values and your virtues and whether you are achieving them.
	I mean, I went for, I said this on excellent, like I went through most of my 20s having values, but not really sitting there and saying, well, how are they manifesting in my life?
	Am I doing good in my life?
	How are my virtues and values affecting my daily choices?
	And when I started to really think about that and do that, like actually have them affect my choices, my entire life changed.
	So I think it has a lot to do with check in with your virtues, your values, check in with your integrity and be around people who really care about that kind of stuff.
	Because all of the commandments were social because there was no real individual life back in the day.
	And so it's saying, have a community of people around you who will talk about values and virtues with you and goodness and good and evil and the purpose of life.
	And otherwise, you're just on this crazy hedonic treadmill or busy work.
	Admit it's trivia, a friend of mine calls it.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, I think so.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
Check In With Your Values 00:00:33
	Okay, good, good.
	All right.
	Thank you very much.
	My pleasure, man.
	It's great, great.
	I love these questions.
	You guys are just the best people to talk about philosophy with.
	And I really do appreciate that.
	Freedomain.com slash donate, please, please.
	It's the beginning of a new month.
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	Anti-no poop?
	No, I don't think that's, I don't think we're going to be doing that one.
	All right.
	Thanks, everyone.
	Have yourself a great week.
	We'll talk to you soon.
	Freeman.com slash donate to help out the show.
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	Lots of love.

Chapters

00:00:00 Boomers and Cultural Hypocrisy
00:14:58 Imagining the Most Moral Person
00:21:34 Cascading Risk Hiccup
00:28:21 Investors Struggle
00:34:46 Student Loan Forgiveness Dreams
00:43:17 Caring Through Illness
00:46:58 Balancing Fun and Responsibility
00:52:10 Consistency in Hedonism
01:02:09 Exploiting Women's Hopes
01:16:23 Complicated Choices
01:26:00 False Gods and Truth
01:41:01 Drift and Moral Inventory
01:45:57 Check In With Your Values