Feb. 17, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
41:02
The True Roots of Addiction!
Jordan Peterson examines addiction as a survival mechanism rooted in childhood neglect and evolutionary biology, arguing it stems from loneliness and primitive bonding over conformity, sexuality, or status—like the Outback gang’s drug-fueled hacky sack games. He suggests abuse-driven genes replicate through cycles of self-erasure, citing Donald Trump’s avoidance of alcohol despite his father’s addiction and Dr. Phil McGraw’s family history. Love, he claims, demands virtue like moral courage, often met with societal rejection, while addiction lets people suppress higher thought for fleeting connection. The modern economy enables individualists to survive outside tribalism, but addiction thrives in a world where evildoers exploit conformity to crush dissent, leaving only isolation or self-destruction as alternatives. [Automatically generated summary]
We're going to do callers over on locals, and this is going to be donors only in a few minutes.
However, we are, in fact, going to talk a little bit about drugs this morning.
I have been talking to potheads on X.
Now, I want to sort of make my position clear.
We'll take it private in a minute or two.
Let's make my position clear.
First of all, look, I have a lot of sympathy for people with addictions.
I always have.
I've always talked about its roots in child abuse.
I have a lot of sympathy for people with addictions.
But that doesn't mean I have sympathy for every effect of child abuse, right?
So I have sympathy for the effects of child abuse, but not every effect of child abuse.
So people who abuse children were almost certainly themselves abused as children.
And it is wrong to abuse children, obviously.
And so the fact that you were abused does not give you can't blanch to go and abusing children without moral judgment.
If somebody was abused as a child and has a problem with part because it's helping them mask or deal with or overcome or minimize the symptoms of child abuse, I sympathize with that.
I really do.
But there's a problem.
So the problem is if you are into drugs, in part because of abuse or neglect that you suffered as a child, right?
So especially neglect, right?
Neglect, I think, drives people a lot towards drugs because neglect makes you lonely.
And being willing to do negative things gives you an instant community in this sad world.
Right?
We say this again.
If you were neglected, you're lonely.
And a willingness to do bad things gives you instant society, instant, quote, friends, instant companionship in this sad world.
Genes for Addiction Replicate Through Isolation00:08:40
There's a show made about 25 years ago called Freaks and Geeks, where there's this girl in high school who is torn between two extremes.
One is the super nerdy people and one are the people on their way to jail.
And the super nerdy people are trying to get her to be nice and good.
And the people on their way to jail are the ones trying to get her to take a bad road to start committing criminal acts.
The normal people, of course, are nowhere to be seen.
The show is called Freaks and Geeks.
The freaks are the bad guys.
The geeks, of course, are the turbo nerds.
And if you are willing to do negative things, if you're willing to drink, if you're willing to be promiscuous, particularly as a female, of course, and if you're willing to do drugs, and if you're willing to go do dangerous, stupid, negative, destructive stuff to yourself and others, then you will have no shortage of companions.
You will have no shortage of people who are more than happy in a very grim fashion to have you become one of them.
So in my high school, it was the Outback gang, which sounds like cool, bronzed Australians who make that ambulance sound when they don't want something.
Meow.
Meow.
So the Outback gang would sit there and smoke drugs and play hacky sack.
Maybe it was a bit before Hacky Sack.
Maybe that was a bit more later in university.
They were just out back and they were doing that sort of stoner laugh, the cynical laugh.
They were nihilistic and so on.
And I've never really suffered from loneliness in my life because it's kind of crowded in here and I usually have people around me.
But if I was lonely, then it would have been tempting.
It would have been tempting.
Because the question in life when you're isolated is, is bad companionship better than no companionship?
Well, that's an easy question to answer biologically, right?
That's an easy question to answer.
Bad companionship is infinitely better than no companionship because you need others to reproduce.
And because you need others to reproduce, bad companions are better than no companions.
You know, the sort of proud Howard Rock isolated loners who held their standards high and, you know, were isolated.
They just got ignored or they got ostracized or they went into a monastery or whatever, right?
But their genes didn't reproduce.
So I want you to think of it.
I mean, I want you to, you don't have to, obviously, but I want you to think of it like this: that isolation in particular is the methodology by which the genes associated with addiction tend to replicate.
So how do genes associated with addiction, which themselves want to survive, how do genes associated with addiction replicate?
Well, they replicate through child abuse.
And I think in particular, they replicate through isolation.
Now, isolation can be physical, right?
Maybe you're an only child, or maybe your siblings are much older or much younger, or maybe you live in a kind of isolated area, or, you know, maybe you just have one of those weird, glassy NPC families where no one talks about anything and you just get useless shoot from the hip lessons from your dad and your mom is maybe more interested in God or community or something.
And you just, you can be surrounded by a cloud, a crowd, and utterly alone.
I mean, we all know that, right?
So when you're isolated, you are desperate for companions, but you lack social skills.
So if you're desperate for companions, but you lack social skills, what do you do?
Social anxiety is the mechanism by which the genes associated with alcoholism reproduce.
Because alcoholism usually covers up a lack of social skills.
It covers up anxiety.
And it covers up a feeling of worthlessness that is bitterly and angrily avoided.
And therefore, the alcohol is for that.
So all the genes associated, there are definitely genes associated with addiction, but all the genes associated with addiction are in a cycle.
The genes associated with addiction want to produce the same mindsets in people that lent them to be more prone to addiction.
I mean, imagine if, you know, in some alternate universe, imagine if the story of the angels in my book, The Future, came true.
The angels are automated AI robotic protectors of children that prevent child abuse in a single generation.
Amazing.
I think it's a fantastic, one of the greatest in me plot and literary devices and instructional devices in the history of literature.
But that's just me.
Of course, I love my own books.
I leave it to you to judge.
The book is free at freedomain.com slash books.
But imagine if child abuse was ended, then people who had the genes for addiction would be much less likely to have those genes activated.
You know, I mean, Trump probably, Donald Trump probably carries the genes for addiction because his father was an alcoholic.
I think his brother died of alcoholism, but he never touched alcohol.
I think similar things happened in the Dr. Phil McGraw family, that shiny-headed purveyor of Tom Selleck NPC psychology.
So those genes wouldn't be activated, which means people wouldn't cling together based on doing terrible stuff, which means that people who had the genes for addiction would be much more likely to mate with people who didn't have the genes for addiction, which means that over time, the genes for addiction would diminish.
I mean, the genes for alcoholism want you to, if you have the genes for alcoholism, then those genes want you to mate with another alcoholic, obviously, so that they're more likely to replicate and survive.
The genes for social anxiety want you to mate with other people who are socially anxious.
And the best way to do that is to enter into an addiction.
Most people are empty-headed giant levers by which their genes reproduce and they don't even understand what they're doing and why.
Addicts are addicts because their genes want them to reproduce with other addicts so the genes for addiction have a higher chance to reproduce.
You're a machine.
The genes for violence want you to be around other violent people so that they have a greater chance to reproduce.
The genes for depression want you to be around other depressed people so that they have a greater chance to reproduce.
The genes for anxiety want you to be around other anxious people.
So that's a filter, right?
That's a filter.
If you are philosophical, then you aim for the truth, not for this sort of Simon the Boxer repetition compulsion that I've talked about, Lowe, these many decades.
I try not to be a blind photocopier.
Go eat, go eat, go eat, go eat.
Copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste.
People who are isolated lack social skills, and therefore they need something that erases their identity in order to have anything in common with other people who have no social skills.
Social skills being the ability to negotiate, the ability to talk about important issues without everyone losing their shite, the ability to connect with people, the ability to navigate what can be sometimes difficult and complex discourse, the ability to listen.
Feelings of Worthlessness00:04:28
And social competence at its root is the belief that you have something of value to offer in a conversation.
And if you are, and I'm not talking to anyone here, of course, right, you're working on your way, as I am, towards sort of authenticity and truth.
But if you're philosophical, you never doubt that you have value to add in a conversation.
Now, it may be that you have too much value to add in a conversation.
I mean, I remember many years ago, a guy was working on something for me, and he mentioned he was going through a divorce.
I mean, I've always been someone that people unpack their hearts to, which is great.
I appreciate it.
And I mentioned something about men's rights, and he got very tense.
He got very tense.
And what do you mean, men's rights?
Men don't have rights specific to men.
Okay.
So, you know, that's fine as opposed to, hey, well, I've never heard that term.
What do you mean?
Right?
So most people are just managing their own emptiness.
They're managing their own self-hatred.
They're managing their own feelings of worthlessness.
They're managing their own sense of being fraudulent.
They're managing their own sense of worthlessness.
People who weren't allowed to become themselves by their parents have nothing individual to offer.
And if you don't have anything of yourself to offer because your natural self has been opposed and attacked and undermined and criticized, and you're bad, you're wrong, you're selfish, you're mean, you're stupid, you're dumb, you're whatever.
Well, then you don't have anything to offer, or you feel like you don't have anything to offer.
If you're down on yourself, what do you feel like you have to offer people if you're negative towards yourself?
I mean, you either start talking to people honestly and say, well, you know, I mean, it's nice to meet you, but honestly, I don't feel like I have anything to offer people socially.
I'm kind of broken and I just feel this, I feel this, like if you drop a bowling ball down a well, I just feel this sense of dread talking to people because I think I'm going to be exposed as kind of empty.
And, you know, I want people, but I don't feel like I have anything to offer them.
You can be honest about it, right?
But what's going to happen to most people if you say something like that?
Whoa, well, good luck with all that.
And they'll sort of seinfeld their way slowly backwards out of the room like there's some higher caste Indian who accidentally entered into an enclave with a lower caste member of society.
Whoops, I'm sorry, I did not mean to kick that hornet's nest.
And away they go.
And away they go.
That's funny.
You know, I always have these little scraps of songs in my head.
I really do wish I was more musical.
I love music.
There's an old George Thorrogood recording of him doing bad to the bone, I think it is.
And away we go.
That's how he starts.
He's a good blues guitarist and singer, with a throaty baritone, it's really good.
Who do you love?
It's either, there's already two songs of his that I like, the cover of Who Do You Love, which actually the Doors did as well, quite well.
And away we go.
So you can't really be honest if you're down on yourself.
Because it opens with a desperate plea for connection, a bottomless hole of negative self-regard.
And, you know, I mean, people don't know how to get involved with that.
They don't want to get involved with that.
They may be curious and interested about that, but it's a dicey opening, I suppose.
So they have to cover all that up, right?
And so most people, you know, particularly with stuff like drugs or alcohol, more so.
They don't have anything to say to each other.
They don't have any positive self-regard.
They don't feel like they have anything of value to offer each other.
So they get drunk.
They drink.
And the drink is to cover up everything that they don't have to offer each other.
I mean, I see drunk people.
I see hurt people who desperately need to and want to connect, but have nothing to connect with.
Connecting at Our Biological Level00:05:24
And so people connect at the level of biology they operate at.
So if a woman is really down on herself, doesn't feel like she has much to offer, wasn't loved as a child, maybe neglected, maybe abused, then she's operating at a fairly primitive level because her higher faculties were not developed.
Like those kids who get abandoned or lost and end up raised by wolves.
They don't have language and they never really learn language.
Has a pretty narrow window when you're young to learn language, human language.
So a young woman who's operating at a very low level, at a very primitive level, she can't connect with people in terms of thoughts or ideas or literature or conversational levels that are reasonably advanced.
And honestly, it's not, I mean, it sounds like a lot of this stuff.
Oh, social complexity.
It sounds like an IQ thing.
I mean, obviously, it's a little bit related to IQ, but I don't think hugely much.
I mean, I've had pretty good conversations with people who aren't very smart, and I've had terrible conversations with people who are very intelligent.
So it's probably a little bit related, but maybe a 0.2, 0.3 correlation, except at the extremes.
But it is just a skill.
I mean, I think it takes a fairly intelligent person to learn Japanese in his or her 40s.
But of course, if you grow up in Japan and raised by Japanese parents, then you speak Japanese fluently.
It's not an IQ thing.
It's just an exposure thing.
Very smart people can figure out social skills over time.
Less intelligent people, if they're raised with good social skills, they just speak that language naturally.
So I just sort of want to point out it's not exclusively some kind of IQ thing.
So a woman who's been treated badly and who's been treated as an object, right?
Obviously, that could be sexual abuse, but it could also be just, you know, you have to do your chores, you have to behave, you have to show credit to the family, you have to do all these kinds of things.
So a woman who's, you know, and I say this with great sympathy, right?
Who's operating at a very low level, her higher faculties, her individuation, right?
I mean, the brain is three pounds out of a, you know, if it's three pounds out of a hundred pound female body, it's 3% of body mass, right?
For a man of 200 pounds, 1.5% body mass, 2.25% if you're 150 pounds, something like that.
So it's a very small part.
And a brain, of course, is mostly primitive, right?
Our consciousness is like the top 50 feet of Mount Everest.
There's a whole planet, right?
The planet is the body.
The mountain is the mind.
The conscious mind is just the tippy top.
So we're mostly primitive.
And we have to be lured into the higher dimensions.
We have to be lured into sophistication.
We have to be lured into individuation.
Your kidney is kind of like my kidney.
Your lungs are kind of like my lungs.
Your skull is kind of like my skull.
You know, the variations are small.
Where we are individuated is in our neofrontal cortex, in our seat of reasoning, in like who we are is, since we want to be loved, right?
We want to be loved.
We can't be loved because we have a stomach, because pretty much everyone has a stomach.
We can't be loved.
Oh, I got two legs.
You should love me.
It's like, well, you know, pretty much everyone.
I hope that Olympic skier gets to keep both of hers, the 41-year-old who in a mad death down the mountain skied way too hard when she was way too old.
But anyway, she had a 20-year career.
She had like 24 major injuries and she still keeps going.
That's wild.
She's committed to excellence.
That's one off.
It's one possibility.
So we want to be loved for who we are.
But who we are requires thinking for ourself, requires coming to our own conclusions, requires individuating ourselves from the masses.
I mean, talk to women about if guys approach them, you know, online or in person, hey, what you drinking?
Sup?
Hey, right?
I mean, it's sad.
It's sad.
I mean, I think I'm going to do a whole show on trying to teach guys how to approach females because it's sad, man.
It's sad.
And when the women imitate these men, it's always with this, you know, retarded lumberjack voice.
Hey, what you drinking, man?
Sup?
Haven't seen you here before.
You know, just like, I mean, terrible, right?
But that's a signal to meet at the physical level rather than the intellectual level, which is where the only sustaining pair bonding can happen.
So the woman who's operating at a very primitive level goes out into the world.
How can she connect with people?
Well, the most primitive things that we have are conformity and sexuality.
Because conformity is very, very animalistic.
And please understand, when I say animalistic, I don't mean that's negative.
I don't mean that's negative, but it's not individual.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
It's not negative for me that my kidneys and my liver work.
That's not negative for me all.
Everybody Wants to Be Chosen00:15:14
That's a big plus.
That's a huge plus.
That's a okay good thing.
But you can never be loved and pair bonded with those things.
You need to be different in order to be loved.
You need to be yourself.
Being yourself distances you from the conformists, but it opens you up to the possibility of being truly loved.
So a young woman who's it's it's it's not that you're not allowed to develop these higher aspects of the self.
It's that if you try to develop these higher aspects of the self, people will attack you venomously because you're in the primitive world of conformity and biology.
Biology just means greed, lust, aggression, violence, right?
Just the base monkey brain and lizard brain.
These are the people that you bring up an uncomfortable question, they just lash out.
All they are is biological reaction.
And if you try, like there's a horrible low ceiling, you know, there's a movie Being John Malkovich, I think, where there's this, is it Pean John Malkovich?
There's an elevator that goes up and there's a really low office space between floors eight and nine or something like that.
This very sort of very low ceiling.
I think this is where claustrophobia comes from.
Claustrophobia comes from a general terror of the smallness of the minds of the people who raised you.
And if you are raised by people who operate at the animal level, who operate at the level of instinct, aggression, reaction, and do not intercede with their responses, right?
You have that quarter second if you have an impulse to say to yourself, is it good or bad or right or wrong?
And if you operate, or if you're forced to operate at the level that's very low, that's very biological, trying to raise yourself above that level, which I think is the mission of most of us here, is most of us were raised in low, mean, restricted, reactive, unthinking, and aggressive and violent circumstances.
And even if this wasn't the case at home, it certainly is the case these days in school, then trying to become bigger, trying to think for yourself, trying to rise above these circumstances, it feels like you were raised in a house where you were constantly distorted because the ceilings were four feet above the ground and you still had to move around.
So you're crawling and you're maybe crab walking a little and it's just awkward.
And then you're like, you need to straighten up.
But if you need to straighten up, then you bump into the ceiling a lot.
And then if people bump into the ceiling a lot, people get mad at you for leaving grease marks or bumps or marks on the ceiling.
Stay down, stay low.
Don't try to rise up.
Don't try to get out.
But it's cramping, particularly to those of us who maybe were blessed slash cursed.
It feels like sometimes with expansionist souls that we just, we need some straight spines.
We desperately need some straight spines.
We need to straighten up.
And if that means abandoning these crazy, low-ceilinged, claustrophobic zoo prisons of other people's reactive limitations, well, so be it.
I couldn't, for the life of me, like I was raised in such, you know, I used to dream of ceilings four feet high.
My ceilings were two feet high.
It was nothing but military belly crawls going on where I was.
And I just, I couldn't.
I had to straighten my spine.
I had to get out.
I had to be vertical.
I just had to.
And it's painful as hell.
It's painful and difficult as hell to get out of these low circumstances.
So, sorry, to return to our young woman whose development of any higher individual faculties, individuated faculties, because everybody wants to be picked for who they are.
But if you're not raised to think for yourself and be who you are, then you want to be picked for who you are, but you aren't who you are.
That's the contradiction.
That's the contradiction.
I want to be chosen for me, but I don't really exist.
Well, then you have to be chosen for something else.
You have to be chosen because you're high status.
You have to be chosen because you have a lot of money.
You have to be chosen because you're pretty.
You have to be chosen because you're hot.
You have to be chosen because you're sexually available.
You have to be chosen because, because, because, right?
Because you're really great at sports.
You have to be chosen because you're whatever.
This is back to my novel, Dissolution.
Everybody wants to be chosen for who they are, but everybody wants to be like everybody else.
I want to be chosen, right?
This giant row of Toy Story 2, right?
In Toy Stories 2, Buzz Lightyear gets into a toy store where he sees thousands of himself in boxes in the shelves, right?
It's a very, very good movie, very funny movie.
Barbie, don't.
So everybody wants to be chosen for who they are, but most people are raised with this limitation that leaves them at the level of the animal.
So the woman, who, as a girl, as a child, there's a battle between those who want to rise up and those who want to stay low, right?
The hammer that sticks up gets, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down, the tall poppy gets cut.
So there's a, we want to be ourselves, we want to think for ourselves, and we're told to think for ourselves.
I mean, I don't know if this is still the case, but I was always told, well, if everybody was jumping off the CN Tower or the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it too?
You have to think for yourself, blah, blah, blah, right?
But then if you think for yourself, they hate that too.
So it's a bit of a paradox, but that's just society, right?
In a very primitive state as we are.
So the woman who's never allowed to develop her own thoughts, her own ideas, her own arguments, her own perspective, to reason from first principles, then she exists in a very primitive state.
So where do people meet if they're both existing in a very primitive state?
Well, they meet at the biological.
So she puts out.
So she wants to be chosen for herself, but she doesn't have a self because it was so violently opposed for her to develop one.
So she offers up sexual access.
In other words, she wants to be chosen not for where she is, but for where she isn't, for her whole.
And people who drink, they drink to meet at the level of mere biology.
They do drunk.
They do drugs or they drink or whatever, to meet at the level of mere biology.
You can think of these creepy swingers' clubs, you know, the orgies, the orgy clubs, the lubes and mustaches club, bathrobes, they meet at the physical.
And the lower self wants to reproduce, right?
The genes for the lower self want to reproduce, which is why the genes for the lower self attack the higher self with great ferocity.
And of course, women want to be chosen for who they are as individuals, but women tend to be highly conformist, which is why women will often put much more care into their physical appearance.
Because you can divide the boys, right, in general, into like the jocks, the nerds, and the breakfast club divisions.
But girls tend to be, you know, graded in levels of popularity, and that's about it.
So addiction is so people have something in common when they are not individuated, when they are not able to think for themselves, when they don't reason for themselves, when they are not themselves.
Because people who reason with each other have the delightful act of reasoning and thinking and chatting and, you know, exploring and not reacting because, you know, smart people don't react.
Or if they do react, they notice it and don't allow it to overwhelm their thinking.
But less individuated people, they just react, right?
You know, that triggered liberal female face meme.
So people drink so that they have something in common, which is the reduced identities of being drunk.
They also don't have intimacy, connection, affection, love, and contact.
And, you know, there's a famous saying among alcoholics, like no great story ever started with, so that, so I had a salad, right?
And so what they do is they substitute stories for connection.
Hey, remember that time when I was so drunk that blah, That's a story a guy told me many years ago when I was chafing against a particular social circle that I was in.
I mean, pretty briefly, I went to like five events and they just drank.
And I remember a guy there sort of impatiently telling me, oh, yeah, you're like that guy.
We're up at the cottage.
You know, everyone's up at the cottage and it's a nice sunny day and everyone's just on the dock chilling, listening to some tunes, tunage.
And you come on like, hey, let's play pictionary, right?
Everyone's like, right?
Well, they're just sunning themselves like walruses.
And, you know, I come along and say, hey, let's do something that actually engages our intellect.
I'm not saying all the time, but maybe once for an hour over the course of an entire long weekend, we can doing something other than drinking or recovering from drinking.
Drinking is about erasing the knowledge that you're erasing the knowledge.
Drinking is getting everyone to a lowest common denominator so that they can bond about who they aren't without being conscious that they're bonding over who they aren't.
I remember my mom had a friend over once when I was young, who was an alcoholic and just completely desperate to never be alone.
And I was trying to go to bed, and this woman came in and was like, I remember she was talking about the newspaper that Globe and Mail should be called the grope and fail.
You know, it just had all of these, you know, just completely NPC talking points.
Hey, what are you going to bed for, kid?
Stay up, chat a little, live a little, right?
It's like it's a school night.
Nah, you'll be fine, you know, just this raw desperation to not be alone.
I remember my mother was later with this woman held at gunpoint for several hours by this one of these women's ex-boyfriends.
It was really quite an ordeal.
But just can't be alone.
Can't be alone because there's nobody there.
Because all addictions are about self-erasure, the substitution of raw need for the absence of an actual person.
And of course, I mean, I know that there's a potential person there and so on.
And I don't want this to sound terminal, like you've sawn off your arm, it's not going to regrow.
But that's why people fight so ferociously to avoid being honest about their own addictions.
Because if they're honest about their own addictions, then they unmask to themselves that they don't really exist.
Like if all you are is pursuing addictions, making money, seeking status, and avoiding discomfort, you're an animal.
And again, it's nothing wrong with animal.
We have an animal side.
It's nothing wrong with that.
But if that's all you are, then you're not really a person.
You're just a cunning ape.
I mean, I remember another guy I knew many years ago was telling me a story about how he had social anxiety and he would go to parties and there'd be pot and he would smoke the pot.
And I remember him saying, like, it didn't really have any effect on me, but I really played it up just to get some laughs.
And I used to play this game called Find My Feet, you know, and I would pretend.
He said, I would pretend like I couldn't find my feet.
And I was so stoned that and people would laugh.
And, you know, at least I felt I was adding some value or something like that.
And I would say things like, he would say, I would say things like, only your left hand knows you're right-handed, man.
And people are like, whoa, you know, hey, maybe we're just an, maybe the solar system is an atom in the couch of another creature.
And meeting at the level of the animal alone makes social insecurity worse, right?
And this is why people crash out of their relationships, is they meet at the level of the animal, and then they're shocked and appalled that people cheat on them.
Well, of course.
That's the price you pay for meeting at the level of the animal, is you get the loyalty of an animal and not a K-selected animal either, but an R-selected animal.
You know, the female monkey that raises her butt, can she really be shocked when the male mates with another female monkey who raises her butt?
It's like, well, no, she's offering up what everyone else can offer up.
This is part of the discourse that's going on on social media at the moment.
It kind of flares up from time to time.
And this is the discourse of like, well, God, I mean, geez, the guys who are 30 who want a 21-year-old, you know, it's creepy and it's weird and it's bad.
And it's like, no, no, no.
It's biological.
It's biological.
It's our selected biology.
Seek out the youngest, most fertile females.
And it's women who got a lot of value out of offering up sexual access when they're young, who are now aging out and getting mad that other women are doing what they did, offering up sexual access in return for male resources.
And the resources don't tend to be money as quite as much now because of the welfare state and women can get money from men using the power of the government, but more so because it's status, right?
It's high status.
They don't want to be with a brokey, and most young men are broke.
You have to be willing to disagree with people in order to be loved.
There's absolutely no way to be loved without disagreeing with people.
There's no way to be loved in this sad world.
And listen, you can have a happy life in a sad world, right?
But the world itself is very sad.
it's very posturing, it's very, I just see the world mostly as isolated people desperate for affection, doing everything possible to gain affection rather than be virtuous.
Because being virtuous means that you're going to be hated by evildoers.
You're going to be targeted and attacked.
And it's a sad thing that the price to pay for being loved is being hated and being rejected and scorned and isolated.
That is the price we have to pay in this sad world for being loved.
And there's no way to avoid that at all.
Desperate for Affection00:04:32
Maybe if you move to the woods and just, you know, whatever, right?
But you've, you know, you want your kids to not be isolated too, right?
So, yeah, there's no way.
There's no way to be loved in the world without being hated by the NPCs, without being hated by the normies, without being hated by society as itself.
The rulers all want to punish conformity because conformity means that people obey the rulers.
So the rulers always want to punish rebellion.
Like they'll preach rebellion.
Like, you know, they'll preach rebellion in movies.
You've got to be the cool kid who thinks for himself and goes against the crowd.
But they do that just so they can single out people to be attacked.
Oh, this rebel listened to our propaganda about how good it is to be a rebel.
Fantastic.
He's self-identified.
Now we can attack and destroy him or try to.
Love is a glowing prize in the heart of a deep and blindingly hot social fire of isolation, attack, and exclusion.
And earlier when I said like we meet at the animal level with conformity and sexuality, and status is a little higher than that because animals have conformity and sexuality.
That's like the lowest thing.
I mean, if you look at flocks of birds, they only survive by all darting around in similar directions.
There are schools of fish that can form the salmon, jump the currents, jump the waterfalls to get back to the spawning grounds.
Even the insects act in tandem.
The butterflies will spend some generations going from the north to that five trees in Mexico.
The birds fly south for the winter.
Conformity is a very, very low level.
Very low level.
And we need some conformity even to have individuality, because we all need to use words that mean similar things and so on.
You need to have some conformity.
Even if it's hot, you can't walk around naked outside your own property.
It's hopefully outside of the visibility of others.
So conformity and sexuality are just about the lowest of our biological activities.
It is, in a sense, the least human about us.
What is human about us is our individual thought and capacity to reason and our moral courage, our virtues, the things that you can actually be loved for.
Conformity and sexuality is very low.
Status is quite a low thing as well, the pecking order, right?
I mean, most mammals that are social will have a pecking order.
And that pecking order is pretty strictly reinforced.
And the young people, the young, the young monkeys want to climb it.
The old monkeys want to keep them down.
And so status is very low as well.
It happens in lion prides, right?
The alpha male.
It happens in monkey pride.
It's pretty low.
Sexuality and conformity are the lowest, really, outside of pure biological function, but in terms of the mindsets.
And then status is pretty low as well.
And, you know, again, in a virtuous world, in a free world, in a peacefully parented world, then you can be loved by an individual and society at the same time.
But in the sad world that we have, to be loved by an individual is to be hated by society.
Now, I think it's worth the price, but I'm not going to say the price is inconsequential.
The price has a big effect on your life.
And really, I mean, sort of with the modern economy, it's really only been possible to be loved by an individual and survive society's hatred.
It's a pretty recent phenomenon.
It's a pretty recent phenomenon that you can survive without the tribe.
And the tribalists are constantly attacking the individualists and all this, right?
So, yeah, I just wanted to share some thoughts on addiction.
Addiction is required because we cannot be lower animals without great pain.
And if we want to act as lower animals, we have to erase the higher part of ourselves in order to make that bearable.
And that's what addiction does.
It allows us to focus on something external rather than deal with the empty pain inside.
In other words, most fundamentally, addiction is the mechanism that allows us to most easily lie to ourselves and believe it.
Supporting the Show00:00:27
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