Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - I Fight with a LISTENER 2! X Space
Aired: 2026-03-11
Duration: 01:50:06


=== Why Mature People Ignore Philosophy (05:43) ===

[00:00:00]  Good morning, everybody.
[00:00:02]  Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
[00:00:05]  Oh, I lost an hour last night, shaved of my life.
[00:00:10]  You know, I wonder if when I die, I'm in the situation of having an extra hour or having an hour stolen.
[00:00:19]  It may not be my last thought, but it'll probably be in there.
[00:00:23]  So I hope you are.
[00:00:26]  Looks like our connection was lost.
[00:00:28]  What does it say?
[00:00:30]  Are we back?
[00:00:32]  So I wanted to mention, I think it was Friday night, I had an impressive tangle with a listener who was manipulative and defensive and avoidant, and that pisses me off.
[00:00:49]  Now, the fact that I'm pissed off doesn't mean anything foundational.
[00:00:54]  It doesn't mean that I was right.
[00:00:55]  It doesn't mean the other person was wrong.
[00:00:57]  But, and I see we do have a request to talk.
[00:01:00]  We'll talk in just a sec.
[00:01:02]  I need to get this off my chest.
[00:01:04]  Well, I don't need to.
[00:01:04]  I choose I want to get this off my chest first and foremost.
[00:01:08]  So why is it that sophists are so annoying?
[00:01:15]  Why is it that for me, plainly for me, and maybe it validates the emotions?
[00:01:20]  Maybe I'm just petty.
[00:01:22]  But hey, trust me, it's always a possibility.
[00:01:26]  So why is it that it angers me so much when people say, hey, man, I'm really into philosophy, and what's really important in philosophy is the third way of Platonism.
[00:01:45]  Maybe Platonism was affirming things that were positive and true.
[00:01:48]  Maybe Plato was a nihilist who wished to erase everything that could be true.
[00:01:53]  Or maybe there's a third way.
[00:01:56]  And I view people like that.
[00:01:59]  And I'm not saying anything about this person's mindset because I don't read intentions.
[00:02:06]  Intentions are a form of mysticism.
[00:02:09]  And intentions are always the first offense of a frightened child.
[00:02:15]  You knock over a lamp.
[00:02:16]  Your dad comes in angry.
[00:02:19]  I didn't mean to.
[00:02:21]  It is the first offense of a frightened child.
[00:02:23]  And when people think that it is a valid thing to say in an intense debate, well, that wasn't my intention, it means that they're not mature.
[00:02:35]  Mature.
[00:02:36]  Mature, as Kevin Samuels used to say.
[00:02:39]  Geeds.
[00:02:41]  But it just means that they're not mature, that they are mucking about with things that they don't understand.
[00:02:49]  Now, the reason why I get angry at people who claim to be into philosophy and can't answer basic questions is I view them as greater enemies than those who are openly mystical or anti-rational.
[00:03:10]  So if somebody says, philosophy is nonsense because our lives are guided by the actions of stars dozens or hundreds of light years away, well, people look at that and they say, well, that's kind of crazy.
[00:03:26]  Well, that doesn't really make any sense.
[00:03:28]  Or, you know, they agree with them, in which case, neither of them make any sense.
[00:03:33]  If somebody says, I fully believe that two and two equal a blue unicorn, then nobody with any sense is going to take them seriously.
[00:03:46]  If somebody says, you know, philosophy is crap because nothing is true, well, it's pretty easy for anybody with any common sense to dismiss such people as bitter evildoers.
[00:03:59]  I mean, if you say nothing is true, this is philosophy 101.
[00:04:03]  If you say nothing is true, then you've just made a truth statement and you haven't even noticed it, which means you're so full of shite that your eyes are brown.
[00:04:13]  No, no, the most dangerous people in the realm of philosophy and therefore in the realm of the moral improvement of mankind are not the people who oppose philosophy.
[00:04:26]  They're not the people who ignore philosophy.
[00:04:29]  They're the people who make philosophy boring and useless.
[00:04:34]  Oh, those people are the real enemies.
[00:04:39]  They're the real foot soldiers of the evildoers.
[00:04:42]  They are the real court toadies of the corrupt.
[00:04:48]  Because what they do is they go around year after year, decade after decade, boring the living urine out of anyone who hears them drone on about completely inconsequential matters in philosophy.
[00:05:10]  If you look at the groaning amoral or evil decay in the world, the power structures that people accept that make the world infinitely worse.
[00:05:21]  The children falling like fish in a giant waterfall over the edge of corruption, self-indulgence, hedonism, amorality, and evil.
[00:05:31]  And you say, well, the most important thing is to evaluate the metaphysics and epistemology of Plato to figure out.

=== The Welfare State Trap (03:39) ===

[00:05:43]  Shut up.
[00:05:45]  Shut the living F up.
[00:05:48]  Philosophers are designed to piss people off because most people cloak hedonism and conformity in pretend moral virtues.
[00:06:00]  We know this from the Milgram experiments.
[00:06:02]  We know this from having eyeballs.
[00:06:04]  We know this from conversations we've had with people in our lives.
[00:06:09]  Most people cloak cowardice, predation, and conformity in a not even close to human skin suit of pretend moral idealism.
[00:06:25]  We, as a I'll give you an example, we as a society are now stuck in the West with hundreds of millions of people who have now spent two or three or four generations on welfare.
[00:06:42]  We're stuck with them.
[00:06:44]  We are stuck with hundreds of millions of old people who refused to hold their governments accountable for making sure they had money for their pensions.
[00:06:55]  And now they don't have any money for their pensions and they're all retiring.
[00:07:00]  And all those boomers who flogged and shouted and beat and hit their children into taking responsibility.
[00:07:10]  You didn't study for the test.
[00:07:12]  You fail, and if you fail, we will keep you behind for an entire year.
[00:07:19]  We will take an entire year of your life and cause you to repeat it.
[00:07:24]  I mean, when I came to Canada, I was two years ahead of the other children.
[00:07:33]  I mean, I'm smart, well-read, and I had pretty good and rigorous education in England, in boarding school, and other places.
[00:07:42]  So when I first came to Canada, I was put into grade eight because everybody recognized my intelligence and my ability.
[00:07:49]  And then when we moved to Toronto, they put me back in grade six.
[00:07:54]  Now, grade six was my age-appropriate Place, but it just was not my intellectual appropriate place.
[00:08:04]  So they took two years of my life.
[00:08:07]  All the boomers who told me I had to be responsible, and I had to accept the consequences of being irresponsible.
[00:08:16]  So we're stuck with hundreds of millions of people on welfare and hundreds of billions of boomers, and we have no money to pay them.
[00:08:25]  And I suppose, I mean, maybe we're concerned about riots from the boomers, but we all know that if we say, you know, the welfare state was, you know, a bad idea, it's coercive in nature and it's destructive in practice.
[00:08:42]  Welfare state was a bad idea.
[00:08:44]  Everybody knows that the cities will burn to the ground.
[00:08:49]  We don't generally have the recipients of charity on our hands.
[00:08:54]  We have people who will take cities hostage if we don't pay them off.
[00:08:59]  I mean, that's just a fact.
[00:09:00]  Right now, politicians can't say that.
[00:09:02]  Social scientists can't say that.
[00:09:04]  I mean, we all know that it's true.
[00:09:05]  And so everyone pretends that the welfare state is about being nice to people and taking care of people and blah, And it's not.
[00:09:14]  It's just you have a wolf by the ears and you can't let it go and you're stuck with it.

=== Handling Rejection and War (09:08) ===

[00:09:22]  And people don't want to face the basic truths of their society.
[00:09:26]  So what do they do?
[00:09:27]  They lie and pretend.
[00:09:31]  So most people are lying and pretending.
[00:09:37]  And this is not, this is true for women, of course.
[00:09:39]  It's true for men.
[00:09:40]  It's true for men.
[00:09:42]  Men have two great tests in the world.
[00:09:49]  Number one is war slash money making.
[00:09:53]  I mean, if you go to war, you have your great physical test of courage and conformity and often foolishness and being exploited, but that's your great moral test.
[00:10:02]  Now, we're not going to war, at least not in the West, at least not yet.
[00:10:07]  And so the biggest test is money making.
[00:10:10]  I mean, the essence of being a man is to provide for a family and to protect them.
[00:10:18]  Now, the government has taken away our right to protect ourselves, but at least we can provide, which of course is becoming increasingly difficult for white males for legal reasons, but it's still possible, and that's number one.
[00:10:33]  Number two, which is, I think, a little more possible to achieve, the number two challenge for males is to yes, that's right.
[00:10:51]  To talk to girls, to charm the fairer sex, to be witty, to be engaging, to be likable, to survive rejection.
[00:11:06]  And one of the reasons why women, like men, who have some sort of courage, Courage is it is a proxy for the aforementioned war/slash money making.
[00:11:15]  If you don't have the nerve to talk to a girl, how are you going to have the nerve to win a war or enter into the fiat money fray of money making and come out with enough money to feed and house your family?
[00:11:31]  Also, men who can't handle rejection tend to be very volatile fathers because children can be scornful, children can choose friends over family, children can roll their eyes, and children will reject you over time because most parents, and I think this is more true of fathers than mothers, tend to want to play childhood games a little bit longer than the children do.
[00:11:58]  And the children have to say, I think I'm a bit old for this.
[00:12:01]  And of course, because the children see things from the inside out, we see them from the outside in.
[00:12:07]  So you will face some rejection from your children.
[00:12:11]  And of course, children eventually move on and have their own families and hopefully stay in touch and stay close, but they do leave in a way that wives don't.
[00:12:20]  So you have to be able to handle rejection.
[00:12:22]  Most of money making involves rejection.
[00:12:25]  And you see those sad little stalls in the mall and you walk past, even if they offer you samples, like 99% of people just walk past and don't buy anything.
[00:12:35]  Most of money making is being rejected.
[00:12:39]  When I used to do cold calls in the business world to sell my software, I would get five meetings for every 100 phone calls, and I would get one sale for every 100 phone calls.
[00:12:54]  So 95% failure rate to achieve a meeting, 99% failure rate to sell the software, but the software would sometimes sell for over a million dollars.
[00:13:02]  So it kind of made it worthwhile.
[00:13:05]  So women need men who can handle rejection.
[00:13:08]  Also, women need men who can handle rejection because sometimes in a marriage, women don't want to have sex.
[00:13:18]  I know.
[00:13:19]  I've never experienced that, but I hear rumors.
[00:13:22]  I hear tales from distant lands.
[00:13:24]  There are gentle core crows of cookery in the deep thorny bushes on the edge of the horizon.
[00:13:32]  And if a woman says no, of course, every single time a woman says no, you say sure, no problem.
[00:13:38]  Keep it fun so that she never feels any pressure to have sex because if you pressure or manipulate a woman into having sex, you are going to kill her sex drive.
[00:13:49]  And you deserve to.
[00:13:51]  So women need men who can handle rejection.
[00:13:55]  And so the other big test of manhood is to talk to girls.
[00:14:03]  To shoot your shot.
[00:14:05]  And the best way to gain the courage to shoot your shot, by the by, is to work out with weights.
[00:14:13]  Working out with weights generally raises your masculinity, raises your confidence, raises your testosterone, and makes you less concerned about rejection and gives you a strength and poise and presence in the world.
[00:14:25]  That is very helpful.
[00:14:28]  So we need courage in this world.
[00:14:30]  Men need to overcome obstacles.
[00:14:33]  And one of the things that men do is they say, women aren't worth it.
[00:14:39]  Ooh, these modern women, they're 304s and they're just terrible and wrong and bad and blah, And of course, there's some truth in that with regards to if you're not on the left, then women have become more and more left, which I understand is a challenge.
[00:15:01]  But if you are an intelligent, virtuous man, which I put the male listeners of this show in that category, if you're a male and virtuous man, then you want an intelligent and virtuous woman.
[00:15:15]  You don't want a conformist.
[00:15:16]  You don't want an NPC.
[00:15:19]  Because people who conform are hedonists.
[00:15:23]  They are making their decisions in the world based on what feels good and avoiding what feels bad.
[00:15:33]  And women are uniquely susceptible to social ideological contagions because men form hierarchies in order to serve the tribe and women form collectives in order to serve the tribe.
[00:15:48]  Men go out and hunt.
[00:15:50]  The best hunter gets the spear.
[00:15:51]  That's how they get the deer.
[00:15:53]  Women need a lot of cooperation because they're disabled through pregnancy while the men are out hunting or farming and they need other women to watch their children.
[00:16:03]  And there's pluses and minuses to that.
[00:16:06]  It means that women, I mean, they do score higher in the big five personality trait called agreeableness.
[00:16:11]  They like to get along.
[00:16:13]  They don't like it when people don't get along.
[00:16:15]  You know, when men start getting into a heated political argument, women roll their eyes and do the dishes.
[00:16:21]  But that's also where culture comes from, that men generally create culture, women transmit culture, and they do that through the hive mind.
[00:16:30]  And that's always the challenge.
[00:16:31]  When the government controls education, the enemies of your civilization will take over those educational structures and use them to program the women to destroy your culture.
[00:16:46]  So I understand that there are challenges, but there have always been challenges.
[00:16:50]  I mean, think of the 1950s.
[00:16:52]  If you were an anarcho-capitalist atheist, as I am, it would have been kind of tough to find a woman who would at least be open to that line of thinking.
[00:17:09]  I mean, I remember very early on when I was dating my wife, the topic of prison and prisoners came up, criminals.
[00:17:19]  And she just, as a throwaway comment, she said, well, yeah, I mean, but I mean, they really can't be rehabilitated.
[00:17:27]  And that's what all the literature says.
[00:17:30]  And my heart sang.
[00:17:33]  I mean, just literally put on a sundress, put on a sundress and criticize the government, and you will have men flocking you.
[00:17:40]  But I remember thinking, like, wow, so she takes the facts, the reason, and the evidence over sentimentality and wishful thinking.
[00:17:50]  Wow.
[00:17:52]  Put a ring on it.
[00:17:56]  And it was very cool.
[00:17:58]  It was very cool.
[00:18:00]  Because if people have integrity for facts and they both live in the facts, they then have loyalty to each other through reality.
[00:18:07]  So modern men will say, women, ah, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
[00:18:12]  Women are bad.
[00:18:13]  Women are blah, And rather than say, I mean, okay, even if we say, even if we say, I don't know, 90% of modern women wouldn't be a good partner for a true independent thinker.

=== Accidental Anger vs Manipulation (03:27) ===

[00:18:31]  Okay.
[00:18:32]  I mean, I think that's been pretty true throughout almost all of human history.
[00:18:36]  So the fact that there are a lot of leftist women is very helpful.
[00:18:42]  It's very helpful.
[00:18:44]  Because that way you can look at someone, you can ask them some questions.
[00:18:48]  And if they spout the usual leftist clichés, you can move on without having to waste time trying to date them.
[00:18:55]  NPCs, there aren't more of them.
[00:18:59]  They're just more obvious, which is actually very helpful as a whole.
[00:19:04]  And I'll stop in a sec.
[00:19:06]  I appreciate your patience, but I think for me, this is important.
[00:19:09]  Because the ferocity that I feel when I'm confronted with a sophist, somebody who claims to be into philosophy, and as it turns out, this guy had been into philosophy from Friday for over 20 years.
[00:19:23]  And he wouldn't answer simple questions.
[00:19:25]  He prevaricated.
[00:19:27]  He lied.
[00:19:29]  He made unverifiable claims like, my intention wasn't to.
[00:19:33]  And the intention thing is very manipulative.
[00:19:38]  Because if somebody says it wasn't my intention, what they're trying to do is do a headshot towards your assertiveness or aggression or anger.
[00:19:51]  So if somebody deliberately stomps on your foot, you're going to be angry.
[00:19:57]  However, if you're on a bus, and this happened a lot when I was taking the bus, somebody, you know, the bus lurches and somebody accidentally steps on your foot and turns and says, oh, I'm so sorry.
[00:20:08]  You okay?
[00:20:10]  Well, the level of anger that you would have would be different.
[00:20:14]  I remember a friend of mine, when I was in my early teens, was walking with my friend, my mother, and his mother, and he jumped into a puddle and splashed his mother.
[00:20:26]  And she said, Why did you slap?
[00:20:28]  Why did you jump in that puddle?
[00:20:30]  My dress is ruined.
[00:20:32]  And he said, big smile, what puddle?
[00:20:35]  Right?
[00:20:36]  Like you didn't even see a puddle.
[00:20:37]  So intentionality matters in terms of repetition.
[00:20:41]  If somebody deliberately stomps on your foot, then they're a bit of a psycho-dangerous person, likely to do violence to you again.
[00:20:47]  Whereas if somebody accidentally steps on your foot, turns around, oh, blushes, I'm so sorry.
[00:20:52]  Are you okay?
[00:20:53]  I'm so sorry.
[00:20:54]  My fault.
[00:20:55]  I should have been holding on tighter or something like that.
[00:20:58]  Okay, so that kind of intentionality matters.
[00:21:01]  So if I'm getting angry at someone and they say, well, it was never my intention, right?
[00:21:06]  Then what they're trying to do is portray me as someone who is getting as angry at somebody who accidentally stepped, like they're trying to portray me as somebody who's getting as angry at somebody who accidentally stepped on my foot as somebody deliberately stomped on my foot.
[00:21:26]  They're trying to portray me or you or anyone as irrationally angry and overly volatile and mistaking something that is accidental for something that is intentional.
[00:21:37]  This is why I had no intention.
[00:21:39]  I didn't mean to blah, They're trying to portray you and they're trying to defuse your anger in a highly manipulative fashion.
[00:21:47]  And it's terrible behavior.
[00:21:50]  It's terrible behavior.
[00:21:51]  Because of course, when I asked the fellow on Friday, how do you know what your intentions are in the moment?
[00:21:57]  He said he didn't know.

=== Pretending to Know Nothing (08:17) ===

[00:21:59]  So again, that was more lying and more sophistry.
[00:22:01]  And the reason why that kind of person is an enemy to me, and not at the beginning, right?
[00:22:08]  Is that they say they're really into philosophy, highly manipulative, false, won't answer basic questions and focuses on irrelevant things.
[00:22:19]  And what does that do?
[00:22:21]  That smears and destroys the reputation of philosophy and makes the job of actual philosophers that much harder.
[00:22:30]  I mean, imagine if you wrote a fantastic diet book that, you know, really did nail all the basics and would really help people and get better health and longevity and live with less joint pain.
[00:22:41]  And, you know, a really fantastic diet book, just wonderful.
[00:22:45]  And let's say that some massive prior mukbang social media personality who weighed 350 pounds kept recommending your diet book while continuing to gain weight.
[00:22:59]  Right?
[00:23:00]  So 350 pounds, 360 pounds, 370 pounds.
[00:23:04]  And he keeps recommending your diet book.
[00:23:06]  Every show he holds up the diet book.
[00:23:08]  This looks the best diet book ever.
[00:23:10]  This is so effective.
[00:23:11]  This is so powerful.
[00:23:12]  I love this diet book.
[00:23:13]  And they keep gaining weight.
[00:23:15]  As the diet book author, what would you think of that person?
[00:23:19]  Well, it would be weird because they would be sabotaging your diet book.
[00:23:23]  And I feel the same way when people claim to be into philosophy, which, you know, among normies might give them a certain reputation.
[00:23:32]  Ah, a guy's really into philosophy.
[00:23:34]  Wow.
[00:23:35]  He's got to be really smart.
[00:23:36]  And then when such people will call him Bob, right?
[00:23:40]  Bob says, I'm really into philosophy.
[00:23:42]  And people are like, oh, that's really cool.
[00:23:44]  Do some philosophy for me.
[00:23:45]  Do it.
[00:23:46]  Well, Plato has this blah, And who knows if he's actually advocating values or removing values or there's a third way and blah, And what do people say?
[00:23:56]  Oh, my God, philosophy.
[00:23:59]  Well, I guess it's time.
[00:24:01]  I mean, I guess I'm not smart enough for it.
[00:24:04]  I don't really understand it.
[00:24:05]  It seems kind of boring.
[00:24:06]  I don't really get it.
[00:24:09]  And that is like the guy cruising past 400 pounds waving around your diet book, which is why I've always told people that if you don't want to live philosophy, please stop listening to the show.
[00:24:20]  Because if you don't, like if you don't want to do the diet and you're in fact gaining weight, please don't talk about how great my diet is, my diet book is.
[00:24:32]  If you're not going to live philosophy, please stop pretending.
[00:24:36]  Because if you have a chaotic, confused, lazy, bad, hedonistic life, if you have bad people in your life, and listen, it takes a while, so I'm not saying instantaneously, it takes a while to really understand philosophy.
[00:24:52]  I mean, it took me a long time to really begin to live philosophy.
[00:24:56]  But if you've listened to the show, I've given you enough shortcuts that you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
[00:25:01]  But please don't say you're into philosophy if you're not living philosophy.
[00:25:06]  That's like saying you're into a particular diet while not following it at all.
[00:25:12]  All you're doing is discrediting the diet and discrediting dieting as a whole.
[00:25:16]  So I think of this guy on Friday, he's 38 years old, 38 years old, never kissed a girl.
[00:25:22]  That's a song.
[00:25:23]  Not a criticism of him, although it may be true.
[00:25:27]  And I think of the two plus decades that he's been out in the world yammering on about philosophy for reasons of vanity at the expense of truth, virtue, and reason, making my job that much harder and the job of saving the world that much harder.
[00:25:49]  Because this guy has been boring and alienating people by yammering on about philosophy for 20, 25 years.
[00:25:58]  And then when someone else says, oh, hey, you should listen to this philosophy podcast.
[00:26:03]  What do they say?
[00:26:04]  Oh, God, no.
[00:26:06]  I've been listening to this guy talk about philosophy for 20 years.
[00:26:10]  I don't know what the hell he's talking about.
[00:26:12]  It seems completely boring and irrelevant.
[00:26:14]  Why would I want to do that voluntarily?
[00:26:17]  And the world loses another soul to the possibility of reason.
[00:26:22]  He is a kind of poison.
[00:26:26]  And what he does by being boring, irrelevant, manipulative, deceptive, is he is inoculating people against healthy doses of reason and evidence.
[00:26:42]  Now, he may not know this.
[00:26:44]  Doesn't really matter, so I don't read intentions in that way.
[00:26:49]  And even if somebody has no conscious intention but is manipulative and defensive, they're still responsible for that because they should have, over the 20 or 25 years they've been studying philosophy, they should have realized that they are manipulative and defensive and worked to change that.
[00:27:05]  In a time of plague, if you went around putting powder in people's drinks that rendered them allergic to the only medicine that would save them, that would be kind of murderous, right?
[00:27:19]  There's some virulent infection going around.
[00:27:24]  There's only one antibiotic that can save you from that infection.
[00:27:28]  It could cost you your life and limb.
[00:27:31]  And there's some guy out there mixing a powder into people's drinks that makes them allergic to the only antibiotic that can save them in a time of plague.
[00:27:41]  Wouldn't that piss you off?
[00:27:42]  Now, of course, I'm not calling the caller murderous or anything like that.
[00:27:45]  I'm just using that as an analogy.
[00:27:48]  But there's been a race.
[00:27:50]  So I've been almost 45 years promoting the virtue and value of philosophy 21 as a public figure.
[00:27:58]  And I'm racing not against those who are indifferent to philosophy, but those who work as hard as they can, consciously or unconsciously, it doesn't matter, to discredit philosophy.
[00:28:11]  And what's the best way to discredit philosophy?
[00:28:14]  It's to pretend to know it and do the opposite.
[00:28:17]  The best way to discredit a diet is not to ignore the diet or say, I don't know anything about it.
[00:28:22]  The best way to discredit a diet is to claim to follow it while gaining weight.
[00:28:26]  Say, oh my God, everybody I know who follows that diet puts on 50 pounds.
[00:28:32]  I'm not reading that diet book.
[00:28:33]  Every single person I know who's followed that diet has put on 50 or 100 pounds.
[00:28:38]  There's no way I'm following that diet.
[00:28:41]  Oh yeah, that guy I know who's really into philosophy.
[00:28:45]  I mean, he's kind of boring.
[00:28:47]  He's kind of manipulative, won't answer basic questions, talks about a whole bunch of things I don't even understand, and doesn't even seem to know that I don't understand them.
[00:28:56]  Like you have the responsibility.
[00:28:58]  This guy says he's really into Socrates and then starts off with the most obtruse abstractions that he refuses to define.
[00:29:04]  Well, Socrates never used the word epistemology or metaphysics.
[00:29:08]  Socrates always talked in the language of the common man, and that's the job of a philosopher.
[00:29:15]  Can you imagine going to a doctor saying, Doctor, how do I cure this illness?
[00:29:22]  And he gives you a five-minute lecture in Latin.
[00:29:25]  Be like, what?
[00:29:27]  Bro, what are you doing?
[00:29:29]  I don't speak Latin.
[00:29:31]  And you don't even seem to notice that I don't speak Latin.
[00:29:33]  And that's with technical terms.
[00:29:35]  That's why I always, I mean, I try.
[00:29:37]  I mean, it's not perfect, right?
[00:29:38]  But I always try to boil things down into practical, actionable plans, goals, insights, ideas, and so on.
[00:29:46]  So that's why I said Socrates didn't get angry enough.
[00:29:51]  And then on Friday night, you should go back and listen to the show.
[00:29:54]  It's March the 6th, 2026, the show.
[00:29:58]  FDRpodcasts.com.
[00:30:01]  Fight with listener is what you can search for.
[00:30:04]  That is the enemy.
[00:30:07]  Because that is why I remember from Bill and Ted's excellent adventure.
[00:30:14]  I think it was the first one.

=== Dentist Suicide and Income (08:55) ===

[00:30:16]  And it's funny because Freud, when they resurrect him, so to speak, Freud has interesting things to say about one of their relationships with their mom.
[00:30:26]  And Socrates looks like this completely dazed hippie.
[00:30:30]  And the Kansas song, Dust in the Wind, all we are is dust in the wind.
[00:30:35]  And yeah, man, dust in the wind.
[00:30:38]  Socrates just looked dazed.
[00:30:41]  And the only wisdom he could come up with was a cheesy 70s love song.
[00:30:46]  And that's the reputation that philosophy has because of people like that.
[00:30:50]  All right.
[00:30:50]  Thank you for your patience.
[00:30:53]  Reynard, if you are still with us.
[00:30:56]  Boy, that sounds a little sinister.
[00:30:58]  You wouldn't want that on the death ward, right?
[00:31:00]  If you're still with us, you can get your meds.
[00:31:03]  Yes, good morning.
[00:31:04]  How you doing?
[00:31:05]  Hi, how you doing?
[00:31:05]  Sorry for the delay.
[00:31:07]  If you don't mind, I have a couple personal questions of you.
[00:31:16]  Thinking back to the time when you were the platform, how did you feel specifically?
[00:31:26]  To have, I guess, a substantial decrease in your income, were you filled with fear or anxiety or frustration during that period of time?
[00:31:42]  What philosophical properties are what did you do philosophically to manage and cope and endure through that period of time?
[00:31:52]  Also, you've said in the past, you know, during that time frame, there were instances where, or you talked about how people didn't move one website or two websites over.
[00:32:08]  So to take the risk that you took in terms of talking about some of these topics and then people didn't follow you, didn't support you.
[00:32:18]  Did you have a strong sense of a sense of betrayal?
[00:32:24]  Did you, how did you not feel consumed by that?
[00:32:29]  And then the last question is, as a man, generally speaking, we have the instinct to want to provide.
[00:32:38]  So again, to have a substantial decrease in income, how did that affect you, your family, your psyche?
[00:32:46]  Did you have a sense of feeling less than?
[00:32:51]  Did that affect you in that way?
[00:32:52]  I mean, I know you have a great family, but sometimes as men, we put this pressure on ourselves to produce and provide.
[00:32:58]  And if you have a substantial decrease in income, how did you feel?
[00:33:02]  And how did you get through that whole circumstance?
[00:33:05]  I mean, I guess as a lesson for people going through hard times in their lives.
[00:33:10]  Yeah, so tell me a little bit about why you want to know all of this.
[00:33:18]  I guess that I've had some.
[00:33:21]  We talked a couple of weeks ago, and it was a conversation about Edenism.
[00:33:26]  We talked about my friend who was the dentist who basically was enjoying himself.
[00:33:33]  That sort of thing.
[00:33:34]  Yeah, the hedonist.
[00:33:35]  Yeah.
[00:33:35]  Yeah, the hedonist.
[00:33:36]  Yeah.
[00:33:36]  So, you know, I have sons and, you know, as a form of just giving advice when the going gets tough, how do you, how do you survive?
[00:33:46]  How do you get through it?
[00:33:47]  You know, and I've had, you know, periods of time where things were tough and, you know, how you get through it.
[00:33:55]  Also, during COVID, for example, there was a dentist around the corner from me that he was going through town and he was complaining about, I don't know what I'm going to do.
[00:34:06]  They're going to shut us down because we couldn't practice for a couple of months.
[00:34:10]  And he just picked up a gun and put it to his head and pulled the trigger.
[00:34:14]  That was it.
[00:34:15]  And I was looking into the story because some of my patients knew him.
[00:34:20]  I had a patient that was a neighbor.
[00:34:22]  And I was, I googled the story and I was looking into the story.
[00:34:26]  And I was reading a story about a dentist who had committed suicide.
[00:34:29]  And it was from 2019.
[00:34:31]  So this was another dentist that committed suicide the year before.
[00:34:36]  So dentists have a high suicide rate for sure.
[00:34:38]  Yeah, they have a high suicide rate.
[00:34:40]  So, you know, that sort of thing.
[00:34:41]  So, and I'm saying to myself, wow, you know, if I felt like if he had a loving family, why would you want to take your life away?
[00:34:49]  And he had children.
[00:34:50]  Why would you want to do that?
[00:34:51]  So, you know, what's the armor that you can use to prevent yourself from doing something like that when times get tough?
[00:35:00]  Right.
[00:35:01]  Now, what do you, I'm just sorry to not answer your question, but I just want to understand it a little bit more.
[00:35:09]  So, what do you think it's like to be on the receiving end of these kinds of questions?
[00:35:15]  Like, Steph, go back to a very dark time in your life and unpack it all for me.
[00:35:20]  Well, I'm just curious, maybe, but I'm just curious because to me, it's kind of like, let's say that, God forbid, right?
[00:35:29]  Let's say I'd lost my wife, right?
[00:35:31]  And I knew some public figure who'd lost his wife.
[00:35:36]  Then I would have a choice, right?
[00:35:37]  I could either call, and let's say I called up that public figure and I could say, you know, I've lost my wife.
[00:35:43]  This is really tough for me.
[00:35:44]  Can I talk about it?
[00:35:45]  And then that other person hopefully would say, yes, you can talk about it and so on, right?
[00:35:50]  And then maybe they'd share some of their own insights.
[00:35:53]  But to call up the public figure and to say, I want you to go and relive losing your wife for my benefit is interesting.
[00:36:03]  I'm not saying it's bad, but it's interesting, right?
[00:36:07]  So rather than come with a specific problem that I can solve, it's like, Steph, I want you to go and unpack a very difficult time in your life.
[00:36:14]  And I have no particular problem doing it, just so you know.
[00:36:18]  But it's an interesting approach.
[00:36:21]  Rather than saying, I lost my wife, here's the challenges that I have.
[00:36:26]  It's like, oh, public figure, could you go into great and grueling detail and relive the experience of losing your wife for my benefit?
[00:36:34]  Does that make sense?
[00:36:35]  Like, it's interesting because if there's a specific, and listen, I don't mind talking about it, but if there's a specific problem that you have, it might be more helpful to talk about that specific problem rather than the kind of scattershot of, you know, Steph, tell me about, you know, one of the most difficult times in your life, and maybe I'll find something in your flurry of words that can apply to my situation.
[00:37:02]  It's sort of like going to a doctor with a specific complaint and then say, talk about health in general, and maybe I can find something to address my specific complaint, if that makes sense.
[00:37:13]  Is there something more specific?
[00:37:14]  And again, I won't say I'm happy to talk about it.
[00:37:17]  I could talk about it.
[00:37:18]  But if there's something more specific, then I would probably tailor what I'm responding to to something more specific rather than a, I mean, I could talk for hours and hours about that process and that time.
[00:37:32]  And then hoping that you're going to find something of value in that is pretty optimistic, if that makes sense.
[00:37:39]  Okay.
[00:37:39]  So then let's turn it around and let's just talk about, or I'll phrase it, how do you, how does one deal with anxiety?
[00:37:50]  So you just mentioned the overall rate of suicide is higher for dentists.
[00:37:56]  So for example, you know, I have a practice, I own a practice, and even I would say a month ago, about a month ago, the company that handles my deposits, they were hacked.
[00:38:12]  So it's going on a month that some of my payments have not been coming into the office.
[00:38:18]  So it just seems like there's always something.
[00:38:21]  And, you know, as a dentist, and we were similar in the sense that we sort of eat what we kill.
[00:38:27]  So if I don't go in and produce dentistry, I don't make any money.
[00:38:31]  So you have that constant pressure.
[00:38:34]  If you're not feeling well, you have to power through, you have to work, you have to produce, you have to provide, you have to make sure you meet payroll.
[00:38:42]  It's a constant thing.
[00:38:44]  And I guess I asked you the question more so because it seems like you went through a tough time and you're still going.
[00:38:54]  And I guess trying to figure out how do you do it?
[00:38:59]  How do you do it?
[00:39:00]  And I guess maybe not so much to judge up uncomfortable memories, but how did you get through it?
[00:39:07]  And, you know, what did you do to keep on going every single day?

=== Minimizing Costs for Savings (04:57) ===

[00:39:12]  Right.
[00:39:12]  So with regards to anxiety, there are and all intelligent people have the challenge of anxiety because intelligence evolves to deal with anxiety and therefore anxiety has to be present in order for intelligence to deal with it.
[00:39:32]  The anxiety fundamentally for northern climate people comes from having to survive winter.
[00:39:38]  And do I have enough food for winter?
[00:39:40]  There's anxiety about that.
[00:39:42]  So intelligence and anxiety kind of go hand in hand.
[00:39:47]  And I don't know if you've ever known people who aren't smart.
[00:39:49]  Lord knows I grew up with some, but people who aren't smart act out their emotions, but they don't tend to suffer from anxiety very much.
[00:39:58]  And so anxiety is founded on, am I prepared?
[00:40:02]  Now, for myself, I was aware that deplatforming was going on.
[00:40:10]  Andrew Englin, I think, was number one.
[00:40:13]  And then it happened to Alex Jones.
[00:40:16]  And Mike Cernovich's movie got yanked from Amazon.
[00:40:20]  Even the people who bought it no longer had access to it.
[00:40:22]  HoaxedMovie.com.
[00:40:24]  You should check it out.
[00:40:24]  It's a great movie.
[00:40:25]  I happen to be in it, but it's a great movie.
[00:40:28]  And so that was a genuine risk.
[00:40:33]  And if it was going to happen, it was going to happen in 2020 because it was an election year in the United States.
[00:40:43]  And the left really, really wanted to open the borders and go after their enemies.
[00:40:51]  So for me, I was like, okay, well, save money.
[00:40:57]  Have money.
[00:40:58]  This is something that, you know, nuts in the winter, for squirrels storing up nuts in the winter.
[00:41:04]  And I was always told have at least six months of savings on hand.
[00:41:08]  This was true in the business world.
[00:41:09]  It's true in the personal world.
[00:41:11]  You may have noticed that I have not spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a studio.
[00:41:17]  Now, that's no disrespect to people who've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on studios.
[00:41:22]  I think they look very nice.
[00:41:24]  But I have not, and one of the reasons for that is to make sure I have savings.
[00:41:32]  I tend to use old computers, the computer that I use for my call-in shows when I'm not doing video.
[00:41:40]  I can tell because of the first update, it's almost 10 years old.
[00:41:46]  And I have tried to minimize costs, drive a secondhand car, and so on.
[00:41:53]  And so I have tried to minimize costs.
[00:41:55]  So when I had a bit more income, I worked hard to pay down mortgages and other things to have a lower overhead, so to speak.
[00:42:06]  So for me, knowing that there was this risk that winter is coming, I saved money.
[00:42:13]  And so it was not a matter of could I eat when the deplatforming hit, but I had some savings.
[00:42:21]  And so it wasn't an emergency in terms of survivability.
[00:42:25]  And it's the same thing in business.
[00:42:27]  In my personal opinion, you should not have a business where if you don't get paid for a month, the business is threatened.
[00:42:34]  You should have lines of credit.
[00:42:36]  And I'm sure you do, right?
[00:42:37]  But this is just for others, right?
[00:42:38]  If you're thinking of this, cash flow is everything in business.
[00:42:41]  Most businesses fail because of cash flow issues.
[00:42:44]  In other words, they have money coming in, but it doesn't come in for another month or two, but you need to meet payroll every two weeks and you got your monthly rent and other things.
[00:42:54]  And so lines of credit.
[00:42:57]  This came across to me very vividly in the business world where I had to sign big lines of credit personally.
[00:43:02]  Like if the business failed, I would be on the hook for an ungodly amount of money just to cover payroll until because a lot of corporations have 30, 60, 90 day payments.
[00:43:12]  So you might not get paid for three months, which is six payroll cycles that you have to cover.
[00:43:18]  So one way to deal with anxiety is to make sure that you have savings.
[00:43:25]  When I first started to make some money in the business world, I hoarded it because I liked being able to have that cushion.
[00:43:33]  Now, I know there's inflation and so on.
[00:43:35]  I get all of that, but this is just the sort of the basic, the basic numbers.
[00:43:39]  And I knew someone in the business world in a different field.
[00:43:44]  He also started to make money, and all he did was up his spending.
[00:43:49]  He made more money.
[00:43:50]  He got a more expensive car.
[00:43:52]  He made more money.
[00:43:53]  He went on more vacations.
[00:43:54]  He made more money.
[00:43:56]  He upped his entire wardrobe.
[00:43:58]  He made more money.
[00:43:59]  He bought, oh, gosh, what was it?
[00:44:00]  He bought, oh, yeah, he bought this big giant marble table of all the things.
[00:44:04]  A big giant marble table.
[00:44:06]  It actually had a crack on one side, and people were afraid to sit on that side.

=== Escaping Current Events Treadmill (10:06) ===

[00:44:09]  But anyway.
[00:44:11]  And I remember saying to this fellow, don't you're not any wealthier if you just spend more money.
[00:44:20]  If you double your income and you double your expenditures, you're not any wealthier.
[00:44:26]  You're still riding paycheck to paycheck.
[00:44:28]  And the paycheck to paycheck thing, I can't stand it.
[00:44:31]  So I had some cushion.
[00:44:33]  And I worked to get people over to the new site.
[00:44:39]  I worked to provide more core value and I worked to service a smaller audience.
[00:44:45]  So it's the old jazz club versus stadiums analogy that I've used before.
[00:44:51]  And for me, what I had to do was relentlessly look for the positives and say, okay, so I am liberated from politics.
[00:45:04]  Now, I left politics before the deplatforming.
[00:45:08]  I mean, I could see which way the world was going, at least in the short run.
[00:45:12]  And so there are some things where it's just a negative, right?
[00:45:17]  But there are other things where you can extract it positive from the negative.
[00:45:21]  And for me, it was like, so I had been on this treadmill of politics, of truth about presentations.
[00:45:29]  I was reading, you know, four to six books a week in order to do interviews with subject matter experts and not sound like a complete idiot.
[00:45:37]  I mean, only a partial idiot, but not a complete idiot.
[00:45:40]  And it was a lot of work.
[00:45:41]  And that work, I mean, I'm glad I did it.
[00:45:44]  I think it was productive in the world.
[00:45:45]  It's created a good library of expertise.
[00:45:48]  But I was liberated from that.
[00:45:52]  I was liberated from that.
[00:45:53]  And I could work on things that I prefer.
[00:45:56]  I mean, when I was younger, of course, I was in the arts.
[00:46:00]  I wanted to be a novelist, a poet, a playwright, maybe do some acting.
[00:46:04]  And I explored all of those things.
[00:46:05]  I went to the national theater school, studied acting, playwriting, produced a play, produced a short movie, and so on.
[00:46:12]  And I love the arts.
[00:46:14]  I mean, I remember many years ago when I was talking to someone and saying, I can't decide whether I want to do acting or I want to do writing.
[00:46:24]  And this person said to me, I mean, it's not hard to make the decision.
[00:46:28]  When you go home and you have some time, what do you do?
[00:46:30]  Do you work on accents?
[00:46:31]  Do you work on audition pieces?
[00:46:33]  Do you work on sword fighting?
[00:46:34]  Do you learn on, like, do you learn acting skills?
[00:46:37]  I said, no, no, no, I write.
[00:46:39]  I said, well, that's what you should do then.
[00:46:42]  And that was, in fact, correct, right?
[00:46:45]  When you have liberty from constraints.
[00:46:48]  Like, if I have some free time, when I was younger, I had free time.
[00:46:50]  I didn't work on my acting skills.
[00:46:52]  I worked on my writing skills.
[00:46:53]  That's what I preferred to do.
[00:46:55]  So I did that and focused on writing, which turned out to be a lot better.
[00:46:59]  I mean, the acting training certainly helped with the role-playing that I do, with some of the dialogues that I do.
[00:47:07]  It certainly helped with writing articles in books.
[00:47:11]  And so with the deplatforming, I said, I have been freed from politics.
[00:47:16]  I have been freed from current events.
[00:47:18]  I've been freed from subject matter experts because, you know, I felt during the time of deplatforming that it would be kind of unfair to ask people to come onto my show without saying, oh, by the way, you know, there's my reputation.
[00:47:33]  And so I didn't want to sort of inflict or impose that splash damage on people.
[00:47:38]  So as you can see, with a few exceptions, I stopped doing interviews.
[00:47:43]  And it wasn't because people were saying no.
[00:47:46]  It was because I stopped asking because I felt that would be kind of unfair.
[00:47:50]  Like I either say, you know, here's all the considerations you need to take into account, which is putting them in an awkward position because they're probably going to say no.
[00:47:58]  Or I don't.
[00:48:00]  Sorry, I need you to mute while we're talking.
[00:48:03]  So, or I focus on other things.
[00:48:07]  So basically, it was like, okay, so I'm off the treadmill.
[00:48:10]  I now get to do what I want with my time.
[00:48:13]  And so I started getting into core philosophy.
[00:48:15]  And I've written four books since 2021.
[00:48:20]  Summer of 2020 was the first round of deplatforming.
[00:48:24]  And I have written, yeah, four books.
[00:48:28]  So I've written my novel The Future, which is my answer to 1984.
[00:48:33]  I've written my novel The Present, which is the trend of current events.
[00:48:39]  I've written two versions of peaceful parenting, the long version and the shortened version.
[00:48:46]  And I've written a novel called Dissolution.
[00:48:50]  And I'm currently working on a very great book that I want to write next.
[00:48:56]  I'm working on the plot outline.
[00:48:58]  It is a cheesy romance story that turns into a thriller.
[00:49:03]  And that would be, I've never written anything like that before.
[00:49:05]  So to me, I always like to write something new.
[00:49:08]  I couldn't do this copy-paste Stephen King stuff to save my life.
[00:49:11]  So I also thought, and I talked about this before, that the current event stuff, while interesting, had a very limited shelf life.
[00:49:20]  And as I've used the analogy before, or the example, not really the analogy, but the example of Mark Twain.
[00:49:28]  Mark Twain wrote newspaper column for decades.
[00:49:30]  Nobody cares about it anymore, but the novels he wrote are still being read.
[00:49:34]  And so I thought, okay, so this is a way to get me off the treadmill of current events, which has more influence in the present, but less influence in the future, and work on core philosophy, which is going to have less effect on the present, but more effect in the future.
[00:49:49]  And I thought, you know, if Plato had spent all of his time commenting on the politics of the day, nobody would really care about that anymore.
[00:49:56]  But because Plato wrote and Aristotle wrote detailed treatises on philosophy, their work remains relevant to today.
[00:50:05]  So I just viewed it as, and there was a shock.
[00:50:07]  And just because, you know, even if you're waiting for it to happen, you know, part of you thinks it might not.
[00:50:13]  And when it does, there's still a little bit of a shock.
[00:50:17]  And I just had to work and say, okay, well, I have done my work.
[00:50:23]  And the world in itself, like, I know this sounds cheesy and I'm not a Hegelian this way, but if I sort of analogize it to myself this way and said, look, the world spirit wants me to do something other than current events, current events and politics.
[00:50:40]  And I think about the future.
[00:50:41]  What do people 500 years from now want me to be working on today?
[00:50:46]  Do they want me to be working on current events which are irrelevant to them or on core philosophical principles that might liberate the world over time?
[00:50:55]  And of course, if you look at people 500 years in the future and looking back, which is part of what I was doing with my novel, The Future, and they would say, don't work on current events, don't work on politics.
[00:51:07]  What you should do is you should work on core philosophical principles, individual human liberation, peaceful parenting, and so on.
[00:51:15]  And that way, if people call you up and they're bad parents and they've been listening to your show for a while, also I do get the additional benefit of saying, have you read Peaceful Parenting?
[00:51:25]  And if they haven't, I can be a bit more strict with them than if they have.
[00:51:29]  So, and then, of course, seeing the hammer that came down on a lot of people post-2020 and being out of that arena was a value, right?
[00:51:39]  I mean, as I've mentioned before, many times Plato got involved in politics, ran for office, ended up being captured and sold into slavery, and would have died a slave if a former student of his happened to, hadn't happened to see him on the auction and bought him and set him free.
[00:51:58]  I don't know if my enemies are doing me harm or good.
[00:52:05]  I don't know.
[00:52:05]  Like, it's the old thought, like, if in the movie Titanic, Jack, if I remember rightly, it's been forever since I've seen it.
[00:52:13]  But in the movie Titanic, Jack wins in a card game.
[00:52:16]  He wins a ticket on the Titanic, and he's very happy.
[00:52:21]  And the guy who lost the ticket is very unhappy.
[00:52:25]  Man, it's the world's most famous ship.
[00:52:28]  It's a floating paradise.
[00:52:30]  And I can't be on the voyage.
[00:52:32]  And he's very unhappy, very angry.
[00:52:34]  But was it the Chinese guy who was asked, what do you think of the French Revolution?
[00:52:39]  And he says it's too soon to tell.
[00:52:41]  It's hard to know whether your enemies are doing you harm or good.
[00:52:48]  So let's say you have an enemy who steals your ticket on the Titanic.
[00:52:53]  And you're angry and you're, I paid a huge fortune for this.
[00:52:57]  And I've been looking forward to this voyage for six months.
[00:52:59]  And it's going to be the memory of a lifetime.
[00:53:01]  And blah, And you're really angry at your enemy because he told your ticket to the Titanic.
[00:53:05]  And then, of course, you read about the sinking of the Titanic and the fact that the majority of women were saved, the majority of men died because patriarchy.
[00:53:16]  And then you thank your enemy for stealing your ticket.
[00:53:19]  And your enemy gnashes his teeth because he was hoping to harm you, but he in fact saved your life.
[00:53:25]  So when people act against me, I don't know if they're doing me harm or they're doing me good.
[00:53:32]  I also know, and the last thing I'll say, and some of the harm or good that they have done to me is up to me.
[00:53:42]  So if I'd have said, oh, you know, they erased my life's work and my income has crashed and viewership has crashed and so on, right?
[00:53:50]  I mean, there were times after deplatforming when I was like, I would live stream to 10,000 people, blah, blah, blah.
[00:53:56]  And there were times after deplatforming, I was live streaming to 20 people.
[00:54:00]  And I can say, oh, my gosh, that's a catastrophe.
[00:54:03]  It's the worst thing ever.
[00:54:05]  And I can't win against evildoers and it's also unfair and unjust.
[00:54:09]  And that would be giving a victory to the enemies of reason that I don't owe them.

=== Deplatforming Future Benefits (03:50) ===

[00:54:16]  It'd be like if some guy says, give me all the money in your wallet, and you have $100 in your wallet.
[00:54:21]  You give him the $100.
[00:54:22]  You've got a knife to your ribs or whatever, right?
[00:54:24]  Give them the $100, right?
[00:54:25]  And then you say, oh, listen, hey, by the way, I've got another $100 tucked in my shoe.
[00:54:29]  I'm going to give that to you as well.
[00:54:31]  Well, that wouldn't make any sense, right?
[00:54:33]  So, you know, if your enemies get you deplatformed, okay, they've got that, right?
[00:54:38]  They've got that.
[00:54:39]  Is that a victory or a loss?
[00:54:41]  Hard to say.
[00:54:42]  It's too soon to tell.
[00:54:43]  I think it's going to be a victory for the future, though it certainly is a cost of the present.
[00:54:48]  But if somebody's robbing me of $100, I'll give them the $100, but I won't give them the other $100 I have hidden in my shoe.
[00:54:56]  And so I don't surrender more than I have to to people who've done me wrong.
[00:55:02]  In other words, I won't surrender that which I have control over, my mindset, my focus, my energy.
[00:55:08]  I had more fun and more enjoyment and a richer experience writing three novels in peaceful parenting.
[00:55:16]  I love writing novels than I did interviewing subject matter experts on various social, political, and psychological subjects.
[00:55:28]  Because when I interview people, I'm asking them some questions, but it's mostly them talking, which is fine.
[00:55:33]  That's the deal, right?
[00:55:34]  But I wasn't getting my own voice out.
[00:55:37]  And I think I'm too high a horsepower intellectual to simply be teeing up questions for people for them to answer.
[00:55:44]  I have better and deeper insights to bring to bear.
[00:55:47]  So I think that the future benefits more from getting me out of politics.
[00:55:51]  I think the future benefits more from getting me out of the interview game.
[00:55:55]  The future benefits more from peacefulparenting.com.
[00:55:59]  And I benefit more from life post-deplatforming because it liberates me to work on stuff that I like, that I think is powerful and important, and rich and deep, and which is better for the future.
[00:56:12]  So, yeah, I had to surrender.
[00:56:14]  I don't know.
[00:56:14]  I can't remember if I ever did the count, but I probably got banned from like 15 different platforms and payment processors.
[00:56:21]  And the other thing, so I mean, I have to surrender that.
[00:56:24]  I can't change that.
[00:56:25]  I can't control that.
[00:56:26]  But I can control how I process.
[00:56:30]  And jumping to conclusions about whether it's a good or bad thing is premature.
[00:56:36]  It ended up for me being a good thing.
[00:56:38]  And the last thing, well, two things, and I'll keep them brief.
[00:56:41]  Number one was, of course, I was working very hard on the show in its heyday.
[00:56:45]  I think Tim Poole was talking about working 16 hours a day.
[00:56:48]  Now, I wasn't quite working 16 hours a day, but it's pretty hard work.
[00:56:51]  And what the deplatforming gave me, my daughter was deplatformed when she was 12 or so.
[00:56:58]  So what deplatforming gave me was five years of far more time with my daughter because she's going to be 18 this year and so on, right?
[00:57:06]  So when I look back on my life, would I say, gee, if I hadn't been deplatformed, I'd have some more money, I'd have some more risk, I'd have some more fame, and I would have spent far less time with my daughter and my wife and my friends.
[00:57:26]  And I wouldn't have written these books, which I think are great and which will have good and positive effects on the future.
[00:57:34]  But I think about, well, I could have had more fame and money and audience size, but then, you know, the hundreds of thousands of children who aren't getting hit because I wrote peaceful parenting, well, they'd be getting hit.
[00:57:47]  And would I trade that?
[00:57:48]  No.
[00:57:49]  I don't see how peaceful parenting would have been written if I hadn't been deplatformed because I was too busy with other things.
[00:57:55]  And then last but not least, the same factors that drove deplatforming also drove the increase of the price of Bitcoin and other cryptos.

=== How Response Controls Anxiety (03:39) ===

[00:58:06]  So I hope that helps.
[00:58:08]  That's my sort of general thoughts on the matter.
[00:58:10]  And it's all yours.
[00:58:12]  Yeah, I mean, it helps.
[00:58:16]  I think what you're saying, partially having a little bit more of an attitude of gratitude will help.
[00:58:24]  Obviously, you know, saving and preparing, that helps with the anxiety.
[00:58:31]  And sometimes when you have things that happen to you, it's how you actually respond to it, that, you know, having more control of how you respond will also help tamp down the anxiety.
[00:58:44]  So yeah, sure, it helps.
[00:58:45]  But I always go back and I'm going to go back and listen to what you said and relate to the show and, you know, apply it even more.
[00:58:53]  But thank you.
[00:58:54]  You're very welcome.
[00:58:55]  You're very welcome.
[00:58:56]  Yeah, I don't know if animes are enemies or confused friends, if that makes sense.
[00:59:03]  All right.
[00:59:03]  I appreciate that.
[00:59:04]  And if anybody else wants to have questions or comments or issues, don't forget.
[00:59:07]  I've had some signups and I appreciate that.
[00:59:10]  It's a rare thing.
[00:59:10]  And really, for the first 20 years, I've been way overbooked.
[00:59:14]  But I have some space coming up.
[00:59:16]  Freedomain.com slash call, public or private call-ins.
[00:59:19]  You owe it to yourself.
[00:59:21]  If you have challenges or problems, as we all do in life, freedomain.com slash call.
[00:59:25]  Free for public, paid for private.
[00:59:27]  And I am overjoyed.
[00:59:30]  I love the call-in shows.
[00:59:31]  And of course, the other thing is that the call-in shows didn't diminish anyway.
[00:59:34]  And I think the call-in shows certainly they tend to be the most popular things that are occurring in the show.
[00:59:43]  People love the call-in shows, and I like them too.
[00:59:45]  I did one, gosh, what was it yesterday?
[00:59:47]  Yeah, three and a half hours.
[00:59:49]  Three and a half hours.
[00:59:50]  So I love the call-in shows.
[00:59:52]  I think they're great.
[00:59:52]  I love having those practical conversations with people about how virtues and values can shape their lives for the better.
[01:00:01]  And they're very helpful to others.
[01:00:03]  It's funny because, and of course, it's a bit of a self-selecting group, but the people who call in for the call-in shows say, oh, I've been listening to call-in shows.
[01:00:11]  They're the greatest.
[01:00:11]  But I also did a survey.
[01:00:13]  And maybe I'll go over the details of that survey for donors.
[01:00:16]  But I did a survey on what people like and don't like and prefer and don't prefer about what it is that I do.
[01:00:22]  And the call-in shows rank always, always, always very high in what people like.
[01:00:30]  And it is a very unique thing.
[01:00:33]  I don't think in the history of philosophy, in any way, shape, or form, I don't think anything like the free domain call-in shows have ever existed.
[01:00:45]  They are an absolutely unique phenomenon in the history of philosophy because the Socratic dialogues is an expert proving that people who claim expertise aren't in fact experts, that they are claiming to have a knowledge that they don't have.
[01:01:03]  And so that is the dismantling of a vanity that is the Socratic dialogues.
[01:01:10]  There are, of course, philosophers who are constantly writing treatises and endless books, often filled with technical, dense verbiage that is largely impenetrable to the general population.
[01:01:22]  And I've done some of that, essential philosophy, everyday anarchy, practical anarchy, on truth, the tyranny, evolution.
[01:01:30]  But applying universal abstract ethics to detailed and specific life problems has never before occurred, to my knowledge, in any significant public way, at least, in the history of philosophy.

=== Socratic Dialogues on Vacation (03:19) ===

[01:01:45]  And it could not have occurred in the absence of the internet.
[01:01:51]  And it's funny, I was just thinking the other day.
[01:01:53]  So after high school, as you die, I went and worked in northern Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan as a gold panel and prospector.
[01:02:02]  And I remember being in Thunder Bay.
[01:02:05]  I spent some time in Thunder Bay.
[01:02:07]  Would go out into the bush and collect our samples, and then we would go back to a town, rent a warehouse, and process them, which means to pan them down and look for traces or indications of gold in the samples.
[01:02:20]  And I would go to bars.
[01:02:23]  A shower, a shite, and a shave is what we would talk about, right?
[01:02:26]  So I would go to bars.
[01:02:28]  And I remember going to a bar in Thunder Bay.
[01:02:33]  And there was this very pretty young woman, and I was chatting away with her and so on.
[01:02:38]  And she mentioned something about her mother and something negative.
[01:02:42]  And I remember asking her a bunch of questions about her mother to the point where she said she had to talk to someone else.
[01:02:50]  And I kept waiting for her to come back.
[01:02:52]  Of course, she did come back because she didn't want to poke around those particular things.
[01:02:57]  I remember being on vacation with a friend of mine in the Dominican Republic and meeting and chatting with three girls.
[01:03:07]  And one of them, I remember her talking about how after her mother hit menopause, her mother turned into a real witch and left, like had an affair and left her father, who she loved, and so on.
[01:03:24]  And then she herself ended up bleeding in intimate places.
[01:03:29]  And I remember saying, it's almost like your body was making up for the menopause.
[01:03:33]  Like your mother stopped having periods, you had extra bleeding, and so on, right?
[01:03:38]  And these, and of course, you know, she's on vacation.
[01:03:41]  Now, she actually, we did have a good conversation about things and she appreciated it.
[01:03:46]  But this is something I was in my teens doing this stuff, right?
[01:03:51]  I don't come to this without preparation.
[01:03:53]  You know, it's that Huey Lewis, right?
[01:03:56]  The 10-year overnight success that Huey Lewis, I mean, he was in Marrakech doing the harmonica when he was in his late teens.
[01:04:05]  He was a brilliant guy, by the way, Huey Lewis, like very high SATs, accepted to universities and so on, but decided to go and travel the world and rambled about in music.
[01:04:14]  And it took him 10 years to become a success.
[01:04:18]  I had been doing philosophy in conversation with people for 20, more than 20 years before I started doing it publicly.
[01:04:27]  So it was pretty easy for me to slide into that role, so to speak.
[01:04:32]  It was pretty easy.
[01:04:34]  And it came about entirely really by accident.
[01:04:36]  It was not a plan of mine.
[01:04:38]  I started doing these philosophical roundtables on Skype way back in the day.
[01:04:43]  There used to be a Skype room where you could, like this, you could sort of let people talk or not talk.
[01:04:48]  And bring me your questions.
[01:04:50]  And boom, the personal questions just came flowing in.
[01:04:54]  And because I had been doing it for over 20 years, before people asked me in public, I was pretty fluid at doing that on the fly because I had been doing it for so long.

=== Individual Responsibility in Law (15:11) ===

[01:05:05]  And it's not therapy, of course, because therapy is not foundationally moral.
[01:05:10]  And it's not about philosophical principles.
[01:05:13]  So, yeah, the things that people like the most kind of came about almost by accident and without preparation, as a lot of good things in life seem to come about that way.
[01:05:26]  All right.
[01:05:26]  Let's see.
[01:05:27]  Is there any other questions, comments, issues, challenges that people have?
[01:05:30]  Oh, you're just loving the sound of my dulcet tones this morning, which is fine.
[01:05:34]  We don't have to have a long show.
[01:05:36]  I mean, I was going to sound funny.
[01:05:38]  I was going to do it at 10 o'clock this morning because if I wake up and I have like an hour or two until the show, it's kind of like a little void, you know, like those little landings at the tops of stairs and hum houses, some houses you don't really know what to do with.
[01:05:51]  My wife is like, no, no, we lose an hour.
[01:05:54]  So I made it.
[01:05:55]  All right.
[01:05:55]  So, yeah, we don't have to have a long show.
[01:05:57]  I appreciate it.
[01:05:57]  Oh, wait, we have somebody.
[01:05:59]  Yes.
[01:06:00]  All right.
[01:06:01]  J-O-S.
[01:06:02]  I'm not even going to try and pronounce that face plant of keyboard syllables.
[01:06:07]  If you want to tell me what's on your mind, I love to chat.
[01:06:11]  But you will need to unmute.
[01:06:14]  My question has been: is the Constitution of 1789 evidence of fraud covering treason during wartime?
[01:06:27]  All right.
[01:06:28]  Tell me a little bit more about what you're talking about.
[01:06:31]  Well, the most obvious answer, if you study it, is yes, because in order to get that majority rule enforced, they had to put in the statement other persons to hide by fraud that what they were actually doing was kidnapping and profiting from kidnapping.
[01:06:57]  Okay, so sorry, I mean, you're going to have to back up and at least tell the audience, I know a little bit about this, but probably not enough to be of any particular value.
[01:07:06]  So why don't you, you know, feel free, take the time, make the case, but make the case, of course, talking to an audience without knowledge.
[01:07:13]  I mean, it's one of the challenges when you have a lot of knowledge is to remember that most people don't.
[01:07:18]  So if you could sort of make the case, take your time, I would appreciate that.
[01:07:22]  Yeah, the problems today, a lot of people will see that there are people in office that get away with crimes and nobody does anything about it.
[01:07:34]  Well, the problem is, if you trace it back to when the problem started, as I did, you'll find that it started in 1789 when instead of using common law, what was put into play was something called civil law, which is the old Roman dictatorship.
[01:07:58]  So the reason why I frame the question that way is to try to eliminate any arguments having to do with people wanting to do something and not having any lawful way to do something.
[01:08:21]  What you find is it's actually mandated that you should volunteer to put on trial anybody that has produced evidence of any crime, including fraud.
[01:08:40]  So you can see that in the past, when the British were attempting to kidnap or enslave people in America, what they did was they used a system called civil law.
[01:08:59]  So what the Americans did was they regained their power, which is individual.
[01:09:08]  It's an individual responsibility to be lawful.
[01:09:12]  And they regained their power to use the law to discover and then move forward the discovery of evidence of a crime such as fraud or such as fraud covering treason.
[01:09:28]  And there was actual treason trials where people that were choosing to aid and abet the criminal aggressive British actually went on trial and there were trial transcripts then.
[01:09:43]  So when that changed and then no longer are individuals empowered with the law was 1789.
[01:09:52]  And that was very easily shown with the predicted change that would happen by such people as George Mason and Richard Henry Lee describing exactly what would happen if you change the government from a federation of republic.
[01:10:13]  Flex 2.
[01:10:14]  to a nation state, you would then lose your ability to enforce the law.
[01:10:22]  And instead, the civil rulers will take you, if you dare to question their authority, into their courts.
[01:10:33]  And that prediction came true in the form of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which was along the predicted line of what happens when a government that is lawful turns into a despotic government.
[01:10:55]  So this is all just so obvious to me, it becomes very difficult for me to become the whistleblower because nobody will listen.
[01:11:11]  And I don't understand why.
[01:11:13]  Okay, so if you were to do the elevator pitch, what is it that you would like to get across to people that you want them to hear?
[01:11:21]  Well, what I think people need to understand is that the law is internal, not external.
[01:11:29]  So the first thing that they have to do is try the case internally.
[01:11:34]  then if that's done successfully, what then happens is what do I have at my disposal when I become lawful?
[01:11:43]  And the first thing that...
[01:11:45]  Okay, sorry, sorry.
[01:11:46]  I don't know.
[01:11:47]  You're going to have to be more specific.
[01:11:50]  So when you say the law is internal, not external, what do you mean?
[01:11:54]  Well, if you're going to try a case like you are suffering at the hands of somebody else, what do you do when you become the law rather than you asking somebody else to be the law for you?
[01:12:14]  Well, if you try the case and you become the law internally, then the first thing that you're going to realize is that you don't have access to the law.
[01:12:23]  And then that is actually a known situation that causes people to come up with organically what is called a notice of liability or a defiance, which is the basis for actually a Declaration of Independence.
[01:12:46]  Okay.
[01:12:47]  I think I'm starting to follow.
[01:12:49]  So are you saying that if you decide to be a vigilante and take the law into your own hands, you no longer have access to the law of the courts?
[01:12:57]  Well, that would assume that the word vigilante isn't carrying the extra baggage of doing something unlawful.
[01:13:05]  No, no, I get that.
[01:13:06]  I mean, let's just say that vigilante is simply, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing something immoral.
[01:13:12]  I mean, if you see someone rape your children, God forbid, right?
[01:13:20]  And then the courts set them free, and then you punish that person in some manner, we could make a case that that is moral and that the court is failing.
[01:13:28]  But of course, if you punish this person who's been set free by the courts, then the courts will come after you or could come after you and probably will if you're found out.
[01:13:37]  And so is it, I'm not, when I say vigilante, I don't necessarily mean that it's immoral in terms of UPP, but so you're saying that if people take the law into their own hands, they don't have access to the law of the courts, which is true, right?
[01:13:52]  No, there's two systems.
[01:13:54]  There's one system that is a civil law system, and it's dependent entirely upon fraud.
[01:14:00]  And then the other system is a court of law.
[01:14:03]  And a court of law is a system where you can trace this, and I've traced this back to wherever it emerges organically from grassroots, from Roman times, Greek times, Saxon times, English times before and after the Romans were there.
[01:14:22]  And what happens is the group, wherever the location is, decides to form offices such as grand juror, trial juror, private prosecutor.
[01:14:38]  And if they have a government, then the government has people like coroners, sheriffs.
[01:14:44]  And if there's a judge, then the judge will be there only to teach the law.
[01:14:49]  And that's when things start becoming civil law, because what will happen is the judge will then overstep, overreach, and start dictating rules, which the common law judge, that's not what they're there for.
[01:15:08]  What they're there for is to teach the law.
[01:15:10]  And if something is a lawful order, it is a product of a private prosecutor or it is the product of a grand juror subject to the votes of the grand jury and only limited to whether or not a set of evidence passes probable cause.
[01:15:31]  They don't try cases.
[01:15:33]  And then if you have a trial juror, then they issue lawful orders that are bring me more evidence or this matter is now probably past probable cause.
[01:15:46]  So they'll send something over to the grand jury to have the grand jury do something with it.
[01:15:51]  And for example, if you have a case like, let's say the Zenger case, which is a classic example of what would be the mixing of common law with civil law or the overreaching of what a judge will do.
[01:16:16]  In that case, what it was was civil law not being overruled by common law yet to the point where Zenger was criticizing the government.
[01:16:32]  So the governor had him arrested, which is something that you can't do in common law.
[01:16:38]  Common law, you don't arrest somebody.
[01:16:40]  You offer them the opportunity to redeem themselves in a court of law.
[01:16:47]  And then if they don't accept that, if they don't agree to that, then if they're still out there producing evidence of harm, then an arrest warrant is put out so that they're not kidnapped.
[01:17:03]  They're contained so that they don't do any more harm so that the trial transcripts get published so that the public knows the whole truth about what they did.
[01:17:14]  So it's hard to explain all of this for, you know, I don't know.
[01:17:20]  I've been at this since I think I was five years old and I'm now 67.
[01:17:24]  So it's just easy for me to explain it.
[01:17:29]  And I have enough data to show, you know, where my opinions come from.
[01:17:37]  So when I hear somebody that doesn't understand it, I can already hear all the problems that you need to overcome.
[01:17:46]  Like when you say the court system, what you're talking about is civil court system.
[01:17:51]  So what should have happened.
[01:17:53]  You said, sorry, what you said was based on fraud?
[01:17:56]  Yeah.
[01:17:56]  Okay, so see, when you make statements like that and just move on, it's confusing.
[01:18:02]  Because if you say, well, the entire civil court system is based on fraud and then you move on, that's familiar to you, but it's not familiar to me, at least not that argument, and it's not familiar to the audience.
[01:18:12]  So, you know, it's important to study things.
[01:18:15]  It's also important to study how best to explain things to the lay audience, because otherwise studying things doesn't really do you much good because you end up kind of isolated in your own understanding.
[01:18:25]  So, what do you mean when you say that the civil court system is based on fraud?
[01:18:30]  Well, the Zenger case is a very good case to show.
[01:18:34]  Okay, but no, I need, sorry, I need principles because I'm not familiar with the Zenger case and nobody else is.
[01:18:39]  So, when you say, when you start invoking case law to people who don't know what you're talking about, it's not going to be very explanatory, if that makes sense.
[01:18:47]  Yeah.
[01:18:48]  The explanation then on principle is: is the truth valuable?
[01:18:55]  And then the Zenger case shows, yes, it is.
[01:19:00]  Right.
[01:19:00]  So, when I said to you that the Zenger case doesn't help, and then you immediately quote the Zenger case again, I'm not sure you're listening to me.
[01:19:08]  Well, I'm listening, and then I hear that principle is a basis to help people see what I've learned by relying on.
[01:19:22]  No, sorry, let me be clear.
[01:19:23]  So, what I said was that if you are making an abstract argument, such as civil law is based on fraud, and then I say, What do you mean by that?
[01:19:32]  And you start going into a particular law case that I'm not familiar with, and nobody in the audience, I assume, is familiar with.
[01:19:38]  I said that doesn't help explain things, and then you immediately pivot back to the Zenger case.
[01:19:43]  When I said, The Zenger case doesn't help me understand it, and then you say, Yes, but the Zenger case, I get the experience that you're not particularly listening, if that makes sense.
[01:19:52]  It's not a big criticism, I'm just sort of pointing out my experience of the conversation.
[01:19:56]  Yeah, I don't know what to say at this point.
[01:19:59]  Well, and it's a very interesting question that you raise, and it is foundational to society that we need bad people to be punished, but we also don't want a system where bad people can use the system to punish good people.

=== Civil Law Based on Fraud (14:57) ===

[01:20:16]  So, this is something that is talked about in American law.
[01:20:20]  It's called a slap motion or something like that: strategic lawsuit against public participation, or something like that.
[01:20:29]  Anti-slap, right?
[01:20:30]  So, we do want people who lie and destroy reputations and harm people's finances to not do that, and perhaps to pay restitution.
[01:20:40]  So, if some guy who runs a competing restaurant says about another restaurant, oh, I found a rat tail in my food, and that wasn't true, then they've harmed the reputation, they've harmed the income, and they should pay recompense, right?
[01:20:55]  So, we do want people who lie and harm other people's economic interests to be punished, and not necessarily with jail, because that usually is civil, not criminal litigation, which is about money, not prison time.
[01:21:11]  And so, we do want that.
[01:21:12]  On the other hand, we don't want people to be sued for saying things that are true in the public square, right?
[01:21:22]  So, this is why a lot of states, I think California has, and of course, none of this is legal advice.
[01:21:26]  I'm not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination, consult a lawyer.
[01:21:30]  But if you, as Person are sued for saying something about politics, for saying, I think politician X is corrupt and something like that, and then you're sued, then usually you can get that kind of stuff tossed out because the courts, at least for now, view suing people for having opinions about you as not valid, right?
[01:21:58]  Opinions are protected speech.
[01:21:59]  You may remember this from Facebook.
[01:22:01]  Facebook had all these fact checkers, and then they were sued, and their defense against these fact-checkers was to say, no, no, they're just opinions.
[01:22:08]  When, of course, they weren't, here's my opinion.
[01:22:11]  They were called fact-checkers, right?
[01:22:12]  So, if somebody says this is a fact, then they should not be able to retreat into an opinion.
[01:22:19]  Like, if I say, I think O.J. Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson and the waiter, I think he killed them, that's fine.
[01:22:30]  If I say he was convicted of murder, that's not fine because he wasn't convicted of murder.
[01:22:36]  And so, we do want a system where bad guys get punished, but the problem is the moment you have a system that punishes people, bad guys will try and take it over and use it to punish good people.
[01:22:48]  And so, how do you solve that problem?
[01:22:51]  It's a challenge.
[01:22:53]  Now, like all complex challenges, there's no central solution, there's no coercive solution.
[01:23:00]  So, it's a complex challenge how people find their mates, how people get married, and so on.
[01:23:06]  And that has to be left to the free market.
[01:23:08]  In other words, no coercion, no arranged marriages, no forced marriages, things like that.
[01:23:13]  So, the more complex the problem, the more free market a solution you need.
[01:23:19]  And so, the last thing you want to do in a society when you want evildoers punished and good people protected is to create a coercive system like law courts and so on, which are based upon government law courts, which are based on coercion because they're funded by taxpayers by force, and they're not in competition with each other.
[01:23:44]  I mean, there are some private adjudications that go on.
[01:23:49]  I used one some years ago rather than a full court system.
[01:23:54]  I used a private adjudication for that, but it's very limited in the damages and so on.
[01:23:58]  But at least it takes weeks or months rather than years or decades.
[01:24:02]  So, you have a complex problem, which is you need to be able to punish bad guys.
[01:24:08]  But if you set up a system to punish bad guys, bad guys will try to control that system to punish good guys and protect bad guys.
[01:24:16]  And we can sort of see that happening in a lot of places in the West where some people have gone to jail for free speech for longer than other people who've assaulted or even raped others, right?
[01:24:30]  So, it is the protection of the evildoers and the persecution of honest folks concerned with their societies that is a constant problem in society.
[01:24:42]  Whatever system you set up to punish bad guys and protect good guys is liable to be taken over by bad guys to protect bad guys and punish good guys.
[01:24:52]  That is just a basic fact and history of the world.
[01:24:55]  And the only solution to that is voluntarism.
[01:24:59]  The only solution to that is the free market.
[01:25:02]  Because if a system starts to protect bad guys and punish good guys, then good guys in general outnumber bad guys.
[01:25:12]  And so, if you have a system that is in place that is punishing the good guys and protecting the bad guys, good guys will stop paying for it.
[01:25:21]  So, if you have what I call a DRO, a dispute resolution organization, it's a sort of free market court and contract resolver.
[01:25:30]  If a DRO protects a rapist and punishes the accuser, and let's say that there is clear evidence of the rape, or the person is convicted of rape, let's say, let's make it even more certain, right?
[01:25:46]  Bob, the rapist, Bob, is convicted of rape and Sally, his victim.
[01:25:50]  And if the DRO forces Sally to pay Bob and then sets Bob free, then people would be so repulsed by that that if this were a true situation, they would immediately cancel their contracts with that DRO.
[01:26:05]  And so the free market is required for any kind of efficiency.
[01:26:10]  And anything which is coerced tends towards evil over time, of course, right?
[01:26:15]  I mean, we don't need to go into all of the arguments for that, I'm sure.
[01:26:19]  And so the only way to have a system that can reliably and sustainably punish bad guys and protect good guys is a voluntarily funded system by the general public.
[01:26:31]  And this, I talk about this to some degree in a presentation that you should definitely check out called The Truth About the Wild West, FDRpodcast.com, just the truth about the Wild West.
[01:26:41]  That on the frontiers, as you sort of point out, there were judges who instructed the people on the law, but you had much more of a free market legal system, a free market contract enforcement system that worked very well and was very cheap.
[01:26:58]  And then, of course, when the government came along, things started going to hell as they generally do.
[01:27:04]  And I'm sorry, I don't mean to hijack your conversation, but I think that's the general topic that we're talking about.
[01:27:10]  And of course, if it's not, please let me know.
[01:27:13]  Yeah, the framing of the motivation for government as being punish people, I think that's wrong.
[01:27:25]  And hang on, hang on.
[01:27:27]  Sorry, sorry.
[01:27:28]  I don't know what you mean when you say the framing.
[01:27:31]  So if you say I'm incorrect, and of course, I absolutely welcome being corrected.
[01:27:36]  If you say that I'm incorrect, I do need to understand what it is that you're referring to.
[01:27:40]  So society, okay, let's do this.
[01:27:43]  It's a dialogue.
[01:27:44]  So would you agree that society needs a way to punish evildoers and protect the virtuous?
[01:27:52]  No, because I don't want to get put into that frame of mind.
[01:28:00]  My frame of mind is that the concept of the law is to offer a remedy for people that want one.
[01:28:13]  Sorry, sorry, people who want what?
[01:28:16]  A remedy.
[01:28:17]  No, people, you said a remedy for people who want, and I just missed that word.
[01:28:20]  For people who want a remedy, meaning somebody who's made mistakes or somebody who's going into a criminal lifestyle, they can get remedy by choosing to agree to show up in a court and then have their matter heard and a determination made.
[01:28:50]  Towards remedy.
[01:28:53]  Okay, so you said earlier that civil courts were fraudulent and also you're talking about a criminal lifestyle.
[01:29:01]  Is fraud immoral?
[01:29:03]  Fraud mandates a trial by jury, so yes.
[01:29:08]  I don't know what that means.
[01:29:09]  I just want to know, is fraud immoral?
[01:29:13]  The problem is that according to the fraud, it's not.
[01:29:16]  But according to the victim, it's almost always, yes, fraud is immoral.
[01:29:23]  But the problem with fraud is the victims are made to believe that it's not.
[01:29:29]  Okay, but you're doing perspective stuff.
[01:29:32]  Right.
[01:29:32]  So if I say, is gravity real?
[01:29:35]  And you say, well, some people don't believe that it is.
[01:29:37]  That's not an answer, right?
[01:29:39]  No, if somebody doesn't believe that gravity is real, they might be a victim of fraud.
[01:29:45]  So that makes fraud immoral.
[01:29:47]  No, no, I'm talking about just gravity, right?
[01:29:49]  So if I were to say, is gravity real?
[01:29:53]  And you will say, well, some psychotic people jump off buildings believing they can fly.
[01:29:58]  Does that mean that gravity is not real if they don't believe in it?
[01:30:01]  Forget fraud, just gravity.
[01:30:04]  Is this like a no-brainer question?
[01:30:06]  Or are you trying to put me on the spot here or what?
[01:30:10]  The conversation goes well if we just ask and answer each other's questions.
[01:30:14]  It doesn't go well if you hedge.
[01:30:17]  I'm just asking, it's a simple question.
[01:30:19]  Does gravity cease to exist because some people don't believe in it?
[01:30:24]  No.
[01:30:25]  Okay, good.
[01:30:26]  So when you talk about people's perspective on fraud, my question is, is fraud immoral?
[01:30:32]  Which is lying to people and not fulfilling contracts in order to steal from them.
[01:30:38]  Well, now you're adding contracts, but I think fraud is immoral because a victim is injured.
[01:30:45]  Okay, good.
[01:30:45]  Okay, that's fine.
[01:30:46]  That's fine.
[01:30:47]  Okay.
[01:30:48]  So fraud is immoral.
[01:30:50]  Now, you talked about criminal, people falling into a criminal lifestyle.
[01:30:55]  So do you mean like rape, theft, assault, and murder, those kinds of things?
[01:31:00]  Yeah.
[01:31:01]  Okay.
[01:31:01]  Rape, theft, assault, and murder, are they evil?
[01:31:06]  I think they're prosecutable, but if you're going to use a word like evil, then you might want to show me an example of one.
[01:31:17]  I'm sorry, I'm not sure.
[01:31:18]  I just gave you four examples, rape, theft, assault, and murder.
[01:31:21]  Well, somebody can be a victim of rape, and then somebody can become a rapist because they've been indoctrinated into that, which is rape as a way of living.
[01:31:37]  So that makes that particular case something that could be redeemable and not, let's say, evil, which could be considered irredeemable.
[01:31:52]  What?
[01:31:53]  So wait, somebody is indoctrinated into thinking that rape is good, therefore they're not a rapist?
[01:31:59]  I mean, all rapists want to rape.
[01:32:01]  That's why they do it.
[01:32:02]  So they must think it's good in some manner.
[01:32:04]  So I'm not sure what I understand.
[01:32:05]  I'm not sure I follow.
[01:32:06]  Do you know the meanings of the Latin words mens rea and actus reus?
[01:32:13]  Mensrea, I think I've seen it a couple of law shows.
[01:32:16]  I don't know the other ones.
[01:32:16]  So yeah, please enlighten us.
[01:32:18]  Okay, so guilty in fact is actus reus, and mensrea is guilty of mind.
[01:32:26]  So the distinction is a like hypothesis.
[01:32:32]  A hypothesis is, can somebody be redeemed if they were doing something but not willfully doing it as if they were evil?
[01:32:44]  They just, they just were guilty in fact.
[01:32:47]  Whereas mensrea, that's like, okay, well, this person is probably irredeemable because their mind is set and cannot be improved towards a moral mindset because of their actions that are willful, as would be in the word mensrea, guilty of mind.
[01:33:16]  So, if I understand this correctly, some people who get cancer can be cured, and some people who get cancer are incurable.
[01:33:23]  I don't know about cancer because I've… No, sorry to interrupt, but you're saying that some people who commit crimes are doing so from a mindset that can be altered for the better, and other people who commit crimes will just continue to commit crimes because they're irredeemable.
[01:33:39]  Is that right?
[01:33:41]  I think you're bringing up the subject of evil.
[01:33:46]  No, no, I'm just trying to understand your argument, bro.
[01:33:49]  I'm trying to understand your argument.
[01:33:51]  So you're saying that there's two different mindsets.
[01:33:54]  Let's say a thief, right?
[01:33:56]  So some guy steals because he's hungry and he doesn't think of any other way.
[01:34:00]  He's made some mistakes or whatever.
[01:34:02]  And other people steal because they're just irredeemably bad guys who will never learn to not steal or can't be redeemed.
[01:34:09]  And I'm not trying to oversimplify.
[01:34:10]  I'm just trying to understand what you mean.
[01:34:13]  That was my answer to your question that had to do with evil.
[01:34:17]  And I wasn't really willing or wanting to go there.
[01:34:22]  Okay.
[01:34:22]  So some people who steal will become not thieves if they go through some sort of moral education or correct program or whatever it is some circumstance is dealt with.
[01:34:34]  So some people who steal might end up not stealing and other people who steal are just hardened, habitual, psychopathic, lifelong criminals and they won't ever not steal.
[01:34:46]  and I'm just trying to sort of understand because you brought this distinction up with regards to crime, which is a very interesting one.
[01:34:52]  Yeah, the main focus that I have is what...
[01:34:56]  No, no, no, sorry, sorry, I just...
[01:34:58]  I'm just trying to understand what it is that you're saying.
[01:35:01]  And it really shouldn't be this hard.
[01:35:04]  Some people who steal will end up not being thieves.
[01:35:08]  Other people who steal will be lifelong criminals and can't be fixed, are irredeemable, I think, in your phrase.

=== Agendas vs Genuine Conversation (14:52) ===

[01:35:13]  Is that right?
[01:35:14]  I think that's a hypothesis that can be tested.
[01:35:19]  No, no, you brought this up, bro.
[01:35:21]  You brought up these two different states of mind, mens Rhea or the other one, right?
[01:35:26]  No, I was answering your question on evil.
[01:35:29]  Okay, good.
[01:35:31]  So some...
[01:35:31]  Okay, I don't know why this is so hard for people.
[01:35:34]  So...
[01:35:34]  So some people can be fixed who are criminals and some people can't be fixed.
[01:35:42]  And some people are criminals of circumstance.
[01:35:44]  Some people are criminals because they're just sadists and lazy or whatever it is and they'll never change.
[01:35:49]  So that's interesting.
[01:35:52]  But I didn't talk about criminals.
[01:35:54]  I talked about the actions.
[01:35:56]  So the action of rape or murder, right?
[01:36:00]  Murder is not just killing, but the unlawful killing, right?
[01:36:03]  You could kill someone in self-defense and be fine.
[01:36:06]  But murder and rape are evil actions.
[01:36:11]  Now, as to whether the person who is a rapist or a murderer could be redeemed at some point in the future is not relevant to the good or evil of the actions in the moment.
[01:36:25]  So in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov kills the old pawnbroker, and then later he realizes that he was seduced by socialist immoralities in his mind, and he rediscovers Jesus and becomes a better person at the end of the book and so on.
[01:36:44]  But nonetheless, the action, this is why I didn't talk about people.
[01:36:48]  I talked about actions.
[01:36:49]  I didn't say a rapist, a murderer.
[01:36:51]  I said rape, theft, assault, and murder are evil.
[01:36:55]  Now, that doesn't mean that everybody who commits a crime is irredeemably evil for the rest of their life.
[01:37:00]  That's not a question at hand.
[01:37:03]  The question at hand is, are the actions themselves evil?
[01:37:08]  And the answer is, well, yes, those actions are evil, and we need to find a way to protect ourselves against them.
[01:37:14]  Now, as to whether the people who commit these actions are irredeemably evil, no, of course not.
[01:37:20]  I mean, a lot of kids will go through, you know, they maybe take a bit of money from their mother's purse, they maybe steal a candy bar or something like that, and that is theft technically, but that does not make those people irredeemably evil.
[01:37:36]  And assault, yeah, I mean, I mean, I think, gosh, what is it?
[01:37:42]  Marky, Mark, Mark Wahlberg is a rapper and a performer and an actor.
[01:37:48]  And when he was younger, if I remember rightly, he was involved in an assault where some guy suffered significant damage.
[01:37:57]  Does this mean that Mark Wahlberg is irredeemably evil?
[01:38:01]  Well, no, I mean, he seems to have turned his life around.
[01:38:03]  He seems to have a good family.
[01:38:06]  He prays every day.
[01:38:07]  He seems to have turned things around for himself.
[01:38:10]  And that's great.
[01:38:11]  That's great.
[01:38:12]  Now, that doesn't mean it wasn't evil for him to assault a guy and I think half put out one of his eyes.
[01:38:17]  And I'm sorry, like, please go and check this story.
[01:38:19]  This is off the floating scraps of distant memory.
[01:38:23]  So when I say rape, theft, assault, and murder are evil, I don't mean that everyone who commits these crimes is irredeemably evil, but the actions themselves are evil.
[01:38:34]  And that's what I mean when I say that we need to have something in society that is going to protect good guys and girls and punish or remove from society or in some way negatively affect bad guys.
[01:38:51]  And if you've been studying this for 60 years and you don't think that there's good and evil, I mean, that's fine.
[01:38:57]  It's a different perspective than I have, but I just wanted to clarify that.
[01:39:01]  Yeah, I just didn't want to get into what I thought about good or evil.
[01:39:05]  I was mainly trying to promote open source, free market franchise, which is common law.
[01:39:14]  Right.
[01:39:15]  And it's interesting to me.
[01:39:16]  Like, why would it matter what you did or didn't want to get into in a conversation?
[01:39:20]  I mean, you're not in control of the conversation.
[01:39:22]  Neither am I. Right.
[01:39:24]  But I'm not sure why it would matter.
[01:39:25]  Like when I started, I don't know if you listened to the whole show.
[01:39:28]  When I started the show, the first question I had was, you know, unpack some of the most challenging and difficult times in your life.
[01:39:36]  And that wasn't what I wanted to do on a Sunday morning, but I'm not in control of the conversation.
[01:39:42]  So I'm not sure why it would matter fundamentally if you do or don't want to talk about something that I feel that I need to understand.
[01:39:51]  Because, I mean, you wouldn't be in control of the conversation.
[01:39:55]  We're having a conversation, which means you get to ask me stuff and I get to ask you stuff.
[01:39:59]  So when you say, well, I didn't want to talk about that, I'm not sure.
[01:40:02]  I'm sorry if I misunderstand something.
[01:40:04]  I'm not sure why that would matter.
[01:40:06]  Because I have like an agenda and my agenda is to promote something which is open source, free market franchise, common law.
[01:40:17]  Well, but an agenda is rude because an agenda is pretending to have a conversation because I could hear you getting annoyed earlier when I was asking questions, I guess, that you didn't want to talk about.
[01:40:29]  But it's dishonest because if you have an agenda and you say, Steph, I don't want to have a conversation.
[01:40:35]  I just want to promote my ideas.
[01:40:38]  And if you have a conversation that doesn't go along the lines of what I want to do using your platform, I'm going to get irritated with you.
[01:40:46]  Do you think that I would want to have that pretend conversation?
[01:40:50]  It sounds like you don't want to have a conversation with me.
[01:40:54]  So where does that leave us?
[01:40:56]  Okay, so you're not going to answer that question, right?
[01:40:58]  Well, do you remember the question I just asked, like 10 seconds ago?
[01:41:02]  Yeah.
[01:41:03]  And it sounds like you have an agenda and I have an agenda.
[01:41:08]  And your agenda is to have a conversation that is run by both of us.
[01:41:18]  And I can understand that.
[01:41:20]  And I've listened to what you asked.
[01:41:23]  And I've tried to answer it.
[01:41:25]  But it sounds like we're going nowhere.
[01:41:28]  And so if we're going nowhere, then why are we here?
[01:41:33]  Well, you just falsified something.
[01:41:37]  So an agenda is when you want to get your ideas across and you're not interested in feedback from the other person.
[01:41:45]  In fact, you view feedback from the other person as an interruption or an annoyance or a roadblock to your agenda.
[01:41:54]  And if you enter into a conversation where the other person thinks it's a conversation, but you are just trying to push an agenda, that's a form of fraud.
[01:42:03]  I mean, it's not evil or anything like that, but it is a form of deception.
[01:42:09]  Because you are entering into a conversation and I need to understand what it is that you're talking about.
[01:42:16]  And what you were talking about in the first part of the conversation, I was not able to follow.
[01:42:21]  And I'm pretty well read in these kinds of things.
[01:42:24]  And I've talked about free market voluntary forms of law for decades.
[01:42:29]  So I'm not too bad with this kind of information.
[01:42:32]  So I was just trying to understand what it is that you were talking about.
[01:42:37]  And so, and I have to do that both for myself and on behalf of the listeners.
[01:42:42]  Because if you come on my show, which is how I make my income and how I keep people interested, if you come on my show and you are confusing, then what happens is people stop listening.
[01:42:55]  They leave the conversation.
[01:42:56]  They don't follow what you're saying.
[01:42:58]  And so I will allow that for a certain amount of time, but I can't allow that for too long because if you come onto my show and you are confusing or not particularly interesting because you have a bit of a monotone, there's no particular spice, there's no stories, there's no examples.
[01:43:19]  And these are all ways that you try to communicate complex topics.
[01:43:22]  So if you are confusing and not super interesting, what happens is my audience leaves.
[01:43:28]  And that costs me attention.
[01:43:30]  It costs me money.
[01:43:31]  It costs me time.
[01:43:32]  Now, if you come on and say, Steph, I don't want any feedback from you.
[01:43:36]  I just want to hijack your platform to push my own agenda.
[01:43:39]  Then I wouldn't have that conversation with you, right?
[01:43:42]  Because that's kind of rude.
[01:43:43]  Now, if you come onto a show and you say, I want to have a conversation about this, which is kind of what's implied, right?
[01:43:52]  And then you get annoyed when I say I don't understand something or try to figure out your mindset.
[01:44:00]  I mean, I'm a moral philosopher, as you know.
[01:44:03]  So if I'm talking about good and evil, that is entirely in line with what it is that I'm doing.
[01:44:11]  And courts in their ideal form are dealing with good and evil, because otherwise it's just naked power or manipulation or something like that.
[01:44:20]  So the reason that I would push back against this is if you come on pretending that you want a conversation when you in fact only want to hijack my platform to talk about the things that you want to talk about, regardless of whether they're interesting to my audience or useful to me as somebody who makes money off doing these kinds of shows, you can understand that I might perceive that as a little bit rude.
[01:44:44]  Does that make sense?
[01:44:44]  I'm not saying whether you agree with it, but you sort of understand the perspective.
[01:44:48]  That makes sense.
[01:44:50]  Okay, so if somebody says, this is why I was asking you about the fraud.
[01:44:57]  So if somebody says fraud is bad, and then they're a little bit fraudulent in how they come on my show, which is to have a conversation, and then they get annoyed when I try to have input in the conversation,
[01:45:12]  and I view that as a kind of fraud, and the person doesn't even seem to know that that's a little bit fraudulent, then I'm going to have some pretty significant skepticism about your virtues and integrity, if that makes sense.
[01:45:27]  And so my suggestion is, and listen, you're a very smart guy, and you've studied this stuff, as you say, for 62 years.
[01:45:35]  And it's nice to know, because on Friday I couldn't get how long somebody had been interested out of that person for love or money.
[01:45:41]  So if you want to talk to people as a whole about good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice, fraud and integrity, you shouldn't do so in a semi-fraudulent manner.
[01:45:56]  In other words, I shouldn't say to you, here, you should read this textbook on how bad stealing is.
[01:46:02]  Oh, and by the way, I stole this textbook, right?
[01:46:05]  That wouldn't make much sense.
[01:46:06]  So if you want to, and this is just a tip, right?
[01:46:10]  I mean, you're a smart guy, you're a good communicator, but this is just a tip from somebody who's maybe been around the block in different ways.
[01:46:18]  If you want to communicate about virtue, you have to yourself first be virtuous, right?
[01:46:25]  If you want to sell a diet book, you can't be fat.
[01:46:28]  If I want to sell a hair loss remedy, there's no point showing up bald, right?
[01:46:32]  If I want to say, here's how to quit smoking, I shouldn't light up while I'm doing that.
[01:46:36]  So if you want to communicate to people about virtues, don't do it in a fraudulent manner.
[01:46:42]  Don't pretend to have a conversation, but actually be hijacking for the sake of your own agenda, because then people won't listen to you about right and wrong if you're entering into a conversation in kind of a fraudulent manner, if that makes sense.
[01:46:58]  Yeah, that makes sense.
[01:47:00]  Okay.
[01:47:00]  Is there anything else you wanted to mention?
[01:47:02]  Nope.
[01:47:03]  All right.
[01:47:03]  Thanks, brother.
[01:47:04]  Appreciate the conversation.
[01:47:05]  And, you know, these things are challenging, right?
[01:47:08]  And so I say this without any negativity, but these are very important things.
[01:47:13]  It's very easy to lecture people.
[01:47:15]  It's very hard to be good.
[01:47:17]  And I am susceptible to this.
[01:47:18]  So I'm not trying to say that other people are bad and I'm perfect or anything like that.
[01:47:23]  I mean, I have the same temptations as everyone, and I feel those temptations from time to time as well.
[01:47:30]  But in general, if you have a great diet that you want to sell, the first thing you have to do is lose weight.
[01:47:37]  You cannot sell a diet if you're fat.
[01:47:41]  And you can't convince people of the morals that you want to get across to them if in a conversation you are not actually having a conversation, but you have an agenda.
[01:47:53]  And if you listen back to this, I could hear it very clearly when I started asking him some fundamental questions.
[01:47:59]  So I was trying to clarify his position and say, okay, so we have good guys and bad guys.
[01:48:05]  We need a system that punishes the bad guys and protects the good guys.
[01:48:08]  But then if you put in a coercive system, the bad guys take it over.
[01:48:11]  There's no competition.
[01:48:12]  You can't withdraw.
[01:48:13]  So I was just trying to summarize this challenge so that people understood the relevance of the conversation.
[01:48:19]  I was hoping that he would do that, but he went into various court technicalities and case law, which nobody understood.
[01:48:27]  So I think that's kind of a shame, but that is what happened.
[01:48:32]  And so I was trying to clarify things and then I thought I was clarifying things, good guys, bad guys.
[01:48:38]  And then he didn't seem to believe in good guys, bad guys.
[01:48:40]  So I was a little confused.
[01:48:42]  And I could hear the irritation, which is I want to be in control of this conversation.
[01:48:45]  And if you ask me questions, Steph, that I don't want to answer, I'm going to get annoyed.
[01:48:49]  And that's not a conversation.
[01:48:51]  And so, if you want to say fraud is bad, don't be fraudulent in pretending to have a conversation when you, in fact, just want to make a speech.
[01:48:57]  All right.
[01:48:58]  Okay.
[01:48:58]  Well, I think we'll end up here.
[01:48:59]  And I really do appreciate everybody's time, care, attention.
[01:49:02]  Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
[01:49:04]  You know the spiel, but I'm going to say it anyway.
[01:49:06]  Don't close off yet if you haven't donated for a while.
[01:49:09]  Now's the time, my friends.
[01:49:10]  Now's the time.
[01:49:11]  I'm beginning to rebuild, I guess, the somewhat shattered public perceptions and so on.
[01:49:17]  So I hope that you will help that process out.
[01:49:20]  Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
[01:49:24]  And also, you can go to shop.freedomain.com for your merch, freedomain.com slash call to set up a call-in show.
[01:49:31]  You won't have to wait for weeks and weeks as you have had for a while.
[01:49:34]  So I hope that you will take advantage of that.
[01:49:37]  And freedomain.com slash books for the books, peacefulparenting.com for peaceful parenting, free.
[01:49:43]  And there's an AI there as well.
[01:49:44]  And remember, if you subscribe to FreeDomain at freedomain.com slash donate, you get access to hundreds of bonus podcasts and a bunch of different AIs and all kinds of tasty goodies.
[01:49:55]  So thanks, everyone, so much.
[01:49:56]  Have yourself a glorious, lovely, wonderful day.
[01:49:58]  We'll talk to you Wednesday, if not before, and love you guys to death.
[01:50:02]  Thank you so much for this incredible honor and privilege.
[01:50:04]  And have yourself a lovely day.
[01:50:05]  Bye.