Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - Were You Pushed, or Did You JUMP?
Aired: 2026-04-30
Duration: 01:25:45


=== Gaslight Yourself for Success (05:31) ===

[00:00:00]  Morning, morning, morning, friends.
[00:00:02]  Hope you're doing well.
[00:00:02]  It's Defend Molyneux from Free Domain.
[00:00:06]  Freedom is the main thing.
[00:00:08]  Freedom should be your domain.
[00:00:09]  Free domain.com.
[00:00:11]  Free domain.com slash donate to help out the show.
[00:00:14]  And welcome to your Sunday morning.
[00:00:18]  And I hope you had a good sleep.
[00:00:21]  Do you know, it's actually quite interesting.
[00:00:23]  One of the most helpful things to do in your life is to gaslight yourself.
[00:00:30]  I'm not sure.
[00:00:31]  If you know all about this, but it's quite interesting.
[00:00:34]  Now, I know this sounds a little anti philosophical.
[00:00:37]  I understand that, and bear with me as I sort of mention it a little bit.
[00:00:43]  But placebo sleep affects cognitive functioning.
[00:00:49]  It's just sort of one example out of many, but it's very interesting.
[00:00:54]  So, the placebo effect this is from the abstract of the paper.
[00:00:58]  The placebo effect is any outcome that is not attributed to a specific treatment, but rather to an individual's mindset.
[00:01:06]  The phenomenon can extend beyond its typical use in pharmaceutical drugs to involve aspects of everyday life, such as the effect of sleep on cognitive functioning.
[00:01:16]  In two studies examining whether perceived sleep quality affects cognitive functioning, 164 participants reported their previous night's sleep quality.
[00:01:25]  They were then randomly assigned to one of two sleep quality conditions or two control conditions.
[00:01:31]  Those in the above average sleep quality condition were informed that they had.
[00:01:36]  Spent 28.7% of their total sleep time in REM, whereas those in the below average sleep quality condition were informed that they had only spent 16.2% of their time in REM sleep.
[00:01:50]  Assigned sleep quality, but not self reported sleep quality, significantly predicted participant scores in a bunch of cognitive tests.
[00:01:59]  In other words, if you were told you had slept well, you did well in cognitive tests.
[00:02:05]  If you were told you had slept badly, You did badly in cognitive tests.
[00:02:11]  There's another study which I thought was interesting.
[00:02:14]  Sorry, that's a bit redundant.
[00:02:16]  If I didn't think it was interesting, why would I bring it up?
[00:02:19]  These and all of these, I'm trying to iron out my little verbal tics that waste time.
[00:02:25]  Wait, am I telling you that?
[00:02:27]  Am I doing it too?
[00:02:28]  I don't know.
[00:02:28]  This could go on and on.
[00:02:29]  But there was a study where it was supposed to be a study on the effects of facial disfigurement on being hired.
[00:02:38]  So some women were given a facial disfigurement with.
[00:02:42]  Makeup and prosthetics and so on.
[00:02:44]  And some women were given a big wart or something, nothing sort of major, and they couldn't see it from the inside of their own faces.
[00:02:54]  And they were sent on job interviews.
[00:02:56]  And some of the women had the facial disfigurement kept on, and others of them had it taken off in a surreptitious way before they went into the interviews.
[00:03:05]  And of course, the women who went in thinking they had a facial disfigurement when they didn't reported.
[00:03:12]  That people looked down on them because they had a facial disfigurement.
[00:03:16]  They experienced bigotry, prejudice, that sort of John Candy take 50 cents, go and have a rat gnaw off that giant mole or whatever it was in Uncle Buck.
[00:03:27]  But the women who didn't have a facial disfigurement but thought they did reported all of the horrors of how much prejudice they faced in these job interviews because they were so facially disfigured.
[00:03:41]  I myself.
[00:03:43]  On the occasional times that I've slept poorly, I don't particularly like to eat before I go to bed, but I like even less waking up hungry in the middle of the night.
[00:03:55]  When you have muscles, I say this advisedly, knowing that I'm far from a bodybuilder, but when you have muscles, they burn a lot of calories while you sleep.
[00:04:07]  And every now and then, if I haven't timed it just right, I'll wake up at three o'clock in the morning hungry, and I find it very hard to go back to sleep.
[00:04:14]  Unfortunately, it's just hardwired from my childhood.
[00:04:17]  When you grow up without food, like I grew up, what do they say?
[00:04:20]  Very food insecure.
[00:04:21]  I grew up very food insecure.
[00:04:24]  And so I constantly have to fight the urge to overeat, even now.
[00:04:27]  Decades after that's largely ended.
[00:04:30]  I mean, I'm married to a Greek woman.
[00:04:32]  Food insecure is quite the opposite of the Greek culture, to put it mildly.
[00:04:36]  So I sort of have to balance and manage my food intake.
[00:04:40]  I can't just eat what I feel like.
[00:04:41]  I have to constantly.
[00:04:43]  What was it?
[00:04:44]  Julia Roberts said in Notting Hill, I'm an actress and a movie star, which means I've been hungry for over 20 years.
[00:04:51]  It's kind of true.
[00:04:52]  But on those times where, for one reason or another, I've slept badly, I just tell myself I'm not tired.
[00:05:00]  I mean, it's not all quite that simple.
[00:05:04]  When I went on a speaking tour in Australia in 2018 with Myth L. Southern, we went to the Southern Hemisphere.
[00:05:14]  When I went on that tour, of course, I mean, you flip night and day and you've got interviews and horrible plane rides and, you know, sleep is sort of at a premium.
[00:05:26]  But I just told myself, no, I'm not tired.
[00:05:29]  Same thing when I went to Hong Kong.

=== Ignoring Fatigue to Win (15:36) ===

[00:05:31]  To do my documentary on the communist rebellions against communists, there, the umbrella people.
[00:05:37]  And so, on those times when I'm tired, and it doesn't work 100% of the time, but it's, you know, what if I'm just not tired?
[00:05:46]  And I'll try my, you know, that kind of spacey helium headed feeling you get when you're tired.
[00:05:52]  Just what if I'm not tired?
[00:05:53]  What if I'm fine?
[00:05:55]  There'll be plenty of time to rest when I'm dead.
[00:05:57]  So, gaslighting yourself in a way is actually.
[00:06:02]  Quite a productive thing to do.
[00:06:05]  And it should not be underestimated.
[00:06:07]  People who think they're tired.
[00:06:10]  And with regards to failure, oh, that's the big one, man.
[00:06:13]  That is the big one.
[00:06:15]  Most people, I mean, everyone fails almost all the time.
[00:06:19]  I've done thousands of shows.
[00:06:22]  If you listen to people who've listened to my show for a while, they say, oh, I remember that one.
[00:06:27]  Oh, that one was really good.
[00:06:28]  And then, you know, a lot of them just kind of come and go.
[00:06:31]  I mean, obviously, I try to do high quality every time I do a show.
[00:06:34]  But what people remember and what people stick with and what sticks with people is singular, right?
[00:06:41]  So people remember maybe five out of 100 shows that they listen to.
[00:06:47]  It's 5%.
[00:06:49]  My big video from many years ago, The Story of Your Enslavement, was something that really changed a lot of people, put me on the map a little bit.
[00:06:57]  And I've done a whole bunch of those videos, even the sort of back before AI, you had to take little snippets.
[00:07:04]  And it was always a little dicey, especially when you're controversial when you take little snippets.
[00:07:09]  Of movies and shows.
[00:07:10]  You're supposed to be able to do that as sort of fair use, but if you get copyright claims, it was too risky.
[00:07:16]  It was too risky to continue doing those things.
[00:07:19]  I'm working on a script at the moment, which because of AI means that you can actually not have to worry about copyright claims, which is good.
[00:07:27]  But failure is everywhere, all the time.
[00:07:32]  I mean, as I sort of mentioned before, Shakespeare wrote dozens and dozens of plays, and Charles Dickens wrote dozens and dozens of novels.
[00:07:42]  And we remember vividly.
[00:07:44]  I mean, the average person, average literate person, remembers vividly maybe 10 out of 30 or, well, 10 out of 50 plus, you know, 5 or 6 out of 30 plus.
[00:07:57]  So even the greatest geniuses have a generalized failure rate of 80%, 75%, 70%.
[00:08:07]  Even the greatest stone geniuses.
[00:08:09]  You know, I watched the movie Hamnet.
[00:08:13]  Hamnet was a word interchangeable with Hamlet.
[00:08:16]  And Hamnet was Shakespeare's child who died.
[00:08:19]  And I watched a movie about it.
[00:08:21]  Oh!
[00:08:22]  I really, really get truly angry at movies because I stay away from the woke stuff.
[00:08:26]  I just find it repulsive.
[00:08:29]  It is like a virus trying to invade my brain, this endless woke stuff, because woke is really the attempt to substitute the opposite of the truth for the truth.
[00:08:39]  And through media and programming and propaganda.
[00:08:43]  And I watched this movie, Hamnet.
[00:08:45]  Oh, man!
[00:08:47]  It bugged the ever living heck out of me.
[00:08:49]  And I very rarely don't finish a movie.
[00:08:52]  My wife's even more like, I have to know how it ends.
[00:08:55]  It's like, you know, it's all made up.
[00:08:57]  One thing if it's a documentary, but.
[00:08:59]  And we just gave up on it.
[00:09:00]  First of all, there's this woman full in your screen screaming, you know, okay, we know childbirth can be uncomfortable.
[00:09:09]  I get that.
[00:09:09]  Childbirth can be painful.
[00:09:10]  I get that.
[00:09:11]  But from what women have told me, it's the kind of pain you forget and you look forward to your next baby and all of that.
[00:09:17]  But just like screaming, showing women in extreme discomfort in childbirth is just another one of these depopulation agendas, just make women frightened of childbirth.
[00:09:30]  And it was really sad.
[00:09:32]  If I didn't know that it was Shakespeare in the movie, right, because it's a young Shakespeare, I would not at all think that he was the greatest genius of language anywhere in the world for all of human history.
[00:09:46]  He was inarticulate, told bad stories.
[00:09:48]  He claimed he himself, oh, I have difficulty talking to people like he's half autistic.
[00:09:52]  This idea that genius is autistic is.
[00:09:55]  Shakespeare was a man about town.
[00:09:57]  He ran a theater company.
[00:09:58]  He acted.
[00:09:59]  He invested.
[00:10:00]  He was married.
[00:10:03]  Very socially competent and confident.
[00:10:06]  It's just a cope.
[00:10:07]  People say, oh, well, you know, I could be a genius, but then I'd be so tortured and tormented and isolated.
[00:10:12]  It's like a curse you put on people who are smarter than you.
[00:10:14]  It's very sad.
[00:10:16]  And in this movie, it's like.
[00:10:19]  First of all, if you're going to take on a character like Shakespeare, like you're going to write the dialogue of the greatest language genius the world has ever seen, I mean, there's no comparison between Shakespeare and any other writer or poet because there's no one who even comes close.
[00:10:40]  It's really quite shocking, and you should do this at some point.
[00:10:41]  It's very interesting.
[00:10:43]  Look at all the turns of phrase we have because of Shakespeare.
[00:10:47]  Look at all the little snippets and bon mots and so on that we have because of Shakespeare.
[00:10:52]  It's pretty wild.
[00:10:54]  Maybe we'll go into them.
[00:10:56]  If you want to chat, I'm happy to chat.
[00:10:58]  But yeah, if you're going to take on the task of writing for Shakespeare, man, you better bring your A game.
[00:11:04]  Because you're saying this is what the greatest language genius in history would have said.
[00:11:11]  This is what his dialogue was like.
[00:11:14]  The guy who wrote the greatest dialogue in the history of the world, I'm writing dialogue for him.
[00:11:20]  I mean, can you imagine?
[00:11:21]  The audacity is staggering.
[00:11:23]  And listen, hey, I have no problem with Audacity.
[00:11:27]  It's a great audio editing software.
[00:11:29]  And also, I have no problem with Audacity, man.
[00:11:32]  Go big or go home.
[00:11:33]  Try your best.
[00:11:34]  Yes, all right, fine.
[00:11:35]  I mean, I wrote a novel with many famous people in it.
[00:11:39]  The novel is called Almost, and you should check it out.
[00:11:43]  It's a great book.
[00:11:44]  It's the story of a German and a British family from World War I to World War II.
[00:11:48]  And Shakespeare, sorry, not Shakespeare, the other wordsmith, Churchill, is a character in the book.
[00:11:55]  So I'm going to write for one of the most eloquent public speakers in British political history.
[00:12:02]  Okay, I'll write his dialogue.
[00:12:03]  I'll take that on.
[00:12:05]  I'll do that crazy task and so on.
[00:12:07]  But you've really got to dig deep and bring your A game.
[00:12:10]  And just having this guy mumbling and.
[00:12:14]  And tortured and tormented, and I can't write, and he's thumping his head on the table in the middle of the night.
[00:12:20]  Like, look, creativity is not supposed to be hell.
[00:12:25]  What are you, a masochist?
[00:12:26]  I mean, there's occasionally times where it's a challenge.
[00:12:29]  Of course, right?
[00:12:30]  You get a little stuck.
[00:12:32]  I have, I was talking to a friend of mine about my novel, Just Poor, last night, and I love the book.
[00:12:39]  The first two thirds are some of the best stuff that I'm ever going to write.
[00:12:42]  It's a wonderful book.
[00:12:44]  You can get it at freedomain.comslash books as you can with the novel Almost.
[00:12:47]  They're free.
[00:12:48]  Throw in the audiobook, man.
[00:12:49]  Like, I'm a trained actor.
[00:12:50]  I kind of know what I'm doing around this stuff, and it's really, really well done.
[00:12:56]  And I've never quite liked the last quarter of it, the last third of it.
[00:13:01]  I've rewritten it two times, and I may at some point try it one more time, but that's all right.
[00:13:09]  I mean, maybe if I was more of a historical perfectionist, I'd get everything just right, but Ayn Rand did, and she didn't change the world.
[00:13:17]  So, in fact, she just got depressed.
[00:13:19]  I have a really, really sad story.
[00:13:21]  So let me trace my thoughts back, Emmett, and so on, woke stuff.
[00:13:26]  So, gaslighting yourself is important.
[00:13:29]  You know, I've often thought of how, again, don't want to make this about myself.
[00:13:34]  If you have questions or comments, happy to get your thoughts.
[00:13:36]  But I've often thought, because I think back to a particular time occasionally when I, as I get older, you kind of look at the shape of your life.
[00:13:44]  When you're younger, hurly burly, that's when the hurly burly is done.
[00:13:49]  Lion from Queen, the band, also the title of a play by David Mamet, and also from Shakespeare.
[00:13:56]  From Shakespeare, holy burly.
[00:13:58]  And in the chaos of your life and the sort of forward thrust of getting things done in the moment, it's hard to see the shape of your life.
[00:14:07]  But lives have a shape, they have a very definitive shape.
[00:14:12]  And even the lack of shape, the shapelessness is a kind of shape, the absence of something is also an indication of something.
[00:14:20]  If you don't work out, you're not working out, shapes your body into a pear.
[00:14:26]  So life has a particular kind of shape to it.
[00:14:31]  And if you live by principles, then you're fighting your battles and having your wins and your losses and so on over the course of your life.
[00:14:41]  And it is sort of like if you're a soldier, then you fight your battles, maybe you have a bit of leave.
[00:14:47]  You know, think of in a trench in World War I, you're just trying to survive the day and.
[00:14:52]  Do the damage on the enemy, avoid damage from the enemy, and so on.
[00:14:56]  And then, of course, historians look at the shape of World War II.
[00:15:02]  And you can, of course, after you're a soldier, a number of soldiers have done this, you become a historian of the war you actually fought in.
[00:15:09]  In fact, Adolf Hitler was one of those people he fought in World War I and then didn't become a formal historian, but wrote a history of World War I from the Nazi perspective when he was in prison.
[00:15:24]  So, life has a kind of shape to it, which sometimes you only see afterwards.
[00:15:29]  It's really tough to say, I'm going to have this shape to my life as a whole early on.
[00:15:35]  Because, again, you're just surviving and fighting.
[00:15:38]  And of course, the other thing is you don't know your own capacities.
[00:15:41]  I mean, there are some people who do know their own capacities.
[00:15:45]  Freddie Mercury, the singer for Queen, when he was starting out, he and Roger Taylor had a stall selling funky clothing.
[00:15:55]  I think it was in Kensington Market or something like that.
[00:15:57]  And early on, he said, I'm destined for stardom.
[00:16:01]  I'm going to be a big star.
[00:16:02]  I'm going to be a superstar.
[00:16:04]  And when people would take photographs of him early, he would demand that they allow him to destroy the photographs he did not consider sufficiently flattering.
[00:16:12]  I mean, he had a, I guess he was, he was quote straight then, became bi, and then eventually openly came out as gay.
[00:16:20]  And he knew early on or believed.
[00:16:24]  But here's the thing, too.
[00:16:25]  It's, there's lots of people who thought they were going to be famous, who had giant ambitions and thought they were going to be superstars, who didn't actually become superstars.
[00:16:35]  So it's not causal.
[00:16:37]  So some people do.
[00:16:38]  And I knew in general that I was going to be destined for fairly big things or I was going to be able to achieve fairly big things.
[00:16:46]  But I didn't know in what area.
[00:16:47]  I tried, obviously, I tried the arts.
[00:16:51]  I tried acting, writing, directing, writing plays.
[00:16:54]  I wrote novels.
[00:16:55]  I wrote poetry.
[00:16:57]  I went into the business world and then I started doing philosophy.
[00:17:02]  Now I tried academia as well.
[00:17:04]  I got a graduate degree and I just kept casting about trying to find something that would fit.
[00:17:09]  And I really had to wait for technology to catch up with what fit with me because I wrote about podcasting in the 90s.
[00:17:18]  You know, 15 years, 10 years before it became a thing.
[00:17:24]  I wrote about it in the early 2000s in a novel called The God of Atheists, which again you should check out, where a guy speaks to a camera on a computer to the world.
[00:17:39]  And it's long before YouTube, long before RSS feeds and podcasting and so on.
[00:17:46]  And so I finally found something that kind of worked and really fit.
[00:17:49]  And is the most important thing for me that I could be doing for the world.
[00:17:55]  So, the shape of life, when you look back in it, becomes more clear.
[00:18:00]  And one of the things that I remember was there was a French podcaster sort of very early on when I was just, just, just starting out.
[00:18:09]  I can't remember his name, Tremblay, something like that.
[00:18:12]  Quebec, sorry, French, Quebec.
[00:18:15]  Something called the Moral Razor.
[00:18:17]  And he had me on his show.
[00:18:18]  And I'd never done anything like that before, being on someone's show.
[00:18:22]  And I remember feeling extraordinarily tentative, like I don't know if I'm any good at this or not.
[00:18:27]  I have no idea.
[00:18:29]  And my default position is to believe I'm not good at something.
[00:18:34]  That way I have something to prove.
[00:18:35]  And that way I work extra hard to be good at it, right?
[00:18:39]  So I say to myself, if I have a debate coming up, I say to myself, the default position is going to be to fail at the debate.
[00:18:47]  So I have to work to not fail at the debate.
[00:18:50]  I have to prepare, I have to make notes, I have to do my research and.
[00:18:55]  For donors, I will usually say, Here are the new arguments I'm going to make in this debate.
[00:19:01]  I always want to come to debates with new arguments because otherwise people can just look up my old arguments and it's way too easy to counter them or at least to know where I'm coming from.
[00:19:11]  And I remember being very tentative and very uncertain about whether I was providing value, whether I was going to do a good job, and so on.
[00:19:22]  And that helps.
[00:19:24]  I always feel like I have to earn everything all the time.
[00:19:27]  And I think that's what keeps things fresh.
[00:19:28]  It keeps me from.
[00:19:30]  Things becoming automatic as a whole.
[00:19:34]  So the shape of life often shows up later, and all we can do is live day to day on principles, and then the general patterns emerge later.
[00:19:43]  And the general patterns should always have to do with honor, honesty, integrity, virtue, and courage.
[00:19:50]  That's what they should generally have to do with.
[00:19:53]  I certainly don't achieve those with every moment of every day, but that's sort of what I'm aiming at.
[00:19:58]  And if I could do that, And part of that is to gaslight yourself.
[00:20:04]  Now, gaslighting yourself isn't saying, I did wonderfully.
[00:20:07]  That's vanity.
[00:20:08]  Like, I did wonderfully no matter what.
[00:20:09]  Oh, it was great no matter what.
[00:20:11]  Part of gaslighting yourself is positive and negative.
[00:20:14]  Because everyone thinks gaslight is just saying that things are better than they are.
[00:20:19]  But part of gaslighting yourself, I gaslight myself if I have a debate that I'm going to do, and I'm sort of looking at a couple of debates down the road.
[00:20:27]  If I have a debate that I'm going to do, I gaslight myself.
[00:20:30]  Like, I could go in saying, look, I mean, I've been.
[00:20:33]  Debating since my teens, you know, it's 40 plus years.
[00:20:37]  I know what I'm doing.
[00:20:38]  I can just go in and I can do this in my sleep and I could be sort of confident and I could have some reasons for doing that.
[00:20:44]  But gaslighting is also saying to yourself, for me, I'm going to do badly if I don't prepare, or at least I'm not going to do as well as I could, which to me is doing badly.
[00:20:56]  I'm going to do badly if I don't prepare.
[00:20:59]  That's really important.
[00:21:00]  Gaslighting yourself is.
[00:21:03]  Helpful, you can just tell yourself you're not tired.
[00:21:06]  And to some degree, that will help.

=== Thinking Independently Matters (11:20) ===

[00:21:07]  Not with medical stuff.
[00:21:08]  You can't say, I don't have a sunburn, right?
[00:21:11]  Or you shouldn't.
[00:21:12]  But gaslighting yourself is much more powerful.
[00:21:17]  I used to have great scorn for the Hamlet statement there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
[00:21:22]  That's not true.
[00:21:24]  Your beloved dog gets run over, and that is not good.
[00:21:27]  Now, of course, there are other positive things that come out of that.
[00:21:30]  Maybe you get a new dog, and you don't get to see your old dog suffer, but maybe you get a new dog that you love even more, and so on.
[00:21:37]  But in general, there are some things that are bad.
[00:21:41]  You can get some good things out of the bad things, but that doesn't make the bad things good.
[00:21:46]  So, gaslighting yourself, don't let the world dictate your perspective.
[00:21:54]  And certainly don't let other people dictate your perspective.
[00:22:00]  Don't let other people, and I've seen this, I'm sure we've all seen this, it's a pretty wild phenomenon.
[00:22:04]  When I was in my teens, it was the polo shirt.
[00:22:09]  And I think it was Ralph Lauren and things like that.
[00:22:13]  And when I was younger, I remember there were two mad passions that went on in boarding school.
[00:22:18]  Sorry, that probably sounds a little sinister.
[00:22:22]  But number one was we all got obsessed with making paper airplanes, and paper was in short supply.
[00:22:30]  And I remember getting a very long lecture in front of everyone because I had ripped out a page with Roman coins from an encyclopedia my mother had given me because I wanted to try.
[00:22:41]  A new design for a paper airplane.
[00:22:43]  Paper airplanes were just a huge fad in boarding school.
[00:22:47]  I was there from the ages of six to eight.
[00:22:50]  And in boarding school, this fad came out of nowhere.
[00:22:54]  I don't know how it started, became huge for a couple of months, maybe two months, six weeks, two months, and then it just vanished.
[00:23:02]  And people didn't care about paper airplanes anymore.
[00:23:07]  Sorry.
[00:23:07]  The other one that happened was a Conqueror's or a Chestnut's.
[00:23:12]  So we would get a chestnut.
[00:23:14]  This was early Fortnite, early Unreal Tournament.
[00:23:18]  We would get chestnuts and we would find a way to put a hole through the chestnut with an awl or a compass.
[00:23:25]  And then we would put a string through a chestnut, and you would hold a chestnut, and someone else would hit your chestnut with their chestnut on the string.
[00:23:31]  And the one that didn't break won.
[00:23:34]  And that was another mad passion.
[00:23:37]  Conkers.
[00:23:39]  Sounds like conquer, maybe?
[00:23:40]  I don't know.
[00:23:40]  The mad passion that went on.
[00:23:42]  And these things kind of come and go.
[00:23:44]  And you see this, of course, with fashion.
[00:23:48]  A particular look is in.
[00:23:51]  You can go back and look at the giant hair and cheekbone makeup from the 80s.
[00:23:56]  The particular fashion is in, and then it's not.
[00:23:59]  It's out.
[00:23:59]  It's bad.
[00:24:00]  It's wrong.
[00:24:01]  And you can't even remotely think of being seen in last year's outfit.
[00:24:06]  It's the big shoulders, big shoulder pads were in in the 80s.
[00:24:10]  It's sort of Power Woman, Melanie Griffith, poofy head stuff.
[00:24:14]  And these passions, it's all just weak minded people following particular dictated mating trends.
[00:24:24]  If you're cool, you wear this.
[00:24:26]  And it's kind of unfair, honestly.
[00:24:28]  I mean, not that life has to be fair.
[00:24:29]  I'm just sort of pointing it out.
[00:24:31]  That the polo shirts that were big when I was a teenager, I mean, all you do, it's pretty simple, right?
[00:24:37]  You just get really good looking guys in polo shirts doing cool things like sailing.
[00:24:45]  And I know, it always seemed to be sailing.
[00:24:48]  Maybe there were other things too.
[00:24:50]  Or, you know, they're all in some ritzy, well trimmed garden with a couple of cool gargoyles.
[00:24:57]  All laughing and so on.
[00:24:59]  And you just get a bunch of good looking people and you shoot them from slightly below.
[00:25:02]  So you're looking up at them as if they're elevated and you get the perfect faces and the perfect teeth and the perfect hair.
[00:25:08]  And you just shoot that and you broadcast it out.
[00:25:11]  And then everyone has to have a polo shirt.
[00:25:13]  And it's pretty tough, man, because if you're poor, well, you don't get a polo shirt.
[00:25:21]  If you're poor, like I was, and I didn't particularly do this, but my brother was quite a fashion plate.
[00:25:27]  And I don't say that necessarily as a huge negative, it just sort of affects.
[00:25:31]  My brother would spend hours and hours scouring the goodwill.
[00:25:37]  There was a Hasidic bazaar that used to go on downtown, and he would just go down all day and look for cool clothes.
[00:25:43]  And he really did find some cool clothes from time to time, found a great leather jacket and beautiful green sweater and so on that really did look cool and great.
[00:25:50]  So you just have to spend time rather than money if you're poor to get these things.
[00:25:55]  But they just kind of come and go.
[00:25:56]  And this is people allowing other people to dictate.
[00:26:01]  The content of their minds.
[00:26:02]  And it is a way of saying, if you have to have a polo shirt, it's a way of saying, don't worry, everyone.
[00:26:08]  I'm an NPC.
[00:26:10]  I don't think for myself.
[00:26:13]  I allow my perceptions to be manipulated for profit.
[00:26:20]  And I've always disliked that stuff.
[00:26:22]  And I get that it has a point and there's a signaling, there's a, you know, my team and tribalism and all of that.
[00:26:30]  But I just, How sad.
[00:26:32]  How sad to just be an empty vessel to be filled with whatever profitable bullcrap comes into the mind of some marketer out there in the middle of nowhere.
[00:26:43]  Like drinking is one of those things where when I was younger, it was sort of heavily marketed.
[00:26:48]  And it's just, it's very sad.
[00:26:51]  It's very much an abandonment of your own consciousness.
[00:26:54]  And because the juggernaut of marketing and advertising, sales and propaganda, and the biggest propaganda, of course, By far as at the schools, because it's such a juggernaut, you can't live without it.
[00:27:07]  You can live for it or against it, but you can't live in the absence of it because it's almost impossible to conceive.
[00:27:14]  So, it's almost impossible to conceive a life where you're reasoned with and it's not just endless amounts of profitable propaganda.
[00:27:21]  So, my friends and I, who were, we were often, I mean, most of my friends were broke or had parents, even if they weren't broke, weren't about to go and buy them a $40 polo shirt.
[00:27:34]  So, a lot of my friends lived in reaction to that and they would make fun and angry fun of the preppies.
[00:27:42]  I think that comes from prep school, preparatory school.
[00:27:45]  And they would just make fun of the preppies and they would mock them and they lived in reaction to all of this.
[00:27:53]  And it's very sad.
[00:27:54]  It's really, really important to think for yourself as best you can and not get swept up in these.
[00:28:00]  I mean, I think grooming is important.
[00:28:02]  Taking care of your appearance is important.
[00:28:04]  You should go to the dentist.
[00:28:07]  You should exercise.
[00:28:08]  You should have some sort of skincare routine, I believe, because it's kind of important to look decent.
[00:28:13]  And, you know, it's important for yourself to look in the mirror and like what you see.
[00:28:17]  It's important to look in the mirror and like what you see.
[00:28:20]  Because, especially in the past, people would get to know you because you were in some small village or farm community or tribe.
[00:28:31]  So, everyone would get to know the qualities of your character.
[00:28:33]  These days, we're all bouncing around like a bunch of Brownian motion atoms in a hysterical windstorm.
[00:28:39]  And so, we just pass.
[00:28:41]  We've got to make judgments very quickly on people and a reasonable amount of grooming.
[00:28:46]  You know, you don't want too little, you also don't want too much.
[00:28:49]  Some sort of femboy makeup tutorial is probably not the way to go.
[00:28:54]  But some reasonable level of thinking for yourself.
[00:28:57]  And as well as recognizing that you also do have a responsibility to have a decent amount of grooming so that you're reasonably attractive.
[00:29:05]  But yeah, so I wanted to mention the gaslighting thing.
[00:29:08]  It's really, really important.
[00:29:09]  Do not let you be the squishy mud that the tire tracks of other people's perceptions and what happens in life just lands on you.
[00:29:17]  Don't do it.
[00:29:18]  Be an active participant.
[00:29:21]  In the creation of your reality.
[00:29:24]  Now, when I know your reality, I know that sounds like subjectivism or some sort of internalized matrix thing.
[00:29:31]  I'm not talking about that.
[00:29:33]  But if you fail at something, do not brand yourself a failure.
[00:29:38]  Failure is the natural condition of human life.
[00:29:44]  If you're happily married, think about all of the women or men that you were attracted to in the past that didn't work out, either because you didn't talk to them.
[00:29:55]  They just sat across from them in the subway, or you went on a date, but it wasn't compelling, or maybe you had a relationship that didn't work out.
[00:30:05]  So, before you get married these days, most people get married in their late 20s, which is, you know, 12 years plus after they first entered into the dating market.
[00:30:14]  And they've had probably thousands of women or men that they've been attracted to or would have dated.
[00:30:19]  And either they didn't do anything, they just passed by, there was nothing, asked them out.
[00:30:25]  Got rejected right up front because maybe the girl has a boyfriend and so on.
[00:30:28]  And so you think of all the people that you were attracted to or would have dated or tried to date or did date before you got happily married.
[00:30:37]  And it's probably in the thousands, not of people you dated or slept with for sure, but I hope, but just in terms of people you were attracted to and would have considered dating.
[00:30:46]  I mean, think of in high school, right?
[00:30:48]  I had a high school with like 2,500 students and, you know, probably 1,250 of those.
[00:30:56]  Were females, and I probably would have dated half of them.
[00:31:02]  So, you know, that's half of 1250.
[00:31:05]  Oh, Lord, 675.
[00:31:07]  So that is a lot.
[00:31:10]  And that's just in high school.
[00:31:11]  And some of the girls would come and go.
[00:31:13]  So, you understand.
[00:31:15]  So, of all the people you were attracted to, let's say you were attracted to 1,000 people and you married one, that's a failure rate of 99.9%.
[00:31:24]  That's life.
[00:31:25]  Most of life is failure.
[00:31:28]  And you have to enjoy something other than success.
[00:31:30]  I remember being quite struck.
[00:31:32]  Martina Navratilova or something like that.
[00:31:34]  She was a tennis star.
[00:31:36]  It could have been Chris Everett.
[00:31:37]  She was a female tennis star.
[00:31:38]  And she said, The thrill of victory lasts about 15 minutes.
[00:31:41]  I think of that, right?
[00:31:43]  To win Wimbledon, the top tennis tournament in the world, it takes an ungodly amount of training and suffering and dieting and exercise and stretching and recovery and icing and like just on and on and on.
[00:32:03]  Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of hours to win Wimbledon.
[00:32:08]  And if you're only playing tennis to win Wimbledon, Then you have a lot of discomfort, and you're not dating, you're not going to bars, you're not out there in the world, you're not learning how to play chess or learning how to play.
[00:32:22]  It's just single minded dedication to tennis, and then you win.

=== Single-Minded Tennis Dedication (06:46) ===

[00:32:28]  And of course, most of the time, right, tennis matches can go on for two or three hours.
[00:32:35]  And most of your life, you're not in a winning tennis match, and you're certainly not in the moment where you've won.
[00:32:41]  Is this the best possible show I could ever possibly do?
[00:32:44]  I doubt it, but I'm really trying to do something to provide value to you in the time that you're spending listening to me.
[00:32:53]  I can't say, oh, that show I did, my God, late April 2026, that Sunday morning was electric, perfect, beautiful, wonderful.
[00:33:02]  So, is this the number one show I have ever done in my life?
[00:33:09]  There's a show, Drew, Carey, and a couple other comedians, where, whose line is it anyway?
[00:33:16]  And it was an improv show.
[00:33:19]  And they came up with 22 minutes.
[00:33:21]  It was 22 minutes of TV plus eight minutes of commercials.
[00:33:25]  So they would come up with some funny stuff.
[00:33:29]  Right.
[00:33:29]  What can you say?
[00:33:31]  What can you say to your dog that you can't say to your girlfriend?
[00:33:35]  And one of the guys came out and said, Come.
[00:33:38]  Pretty funny.
[00:33:39]  Pretty funny.
[00:33:40]  But I talked to someone who was in the audience once, and he said they filmed for like eight or nine hours or 10 hours sometimes.
[00:33:47]  Just to come up with stuff that works for 22 minutes.
[00:33:52]  And even all of those 22 minutes are not stellar.
[00:33:55]  Think of all the movies you've seen in your life, which ones had a big impact on you that really helped you become who you are.
[00:34:02]  There's very few.
[00:34:03]  So don't let the world impress itself upon you, but be an active participant in the creation of your own reality.
[00:34:14]  I was very tentative to think that I could succeed in what I was doing.
[00:34:20]  I was very tentative about that.
[00:34:22]  And the last thing I'll say, because, you know, it shouldn't be, it should be at least, I think, have a contractual obligation for three Queen references per show.
[00:34:30]  But if you look at Live Aid and you look at the design, Live Aid was a big concert to raise money for people in Africa so that they would have the strength in time to get to Europe.
[00:34:44]  Although I don't think that was exactly discussed at the time, but there were.
[00:34:49]  Two memorable acts in Live Aid.
[00:34:53]  One was Led Zeppelin, which was a complete disaster.
[00:34:58]  And the other was Queen, which is considered like the best 20 minutes of live entertainment in like human history, and led Zeppelin for a variety of reasons, barely practiced.
[00:35:12]  And of course, their original drummer had died many years before.
[00:35:16]  And so they had Phil Collins fly from England to New York on the Concorde, as it was back then, which I think ended up being banned because you couldn't break the sound barrier or something.
[00:35:26]  But.
[00:35:27]  Phil Collins flew over and they had almost no time to prepare, and it was a sludgy mess.
[00:35:35]  Robert Plant's voice was shot because he was on tour, and it was just bad, just bad overall.
[00:35:43]  And so that's a lack of preparation, even from very experienced musicians.
[00:35:46]  Queen, on the other hand, spent two weeks rehearsing for their 20 minutes and picked exactly the right songs and so on.
[00:35:54]  Because, you know, bands always want to play their new material, but the fans want the older.
[00:36:00]  And Queen, you know, agonized over the set list and practiced like crazy.
[00:36:04]  Freddie Mercury was in bad shape, man, because I think he already had AIDS at this point and he had a terrible throat infection.
[00:36:13]  And his doctor said, for God's sakes, don't sing.
[00:36:15]  And of course, he went out and belted it out and, you know, whatever.
[00:36:18]  Probably for the best that he did.
[00:36:19]  He said himself that being a rock and roll singer is just about basically abusing your voice until it breaks, which has happened, I think, to a bunch of musicians lately.
[00:36:28]  John Bon Jovi.
[00:36:30]  Has broken his voice, does not seem to be able to get it back.
[00:36:33]  So, Queen, because they were out of favor, because they had played South Africa and so on, and they were out of favor and they were considered long past their prime.
[00:36:42]  And I think the Hot Space had the Hot Space album come out.
[00:36:45]  So they had a big hit with Another One Bites the Dust.
[00:36:48]  And actually, they weren't even going to release it as a single, but they were friends with Michael Jackson.
[00:36:52]  And Michael Jackson said, You got to do it.
[00:36:54]  It's great.
[00:36:55]  There's got to be a single.
[00:36:57]  And so they put it out and it was one of their biggest hits ever.
[00:37:00]  It got them into the RB station, got the big and they.
[00:37:03]  In the States, which they'd never really been before.
[00:37:05]  And then they said, oh, I think Freddie was doing a whole bunch of sinister Hamburg nightclub, Munich nightclub living where he was just exposed to constant disco.
[00:37:15]  So they tried to do an entire A side of an album with just crap disco on it.
[00:37:20]  And the B side of that album is underrated.
[00:37:22]  It's really, really good.
[00:37:23]  Cool Cat is great.
[00:37:24]  Les Palables de Amor is great.
[00:37:26]  I'm not a big fan of Put Out the Fire because it's an anti gun message, but that's got under pressure.
[00:37:32]  It's not a bad B side at all, but the A side's just terrible.
[00:37:36]  So they were out of favor, and everyone thought they were past their prime.
[00:37:39]  Queen was past their prime.
[00:37:41]  And of course, one of the things that was wild about Live Aid was that bands aren't used to seeing their audience.
[00:37:48]  You know, if you've ever been, it's a wild phenomenon if you've ever been up on stage and well lit, right?
[00:37:54]  Because bands play at night, right?
[00:37:57]  So you're up on the stage, you can't see the audience.
[00:37:58]  You cannot see the audience past the lights, particularly when, like Queen and other acts, they have these big, giant, dazzling light shows.
[00:38:05]  Queen had to have a big light show for the middle part of Bohemian Rhapsody where they just play the tape and leave the stage for a A pee break and a smoke, I'm sure, for Freddie.
[00:38:13]  So you can't see the audience.
[00:38:15]  And one of the things that was wild for Queen, as I guess most of the artists that day, is you finally get to see your audience.
[00:38:22]  It's really hard to see your audience.
[00:38:24]  I remember being on stage a number of times.
[00:38:26]  And if I was doing a soliloquy, because I played Macbeth, and you do a soliloquy, you're not supposed to exactly do it to the audience.
[00:38:35]  But as an actor, you have to be aware of the audience.
[00:38:37]  But you can't see them because you've got all these lights on your face.
[00:38:40]  So they could see the audience.
[00:38:41]  Which I think was particularly electric.
[00:38:43]  And Freddie had his famous sort of, he does his vocal warm up exercises with the crowd.
[00:38:48]  And he could actually see them and dance with them and play with them.
[00:38:51]  And so they ended up being a massive success because they knew that they were behind the eight ball on the back foot and they were down in popularity, and there was quite a bit of hostility towards them, which is why they weren't included in the do they know it's Christmas thing.
[00:39:06]  And so they created their own reality because they could have just coasted and said, Listen, we've been doing tours for decades.
[00:39:13]  We know how to do this.

=== Deplatforming and Free Speech (12:13) ===

[00:39:14]  We'll be fine.
[00:39:15]  But nope, they practiced and practiced and practiced because they want to get it just right.
[00:39:20]  And of course, there's nothing like endless practice to make things look effortless and easy, right?
[00:39:24]  So, they gaslit themselves into thinking they were worse than they were.
[00:39:30]  So, they needed two weeks of practice for 20 minutes.
[00:39:33]  And it's funny, it's just a by the by thing.
[00:39:35]  Queen never made any money on their tours.
[00:39:38]  They never made any money on their tours.
[00:39:40]  They toured and toured and toured, and they spent all the money they made on making their tours better.
[00:39:45]  It's a wild phenomenon.
[00:39:46]  So, yeah, just be an active participant.
[00:39:50]  Queen was great that day because they thought they had the capacity to be really terrible.
[00:39:54]  And so, don't gaslight yourself into thinking you're better than you are so that you can achieve your potential.
[00:40:00]  And for heaven's sakes, don't gaslight yourself into thinking that you're worse than you are.
[00:40:04]  And aiming too high can lead you with nothing.
[00:40:07]  Aiming too high can lead you with nothing.
[00:40:10]  And this is true for women and for men that if you aim too high, like you're a five and you're aiming for a 10, and you don't have something to compensate, like a really great sense of humor or charisma or something like that, or some material success, perhaps some great education, some great potential.
[00:40:29]  If you aim too high, you'll end up at nothing.
[00:40:32]  And so don't gaslight yourself into thinking you're better than you are either.
[00:40:35]  This can really happen for females on the internet, right?
[00:40:38]  Dating apps, social media, because they get, you know, hundreds and hundreds of men interested in them every day.
[00:40:45]  And they start to feel like the queen of Sheba, which means they can't settle down.
[00:40:48]  They get so much dopamine from being pursued by endless hordes of men.
[00:40:52]  I mean, to be a woman on social media these days, and particularly in dating apps, I mean, some reasonably attractive women, but even the averages.
[00:41:02]  You get the kind of attention that was reserved for rock stars or the Beatles in the past.
[00:41:07]  I'm not kidding.
[00:41:08]  Like, it's crazy what this does to women's pair bonding and their wiring mechanisms as a whole.
[00:41:16]  And they constantly swipe, No, In the same way, like if you're, I don't know, Paul McCartney talked about how he had a lot of fun when he was with the Beatles, particularly when they first broke out.
[00:41:31]  And by that, I assume he meant groupies.
[00:41:33]  So, and there are rock stars who will point out someone, they'll make a signal to someone when they're on stage, this girl, bring her back after, right?
[00:41:44]  And of course, you know, there are hundreds of girls all dolled up, all hoping to be picked out by the rock star.
[00:41:50]  And this bath is bigger than my whole apartment.
[00:41:53]  So, these groupies, how many groupies are there?
[00:41:56]  Hundreds and hundreds of groupies.
[00:41:58]  And you just pick out one.
[00:41:59]  And that groupie is almost certain to come back stage.
[00:42:03]  Have sex with you.
[00:42:04]  She gets a cool story.
[00:42:05]  She slept with Steven Tyler.
[00:42:07]  And then she also gets to visit her gynecologist and get antibiotics like lots of things that can fall out of these kinds of stories.
[00:42:16]  And holy crap, having hundreds of people clamoring to be with you is something that rock stars experienced in the past and the average woman with a phone experiences in the present.
[00:42:28]  It's extremely distortionary.
[00:42:32]  And keep an eye out for that.
[00:42:34]  Last thing.
[00:42:36]  Last thing.
[00:42:37]  And thank you for allowing me to have my hopefully productive rambles.
[00:42:41]  I think they're productive.
[00:42:42]  Last thing.
[00:42:43]  And again, if you want to chat, if people don't want to chat, I assume that you're getting great value out of what it is that I'm saying.
[00:42:49]  I appreciate you listening.
[00:42:52]  I really do.
[00:42:53]  I love the fact that you're here.
[00:42:54]  Otherwise, it would be a little odd.
[00:42:56]  Like the people who post for nothing, just having long conversations with a brick wall.
[00:43:00]  Oh, not ideal.
[00:43:02]  So I was remembering a conversation I had years ago with someone.
[00:43:09]  It was not a friend, not a stranger, just one of these people who kind of floats around you see from time to time.
[00:43:15]  And let's call him Jim.
[00:43:17]  We can stay away from Bob for the moment.
[00:43:19]  I'll call him Jim.
[00:43:21]  And Jim had a sister who was an addict, and it was not good.
[00:43:30]  She was committed to the bit, as they say.
[00:43:32]  And his sister, you know, this is many, many years after their childhood, I think a decade or two after their childhood.
[00:43:41]  And his sister was just doing poorly and still living at home and still being an addict.
[00:43:50]  My friend Jim was, well, my acquaintance Jim was tormented by this.
[00:43:53]  Oh, why?
[00:43:54]  I didn't become an addict.
[00:43:55]  She became an addict.
[00:43:56]  Like, maybe it's because of this, maybe it's because of that, some birth order thing, or she had this experience and so on.
[00:44:03]  And it's tough, man.
[00:44:05]  That way, madness lies.
[00:44:07]  I'm telling you straight up.
[00:44:09]  When you try to find causal dominoes for people's circumstances, you will go mad.
[00:44:17]  You will go mad.
[00:44:19]  It will torment and torture you.
[00:44:21]  Well, why is he this way?
[00:44:22]  And why am I that way?
[00:44:23]  And why is she that way?
[00:44:24]  And why?
[00:44:25]  Okay, first of all, personality is largely genetic.
[00:44:27]  Now, it's not like personality is foundational to addictive.
[00:44:31]  Oh, there's an addictive personality.
[00:44:33]  I mean, I don't even know really what that means.
[00:44:36]  But there is no causality for people's choices.
[00:44:41]  And this ties into the fact that you have the absolute responsibility to be an active participant in the shaping of your perceptions.
[00:44:52]  As I said before, I got deplatformed.
[00:44:55]  You know, when I saw Charlie Kirk, I accidentally saw the video of Charlie Kirk getting shot.
[00:45:02]  I saw the picture, sorry, I saw the video.
[00:45:04]  Oh, what's that?
[00:45:05]  And it was horrendous.
[00:45:07]  And honestly, I was facing the same threats when I was out public speaking bomb threats, death threats, threats of violence.
[00:45:15]  And when I was speaking in Australia, feral leftists attacked the venue, attacked the buses.
[00:45:20]  They threw giant batteries through the windows of the buses.
[00:45:23]  They tried to tip the buses over.
[00:45:25]  They just attacked.
[00:45:26]  It really was like a zombie army, but fast moving zombies, well coordinated, well paid, I think, too.
[00:45:33]  When I tried to speak in New Zealand, the media whipped up a bunch of hysteria, of course, and then there were bomb threats that shut down the venue.
[00:45:43]  When I tried to give a speech in Canada, there was, again, the same threats against the venue.
[00:45:50]  The venue stopped.
[00:45:52]  We managed to get a church.
[00:45:54]  The priest's car was attacked.
[00:45:55]  It was wild.
[00:45:58]  And the amount of leftist support for political violence is off the charts.
[00:46:04]  They love it.
[00:46:06]  They love it.
[00:46:07]  Because they have convinced themselves that everyone who disagrees with them is about to become a full on Nazi.
[00:46:14]  And, you know, would you kill Hitler early in his career?
[00:46:19]  Well, sure.
[00:46:20]  So, yeah, once you portray everyone as Hitler or Nazis or.
[00:46:24]  Whatever.
[00:46:25]  You can just do whatever you want.
[00:46:26]  It's a full on permission to be as evil as you want to be.
[00:46:31]  And if I look at deplatforming, well, it's entirely possible that the people who deplatformed me saved my life because it was only a matter of time until I was shot.
[00:46:49]  I remember when I was on speaking tours going to the bathroom, somebody would come in, and I half expected a knife through the back when I was at the urinal.
[00:47:00]  I mean, it was really that wild an experience.
[00:47:05]  So, deplatforming, good or bad, never underestimate the worst luck that your bad luck has saved you from.
[00:47:13]  I can look at deplatforming as ah, they took away my audience, they took away my life's work.
[00:47:18]  Slashed my income that, absolutely, I can look at it that way and I could certainly make a case for that.
[00:47:23]  I don't know because there's no alternative dimension wherein I was not deplatformed, but I'm here.
[00:47:32]  I could easily make the case I'm here because I was deplatformed.
[00:47:37]  That those who deplatformed me were part of, and I know I say this advisedly, like it's just an analogy, sort of the Hegelian world spirit, right?
[00:47:46]  So if there was a world spirit that wanted the truth to come out, Or if there was a God who wanted me to continue speaking, what God would say is, You need to deplatform him so that he doesn't get killed.
[00:48:02]  Or put in a wheelchair with a shot through the spine or something like that, right?
[00:48:07]  You need to please deplatform him because he is not, he thinks that the danger is exciting.
[00:48:14]  He doesn't realize how dangerous it really is.
[00:48:17]  Which means that the world spirit or God himself, Thought that it was better for me to keep speaking than to be martyred.
[00:48:28]  And I suppose I agree.
[00:48:31]  I'm very happy to be here.
[00:48:32]  So I agree.
[00:48:35]  I agree.
[00:48:36]  And again, I know that's just an analogy, but these are ways of looking at things that deplatforming, being deplatformed, saved my life.
[00:48:44]  Laura Loomer was talking about that she said after Charlie Kirkus, there was a teacher of the year, a former computer scientist, and so on, was trying to.
[00:48:55]  Assassinate Trump, we assume Trump, at the correspondence or the press dinner last night.
[00:49:02]  And of course, if you want to know who supports violence, just look for everyone who uses the phrase security incident.
[00:49:08]  There was a security incident.
[00:49:10]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:49:12]  And that's what he faces.
[00:49:15]  And Laura Luma was saying that after Charlie Kirk was shot, she just doesn't go to events anymore.
[00:49:20]  She said, What's the point?
[00:49:21]  I can't go to events without massive security.
[00:49:25]  And that's the life that you live in when you disagree with the left.
[00:49:30]  It is as brutal as being in a viciously, violently, murderously dangerous relationship.
[00:49:41]  Like if you're some woman and you've got some roided up rage beast who beats the crap out of you every time you disagree with him, we would all know that that's an abusive relationship.
[00:49:52]  But people who disagree with the left, you can disagree with the right, you can disagree with Christians and so on.
[00:49:56]  People who disagree with the left, A face, violence, attacks, assaults, reputational destruction, income destruction, just for disagreeing.
[00:50:06]  I mean, they don't fight fair.
[00:50:07]  It's one of the things I really dislike about the left.
[00:50:09]  I kind of hate the left for this I don't mind a fight, but you have to fight fair.
[00:50:14]  Like, I'll get into a boxing ring, but not if you call in and don't even show up and call in an airstrike, and it's not a fair fight.
[00:50:21]  I'll go into a boxing ring, but not if you poison me beforehand so that you, quote, win the fight.
[00:50:26]  It's that level of.
[00:50:28]  Horrendous avoidance and manipulation.
[00:50:31]  And of course, the purpose of the media is to keep portraying people as horrible, evil, racist, Nazi, blah, blah, blah.
[00:50:39]  And they do that to imprint upon people who are unstable the virtue and value of murder, assassination, violence, and so on.
[00:50:51]  And people on the right I'm not exactly on the right, of course, I'm a philosopher, a little bit independent of these labels, but anti leftists have all faced unfathomable levels of violence that people on the left can't understand.
[00:51:04]  And people who are moderates can't understand it either.
[00:51:07]  It's pretty easy to not be frightened of lions if you're a bird in a tree.
[00:51:12]  Lions aren't going to fight to get to you.
[00:51:15]  But only the zebra knows the reality of the lion.
[00:51:20]  So, my perception with regards to something like deplatforming is thank heavens.
[00:51:27]  I got to see my daughter grow up.

=== Lions vs Birds Reality (13:54) ===

[00:51:28]  I got to spend more time with my wife.
[00:51:30]  And I get to do a whole lot more philosophy being alive.
[00:51:35]  Be an active participant in your view of reality.
[00:51:41]  Now, you don't want to make up facts.
[00:51:44]  But you really do have a choice about interpretations.
[00:51:47]  Every woman who dumped me or who I dumped led me to my wife 23, 24 years.
[00:51:55]  It's been wonderful.
[00:51:58]  And my heart grows a thousand times a day.
[00:52:02]  Every breakup led me to that.
[00:52:07]  This, what I live, what I love.
[00:52:10]  I wanted to be effective in the realm of philosophy.
[00:52:14]  That really was.
[00:52:15]  My metric.
[00:52:16]  I'm an empiricist, which means, and also my training in the business world means that you actually have to get things done.
[00:52:23]  You actually have to get the contract signed.
[00:52:25]  You have to ship the product.
[00:52:27]  You have to provide the service.
[00:52:29]  You have to get things done.
[00:52:31]  A business plan is not a profit.
[00:52:35]  Daydreaming is not achievement.
[00:52:37]  It's nothing wrong with daydreaming, but it's got to lead somewhere, right?
[00:52:40]  And so, as a philosopher, I wanted to actually achieve things in the world.
[00:52:45]  Not just write a bunch of stuff that no one cares or thinks about, doesn't add up to anything, doesn't really change anything.
[00:52:52]  Like that line in the movie Shadowlands, Deborah Winger and Anthony Hopkins.
[00:52:57]  Anthony Hopkins plays C.S. Lewis, and C.S. Lewis is an academic and talks to another academic, just looking up from his work, saying, Doesn't it all just feel sort of pointless?
[00:53:11]  The other academic says, Well, yes, of course.
[00:53:14]  I didn't want that.
[00:53:16]  So, my choices were to be a windbag with some interesting ideas and arguments and some jokes and charm, perhaps, and not achieve anything in the world and then end up with a sense of emptiness.
[00:53:29]  What have I really changed?
[00:53:31]  The shape of your life is defined by what you've changed in the world.
[00:53:35]  So, I could be ineffective in the world and then I would be safe from violence.
[00:53:39]  Or I could be effective in the world, which means thwarting the interests of evildoers.
[00:53:45]  I could be safe in the world, which means I get the despair of having changed nothing.
[00:53:50]  I can be effective in the world, which means I summon violent opposition, and that's it.
[00:53:57]  That's the only choice you have.
[00:53:59]  You can retreat before evil, which leaves you with self-contempt, depression, anxiety, and feelings of existential disutility that you've wasted your life.
[00:54:10]  Horrendous.
[00:54:11]  Horrendous.
[00:54:12]  Or you can be effective in the world, promote virtue, thwart evil, in which case you get attacked.
[00:54:20]  So, you either attack yourself or you get attacked by others.
[00:54:23]  There's really no other option.
[00:54:25]  You either fall back before evildoers, in which case you have self contempt, again, where reasonably you can fight, or you thwart, effectively thwart the goals, desires, and lusts of evildoers, in which case they attack the hell out of you.
[00:54:43]  And the best you can hope for is surviving the attack.
[00:54:49]  You can't stop the attack, you can only prevent the attack by being inconsequential.
[00:54:55]  But all you can do is survive the attack because they don't fight fair.
[00:54:59]  They don't fight fair.
[00:55:01]  They don't take you on with reason and evidence, which is how you know they're wrong.
[00:55:04]  If you're wrong, you can fight fair.
[00:55:05]  If you're a good boxer, you don't need to cheat.
[00:55:08]  You don't need to poison your opponent.
[00:55:10]  You'll just take them on if you're a good boxer.
[00:55:12]  If you're a bad boxer, then.
[00:55:14]  And of course, I predicted all of this, although I make predictions and then forget about them from time to time.
[00:55:20]  But I sort of said if anybody interferes with the goals, actions, plans, and ideals of evildoers, then the evildoers will.
[00:55:28]  Cheat the system.
[00:55:29]  I'm going to cheat the system.
[00:55:32]  And to be an active participant in the shaping of your perceptions of reality.
[00:55:37]  You can't shape reality.
[00:55:38]  I can't gaslight myself and say, I was never deplatformed.
[00:55:41]  I mean, I could, but that would be kind of crazy, right?
[00:55:44]  That would be unwell in the extreme.
[00:55:47]  So I can't just say, I was never deplatformed.
[00:55:53]  I was never attacked, right?
[00:55:55]  My family was never attacked, right?
[00:55:58]  I can't say that.
[00:55:59]  That would be crazy.
[00:56:00]  But.
[00:56:01]  What it means, right?
[00:56:03]  You have no control over what it is, but you have a lot of control over what it means.
[00:56:10]  Over what it means.
[00:56:14]  And way too many people let other people define what it means, right?
[00:56:18]  So it's back to the polo story I was talking about earlier the polo shirt story in the 80s.
[00:56:23]  Well, what it means to be successful and attractive and hip and cool is wearing a polo shirt.
[00:56:29]  F off.
[00:56:29]  No, it doesn't.
[00:56:31]  Shallow, ridiculous, pathetic adornment.
[00:56:34]  Conformity.
[00:56:35]  Useless.
[00:56:36]  The useless shifting of money to empty headed marketing sociopaths is not the definition of the good life.
[00:56:43]  It's really not.
[00:56:45]  And shouldn't be.
[00:56:46]  Can't be.
[00:56:47]  Isn't.
[00:56:48]  Isn't.
[00:56:50]  So, I haven't forgotten about Jim.
[00:56:52]  Let's go back to Jim.
[00:56:53]  Get back to the Jim.
[00:56:54]  Go back to Jim.
[00:56:56]  Jim with his sister, who's the addict.
[00:56:58]  He was looking for causality.
[00:57:00]  Why did she become an addict?
[00:57:01]  Why did she make this choice?
[00:57:01]  Why did she do that?
[00:57:03]  And of course, like most addicts, she was horrendously manipulative.
[00:57:07]  If you don't give me money, I'm just going to go out and sell my body.
[00:57:10]  If you don't give me money, I'm just going to go and steal it, then I'll go to jail.
[00:57:13]  If you don't give me money, I'm going to kill myself.
[00:57:16]  You know, just addicts are the ultimate NPCs because they're just programmed by the drug to get the more drugs, right?
[00:57:24]  The cells that need the drugs are just the puppet masters.
[00:57:28]  They're not even themselves.
[00:57:30]  It's demonic possession, right?
[00:57:32]  It's the analogy, it's demonic possession.
[00:57:35]  And of course, When you grow up with someone who becomes an addict, you remember them when they were young and tenderhearted and nice and sweet and thoughtful and, you know, before they made the series of choices that they made in order to become addicts.
[00:57:50]  I mean, it's not like the first cigarette you put in your mouth makes you a lifelong two pack a day smoker.
[00:57:55]  It's not like the first drink you ever put to your lips makes you a complete raving alcoholic.
[00:57:59]  No.
[00:58:01]  No.
[00:58:02]  You make the choice and then you make a series of choices that ends up with you being an addict.
[00:58:06]  You make a choice.
[00:58:08]  To try the drug, and then you make the choice to do the drug again and again and again and again.
[00:58:14]  And then, very quickly, the choices you make mean that you don't make any more choices.
[00:58:20]  Like you can choose to jump off a cliff, hopefully into some nice quarry water below.
[00:58:27]  You can choose to jump off a cliff for sure, but after you've chosen to jump off a cliff, you can't choose to not fall.
[00:58:35]  Gravity takes over and you fall, right?
[00:58:40]  So the little choices that you make lead to big choices you can't make.
[00:58:47]  I, for instance, have made a choice to not run a marathon.
[00:58:52]  I ran 25 miles once when I worked up north, but I've never run a marathon, and I'm never going to run a marathon.
[00:58:59]  I have a bit of a solid build body type, and, you know, the skinny javelin limbed runners is not my body type.
[00:59:08]  And I don't particularly enjoy running, and also I'm not sure that I should really start training for a marathon when I'm going to be 60 this year.
[00:59:17]  It doesn't seem right.
[00:59:19]  Also, that thump, thump, thump on your face skin ages you.
[00:59:22]  It's fine.
[00:59:23]  People want to do it.
[00:59:24]  It's great.
[00:59:25]  But I have made choices consistently to not be a runner.
[00:59:28]  I know I can still sprint.
[00:59:29]  I actually did it last summer.
[00:59:32]  I sprinted full tilt.
[00:59:33]  I can still sprint, which is good.
[00:59:35]  Most people can't after the age of 30.
[00:59:36]  I can still sprint.
[00:59:38]  And I, of course, have chosen to not be a runner.
[00:59:40]  And that means I can't choose to run a marathon.
[00:59:41]  I can't stop this show right now, go find a marathon somewhere and run it.
[00:59:46]  I can't do it physically.
[00:59:47]  I cannot do it.
[00:59:49]  So because I've made the choice to not train for a marathon, I do not have the choice to run a marathon.
[00:59:54]  And people become addicts because they make little choices and little choices, and then they end up in a state of no choice.
[01:00:04]  You know, my mother made choices over the course of her life that gave her a bad conscience.
[01:00:09]  And I've known a lot of people like this.
[01:00:11]  They make choices over the course of their life and they end up with a bad conscience.
[01:00:15]  Now, everything they did that was bad or wrong, they chose to do.
[01:00:21]  And they no longer have the choice to have a good conscience.
[01:00:26]  They no longer have the choice to look at themselves with respect.
[01:00:31]  They have no choice for that.
[01:00:32]  They cannot do it.
[01:00:34]  Every cigarette you smoke, if you're a smoker, is a choice.
[01:00:38]  Nobody's got a gun to your head.
[01:00:39]  And if somebody paid you a million dollars to not smoke for five minutes, you'd put that cigarette down.
[01:00:44]  So every cigarette that you smoke is a choice.
[01:00:50]  The damage to your lungs is not a choice.
[01:00:53]  You have no choice for that.
[01:00:56]  That's life.
[01:00:57]  So what we do is we look at people after.
[01:01:01]  They don't have a choice.
[01:01:03]  And they say, we say, well, they never had a choice.
[01:01:07]  Because when you see an addict in the grips of their addiction, and you say, they don't have a choice to not be an addict, look, they're desperate.
[01:01:15]  They can't sleep.
[01:01:15]  They pace.
[01:01:16]  They're so tormented.
[01:01:18]  If they can't get the drug, they feel like they're going to die.
[01:01:21]  And, right, like they have no choice.
[01:01:25]  They can't not be an addict.
[01:01:27]  Okay, fine.
[01:01:29]  But again, somebody who steps off a cliff, we say, well, it's not their fault.
[01:01:33]  They fell.
[01:01:35]  It's complicated though, right?
[01:01:37]  And yet, not.
[01:01:39]  See, here's quality philosophy it is and is not at the same time.
[01:01:43]  So, if somebody is pushed off a cliff, we don't blame them for falling, right?
[01:01:48]  So, right?
[01:01:49]  Pushed off a cliff.
[01:01:51]  And then again, this is not necessarily a death situation you fall into.
[01:01:55]  I love jumping off cliffs into quarry water.
[01:01:58]  I love that.
[01:01:59]  It's great.
[01:02:00]  It's very exciting.
[01:02:01]  Always check the depth.
[01:02:03]  So, if somebody's pushed off a cliff, we don't.
[01:02:07]  Yell at them and say, Why did you fall?
[01:02:10]  So I was pushed.
[01:02:12]  Okay.
[01:02:12]  If somebody jumps off a cliff, we don't say, Why did you fall?
[01:02:16]  We say, Why did you jump?
[01:02:18]  Because the jumping is a choice, the falling is not.
[01:02:21]  And what happens is, in life, we see people and we don't see the choice to jump.
[01:02:25]  We see them falling.
[01:02:27]  And we say, oh my gosh, they must have been pushed by circumstances.
[01:02:33]  They must have been pushed by their circumstances.
[01:02:35]  Events conspired, trauma conspired, bad things, they had this and that and the other, dominoes happened, and they got pushed.
[01:02:42]  And of course, everyone who's falling, who wants you to catch them, will say, I was pushed.
[01:02:48]  And this is the difference between the left and the right.
[01:02:51]  The left says, You were pushed.
[01:02:54]  The right says, You jumped.
[01:02:57]  And I go with, You jumped.
[01:03:01]  I mean, there's some extreme circumstances and so on where we can say people don't effectively have free will.
[01:03:05]  That's very much the minority, a tiny minority.
[01:03:09]  Not guilty by reasons of insanity is very rare and very hard to prove.
[01:03:14]  So he saw his sister, Jim saw his sister.
[01:03:20]  Before she fell.
[01:03:23]  And he says, What circumstance pushed her?
[01:03:26]  And he, well, he said, He said birth order.
[01:03:29]  And I was like, Well, you know, birth order doesn't determine outcomes.
[01:03:33]  I mean, maybe it has an influence, but whatever, right?
[01:03:36]  But doesn't determine outcomes.
[01:03:38]  Because you still have to believe in birth order.
[01:03:42]  You still have to believe in birth order.
[01:03:44]  So if you disbelieve in birth order, what effect does it really have?
[01:03:49]  I was considered small and inconsequential in my family because I kind of armadilloed and curled up in order to survive the chaos.
[01:03:55]  Doesn't mean I have to believe that for the rest of my life at all, right?
[01:03:59]  In fact, I would consider it horrendous to do so.
[01:04:02]  So it's not birth order.
[01:04:05]  So, oh, well, my sister was traumatized as a child.
[01:04:08]  Yeah, of course, that's not good.
[01:04:10]  But it's not like everyone who's traumatized becomes a drug addict.
[01:04:14]  That's not true.
[01:04:15]  It's not causal.
[01:04:17]  You know, everybody who's injected with a lethal drug will die.
[01:04:22]  But not everyone who's traumatized becomes a horrendous manipulative drug addict.
[01:04:28]  No.
[01:04:30]  Were they pushed?
[01:04:31]  Did they jump?
[01:04:33]  Everybody who jumped will try to convince you that they were pushed, right?
[01:04:39]  A woman who's a single mother will try to tell you that she became a single mother through no fault of her own, thus putting herself in the moral category of a toddler or a baby.
[01:04:53]  If a baby is hungry, we don't sit there and say, make your own scrambled eggs, make your own sandwich, make your own whatever, right?
[01:05:00]  No, it's a cat, right?
[01:05:01]  For babies.
[01:05:02]  We don't say to toddlers who are poor, go get a job, unless they're working for big tech.
[01:05:09]  So, people will say, it's not my fault.
[01:05:11]  Well, why are you a single mother?
[01:05:13]  Well, you know, he loved me and then he left me.
[01:05:16]  It's his fault.
[01:05:17]  He lied to me, blah, blah, blah, right?
[01:05:18]  Yeah, like women have never evolved to figure out when men might lie to get sex.

=== Parents Are Not Responsible (14:17) ===

[01:05:23]  We couldn't possibly be here if women hadn't evolved the ability to tell when men lie to get sex.
[01:05:29]  No, you went for looks.
[01:05:30]  You went for the hot tattooed motorcycle guy rather than the mother, more staid provider.
[01:05:37]  You went for a high status guy that your girlfriends would giggle and say, Oh, I'm so jealous.
[01:05:42]  He's so hot.
[01:05:48]  You make little choices, and little choices snowball until you don't have choices.
[01:05:54]  It's like when you're a kid you run down a hill.
[01:05:58]  Running down that hill, you run down a hill, right?
[01:06:01]  And running down the hill, and at some point you can't stop.
[01:06:05]  Right?
[01:06:06]  And your choice is to start running down the hill.
[01:06:08]  Your choice is to build up speed.
[01:06:10]  Once you've built up enough speed, you can't stop, especially if the hill gets steeper.
[01:06:15]  Now, if all you see is some kid cartwheeling, windmilling down the hills, oh my God, right?
[01:06:22]  Well, he made the choice to start running down the hill.
[01:06:25]  And I remember when I was teaching my daughter how to ski when she was little, and we decided to take on some moguls.
[01:06:32]  Moguls are these little bumps that are really tricky to get around, and people, for some reason, I mean, I assume it's just masochism, they like doing moguls.
[01:06:41]  And we started going down the moguls, and I don't remember why we started.
[01:06:48]  I'm not even going to say I thought I could do them, but maybe we're just skiing and there were some moguls, and I don't know.
[01:06:53]  I thought it'd be kind of fun to give it a try or whatever.
[01:06:56]  And we got stuck on the hill.
[01:06:58]  We couldn't.
[01:06:59]  The hill was so steep.
[01:07:01]  We had to take our skis off and we couldn't climb it, it was too slippery.
[01:07:05]  And we were stuck on the hill.
[01:07:06]  I remember my wife was down at the bottom.
[01:07:09]  Are you okay?
[01:07:10]  And we were stuck on the hill.
[01:07:11]  We couldn't go down and we couldn't go back up.
[01:07:14]  And eventually I figured out how to sort of dig my.
[01:07:18]  Boots into the ice, and we sort of slowly made our way back up the hill.
[01:07:22]  And it was actually kind of funny.
[01:07:23]  It was, nobody got hurt.
[01:07:25]  It was very memorable.
[01:07:26]  It was kind of funny.
[01:07:27]  And, you know, having self created problems that you overcome is pretty important to teach your kids.
[01:07:32]  So I made the choice to be in Icy Moguls in a snowstorm at night.
[01:07:39]  Made the choice.
[01:07:41]  And then I was stuck.
[01:07:43]  And I really didn't want to get hauled out by the snow patrol.
[01:07:51]  It was a memorable half hour or whatever it was.
[01:07:54]  So, Jim and his sister think back to before and after this, therefore, because of this, right?
[01:08:02]  That the drug addiction happened after bad things happened, some abuse.
[01:08:06]  I don't know what the details were, but I think there was some abuse.
[01:08:09]  So, the drug addiction happened after the abuse, therefore, the drug addiction happened because of the abuse.
[01:08:15]  After this, therefore, because of this.
[01:08:19]  Right.
[01:08:20]  Temperatures crept up a little after the Industrial Revolution, therefore, because of the Industrial Revolution.
[01:08:25]  No, it's the sun.
[01:08:26]  So Jim was tormented.
[01:08:29]  What caused her addiction?
[01:08:31]  What caused her to be in a state of no free will and just falling?
[01:08:35]  After you've been an addict for, I don't know, 15 years or whatever, I mean, you don't really have much choice about anything.
[01:08:41]  And he was tormented.
[01:08:43]  And I remember saying to him this many years ago there is no answer.
[01:08:47]  There is no answer.
[01:08:49]  Because if there's an answer, there's no free will.
[01:08:53]  Why did his sister become an addict?
[01:08:58]  Because she chose every time she used the drug.
[01:09:04]  And then after a while, she had very little to no choice about not doing the drug.
[01:09:10]  She jumped.
[01:09:13]  And I really remember because he was very angry with his parents.
[01:09:16]  Oh, my parents mistreated her, and that's why she became an addict.
[01:09:20]  And I'm really angry at them, and blah, blah, blah.
[01:09:22]  And I said, But you can't be.
[01:09:25]  Because if her abuses, threatening to kill herself, going to go to jail, sell my body, all that, like her emotional terrorism and manipulations and abuses, her abuses, you say, were caused by her parents, your parents, and you're angry at your parents.
[01:09:45]  But you can't be.
[01:09:47]  Because if you're angry at your parents, you're saying, my parents should have done differently.
[01:09:54]  But you can't say, my sister had no free will, but my parents did, because your parents themselves had really bad childhoods.
[01:10:02]  Right?
[01:10:04]  Jim and his sister's parents also had really bad childhoods.
[01:10:07]  If Jim's sister is not responsible for becoming a drug addict, then Jim's parents and his sister's parents are not responsible for being abusive.
[01:10:16]  You can't say, free will was in the nature of my parents, but not in the nature of my sister.
[01:10:24]  We're human beings.
[01:10:26]  You can't have separate dials.
[01:10:28]  Oh, I'm going to dial, you know, think of those little slider bars for like equalizers and so on, right?
[01:10:34]  I'm going to slide the bar of free will way up.
[01:10:38]  For my parents, my parents could totally have chosen differently, even though they had terrible childhoods.
[01:10:42]  But my sister is a victim of my parents.
[01:10:44]  I'm going to dial down her free will.
[01:10:47]  And this, of course, is generally gendered, right?
[01:10:49]  It's by sex.
[01:10:51]  It's by sex.
[01:10:53]  We dial up free will for men, we dial down free will for women.
[01:10:57]  And women prefer that because they get to be victims, and by being victims, they get to get resources, especially through the government, right?
[01:11:03]  A bit different with the charity, but through the government for sure, right?
[01:11:07]  You can't get mad at your parents for all of their supposed free will and ability to do things differently, and then say that your sister's addiction was caused by your parents and she has no free will.
[01:11:20]  Nope.
[01:11:23]  The moment that someone is angry at someone else, they have accepted free will.
[01:11:29]  And it is absolutely wrong to say human beings have free will, except for my sister, man, total victim.
[01:11:39]  No choice.
[01:11:41]  Everyone chooses stuff except my sister.
[01:11:43]  She was just the last in a whole series of dominoes to fall.
[01:11:45]  She has no choice, no free will.
[01:11:47]  I can't.
[01:11:49]  I mean, I get that it's comfortable.
[01:11:50]  I get that it serves a particular emotional need.
[01:11:54]  But I just can't let people believe that.
[01:11:57]  I mean, I'd like to in a way.
[01:11:59]  I like to be liked.
[01:12:00]  It's nice to be popular.
[01:12:02]  It's nice for people to think positively.
[01:12:04]  But not to that degree.
[01:12:05]  Not to the degree where you're willing to go along with any delusion.
[01:12:10]  And the real addiction is to victimhood.
[01:12:13]  It's not to the drug, it's to victimhood.
[01:12:15]  And I don't know if you've ever gone through this process.
[01:12:17]  I don't know.
[01:12:18]  It's a brutal process.
[01:12:20]  I don't know if you've ever gone through the process of trying to peel self pity off someone.
[01:12:26]  Oh my God.
[01:12:28]  It is demonic.
[01:12:30]  Trying to peel self pity from someone.
[01:12:32]  Self pity is somebody saying, I was pushed.
[01:12:37]  And replacing self pity, I was pushed, with the truth, you jumped, is horrendous.
[01:12:44]  If you ever want to see the most feral aspects of human nature, go to professional victims and tell them they're not victims.
[01:12:52]  Oof.
[01:12:54]  That really does arouse the most feral aspects of human nature.
[01:13:00]  It happened with parents who attacked me in the past, abusive parents, or at least parents who their children said were abusive, their adult children, and they felt that they were the victims of, you know, bad internet guy or whatever it was, or their children who had just.
[01:13:16]  Attacking them or going no contact for no reason, blah, blah, there's victims, right?
[01:13:21]  And of course, pointing out that they held their children responsible at the age of five, but they considered themselves not responsible at the age of 50 is pathetic.
[01:13:30]  I mean, society can never tell me that there's a single goddamn adult who is not responsible for his or her life because they held me responsible at the age of five for my choices.
[01:13:41]  Hey, you didn't study for the test, you get an F. Hey, man, you knew the test was coming, you're five, you're not dumb, right?
[01:13:47]  You're six or seven, right?
[01:13:50]  You know the facts?
[01:13:52]  Hey, you chose to go out without a coat.
[01:13:56]  You're cold.
[01:13:57]  Well, that's what happens if you don't think things through, if you don't think things ahead.
[01:14:02]  Oh, you were hungry and you stole some food?
[01:14:04]  Eh, too bad, man.
[01:14:05]  You're going to the cop shop no matter what.
[01:14:07]  You know, it's wrong, right?
[01:14:09]  You can't do it.
[01:14:11]  Oh, you're having trouble paying attention in class, even though your mother was smoking and typing in your room all night with an electric typewriter.
[01:14:20]  Well, you know, you're tired in class.
[01:14:22]  You're hungry.
[01:14:23]  You've got no sleep.
[01:14:24]  Oh, it's too bad.
[01:14:26]  You get a detention.
[01:14:28]  I remember I got lines and I sprained my wrist horribly.
[01:14:36]  Punished me for not finishing my lines.
[01:14:38]  Like I couldn't write.
[01:14:39]  I mean, I was left handed.
[01:14:40]  I'm left handed, right?
[01:14:41]  So I couldn't write.
[01:14:41]  I could have tried it on my right, but it's kind of awkward.
[01:14:44]  And then she, and then I also knew if I tried it on my right, she would say that I was mocking her by writing the lines badly.
[01:14:50]  It doesn't matter.
[01:14:52]  It doesn't matter that you sprained your wrist.
[01:14:54]  You're still responsible for doing your lines.
[01:14:55]  It doesn't matter.
[01:14:58]  When I was 11, 10, I got my first job when I was 10.
[01:15:03]  And if I didn't produce enough, people said, you know, producing enough, you're going to get fired.
[01:15:08]  Okay, it's fine.
[01:15:08]  I get consequences when I'm 10.
[01:15:11]  Okay.
[01:15:12]  Okay.
[01:15:13]  I joined a swim team.
[01:15:15]  And it was a $4 fee.
[01:15:17]  I couldn't possibly afford it.
[01:15:18]  There was no $4 in my household.
[01:15:20]  And so I got dropped from the team.
[01:15:22]  Okay.
[01:15:24]  I don't have the money.
[01:15:25]  I can't summon the money.
[01:15:27]  All right.
[01:15:28]  When I was going to boarding school once, I lost my ticket.
[01:15:32]  I was seven.
[01:15:35]  Okay.
[01:15:35]  Well, you can't get on the train.
[01:15:39]  My mother once dropped me.
[01:15:40]  She picked me up from summer camp quite a lot.
[01:15:44]  And she picked me up from summer camp, dropped me downtown with no money.
[01:15:49]  And it was a long, I was like a couple of hours to get home, maybe an hour and a half, maybe two hours.
[01:15:54]  And I had a big, heavy bag of all my stuff from summer camp.
[01:15:58]  And I went around asking people, can I have a quarter to get on the bus if I can't get home?
[01:16:04]  And people were like, just rolled their eyes at me.
[01:16:07]  Why are you here with no bus fare?
[01:16:08]  Why are you so unprepared?
[01:16:10]  Bro, I'm 11 years old.
[01:16:13]  My mom dropped me with no money and a big heavy bag because she had to go to work.
[01:16:18]  All right.
[01:16:19]  I mean, the bus dropped me at, I think it was Finch Subway.
[01:16:21]  My mom met me at Finch, rode with me down to Eglinton, said, You've got to go.
[01:16:26]  I've got to get to work.
[01:16:28]  And no money.
[01:16:29]  And people, I remember this one guy with a beard finally gave me a quarter, but he still rolled his eyes like, This is probably a scam.
[01:16:36]  Right?
[01:16:36]  Like, I'm 11 years old.
[01:16:37]  I got this big giant bag.
[01:16:38]  I didn't got no money.
[01:16:41]  So people held me accountable as a kid, little kid, five, six, seven, 10, 12, 15.
[01:16:48]  I was held to the same standards.
[01:16:51]  It doesn't matter that your mother is in an insane asylum, it doesn't matter that your mother has been institutionalized.
[01:16:59]  You got to hand in your book report, kid.
[01:17:03]  Doesn't matter.
[01:17:04]  Okay.
[01:17:05]  Hey, man, I think that's harsh.
[01:17:08]  I wouldn't have those particular standards.
[01:17:10]  But okay, people are responsible.
[01:17:14]  And I was pushed into this family.
[01:17:16]  I didn't choose this family.
[01:17:17]  If I was pushed into this family as a kid, I was pushed.
[01:17:20]  I didn't jump.
[01:17:21]  I didn't say, oh, I was floating like a bunch of souls floating around the earth, like Saturn's rings.
[01:17:26]  And I didn't say, oh, I'm going to go to that one.
[01:17:27]  Oh, yeah, that's the one for me.
[01:17:28]  I didn't choose that.
[01:17:31]  I was definitely pushed, right?
[01:17:32]  I had the family I had.
[01:17:34]  I was pushed.
[01:17:35]  And that's the way.
[01:17:37]  That's the way.
[01:17:37]  Society is like, hey, kid, you're going to be held to everyone else's standards.
[01:17:41]  You know, you're going to be held to the same standards.
[01:17:43]  I was held to the same standards.
[01:17:44]  I had a friend of mine.
[01:17:45]  His father was a professor.
[01:17:47]  His mother was this absolutely lovely homemaker, had a peaceful house, a lot of fun, swimming pool, upper middle class income.
[01:17:54]  And I was held to the same standards as my friend.
[01:17:57]  Okay.
[01:17:58]  So I don't get any excuses, even for the things that are demonstrably not my fault.
[01:18:03]  Okay.
[01:18:04]  I accept that.
[01:18:05]  I accept that I am dealt with as an entirely self generated agent at the age of 5 or 10 or 15.
[01:18:16]  No problem.
[01:18:17]  Well, I mean, a slight problem, but I accept that society says that a 10 year old is fully responsible.
[01:18:26]  Fully responsible.
[01:18:29]  If you didn't study as well as you could have or should have for this test, Even though your mother has not left her bed in two or three weeks and you're running out of food, you still have to hand in your fracking homework assignment.
[01:18:48]  Okay.
[01:18:48]  Hey, that's society, man.
[01:18:51]  Society is just like, man, you are responsible.
[01:18:55]  And then it's kind of bewildering.
[01:18:57]  You grow up and all of these women who've got kids without dads around.
[01:19:02]  That was my fault.
[01:19:03]  I'm not responsible.
[01:19:04]  What?
[01:19:05]  What?
[01:19:06]  What are you talking about?
[01:19:08]  What are you talking about?
[01:19:09]  What do you mean you're not responsible?
[01:19:11]  I was held accountable when I was 10 years old for not studying for some stupid math test that gave me no practical skills in the long run at all.
[01:19:22]  I didn't get any excuses.
[01:19:23]  Nobody asked any questions.
[01:19:26]  I mean, I was coming to school with holes in my clothing, hungry, rings under my eyes.
[01:19:31]  I mean, I can see my pictures from back then, right?
[01:19:34]  In school pictures and so on.
[01:19:35]  I looked like a zombie.
[01:19:37]  I looked like, you know, lights on, nobody home.

=== Full Moral Responsibility (06:04) ===

[01:19:40]  I was hungry, skinny, no haircut, holes in my claws.
[01:19:45]  I smelled for a while.
[01:19:47]  A friend of mine's dad had to intervene and say, Bro, it's great having you around, but you got to get some deodorant.
[01:19:56]  I didn't know.
[01:19:57]  Nobody told me.
[01:19:58]  So, yeah, society held me 100% accountable at the age of 10.
[01:20:06]  Okay.
[01:20:07]  So people are responsible.
[01:20:09]  And then it's just the weirdest thing.
[01:20:10]  Then you grow up and you go out into the world and everyone claims to be a victim.
[01:20:13]  What?
[01:20:15]  I wasn't a victim despite the fact that I was home alone with my mother while she was going literally mad.
[01:20:23]  And I got no excuses.
[01:20:25]  Nobody ever checked in.
[01:20:26]  Nobody asked me how I was doing.
[01:20:28]  I had to do exactly the same work as everyone else despite carrying this massive burden of my mother's hysterical mental decay and descent into madness to the point where she went to the doctor.
[01:20:39]  He called security and they put her in an insane asylum for a long time.
[01:20:44]  And nobody ever asked me how I was doing.
[01:20:47]  I mean, I literally go and visit her.
[01:20:48]  Not one single person at the insane asylum said, Hey, you don't have a dad and you are 12.
[01:20:57]  How are you doing?
[01:20:58]  They didn't care.
[01:21:00]  I mean, I don't mean to laugh because it's so long ago now, but they didn't care.
[01:21:05]  And then society's like, Well, you know, we really care for the Africans.
[01:21:10]  What?
[01:21:11]  I don't care about shit.
[01:21:12]  Don't give me that.
[01:21:13]  Don't give me that.
[01:21:15]  So, yeah, I had to tell Jim, I'm sorry, but your sister's an a hole.
[01:21:22]  And I remember his eyes widening.
[01:21:24]  This is many, many years ago.
[01:21:26]  His eyes were widening.
[01:21:27]  I'm like, well, yeah.
[01:21:29]  I mean, if your parents are a holes, then your sister's an a hole.
[01:21:33]  If your parents are abusive, then your sister is abusive.
[01:21:36]  I mean, she didn't become a drug addict when she was 10.
[01:21:39]  She became a drug addict.
[01:21:40]  It really hit full flower when she was an adult.
[01:21:44]  So, if your parents are responsible, your sister's responsible.
[01:21:47]  And I mean, threatening to off yourself if you don't get your way is just about the most abusive thing that a human being can do.
[01:21:56]  It's horrendous.
[01:21:58]  It's horrendous.
[01:21:59]  I mean, it's just about the ugliest, most brutal thing that you can do to another human being is to threaten that if you don't get your way.
[01:22:07]  And I said, Look, imagine Jim.
[01:22:11]  Okay, no, I think he did have a kid.
[01:22:13]  He had a son.
[01:22:14]  And I said, Imagine that you hire a babysitter.
[01:22:19]  Say she's 18.
[01:22:20]  You hire a babysitter for your son, and you and your wife go out, and you come back home, and you say to your son, How was your evening?
[01:22:29]  And your son, haltingly and hesitatingly and not really knowing the words he's using, ends up telling you that the babysitter threatened to do that to herself if he didn't go to bed when she wanted him to.
[01:22:42]  When she like held a knife out, and I mean, would you be tormented and say, oh my gosh, this babysitter must have had a really bad childhood and sympathy, and what could have caused this, and it's not her fault?
[01:22:56]  And no, you'd be really angry at the babysitter and you'd probably try and report her.
[01:23:00]  Because you can always slide your perception of people's causality back to before they became kind of evil.
[01:23:09]  Always.
[01:23:10]  I'm sure Joseph Stalin was not born evil.
[01:23:15]  He was a little kid and all of that.
[01:23:18]  I'm sure he was nice at times.
[01:23:21]  You can always slide, and this is the more female perspective, right?
[01:23:24]  Female coded.
[01:23:25]  You keep sliding back your hostility towards someone.
[01:23:30]  Or you keep sliding back the damage that someone's doing to you until you get to before they damaged people, and then you have sympathy and it gets all muddy and confusing.
[01:23:41]  But I know this for sure.
[01:23:42]  I mean, I had an objectively terrible childhood.
[01:23:44]  This isn't even like I didn't get a pony, right?
[01:23:46]  Objectively terrible childhood.
[01:23:48]  And I've never got a shred of sympathy from society about that at all.
[01:23:53]  I mean, even if society says, oh, well, what Steph says is really bad and wrong, but you know, you've got to understand he grew up and society didn't protect him.
[01:24:01]  And abandoned him to his crazy mother and so on.
[01:24:05]  So, you know, let's have some simple.
[01:24:06]  No, they don't give me.
[01:24:07]  I'm just bad, right?
[01:24:08]  Just bad, just a bad guy.
[01:24:10]  Okay.
[01:24:12]  I accept that that's where society is that I'm just a causeless bad guy and my past had no effect on me and so on.
[01:24:24]  So I can be fully morally responsible despite the terrible childhood I had.
[01:24:29]  I'm just completely morally responsible as an adult.
[01:24:33]  But then, when adults play victims based on the past, in my mind, I honestly just laugh at it.
[01:24:40]  Like, society doesn't believe that at all.
[01:24:42]  Otherwise, they would have given me some excuses for what they perceive to be my bad or negative arguments or data or perspective or something like that.
[01:24:50]  Nobody gives me any excuses, so I don't give people any excuses.
[01:24:54]  And if you get mad at the babysitter for threatening to offer self if your child didn't obey her, you'd be enraged at that, as you should be.
[01:25:03]  Then stop giving people excuses.
[01:25:05]  The real addiction is always and forever to excuses.
[01:25:09]  All right.
[01:25:10]  Well, I appreciate that.
[01:25:11]  Thank you for your consideration and interest in the lengthy talk.
[01:25:16]  I think it was full of great gems, nuggets, and gold, baby.
[01:25:19]  There's gold in them, thar syllables.
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[01:25:42]  Lots of love from up here.
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[01:25:45]  Bye.