[0:00] Start that recording.
Start that recording, and look at that. We are cooking with gas.
Good evening, good evening. Welcome.
We are going to do great stuff tonight. My cold is almost over.
I can feel it receding like the carcass of a whale being dragged out to the ocean by herds of tiny, dancing, Macarena-based hermit crabs, or some other less insane analogy.
Look at that. A tip already. ready.
Thank you, P-Dot. I appreciate that. I appreciate that.
And let's see here. Let's get to your questions. Get to your questions.
Is it UPB to have one's wife or girlfriend to check your hemorrhoid?
Sorry, the title does say all thoughts.
Yes, it is UPB. Universally preferable bowels.
You want UPB, universally preferable bowels.
So yes, that's fine. How to break free from self-erasure stemming from neglect.
How to start asking for the things I really want.
How to even know what I want.
[1:15] Oh, boy. We can't start with the rant. We just can't. It feels premature.
Premature elaboration has been a constant problem of mine when thinking about my wife.
So, I will tell you the greatest secret of self-erasure.
The greatest secret of self-erasure or of being submissive is that you're actually a Weasley control agent.
[1:45] Oh, but no, you don't understand, Stef. I'm so fragile.
I'm fragile from Naples. I'm fragile. I'm just, you know, don't get mad at me. I'm too fragile.
You are a Weasley squid-based sausage-fingered control agent.
You are a manipulator. And you've got to be clear about that with regards to yourself.
So the way that people who've been abused will often react to others is they will react to others as potential abusers at all times under all circumstances because mommy or daddy or the priest or the teacher yelled at me when I was assertive, I'm just going to treat everyone like they're abusers.
Do you know how unfair and unjust it is to treat everyone like they're an abuser?
That's just terrible. That's wrong. That's really, really bad.
And it's manipulative AF.
It's because, you know, one of the great things that, One of those terrible things that happens with the effect of child abuse or early abuse is that you get all kinds of tremulous and delicate and fail to realize that you do that to manipulate and control others.
If you get too mad at me, I'm going to self-attack.
[2:56] Don't treat me like an abuser. Treating other people as if they're abusers when they're not is really manipulative. And it's how your childhood doesn't end.
[3:07] It's how your childhood doesn't end. So I'm here to tell you, I mean, sometimes, obviously, the most unpalatable truths known to man or God.
And one of the most unpalatable truths is victims ain't victims.
Victims ain't victims. And it's a perpetuation of what your parents did to you, obviously with less justice.
But it is a perpetuation of what your parents did to you. So your parents tried to defy their own parents and got crushed.
And then you try to defy your own parents, which means have your own independent thoughts and opinions, and then they crush you. Why? Because they're treating you.
[3:45] They're becoming their abusive parents, and therefore they're abusing you because they feel fragile.
And then you grow up, and you have this, quote, fragility, and you use it to manipulate other people.
I mean i remember oh gosh many many years ago i used to go occasionally to amateur nights, which is a comedy amateur nights yucky which is like the karaoke of comedy sometimes, you get some good stuff but most often you don't anyway there was this woman who did this really lame carrot top style stand uh physical comedy it was just really bad and she was like oh you guys just hate me and and all this kind of stuff and people were like no no it's great you know No, don't self-attack.
And it's like, no, no, don't.
Don't do that. I literally said to people at my table, don't do that.
If she's bad, she needs to know that she's bad because she needs to up her game or she needs to change careers or something.
But just because someone's self, they collapse in on themselves and it's just a form of manipulation.
And you need to be strict with it as a form of manipulation.
If you think that your fragility is anything other than trying to control other people, you don't understand your own fragility, in my humble opinion. In my humble opinion.
[5:05] So, when you say, how to break free of self-erasure stemming from neglect?
Well, what if, try this on for size, what if you assumed everyone you met was kind and reasonable?
How would your life be if you assumed that everyone you met was kind and reasonable?
How would you change? Would you be tremulous? Would you be, oh, don't self-attack. Oh, this is so stressful. This is so bad.
No, right? You wouldn't do that.
You know, if you made a mistake, you'd be like, wow, I really messed up.
Let me try and figure out what happened and how I can make it right.
[5:48] But what you do, and I've done it before, so I'm in there with you, but what we do generally is we walk around tremulous like everyone's going to be mean and abusive parents.
And then we end up not dealing with people as they are themselves.
We end up dealing with people as projections of past abusers, which is exactly what our parents did to us.
I'm pretty sure I was the entire Red Army sweeping into Eastern Germany for my mother.
Stop stop treating people as if they're abusive stop waiting for everyone to be your parents or your teachers or whoever was mean to you stop waiting for everyone to be your older brother or your older sister or whatever.
[6:36] Treat people as they come with optimism and grace now will you still have some jerks around yes you will occasionally you will run into people who are really mean But the great news is, because you haven't tried to manipulate them, you can just accept that they're mean and move on.
See, manipulating people by self-attacking or self-erasing is predicated on the fantasy that you can do sweet F.A.
About mean and abusive people. You can't. Spoiler. You can't.
You can't do anything about mean and abusive people.
I mean, if they don't even have a conscience, what are you supposed to do?
Hit them with tasers? Don't do that.
So, going through life tremulous and afraid of self-attack and treating everyone like they're just about to blow up at you and scream at you and yell at you is just a form of manipulation.
[7:35] And it's putting everything into an abuse victim paradigm, which will draw abusers to you and keep good people away.
You know, like if I get mad at someone and they then go totally armadillo on me, it's like, don't manipulate me.
I'm allowed to get mad at you. I'm not, I'm not allowed to scream at you.
I'm not allowed to yell abuse you. I'm allowed to get mad at you.
Nothing wrong with me. You're allowed to get mad at me too. Nothing wrong with getting mad at me.
But attempting to manage and control other people's emotions based upon your own self-attack and self-manipulation it's not honorable it's not victimhood it's manipulation and it's control, and it's pretty deadly so stop looking at your weakness like you're just kind of broken and you're nervous and you're scared and you don't want people to yell at you and you don't want anyone ever to get mad at you because it evokes too many now you're gonna put that stuff in the the past.
Don't blame other people for your parents being jerks.
Don't blame other people for your parents being jerks. Your parents were jerks.
I'm sorry about that. Hey, for tiny consolation, my parents were jerks too.
But don't blame other people for that. It wasn't their fault.
Don't act as if they're about to be your parents. Everyone's just my parents with the mask on like Tom Cruise style. All right, let's see here.
I wanted to discuss some of the downsides of The Bitcoin, says Philip, one glaring one in particular, your hourly wage would have to decrease over time.
Raises would be rare.
[9:03] What? Okay, maybe I misunderstood something here.
I wanted to discuss some of the downsides of Bitcoin.
One glaring one in particular, your hourly wage would have to decrease over time.
Raises would be rare are you saying that if you got paid one hundredth of a bitcoin per hour, then it would have to be one two hundredth of a bitcoin and therefore you'd, you'd be paid less I'm sorry I made a laugh that is one of the most economically illiterate things if I understand this correctly that I've heard in at least 7 to 10 minutes, Or what on earth would you care about your hourly wage in terms of Satoshi?
That doesn't matter at all. What matters is how many...
What matters is how many goods and services your Satoshis will buy.
[10:00] Let's say you don't get any raise. You don't get a raise.
You're still being paid one one-hundredth of a Bitcoin per hour.
But you can buy a car with that. Oh no, I haven't got a raise.
Yeah, that's not a thing. That's not a thing.
What matters is if Bitcoin is gaining in value, it means you can buy more stuff with the same amount of Bitcoin. So if you don't get a quote raised numerically, but you can still buy way more stuff.
[10:32] Then let's say, like there was a time, there was a time when a Bitcoin was like 20 bucks, right?
There was a time when Bitcoin, so let's say you're not particularly skilled and you get paid a Bitcoin an hour, right?
And now, like 15 years later, you're like, damn it.
It's so unfair. I'm still only getting a Bitcoin per hour. I haven't had a raise at all. Oh, 15 years, I'm still getting paid one Bitcoin an hour.
Yes, but Bitcoin can buy approximately 3,000 times more than it did in the past.
So again, maybe I'm misunderstanding about something, but, but.
All right. Hi, Stef. What are your thoughts on parents calling their children stinkers versus gremlins versus little shits versus assholes?
I have to tell you that I don't do it, but I've heard a couple of times recently, and it's not sitting right with me. Really?
Children being insulted by their parents?
[11:27] Yeah it's kind of a rule isn't it a rule of basic integrity that you don't do to the least powerful what you wouldn't do to the most powerful around you you know some i don't know some government agent bangs on your door are you going to call him a little shit a gremlin an asshole no oh okay can you can you just imagine how polite you'd you'd be it would be wild so polite so polite light.
Camera is off center. Oh, did it move a bit? All right. Thanks.
Thank you. I shifted a bit, I think.
All right. We will, we will get there.
Oh, wait a moment. You're not Miss Jackson. Oh, yes you are.
Good disguise, Miss Jackson. All right. How's that? Any better? Let's see here.
Did that get sorted?
[12:17] Is that better? It's better? I don't know why it shifts. So I have a kind of two-camera setup here for reasons that we don't care about.
So it's just an exercise in power, and it's a humiliation ritual.
It's a humiliation ritual. See, here's the thing. If you're surrounded, like if you live in Trash Planet, Trash Planet is just where people are reactive and abusive and mean and don't notice it or care about it or want to reform it or anything like that.
If you're in Trash Planet and you want your kids to get along with the kids of other parents who also live in Trash Planet you have to be mean to your kids so that your kids will get along with the other kids, in the denizens of Trash Planet it's a humiliation ritual that.
[13:06] Means that your kids can get along with other badly raised kids what's the deal with all of these attractive high school female teachers teachers getting caught sexually molesting young boys.
See if all the time, you see it all the time on the news, and why is it always the English teachers? The hell it's causing. Hell it's causing this epidemic.
Porn nation, baby. Porn nation, sadly. Porn nation.
All right, let's get. Stef, can you elaborate?
In the story of your enslavement, to see the farm is to leave it. Right.
So if you think you're in a country, and not a tax farm, right, livestock fenced off so that you can pay taxes at the aggression of the leaders.
So if you see the farm for what it is, you no longer think that it's a country, right?
So what I say at the beginning of that presentation is like, we look at the world and we think we see a series of countries, but they are in fact a series of tax farms.
To see the farm is to leave the country, right?
Once you see that you're a tax serf, then you leave the country.
[14:17] I mean, if you could imagine, like, you're in some, you go to some country, you're supposed to have a driver, and then you get in the car, and, you know, they start driving you.
You think it might be the wrong direction, but it's a new country, and you just don't know, and then you end up, like, the door's locked from the inside, and bars come down between you and the driver, and you know you're being driven to kidnapping or something like that.
Well, to see it as a kidnapping means you're no longer on vacation.
Like you've left the vacation mindset and you're now in the kidnapping mindset.
To see the kidnapping for what it is, is to leave the vacation.
And to see the tax farm for what it is, is to leave the country.
All right, let's see here.
[15:11] Thank you for the tip, Jared. and I appreciate that.
Thoughts on R.D. Lange. I read his book called Politics of the Family and loved it. I know absolutely nothing about that, sorry.
My boss has pulled that move before. Oh, I guess I'm just a terrible boss and no one likes me, and blah blah blah.
Well, you have this, right, so you criticize your mom and she says, well, I guess I was just a terrible mother and I didn't do anything right.
Weakness as a form of claustrophobic manipulation is really repulsive.
Stef, I have a virtue in relationships question. Alright.
One of my girlfriend's friends has confided to my girlfriend that she's cheating on her boyfriend, who is also our friend.
I want to act virtuously, yet I lack a moral framework that clarifies whether I should alert my friend that his relationship may not be what he thinks.
Or recognize what is mine and what is not and remain silent.
[16:11] Is this ever a question? Really? All right, let me poll the Glaudians, which is what I call the glorious audience. Let me poll the Glaudians.
So he knows that his friend is being cheated on. Should he say something?
Hit me with a yes or hit me with a no.
Hit me with a yes or hit me with should we? should you tell your friend that his girlfriend is cheating on him?
Of fucking course you should. Of course you should. My God.
[16:57] Like, please stop watching the live stream and go and talk to your friend.
Of course you should. This is Empathy 101. Okay, if your girlfriend was cheating on you, would you like to know? Of course you would.
I don't, maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe I'm missing something here, but how is this a question?
Right, so this is basic empathy.
Because your friend is operating on the assumption that his girlfriend is not cheating on him, and she's lying. Right, she's lying. Okay.
Your, uh, your, your friend's girlfriend is lying to him and you have the facts. You have the truth.
That thing go again. Uh, you have the truth.
[17:51] So, again, I may be... Does this thing move again?
Jeez, what the hell does it keep moving? I don't know. But yeah, I mean... Oh, no, not that. Not that, for sure. All right.
Yeah, I mean, so a couple of basic things. Like, a couple of basic things.
A couple of basic things. Number one, your friend is at risk of getting some virulent crotch rot STD that could be herpes-like permanent.
It could destroy his sperm, either through that or through some sort of treatment program.
So your friend is in grave danger of being on the receiving end of some funky ass crotch rot. So that's not good.
Secondly, he is having sex under false pretenses, right?
He's having sex under false pretenses because his girlfriend is having sex with him. and he assumes that she's faithful.
So having sex under false pretenses is, I mean, I'm not going to use the R word, but it's a form of intense and immense emotional fraud.
Intense and immense emotional fraud.
[19:08] According to her, they no longer have sex. Oh, yes, absolutely.
Absolutely, completely and totally, let's believe the cheating garden implement.
Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I mean, she's cheating on her boyfriend.
Let's totally take everything she says at face value.
[19:32] So, stay out of it, but don't lie to anyone? No, no, no, that's not a thing. That's not a thing.
He's having sex under fraudulent pretenses which is just terrible because what's going to happen is let's say you don't say for six months and then he finds out and let's say he's whether there's sex or not he's affectionate he's close he's looking forward to a future and then he looks back and it's going to completely hollow the man out like in absolutely brutal ways because he's going to sit there and say wait i kissed that mouth that had been around another man's ba-dam-a-dam-a-ding-dong.
And I hugged that girl and I got her a Valentine's Day present and the whole thing was a whole goddamn lie.
What was true, what was real, you're just absolutely messing with your sense of trust and reality.
Number one.
Number two. What if they have sex and she gets pregnant. Ooh.
What if they have sex and she gets pregnant?
[20:46] Then what?
Also, what happens to your friendship with the guy if he finds out, as he will, that you knew that his garden implement of a 304 was cheating on him and you'd never told him?
I mean, we men have to watch out for each other a little bit.
Whether it's a man or a woman is not fundamentally important, but we men do need to look out for each other a little bit.
Also, what you're doing is you're preventing him from ending the relationship and healing, right?
So let's say he spends, it's a two to one, right? It's a two to one.
So let's say he spends another, or at least a one to one, right?
So let's say he spends another year in the relationship. He's going to have to spend six to 12 months getting over that extra year.
So you're basically damning him to not being in the dating pool.
And he needs to know. He absolutely, completely, and totally needs to know.
It's relevant information. It's essential information. And the only person you wouldn't tell about that would be somebody whose destruction you were fervently in favor of.
[22:03] But that's not the big problem. The big problem isn't the other person's relationship.
The big person, the big problem isn't your girlfriend's friend's relationship.
The big problem is that your girlfriend hasn't already told the guy.
So, big problem. Your girlfriend has a friend who's cheated or cheating, and that friend told her that she's cheating, and so your friend is, your girlfriend is friends with the cheater, and has not told the guy, which means she has loyalty, to people, not virtue. You know who you can't trust? People with loyalty to people, not virtue.
You can't trust those people. The only people you can trust are people absolutely devoted to virtue.
And even then, we don't often, we don't always hit that virtue, but it's at least a standard we can be held to, right?
[23:06] My god, that's horrible that's horrible what does it say about your girlfriend that she's friends with a cheater okay that's not great but she didn't immediately say holy crap you know Jocelyn just told me she's cheating on Brian hope their names ain't Jocelyn and Brian Jocelyn just told me she's cheating on Brian we have to call Brian like now now okay let me ask you this, How long has your girlfriend known that her girlfriend is cheating on Brian?
How long has she known that? And what has she done?
All right.
[24:08] Well, and to see the farm is to leave it means you go from thinking it's a country to a farm to recognize that it's kind of prison, right?
So to see the farm is to leave it, right? A sentient cow would not look at the farm and call it a farm. they would look at the farm and call it a concentration camp or a prison or a gulag or something like that, right?
All right, to flesh out some context, says the person, I am not concerned that my girlfriend keeps bad friends.
Her critique of this friend's choices and her inevitable distancing from her are evident to me.
She and I realize that we want to and should make better friends as well, yet still I feel in a conundrum.
No, the problem is that this is even a question. Your girlfriend should be shaking you by the collarbone and saying, of course we have to help this person all right now that the show is over 18 years old do you ever feel like you've answered every question or spoken about every subject absolutely not in no way shape or form it's not even close i'm constantly thrilled at the new approaches and contexts and questions that we can bring to bear on these on these things, what would the late night show with stefan molyneux look like uh mostly karaoke Yogi.
[25:21] All right. I like how there's fear, uncertainty, and doubt about not getting raises with Bitcoin when wages have stagnated since the 70s with fiat.
Oh, James, that's entirely too generous. Wages have not stagnated.
Wages have not stagnated. If you don't take into account unfunded liabilities and national debts with regards to wages, then you're not seeing the full picture.
Wages have utterly collapsed into negative void, intergenerational enslavement territory.
Stef, I believe what you're talking about in terms of Bitcoin is called real wages. Thank you.
Would you like to tell me that up and down are not the same thing and black and white aren't the same thing? It's pretty funny.
Stef, have you seen AI research using MRI machines on human brains?
They were found in human brains, right? They're able to make thoughts to text.
They are even able to recreate an image you are thinking of in your mind.
It's so incredible, it almost seems fake.
This text seems to be a wet dream for corporations, governments, intelligence agencies. Any thoughts on this? Thank you.
I don't have any particular thoughts on it. All right.
[26:42] What is the root cause of porn addiction? I assume dopamine deficiency and a complete lack of confidence. See, there's a fork in the road.
There's a fork in the road.
Right? So when you're a kid, you play act, right?
So when you're a kid, cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers or whatever it is that you, it's probably something different now.
But when you're a kid, you play. And the play is supposed to prepare you for the real thing, right?
So you play at war, you play at hunting, you play at tag you play hide and go seek which is to hide from predators so you do all this playing and at some point you're supposed to graduate from playing to doing right so you know you fantasize about a girl and that's supposed to be something that gets you off your velour couch leather-bound ass and out there into the world to ask the girl out right you know little girls play with with dolls and then they grow up to to have babies and and you know maybe boys play at at buying, like, I have a store.
You want to come and buy things in my store? And you're preparing for sort of entrepreneurship, right? So you've got this fork in the road.
[27:46] Preparation, preparation. Look at lion cubs. They're practicing sneaking up around, grabbing at things and all of that, right?
So all of that is going down.
All right. It's still working, right? Yeah, okay. So all of that is going down.
That happens on a regular basis.
The play is supposed to translate into the real thing.
Uh to before i like there's a reason why i kind of hit the ground running when it came to doing podcasts is that literally for decades i had not only rehearsed in my head but i had actually made to silent places speeches i was constantly giving speeches i would jot speeches down i would make speeches even with no particular plan about how i was going to end up giving those speeches.
So, you know, I really hit the ground running when it came to, uh, doing speeches because I'd prepared for it for, for a long time before.
[28:44] So, um, you know, with pornography or with sexual fantasies or with whatever being horny, uh, as, as a young man, it's supposed to drive you out into the world to ask women out, right.
And get married and have a sex life and raise a family in, in the same way that our ambition to conquer the world as, as little boys, a little bit more little girls to some degree, our ambition to conquer the world, to go out and be a hero and the Bruce Lee stuff.
Off and the training and muscles and whatever it is that we've got going on, right?
That's all in preparation to go out there and actually do something cool, great, wonderful, deep, and fabulous in the world.
Maybe not fabulous, not the most masculine word, but you know what I mean.
You've got the fork in the road.
And what swallows up a man's sexual potential is pornography.
And what swallows up his material potential are video games, because both things give effective, in fact, without cause.
They are drugs. They are absolute drugs. So.
Gotta don't miss that turnoff, man. Don't, don't miss that exit to, to doing shit for real.
Don't, don't miss that because otherwise you just end up in nowhere land, right?
[29:59] Stef, why do family of friends feel like, oh, you shouldn't tell him or her that their partner is wrong for them. I just don't understand this.
Well, you shouldn't tell someone. I mean, you should ask questions. Are you happy?
Tell me about the relationship. You try to evoke their own knowledge rather than tell them, right?
Because if they already feel that, they might get defensive.
And if they don't feel that, they won't believe you.
[30:24] If you consider him a friend, says Dave, then do the right thing.
Would you tell him if someone was stealing money from him? Damn, this is more important. Yes, indeed.
Let's see.
[30:49] Let's see here.
Oh, she's known about a month? Your girlfriend has known about a month and hasn't told the guy?
Oof. Well, after you talk to your friend, you might want to have a real conversation about your girlfriend and say, I'm not cheating on you, but if I was, would you want to know?
I mean, it just seems to be the kind of missing.
That's why I would stay out of it. Get away from this drama.
I really dislike that. Doesn't mean it's dislikable. I'm just telling you, I really dislike that.
This guy's life could be hanging by a thread. You're like, oh, it's just drama. It's just drama.
Drama is just, I don't know.
[31:35] It's really cockettish to say that this guy who's being cheated on, it's just drama.
I don't understand that word drama. This is very serious business.
The guy could get a disease. He could get the girl pregnant.
He could end up, maybe the guy that she's cheating on doesn't know that she's already in a relationship.
In which case, if she's caught, she might say, oh, this guy's totally stalking me.
And she might wind him up to beat him up. Or who knows, right?
This is really dangerous stuff. Just drama.
Human conflict is not just drama. Drama is when you just make something up out of nothing. This is an actual, dangerous, vicious, nasty, underhanded, undermining, horrible, disease-potential-ridden situation. It's not just drama.
I just really dislike it when people just use the word drama for every possible form of human conflict.
No, I get it. You want to stay out of it because there could be the potential for conflict or negative blowback. I get that.
But then just say, I'm scared to get involved. Don't just say, well, I just want to get away from this drama.
Anyway, that is a blind spot for me that women can defend male friends.
I know I used to believe women make relationships and men break them.
I don't know what that means.
[32:58] What is that joke? This woman says, yeah, I'm a model on Instagram.
Yes, I'm a soldier in Call of Duty.
All right. Is it wise to finance business equipment or to pay up front in full and bootstrap.
I don't like debt but also don't want to use a large percentage of my savings.
What does that mean? Is it wise to finance business equipment or to pay up front in full and bootstrap?
[33:38] I don't know what the word wise means here. Maybe I'm missing something.
I mean, if you're broke and you need a car to get a job, then you should pay as little as possible and maybe lease a car or get some loans so that you can scrape together enough money for the first couple of payments and then you pay from your paycheck.
Is it wise to lease a car that's only $100 a month or $200 a month or something?
Like whatever you can come up with I don't know, seven different, seven color different car Is it wise to borrow money?
[34:13] Who on earth can possibly tell you that? I don't understand Who on earth can possibly tell you that?
It's not immoral Now, if you have, a bunch of money that's lying around doing nothing, maybe you should use it so that you avoid the interest charges, I don't know If you get 0% financing, you're essentially being paid 7 points a year year plus to take equipment, in which case you should probably do it.
Like, I don't understand, but do you not understand that as an entrepreneur, you just have to weigh and balance things?
Are you looking for someone outside of yourself to make basic decisions about your life?
Should I rent or should I buy a condo? Who the hell can tell you that?
Own your own life? No No one can tell you that.
Should you commit arson? No. That's a moral thing. But as far as this cost and benefits shit, that's you.
That's your choice, your life. No one can tell you that.
You can't be an entrepreneur if you try to outsource basic common sense decisions.
You have to get used to making those decisions yourself.
[35:21] The only person who will tell you the answer to that is a person who is completely useless in the business world.
Completely useless in the business world.
[35:36] So I don't understand this question.
Should I save my money or should I go on vacation? There's no answer to that.
I mean, there's no answer to that. You save your money, you get benefits, and it costs you a vacation.
You go on vacation, you get a vacation, and it costs you.
Like, who on earth can tell you in the wild maelstrom of personal preferences and costs and benefits what works for you?
[36:05] It's literally like saying, what should I do with my life? What should I do with my life?
No one can tell you that. It's your life. It's your entrepreneurial thing.
[36:16] There's no one who can tell you whether you should finance business equipment or pay up front. No one.
Certainly not with the amount of information. And if you don't know how to evaluate that, then you need to take some basic econ or business courses or read a book or two.
You need to understand that no one can tell you what cost benefits work for you. There's a foundational in life.
No one can tell you what cost benefits work for you. Never talk to moral things or anything like that. Nobody can tell you.
Should I stay at my job or should I quit and become an entrepreneur?
Absolutely zero freaking people in the known universe can ever tell you that.
And you should not ask. Why? Because it's your life.
It's your life and you got to own these decisions. Don't outsource that.
Please, sir, can you tell me who I should marry, or if I should?
[37:16] Should I have children? I mean, you cost benefits. Cost benefits.
If you hate kids and you're massively ambitious, maybe not. If you love kids, you're like, no one can tell you these things. It just drives me crazy.
When people are like, okay, Jesus, take the wheel, maybe.
Dave says, it depends on your financial situation, and will the equipment be billable to clients immediately? Doesn't even manage, doesn't even make, make that difference.
Doesn't even make that difference.
[37:53] Oh, Lord spare me from people who quote song lyrics and think they're adding much. All right.
Not answering for specific decisions, but here's Dwight Eisenhower's Matrix, a useful tool for making the decisions concerning priorities.
[38:14] Should I go out or should I stay in? Should I exercise or should I watch a show?
How on earth can you outsource that to someone without a sense of self-abdicating shame?
I could be wrong about all of this. I'm just telling you what I think.
I'm just telling you what I think.
All right. Let me just double check here.
Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Pring! Pring! Pring! Yeah, okay, that's good.
All right, so let me just go over to...
Rumble. All right.
Ah. Manipulation is a horribly seductive tactic. Yes.
And manipulation based on fragility is really, really toxic. All right.
Why would you even consider not telling him? Yeah, yeah.
Why don't we hear a lot about Stefan Molyneux anymore?
[39:06] You can, if you want. Which is good.
I'm torn between directly supporting Stef on his mainstream and watching on Rumble to support both him and the Rumble platform.
You know, you can also tip on Rumble. Find that to be of value to you.
[39:26] Ah, could you elaborate on your recommendation to get out of the cities before as part of a response to what your projections are for the next few years?
Ah, you can read my free book called The Present about all of that. All right.
I think he's more likely to get viewers back on Rumble. He just started popping up on my feed a few weeks ago.
Used to watch all the time on YubTub. Hello.
Oh, is it that the Kinks open up in California? Hello, LA. Oh boy, there's a 60s joke. All right, hello.
[40:04] Should kids do sleepovers? I would say kids should only do sleepovers.
And I answered this on locals.
Freedomain.locals.com a while ago. I mean, you have to be absolutely completely, 150% totally sure that.
[40:23] You absolutely, completely, and totally trust the people. No unknown kids.
No one you haven't known for a long time. Especially these days with phones.
It's like, here's the armpit of the internet.
Hey, look what I found on my phone. Oh, man. No, it's brutal. It's brutal.
Every kid carries within their back pocket the portal to hell itself.
Can you answer an economic question? Maybe. My buddy says that we do not have to pay back a loan to banks, mainly because of the definition of consideration.
In effect, the bank has not lost anything, if any, only on paper. Any comment?
I guess you could talk to Locke and Rose or Peter Schiff's dad.
Well, you can't talk to Peter Schiff's dad because he died in prison.
So even if you can find, and I'm not recommending that you do, but even if you can find some technical reason why some particular law or whatever, oh, I found, you know, it doesn't matter.
The courts do what the courts do.
Right? Let's say they completely miswrote some law and there's some loophole.
They'll just close it or they'll ignore it or it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
[41:43] I think the biggest turning point Insider had last year was just this, not a fan of the labels, but narcissism and self-erasure are people pleasing codependency are two sides of the same manipulative coin.
The honesty has been somewhat, uncomfortable, but not much more uncomfortable than knowingly presenting in a dishonest manner.
Oh yeah, there's just one creepy kid to open up some horrible site and all of that is just rough. it's just rough.
Yeah, there's tons of people, oh, you know, on paper, you don't have to do this, it was never ratified, there was this, there was that.
That's right. So the government will give up control because of squiggles on paper. Sure. That's exactly how things work in the world.
Exactly how things work in the world. All right, looking for more comments, issues, challenges, questions, Questions I'm happy to hear.
Let me see if I've got anything.
[42:55] Women in rings has become kind of nuts, right? Oh, yeah. The percentage growth in the number of healthcare administrators compared to that of physicians.
Have you ever seen these graphs?
So since the 1970s, the number of physicians has barely budged, but the number of administrators has gone up by well over 3,000%.
Just wild. It's just wild.
A 2022 study found that 82% of clinical psychologists had experienced mental health issues.
An earlier survey found that 29% of psychologists had had suicidal feelings, and 4% had attempted suicide.
That seems quite unusual. That seems quite unusual.
Boy, have you ever seen, and maybe they're picking on women a little bit, right?
Maybe they're picking on women a little bit. So the question goes something like this.
If you're going 80 miles an hour, how long does it take to go 80 miles?
If you're driving 80 miles an hour, how long does it take to go 80 miles?
[44:18] And that's, but boy, you know, without government education, how on earth could people possibly get educated? They can't answer.
Oh, yeah, those kinds of videos are pretty rough. Right, of course, an hour, yeah.
So those kinds of videos are pretty rough, because, of course, when you are around fairly sophisticated, intelligent, well-read people, it's real easy to forget dead.
Just how many empty-skulled dunderheads there are out there.
It's a sort of circle bias, like the people around me are smart and well-educated and curious and blah, blah, blah.
You just donated on FDR. Thank you. Freedomain.com slash donate.
My favorite was 58 minutes.
Well, yeah, you know, there's overthinking, right? So one of the girls was like, yeah, but it takes you a while to get to that speed.
Takes you a while to get to that speed. So that's different.
[45:16] Yeah 58 minutes well and you can see just the absolute guesswork guesswork drives me crazy, hour and a half two hours you know just random stabby guesswork and this is after 12 years of education.
It's literally per hour, 80 miles per hour.
This is not math. It literally is just breaking apart the sentence. That's all it is.
Yeah. Mark Dice had some funny ones. Yeah. About people who'd read or not read or whatever it is, right? That's rough stuff, man.
That's rough stuff. What is the story with the adult Disney phenomenon?
I find that very strange, Right? The adult Disney phenomenon, which is.
[46:08] Adults who go to Disney and are sort of thrilled and excited and, uh, I haven't talked to Goofy in three years and big hugs and all this kind of stuff.
And, oof, I don't know, man, that's, that's a very strange phenomenon to me.
I never went to Disney World as a kid. Of course, it didn't have any money, not that I particularly wanted to.
I went once, uh, for, for business reasons and, uh, I, uh, I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand it.
I was like, so it's really hot. I have to stand in a loud area, a lot of which don't have fans.
I have to stand for an hour or more for a three-minute ride.
I know some adult Disney dinks. A co-worker of yours had a Disney wedding. Oof.
[46:57] Is it really that hard to just grow up minimally?
I mean, we're not talking massive, just minimally. Is it really that hard?
Is it really that hard?
[47:12] Lineups drive me insane. Yeah, I can't stand them. I can't stand them.
Because you're kind of jammed into it together. You can't have a conversation.
And you're just kind of standing there losing life and brain cells.
Like sand particle by sand particle through the hourglass. I can't stand lines. I can't stand it.
I'd rather be in traffic. I'd rather be stuck in traffic than in the lineup.
Oh, Star Wars fans are probably worse. Yeah, and you see occasionally these people are like, over 15 months and spent $50,000 to build a giant Star Wars Lego destroyer. I'm like, oh, God.
Oh, God.
For $400 extra a ticket, you can get the Fast Pass. Oh, my God.
[48:04] Ah, Disney was fun once these days. Uh, Dave says, Disney was fun once in a while as an adult.
I went twice with my ex-wife, but it was only fun because we had money and no kids. And it was prior to 2012.
The obsession with it is weird. We went on weekdays in, in off season.
And did you get the fast passes?
[48:28] Or did you just line up with the proles, let go kids as an adult is weird it's so geared towards kids, yeah you know and i i still remember um it was it was kind of lame which which happened to me not so when i used to go to this summer camp i'd be there like all summer and it was like heavily fully subsidized virtually free basically and i would just go there it was supposed to be two weeks things i think i went four times in a row i've gone for like a month or more, and i remember getting a broomstick i was probably 12 and getting a broomstick and uh inviting some kid to like hey let's let's play sword fight or something and he's like well aren't you a bit old for that and you know i was like hey man you're never too old to have fun but inside i I was like, hmm, yeah, it could be. Could be.
Twelve? You know, it's like that great line from Trump where he's talking to some kid and he's like, you still believe in Santa? Because at seven, it's marginal.
Not a rollercoaster guy, but for Canada's Wonderland, I hear you'll wait up to hours if you don't get the fast passes. Yeah, yeah.
[49:48] Yeah it's um and you know they are of course terrible race baiters and so on it's just yeah that's really really bad i still enjoy being savaged by roller coasters i used to enjoy roller coasters when i was younger but not so much anymore now it just feels like getting and kidney punch slowly.
If you want to build models as an adult, there are adult models.
Lego is too simple and you can't fly it or drive it.
[50:20] But isn't building models as an adult just killing time till you're dead?
Like, you know, like my friend when I was in my early teens, his mother was dating a guy who had this big giant train set in his basement, and the guy was in his 40s.
Like, why?
I mean, you're an adult. What are you doing with a train set?
I don't know. I don't like this sort of time-killing fake hobbies.
I don't like them. Again, I'm not saying this is anything objective or moral or anything like that.
I'm just saying that I don't like them. In the same way that I don't like pet ownership as a substitute for children, I don't like hobbies as a substitute for purpose.
I would only play with Legos or models with my future children. Yeah.
Yeah, like when my daughter was little, she liked watching these um america's funniest videos kinds of things like yeah that's fine we almost sit and watch with them but my wife and i are gonna say hey let's watch some funny videos because for the kids right there is a technology aspect to building things what do you build, what what do you build if you can't spend a few hundred thousand dollars.
[51:38] Uh what do you mean what do you build um build a cottage build an extension to your house build a business build something other than some useless shit to sit and sit in your basement.
[51:56] Build a better widget, build a better mousetrap, build stuff that actually has value in the world.
It's train spotting, right? The thesis of train spotting. Build a family, yeah.
It's a thesis of train spotting that some people are so desperate that all they do is watch the trains that go by and make notes of the trains that go by.
Yeah build a chicken coop build something are there any particular poets that you liked I'm wanting to get into and would love your recommendations I would have to look up I still have some books of poetry in the basement so I will look that up to get the particular names, But I liked Ted Hughes for sure.
What was it? I should really know.
It's a great one.
Wallace Stevens was great. T.S. Eliot I liked.
[53:12] The 13 ways of looking at a blackbird how's this how's this for something just really, really, focused language right so this is 13 ways of looking at a blackbird i love this 1.
Among twenty snowy mountains, the only moving thing was the eye of the blackbird.
[53:43] That's so vivid. Among 20 snowy mountains.
Because it gives you a God view, right? Of course, you would never know.
Among 20 snowy mountains, the only moving thing was the eye of the blackbird.
You would never know that. So it's like a God.
And of course, you know, we're the only moving things in the universe that we know of. The only conscious thing.
So among 20 snowy mountains, the only moving thing was the eye of the blackbird.
That's number one. Number two.
I was at three mines. Like a tree in which there are three blackbirds.
I was of three minds, like a tree in which there are three blackbirds. It's great. It's great.
The blackbird world in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. Eh, that one was okay.
I remember this one so vividly. A man and a woman.
A man and a woman and a blackbird are one.
Right? So, I mean, whether that's a kid, whether that's an ideology, but you can be one with someone with somebody else there or something else there, which is great.
[54:45] 5. I do not know which to prefer.
The beauty of inflections or the beauty of innuendos?
The blackbird whistling or just after?
Isn't that great? Like a movie which has got a really great twist ending.
You love the movie, it's a good movie, and then the twist ending happens, and it's right after the movie's over, you're like, wow!
Do you like the process of life or the insight you get after a particular process has completed? Woof.
Fantastic. Fantastic.
The blackbird whistling or just after when you know the song is complete. Mmm.
Uh, six.
Icicles filled the long window with barbaric glass. The shadow of the black bird crossed it to and fro.
The mood traced in the shadow, an indecipherable course. That one's, meh, okay.
Barbaric glass, I kind of like it. But nature is barbaric.
The natural stuff is barbaric. And it kind of is, right? Like a rock falls on you and you just, you get squished.
It's kind of barbaric, right? But it's also not barbaric because it has no choice to be anything other than what it is. So I think that's kind of cool.
[56:09] Seven. Oh, thin men of Hadam, why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird walks around the feet of the women about you?
Now that, of course, is our desire for abstractions leading us away from the practical beauties of the world.
The practical, fleshy, fertile beauties of the world, that we want to create all of these abstract, nebulous, platonic wonders rather than worship the fleshy, farty women around us and make children with them.
I kind of like that, right? That's very good. Eight.
I know noble accents and lucid, inescapable rhythms, but I know, too, that the Blackbird is involved involved in what I know.
That one, eh, it's okay. It's okay.
[57:03] Nine, when the blackbird flew out of sight, it marked the edge of one of many circles.
Right. So, I mean, have you ever had this thought? I'm sure you have, right? You're on a bus and you're driving.
And I write about this in my novel, The Future, where you're in a bus and you're driving past and someone just flashes past, right? And they're like, they're gone, they're gone, gone.
Now, of course, your life continues and you go on to your journey, your destination.
And but for you they were just a blurred face flashing by in the night but for them you were just a blurred face flashing behind the window i mean it's it's sort of empathy 101 that i am looking at a camera you were looking at a screen right i am outputting language you are inputting language right so when the blackbird flew out of sight it marked the edge of one of many circles right so it's flying out of sight so the blackbird is out of sight well not of the next guy who's seeing it coming towards him. So it's just sort of empathy 101.
[58:03] 10. At the sight of blackbirds flying in a green light, even the boards of a euphony would cry out sharply. Eh.
Eh. Eh. Agreeable sound, especially in the phonetic quality of words.
At the sight of blackbirds flying in a green light, even the boards of euphony would cry out sharply.
Eh, that one doesn't mean how much for that uh uh uh eleven he rode over Connecticut in a glass coach once a fear pierced him in that he mistook the shadow of his equipage for blackbirds and.
[58:45] Equipage uh what's that his finery right let me just double check that, yeah horse-drawn carriage with attendants um so to me that is is our superiority so to speak, is it innate or is it a social convention in other words do people who are superior end up with carriages or do people end up with carriages for other reasons and we just think of them as superior, right? It's sort of an interesting question.
It's an interesting question. Twelve.
[59:21] The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying. I think that's just there to help you unravel cause and effect.
This is 1954 it came out, right? Thirteen. This is the last one.
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing, and it was going to snow. The blackbird sat in the cedar limbs.
That's kind of of a disappointing ending to it but to me there's some really great thought-provoking stuff in there and i quite liked this poem when i was younger it was evening all afternoon it was snowing and it was going to snow so this is uh if you've ever had those days where you completely lose track of time and you get so dreamy that cause and effect gets reversed right you don't even notice you're hungry till your stomach growls so your stomach knows you're hungry before you do so i need stuff stuff, neat stuff in my humble opinion.
So yeah, he's good. I did. All right, let's see here.
[1:00:27] If you would like to tip, I would be thrilled to receive them.
If this helps and is of interest to you, I'll give a link to that poem just in case you wanted to look at it.
I'm sure you can find it on your own, but since I have it here anyway, I might as well.
Of course, you know, Shakespeare is absolutely fantastic and all of that, so...
All right, so let me get to your comments here. Somebody says, Adam Yush, Adam Horowitz, and Michael Diamond were awesome great poets.
Like the whole trauma freezes people in time thing. Yeah, that's definitely the case. A very good point. Very good point.
[1:01:22] What are your thoughts on disease X? Yeah, they're probably going to try again.
I mean, the pandemic was such a success for them that they're probably going to try again.
Ah, let's see here. They don't have kids to take, so they go and act like kids themselves, yeah.
Lego now markets to adults. I have an entire subset.
Oh, there is an entire subset of sets that they use the new slogan adults welcome to sell to them.
Some Lego sets actually say 18 plus on the box.
She built a box with the box. From the box.
I once stepped into a friend of a friend's apartment. It was literally covered in Lego everywhere, except one little spot in the middle with a TV with some old video game systems attached to it.
I do see the rumble chat. I do. I do.
Hmm.
[1:02:31] Let me just get, uh, somebody says, I may be a hip guy, risk averse.
So I wanted to know what you think about going into debt to scale the business.
The company that finances the equipment at 0% for 48 months is known for having glitches and people get slapped with the interest payments all at once for a faulty missed payment.
I could pay up front and if the business fails, I could sell the equipment since I'm already getting it at a discount.
I'm sorry, if the business fails?
If the business fails? How dare you say such a thing? Are you crazy?
If the business fails?
What do you mean if the business fails?
You can't have said that to me. Of all the people in the known universe, you can't have dangled that bait in front of me. if the business fails?
[1:03:36] No. That's not a thing. That's not an option.
That's not a maybe. That's not a possibility.
The business will succeed. And why? Why?
Why will the business succeed?
Why? My gosh. If you're thinking this way, you need a wake-up call.
Sorry to be annoying, but you absolutely... I've been an entrepreneur now for over 30 years, straight, virtually.
If the business fails, absolutely not an option.
That's not an option that's not on the list that's not a possibility, I mean I might get hit by a meteor tomorrow but this business will not fail.
[1:04:44] Well you know if our marriage doesn't work out I'll just the business fails, how little control do you feel like you have over your own destiny that you have an option called well if it doesn't work out i can just sell all of this and that the other, The hell are you doing having an exit strategy called potential failure?
Maybe I'm missing something here. I don't understand.
If the business, assuming it's a viable business, and I'm sure that it is, then you just don't let it fail.
You just don't let it fail. You do whatever it takes. You've got to work nights, weekends.
You've got to stay up three days in a row. You've got to do extra work yourself.
You've got to set up a line of credit to cover your payroll.
I don't understand. What do you mean if the business fails?
What?
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't understand that mindset at all.
I don't understand this mindset at all.
[1:06:02] It makes no sense to me, less than no sense, to have that as something that's on your mind.
[1:06:13] Well, if it doesn't work out, like that's the start of marriage thing.
Well, you know, if the marriage doesn't work out, we'll just get divorced and we'll be fine.
Like, no. I mean, I remember when my wife and I got together at first, before we even got engaged, we were like, I was like, I don't do divorce.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm never doing divorce. Like whatever happens.
We're staying, we're staying together. And she was exactly the same perspective.
And of course, we've never had any particular problems that way.
But no, it was just like, no, it's just, we're in.
Like, there's not an option called, what if the marriage fails?
And you have more control over your business than you have over a marriage.
Just do more, just be better, just innovate more, just be more efficient, just find some way to be absolutely irresistible.
[1:07:08] If it fails, then it will.
If failure is an option, it becomes an inevitability, because you just won't do the stuff that's necessary, because you have the option of failure.
If it fails. Me, of all people, who's kept this thing going by sheer force, of will, grit, F the planet, it's going to happen anyway, resolution.
Do you think there might have been a couple of times where it would be perfectly rational to have thrown in the towel on this stuff?
Oh my gosh.
If it fails. All right, give me just a sec here. I'm not getting new text here, though I can see people typing. Let me just do a reload here.
[1:08:11] Nope. People are typing, but I'm not getting anything. Yeah, I don't...
Yeah, the poem, if. Yeah, you can look at it that way for sure.
But I don't... I really don't understand.
What is this...
If at first you don't succeed, try and try again.
Ah...
All right. Any other last questions, comments? I don't mean to make it too short a show, but tips be a little low and questions be a little low.
So that's all right. Because we did the show last night.
But if you have questions, comments, I'm happy to answer them.
Otherwise, we can do a shorter show tonight.
Certainly, we've put in a lot of value as it stands, as it is right now.
[1:09:11] So I'll give you a second or two in case there are any other questions or comments.
[1:09:16] Concerned about starting a family because of my narcissistic mother-in-law.
Luckily, she lives thousands of miles away. For now.
Ooh, that's a risky proposition, my friend. Literally a risky proposition. Risky proposal. Yeah.
So you know the problem with dysfunctional mothers-in-law?
The problem with older dysfunctional people in your life? Do you know what the problem is? Does anybody know? You all know.
You all know what the problem is with older dysfunctional people in your life, right?
[1:09:57] You wouldn't know this in particular if you were a younger person.
What is the root cause of porn addiction?
I just, I mean, if you're not willing to listen to my answers, I don't know why I would repeat them.
I already, you already asked me this question and I already gave you my answer.
What you may be, you want, what you want to ask is what's the root cause of repetition addiction or the root cause of just not listening to people that you ask.
Maybe that's what you're really asking about. The addiction is to not hearing what people are saying.
But, so yeah, the problem with dysfunctional older people is they get old and ill.
They get old and else you say, well, you know, she's a long way away and not that much interference and this, that, and the other, but, uh, they loom closer.
They get closer and then they get needy and then they get old and then they get desperate and then they get clingy and then they get sick and then they really work the thumb, some thumb screws on the daughters in particular.
[1:10:56] They really, really start to work the thumbscrews, in particular.
So, I will give you a piece of life advice that hopefully will be very helpful to you.
[1:11:15] And my little piece of life advice is this.
If you don't have boundaries now, Now, you don't get them later.
That's just called deferring. That's called appeasing. That's called surrender. That means you lose.
Everybody's like, oh, well, you know, she's thousands of miles away.
It's not that big a deal. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah.
Yep. And then they're not. and are you going to try and set up boundaries after you have kids and after your wife has been further enmeshed into as you say a narcissistic mother-in-law's pathological personality oh don't worry later when my mother-in-law gets ill and she's really turning the thumbscrews on my wife and we're busy with kids and career that's when i'll set up those boundaries, My mistake will re-watch live stream. So you asked me a question, left, and then came back and asked the question again.
[1:12:28] That's great. That's excellent. Excellent. Great stuff. Way to not waste everyone's time.
So yeah, boundaries are now or never.
Boundaries, like it doesn't get easier. If you're in a relationship with a dysfunctional person, you need to set up some boundaries. The idea that it's going to be easier later is a lie.
It's just a total lie. It's not going to be easier later. It's not going to be easier later.
So, yeah, I just, my suggestion would be set up the boundaries now.
[1:13:02] So, and it's not about you, right? You understand it's not about you and it's not about your wife.
These boundaries, nothing, I mean, they're related to you, of course, and all of that. but these boundaries, it's not about you, it's not about your wife.
These boundaries are about one thing and one thing only. Who's healthy to have around your children? That's it. That's all there is. That's all there is.
Nothing more, nothing less, and fundamentally nothing else. Nothing more, nothing less, and fundamentally nothing else.
Who's healthy to have around? Your kids.
And if there's a toxic dysfunctional manipulative intrusive narcissistic woman, well is that healthy to have around your children see if it's just about you you'll lack resolution, right you'll just you'll lack resolution but if you say i'm here in the service of that which is best for my children then you'll make the right decisions and you'll have the strength and will to follow through.
[1:14:09] You know, if some car is rolling down a hill and someone says, there's a cat in there, you'd be like, wow, that's bad for the cat, right?
If somebody says, that's your kid in there, well, you're going to dive through the window and try and stop the car and pull the kid out, right?
Kids give you resolution, which is one of the reasons why those who want to harm civilization try to convince you to not have kids, because kids give you resolution.
Khan, nice to see you again. he writes my mom who I haven't talked to in over two years wants to meet up to set things straight with me, 26 and my brother 22 I know she won't change or take any ownership of her wrongs my plan is to completely, cut ties I think you mean cut ties if she doesn't okay my plan is to completely ties is she she doesn't compromise and do therapy oh cut ties with her if If she doesn't come, please do.
Check your text before you send it to me. Don't make me read this crap. Come on.
Little quality control in the planet. It's what we need. My plan is to completely cut ties if she doesn't compromise and do therapy for her or some sort of restitution, which almost certainly won't happen. What would your advice be?
[1:15:29] Um...
Maybe she can start breastfeeding you again maybe she can change your diaper again maybe she can make sure that.
[1:15:43] Wrote this quick sorry thought you were ending stream right so what you do is you say i've got a message i want to get it right just hold on a second and then get it right that's all so So, she can't be your mother. You're an adult. That's done.
[1:16:03] That's gone. That's history. That's deep in the rear view.
Tell you what, kid. Tell you what. Listen, I know you're 26, but I've had this great idea. I've got this great idea.
I'm going to teach you how to burp, roll over, crawl, stand, and walk.
It's going to take a while. Probably going to take, I don't know, six months. Fairly full time.
But you're going to lie on the ground, and I'm going to teach you how to roll over.
Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to teach you how to sit up and stay up.
I'm going to teach you how to stand. Obviously, you can grab onto the couch.
And then maybe, you know, little wobbly walks. I can hold your hands.
And what would you say? What would you say if your mother offered to teach you how to walk?
[1:16:59] What would you say?
[1:17:10] Somebody says, the dating pool is ruined! Struggling to find high quality girls.
Why do you think this is? And how would you vet or find women?
Most seem to have a high body count by the time they're done with college.
Why on earth would you date a woman who'd gone through college?
Unless it was for some technical designation like engineer or something.
[1:17:34] No do-overs right, right, so if my mother were to call me up and say but i'm your mother, my answer my answer would be you didn't mother you didn't mother me you didn't teach me you didn't guide me, you didn't raise me, you, right?
And my mother would be the first to admit this.
She says, you know, she used to say this constantly when I was in my teens.
Like, you raised yourself, you did it all by yourself. I'm like, yeah, I mean, kind of right, right?
She also got mad that I had Ayn Rand as a substitute mother.
It's like, well, I needed someone.
I needed someone to tell me how to live and wasn't coming from school and it wasn't coming from the church and it sure as hell wasn't coming from my family.
So I had to get it from somewhere, so.
Is mother, like, is a sperm donor a father? Nope. No, he's a sperm donor.
Is someone who didn't parent you a parent? Is parent a verb or a noun?
Is a parent a thing or a process?
[1:18:51] Parenting is something you do. It's not paying the bills. I mean, prison pays the bills.
Welfare can pay the bills Winning the lottery can pay the bills That's not parenting Parenting isn't paying the bills, Is parenting discipline? Nope I got caned in boarding school I got threatened in schools You get threatened in jail Quote, discipline or punishment That's not parenting I don't think.
[1:19:34] What is parenting?
Love and moral guidance. Parenting is love and moral guidance.
I mean, it's like saying, you know what being a doctor is? Being a doctor is having a piece of paper on your wall.
You got that piece of paper on your wall, you're a doctor.
So then you can just photocopy that piece of paper and open up shop.
Don't do it. It's fraud and it's wrong. but that's no no no i've got a piece of paper on my wall that means i'm a doctor no that's a recognition of training and education and understanding and testing that you've already gone through and experience and mentoring right that's the effect the word parent is the effect of a multi-year multi-decade process of love and moral guidance, That's when you get the label, parent.
You don't get the label parent because you had sex with someone, produced a kid, and lived with them and yelled at them.
It's not parenting. That's not parenting.
[1:20:55] So to me, you're 26 and your mom's like, oh, I want to set things straight with me.
What?
Are you going to bring a little bottle for me to feed on and a burpee blanket?
And what are you talking about?
I've been an adult for eight freaking years. What do I need a mom for?
It's so long past when it's required.
It's like you're driving with your friend, like you're driving with your friend and he falls asleep at the wheel and you crash and he puts you in a wheelchair, now two years later he comes over with a brake pad, and he throws the brake pad on the floor by your wheelchair and he steps on the brake pad and he says, I got it, man. I'm braking. I'm braking.
What would you say?
[1:22:19] I don't know why. I don't know why you're pretending to break now.
If you had a break two years ago, I wouldn't be in a wheelchair, but you didn't, and I am.
[1:22:37] You know, if you knock up your fiancé before you get married, and then you get married, and you turn around and you say, it's okay, everyone.
I know she's really showing. She's like a battle cruiser out there.
I know she's like a Nimitz-class carrier. But don't worry about it, man.
I just wanted you all to know. She is, in fact, eight months pregnant.
But she's having a white wedding. Do you know why? Why? Do you know why she's having a white wedding?
Because I'm wearing a condom. Right here, under my tux. I'm wearing a condom.
Just a moment. Yep. Yeah, I just checked. Still wearing a condom.
[1:23:19] Now is not the time for prevention, but repair. Repair what? Repair what?
He doesn't need parenting anymore. He's an adult.
He doesn't need parenting.
If your kid was in daycare for five years and they grow up kind of weird and neurotic like daycare kids often do, and then at 30 you phone them up and you say, you know what?
You know what? I'm not putting you in daycare for the next five years.
It's going to even out. Like you were in daycare from the age of one to six, but now that you're 30, I'm not putting you in daycare.
It's fixed. What?
[1:24:14] You've been a chain smoker for 40 years. You get emphysema and you say, no, I quit. I just quit. Like, what?
I mean, I guess it doesn't hurt, but it ain't going to fix it.
Do you see what I'm saying?
[1:24:37] Because here's the basic fact. The basic fact of why I'm saying this.
It's like the theme of tonight's show is deferment. I'll have boundaries with my mother-in-law in a couple of years.
If parents think they can snap their fingers and become great parents when you're 26, they won't work as hard to become great parents when you're six.
Because they can just fix it later, right? Just fix it later.
We can fix it later. No problem.
I can wait until my kid's like eight years into adulthood, and then I can just be a good mom. I can fix it later. Fix it later.
I mean, if you were addicted to smoking, cigarettes, and you knew somehow magically, that you could smoke for another 10 years and then quit and you wouldn't ever get sick from smoking, you wouldn't quit now. You'd quit in 10 years because you can fix it then.
[1:26:00] You see what I'm saying? If you think you can fix parenting later, you won't fix it now.
There is no fixing it later. There is no fixing it later.
And the fantasy that there is, is why things remain crappy, craptastic assholery, trash planet inhabitants for so long. Because people are like, no, I don't need to fix it now.
I don't need to be a good mom when he's three or five or 10 or 15 or 20.
But boy, when he's 26, I could just be a great mom then. What?
I don't, I don't really get it.
I don't really get it.
[1:27:13] Somebody says, maybe I'm hyper-vigilant and risk-averse because of my shit family, but I haven't given up and have had more success since I've removed toxic family and most toxic people.
It's probably a confidence issue and I lack experience in areas where others can easily excel in.
Well, if you lack experience in something, the last thing you want to do is ask other people's opinion. opinion.
Because anyone who's wise won't tell you which balance of costs and benefits works for you.
They can tell you some of the costs and benefits, but you already know that.
The benefit of owning is you own it, and the benefit of renting is you don't have the capital costs up front, right?
But no one who's worth a damn is going to give you the answer, which is why it makes no sense to ask.
[1:28:10] Between jobs now but i'll get back to subscribing once i get it figured out Stef thanks for all you do well thank you and our call i appreciate that i really appreciate that good place free domain.com slash donate is a great place for donations and of course if you want to join a great community free domain.locals.com is very good is very good it's a good place to chat and And this is where I get most of the questions that I ask or answer. Most of the questions come from there.
[1:28:46] Let me give you another example. So let's say that you're married.
Damn, I'd still be smoking. Yeah, if you knew for sure you could fix it in 10 years and it wouldn't cause any problems, of course you'd quit in 10 years.
You wouldn't quit now. Quitting's unpleasant.
Don't feed into this delusion of infinite fixability and eternal restitution, by letting people who shafted you for your entire childhood do makey-makey-uppies at 26.
This would be like, honestly, this is the same as you're married to some woman.
She says, yeah, I want to have kids. I'd love to have kids.
And then you can't have kids. You can't have kids. And then when she's 50, you find out that she actually was on birth control the whole time and she didn't want kids.
And then she breaks down after she's confronted and she cries and she says, you know what? You're right. I'm so sorry. It was absolutely the wrong thing to do.
I'm absolutely, it was totally the wrong thing to do. But I tell you what, I'm off the birth control now.
I'm sorry I'm going to make up for it now I'm off the birth control let's have unprotected sex let's just go for it.
[1:29:58] The hell? you're 50, what are we going to give birth to? raptors in amber?
You're 50, you can't get pregnant no, no, no, I'm fixing it later It's like the time has gone. The time has passed.
It can't be repaired. Maybe when you were 33, maybe when you were 35 or 38, maybe when you were 40 or 41, you're 50.
There are no mulligans for most important things. There are no do-overs for most important things.
[1:31:07] When you at least twice said that all is fair in love and war.
I think your point was to encourage people to strive greatly for the relationship of their dreams. No?
So there was a cartoon I remember seeing as a kid.
There were a bunch of knights, they all had their armor on, and then this rain of arrows came down, and one knight turns to the other and says, wait, wait, wait, can they do that?
Can they do that? Yes, they can.
Because once you're in a situation of war, you use whatever mechanisms you can to ensure victory. No matter what.
[1:31:52] Right?
And, I mean, we're aware of all of this, right?
We're aware of all of this. I mean, it's not just war. Public health, too.
Use whatever propaganda you can to get people to do what you want, and it doesn't matter what the rules are, right?
So, this is just a reality, right? When you're in a situation, where people aren't being rational, then you are not bound by the rules of rationality.
[1:32:25] Right i mean if if you um are in a situation where you don't speak japanese but the only negotiation is possible requires fluent japanese you can't negotiate because you don't speak the language right so all's fair in love and war, so i mean let me ask you this let me ask you this and i'm happy to be schooled on this i'm I'm happy to get people's feedback, and maybe I'm totally wrong.
It's always the case. It could be totally wrong.
But if you and your friend both like a girl, and then he believes something negative about her, you don't know if it's true or not, right?
Do you urge him to be skeptical, or do you let him believe something negative without putting much effort into figuring out what's true?
So that you have a better chance with the girl. I would.
I would. Because whatever girl was...
Whatever girl was lucky enough to get me, well, I wouldn't want to dishonor her potential by denying her access to the manly staff bot and my 12 chest hairs.
Like, there's just no way. So.
Now, I wouldn't spread rumors. I wouldn't lie directly, but...
[1:33:53] And I've mentioned this before when I was in the business world.
When I was in the business world and some guy who wouldn't reason with me was really kind of trash-talking me and trying to put me down.
And I told the board he's got a real bad temper and this is not a good person to be in this position. They didn't believe me.
So just at a board meeting, I just goaded and goaded the guy until he blew up and then he got fired.
Is that fair? Is that right? I don't care.
I honestly don't care. Yeah. Listen, man, if we're playing chess and you're obeying the rules of chess, let's have a great game.
If you stop obeying the rules of chess, I'm not playing chess with you anymore.
Morality is mutual. Morality is reciprocal. Morality is relational.
You earn moral considerations through virtue yourself.
This idea that morality is some abstract absolute that you apply no matter what is kind of incomprehensible to me.
All right let's see here.
[1:34:55] A few months ago my sister-in-law brought her lover while still married to a family event, my mother-in-law a devout catholic was fine with this my wife and i were not okay with this as this sets a bad moral example for our daughters and told my mother-in-law we will not be attending family events if this individual comes my mother-in-law got outraged at my wife her Her daughter's calling her evil and wishing bad karma on her daughters.
Yeah, well, so people, so I can lie to potential mates. That's not what I said.
[1:35:30] Tell me where I said you can lie. I was very specific with my example.
So if you're just going to be reply guy, like boil it down to something I never said, and then ask me to defend a straw man, I'm not interested in that conversation. session.
That's a complete waste of everybody's time and energy.
[1:35:53] I was very specific in my example about not correcting a friend's, not working very hard to correct a friend's misperception.
I didn't say you lied to him directly. I didn't say you spread the rumor.
So like, I'm sorry, this is just kind of boring that you can just make up something I didn't say and then ask me to defend it and blah, blah, blah. Thank you. All right.
Yeah. So this is typical, right? So you can be a corrupt person who's bringing a lover to a family event while still married and a catholic who's supposed to condemn you for that because you're supposed to stay married as a catholic right like what has god what god has joined together let no man tear us under so you can do any kind of crap you want but if somebody else has standards then they get attacked right they get attacked so your sister-in-law is bringing a lover to a family event, and you don't want to be part of that, for reasons I completely understand and agree with, so then your mother-in-law has no moral outrage to someone who's broken her wedding vows to God, but only has reserved her rage for someone who has moral standards of her own.
[1:37:19] Am I still, am I blurring out a little here? I can't really tell.
Where's my... Ah, it's better, okay. So, um...
[1:37:31] First of all, I don't know. How spicy should I get here?
How spicy should I get?
In general, it may not be the wisest thing in the known universe to rely upon women to uphold difficult moral standards in a situation of social volatility.
[1:38:00] If all is fair, why are there no moral boundaries? Okay, you know there's a phrase called all's fair in love and war, right?
You know that there's a phrase, right?
I talked about the war thing, and I talked about the limits, right?
All's fair in love and war is a phrase which I'm breaking down philosophically.
It's not my phrase. It's just something that comes up when people talk about this stuff and I was giving my, I don't know, gosh, oh gosh.
This is not hard, people. This is not hard. All right.
Kung Pao, baby? Ghost pepper spicy. Oh yeah, so yeah. Look, I mean, let's be frank.
How good are women at enforcing objective and uncomfortable morals in society?
As a whole, in general. Tons of exceptions. But how good?
So, since women have gained more and more influence over, say, the church, has the church become more strict or less strict in obvious moral standards?
[1:39:14] I leave you to, Mo, and contemplate these things, right?
To the point where now the Pope is trying to find common cause with communists.
You know, mortal enemies, right?
Communism, because Satanism is apparently too tricky to spell.
[1:39:32] By your reasoning, all is fair in everything because morality is a relationship.
Do I have that right? That makes sense to me.
Okay i mean you'll read my free book university preferable behavior morality is a relationship, of course morale look you can't go and stab someone but if somebody's running at you with a chainsaw you can shoot them to save yourself because they're no longer respecting physical integrity right so you have the right of self-defense you can't take someone's property but if someone takes your property you can take it back it's a relationship but i don't know what all is fair in everything.
I don't even know what that means. All is fair in everything?
I don't know. Sorry, you're just too uninformed. This is a bit of an advanced class.
So you're just too uninformed. All is fair in everything. So I say all is fair in love and war. I talk about specific victory. I talk about morality and relationship.
And all you get about that is everything is fair in everything.
You can do anything what you want. So anyway.
Oh, this is the same guy who wouldn't tell his friend that his girlfriend is a cheating garden tool.
Okay. Okay, yeah, so his big issue is abstract moral reasoning rather than saving his friend from an STD or an unwanted pregnancy with a crazy woman.
So...
[1:40:51] Yeah, women as a whole, right, women score very high in conformity, right, as a whole, right, in conformity.
So what women in general do is they, in a situation of conflict, they don't generally go to abstract principles.
Again, tons of exceptions, just a little bit more. so women went in a state of conflict so here's a conflict between you uh between you and your wife and your sister-in-law who's breaking who's sinning who's creating and and inflicting an enormous sin not just on her husband on on the marriage right agreeableness yeah most people would know it more as conformity so i'll just go go with that right so the mother-in-law sees that that there's a conflict between her two daughters, right?
The daughter with the lover and the daughter who's married, right?
[1:41:55] So the mother-in-law is not appealing to any abstract principles because that would be very simple.
No, you can't bring your lover to a family gathering because you've sinned by taking a lover while you're married, right? You've broken your vows to God, right?
So, the mother is looking at a conflict and she's saying, not what are the abstract principles that will decide this, she's saying, who is the most reasonable person, I will attack them.
The least reasonable person I will not attack because they will attack me back.
The most reasonable person will have too much pride to attack me back, so I will bully that person.
Right, like bullies in school, they pick on the nerdy kid with the great language skills and the taped together glasses and all of that, right, because that person's not going to fight back.
[1:42:52] So, and this is society as a whole, right?
When society was deciding to de-platform me, so to speak, there were no abstract principles that were being appealed to, right?
There were no abstract principles that were being appealed to.
It was like, okay, so who is more likely to cause me trouble?
The people calling for Stef to be de-platformed or Stef?
Who's going to try and get me fired? Who's going to try and harm my income?
Who's going to try and ruin my reputation?
Who's going to sabotage me here, there? Right?
It's nothing to do with any moral principles.
It's simply who's going to escalate the most, right?
So your wife's mother, okay, first of all, she's not a devout Catholic, right? So she's not a devout Catholic at all, right?
So your wife's mother is saying, okay, I got the one sister who's kind of crazy and the one sister who's more reasonable.
I got the one daughter who's kind of crazy and the one daughter who's more reasonable.
And there's a conflict between the two.
[1:43:49] And she knows that if she sides with you against the other daughter, that the other daughter will make her life hell.
She'll call her up, she'll yell, she'll escalate, she'll intensify, she'll ban her from seeing her grandkids, she'll go nuts, whatever, right?
So that's going to be a huge amount of trouble and pain and difficulty.
Whereas your wife is reasonable, and so she can attack your wife because your wife won't attack back.
It's simple. Now, you think that the problem is solved because your kids don't see this directly. It's not.
It's not solved at all.
Because if your reasonableness results in you being punished, and your kids see that, and they do and they will, no matter what, they do and they will see that.
They will see it implicitly, explicitly in some way or another.
Is this marriage broken up and not yet divorced, or is she outright cheating?
Do you think that matters in the eyes of God? A devout Catholic, right?
[1:45:19] So your mother-in-law will side with the most aggressive person and attack the most reasonable person.
They'll side with the craziest, she'll side with the craziest person and attack the most reasonable person.
And please understand, this is nothing personal.
To your mother-in-law, this is most people in the world. Am I wrong?
This is most people in the world. Most people in the world have zero access to objective principles.
They will follow no matter what. They have zero access to that.
They consult power dynamics, threat dynamics.
Most people have no principles. Having principles is a marker of strength.
And most people don't, they look at a conflict and they don't evaluate it according to principles. They evaluate it according to safety.
[1:46:12] Who's more dangerous? dangerous who's less dangerous. I'm going to side with the more dangerous person and punish the less dangerous person.
And in the modern world, being more reasonable is being less dangerous. Do you see what I mean?
Being more reasonable is being less dangerous. So if you have people who are working on punishment or lack of punishment as their metric for making decisions, the more reasonable you are, the more you're going to get sacrificed sacrificed and attacked.
I choose not to have those dynamics in my life. I choose not to have those people in my life, like in any way, shape or form.
I just won't do it because I'm not going to be in a situation where my virtues become my punishment.
[1:46:54] Like I won't do that. I won't do that.
[1:47:01] I spoke to someone who said that there always has to be the unspoken attitude, that there's a threat of violence if someone pushes hard and tries to mess with them.
What are you talking about?
[1:47:16] That's psychotic. Why would you want to be in relationships with people you have to have an unspoken threat of violence in order to have anything to do with them?
What do you mean? You're going to beat people up? I don't understand this.
Do you think if I have a conflict with my wife, come on, I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy.
I can only see my own comments. Yeah, you just might need to right-click on the background and reload, or F5 or Ctrl-R or something like that.
I don't have a relationship with this person.
[1:47:56] I don't have a relationship with this person. Okay, so then what? Do you?
I don't understand. I mean, you're bringing this idea and this argument up.
Are you saying that you think it's a terrible argument and should be rejected?
Oh, you're saying. I'm so sorry. I think I understand. So you're saying, I think you're trying to say that the mother-in-law is a threat of violence?
That that's what the mother-in-law's perspective is?
I'm sorry. I don't follow. All right. Right. Uh, reminds me of those people who said it doesn't have to make sense when asked about COVID rules.
Well, and it, it shouldn't make sense. I mean, you can't dominate people with rules that make sense.
You have to, the only way you know, you're dominating them is if the rules don't make any sense, but they comply anyway.
Right. I mean, it's not dominance if the rules make sense, because then you're just appealing to the reason you only dominate people by having them accept and parrot things that are patently false and ridiculous, right?
That that's what what power is. Power is getting people to parrot things that make no sense at all.
I mean, Fauci, I was talking about this years and years ago about how the six-foot rule came from some kid's science project and now Fauci has finally admitted that the six-inch rule just kind of bubbled up out of nowhere.
There was no science behind it. It's like, hello? Of course.
Five foot nine, six foot, safe zone. It's pretty funny.
[1:49:16] All right. Any last tips, comments, questions, issues, challenges?
Thank you so much for dropping by.
Freedomain.com slash donate to help me out.
Freedomain.com slash donate. And of course, if you support the show, freedomain.locals.com, you support the show, man, do you get a lot of great stuff.
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[1:50:34] What you're saying right now about safety and fearing punishment is precisely
[1:50:37] the reason I I have not told the boyfriend whose gal is cheating on him.
Great tying things together full circle. Thanks. Oh, because you're concerned that the girlfriend is going to go kind of crazy on you or nuts on you or whatever?
Look, I mean, just basically for me, outside of UPB, everything's permitted.
You just have to be honest with yourself.
So if you say to yourself, sorry, with regards, somebody says, my husband lived in a toxic home for years.
Both his mom slash stepfather would always yell at him to get out.
He stayed only to save money, but he didn't save money.
This idea that you live at home to save money is one of the most ridiculous pieces of treacle I've ever heard in my life.
You are not saving money by living at home.
All you're doing is blunting your ambition, and you're just lazier because you're at home.
Say, oh, I save $1,500 a month staying at home.
It's like, no, you just have $1,500 more of hustle if you get out.
You're just drugging yourself by, it's like saying welfare saves people money.
No, it doesn't. Look, I'm getting all this free stuff. Yeah, but you're killing your entire motivation.
And in this particular situation, you're being re-traumatized, which means that your self-esteem is being crushed, your happiness is being crushed, your enthusiasm is being crushed.
There's no amount of money that would be worth it.
[1:52:00] Somebody says, sorry if I missed the stream, just got home. If you have not subbed, you are missing out. It's worth it if you can spare it. I agree with that.
With regards to conformity in women, have you heard of the Stanley water bottle craze?
[1:52:14] Yeah, I mean, I think women these days have become the status seekers that men were always perceived to be. Oh, you got to have a Bugatti.
It's like, well, the Stanley water bottle phrase. Yeah, it's crazy.
Women used to compete on the number of happy kids they had. Now it's like the number of cats and votes for Democrats and Stanley water bottles.
It's really sad. It's really sad.
[1:52:37] Thanks. Great show. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. And thank you all for dropping by.
All right. So we will, gosh, we'll talk to you guys Friday night.
Don't forget to check out freedomandlocals.com. And thank you for dropping by tonight. A great pleasure to chat with you.
And i hope to see you on the um community in the community uh at um freedom.locals.com and i hope you will check it out it's really really is uh great great stuff Stef you are so wise man will donate end of the week great show thank you i appreciate that thank you and remember if you are a donor if you are a donor call in at freedom.com call in at freedom.com you go to the front of the queue and we are releasing this week a guy who was beating up his wife who i had to really strongly intervene with and a guy who had dreams of ending his girlfriend who i also had to strongly intervene with so it was quite the battle for relationship for the reduction in relationship violence in these call-in shows but they're just going out to donors and if you really want to get some spicy stuff i hope that you will check it out hey Hey, Emma, nice to see you. I hope we will see you on your birthday and happy birthday in advance.
All right. Take care, everybody. Lots of love. Take care. Bye.
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