0:00 - Introduction to Podcast
1:06 - Vivid Dream Concerns and Therapy Recommendation
1:43 - Long-Distance Relationship Dilemma
2:42 - Warning Against Impulsive Decisions
5:02 - Importance of Openness in Relationships
11:29 - Signs of Potential Scam in Online Relationship
17:45 - Temptation of Long-Distance Relationship
23:57 - Loneliness vs. Pursuit of Real Relationships
31:08 - Influence of Social Media on Parenting Decisions
36:48 - Influence of Fear of Missing Out on Parental Decisions
In this episode, I address various listener questions and concerns surrounding personal challenges and societal influences. I touch on topics like dealing with emotional struggles, navigating online relationships, and the impact of social media on parenting. I provide insights and advice from a philosophical perspective on how to approach these complex issues.
One topic discussed is the importance of seeking therapy to address underlying emotional struggles. I emphasize the significance of mental health and the value of professional support in dealing with challenging situations. Additionally, I delve into the dynamics of online relationships and the pitfalls of investing too deeply in connections built through text without validation through voice or video calls.
Furthermore, I explore the concept of loneliness and how it can stem from societal pressures and influences. I highlight the role of societal norms in driving consumer behavior and the tendency to equate material possessions with love and fulfillment. I discuss how the absence of genuine human connections can lead individuals to seek validation and satisfaction through material goods, perpetuating a cycle of emotional emptiness and dissatisfaction.
Moreover, I touch on the impact of absent fathers on children and the interplay between consumerism and emotional fulfillment. I delve into the role of toys as a substitute for genuine connection and the importance of fostering meaningful interactions with children through shared activities. I emphasize the need to prioritize quality time and emotional bonding over material possessions to nurture healthy relationships and promote emotional well-being.
Overall, the episode delves into deep-seated emotional issues, societal pressures, and the quest for genuine human connections in a world dominated by technology and consumerism. The discussions offer introspective reflections and practical advice on navigating personal struggles and forging meaningful relationships amidst societal challenges.
[0:00] All right, so good morning, everybody. Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain. Questions from freedomainsnotlocals.com. And to the fellow who had the vivid dream about harming his daughter, I would really strongly suggest you get to a talk therapist. Really strongly urge you to do that. If you can't afford it, just contact me privately and I'll send you some money to go to therapy. But my guess would be that you had violent parents yourself. You're trying to be a peaceful parent or you are being a peaceful parent. You say, of course, that you're not violent with your daughter when you are with her on a daily basis. So my guess would be that you have a violent parent yourself or a parent with violent impulses, or maybe a parent who acted out violently and that a parent is outraged that you are doing good in the world and the impulses to violence are jumping from parent, your parent to you. And that would be something to really keep an eye on. So again, I would strongly, strongly suggest get to therapy. If you can't afford it, just send me a message. We'll figure it out how you can get there. But that would be my suggestion there.
[1:07] Somebody says, somebody stop me.
[1:12] And we've got, I've been talking online with this woman, 18 to 21. I'm 25 to 28 years old, to whom my online friend introduced me to for about two weeks now. We've covered such topics as children, how to raise them, public schools, marriage, divorce, divorce, mental health troubles, values, political views, hobbies, and interests, among other things. We've got plenty of commonalities, and we agree on basically all the major topics. You don't know that. You're just talking to someone online. So having healthy skepticism is important when dealing with people.
[1:44] There are a lot of people, I'm not saying this woman is one of them, but there are a lot of people who would try to manipulate you by agreeing with you.
[1:53] We both want children to get married and never divorce race happy healthy children etc but then there's the big issue which is distance, We live on almost the opposite sides of the globe. We haven't yet settled on a meeting, and she seems quite reluctant to do so, even if I were the one taking on the cost of that trip. So suspicions arise as to if she is who she says she is. Currently, she wants to wait two to three years before her first in-person meeting. She sent me a couple of photos of her, but none that prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is her. She hasn't agreed to a voice or video call with me either. It would be great if she is real, but I'm afraid I'm just deluding myself. self. I'm rather torn on if I should focus more on looking for other women through friends, dating apps, social gatherings, etc. I simply focus on her. I wonder how long I should wait or push her a video call before abandoning all hope. Hope to hear back from you on this. Thanks for taking the time to read.
[2:43] Now, look, it's easy to mock, but don't. I mean, this is obviously somebody who's very passionate about getting married and having children, and he's found as someone on the other side of the world who claims to want the same things of course you know if it's like well we're gonna have to wait two to three years before meeting and there's no voice call and no video call i mean the most the most likely answer to this as to why she wants to wait before meeting.
[3:13] Is because she is she's overweight or something like she needs to change something about her her appearance and she's got a long way to go that would be my guess so you know as a as a male, you understand like if you live in the west you you have the ticket to the west which is you know pretty important for women around the world you happen to have accidentally inherited something which is citizenship in the west which a lot of women want and so you have this inheritance and And you have a value to offer women around the world that you didn't earn and isn't native to you and will, if it's a motivation, I'm not saying it is here, but just recognize that if you're some sort of passport bro or whatever, that you are strip mining the success of your ancestors in order to attract women who want access to those same resources. doses. So that's not great. And it's not going to lead you to a good place. Now.
[4:15] No, she's she's not she I mean, she's absolutely not who she says she is. Like there's no question of that. So if she sent you pictures, and let's say she's attractive, then if she's really interested in you, then she would have a video call, right? Women are not shy about displaying their assets. I don't mean like TNA, I just mean like if she's pretty, then she'll have a call with you because that would further cement your attraction to her. So a woman who hides her face, who hides her voice is either not a woman or something else or is not who she says she is or not and all of that, right? So the idea that you agree on things but she won't agree to meet you for a couple of years.
[5:02] That's like you don't agree on the same things because openness and transparency are important. And a voice call or a video call is essential for establishing trust over the anonymous faceless channels of the internet. So if she won't have a voice or video call with you, you don't agree on the same things because one of the foundational things that you would need in this kind of relationship is trust. I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a scam because I guess you've offered to send her oh no you would take on the cost of the trip so you wouldn't yeah so she hasn't asked you for money I guess you'd pay for that so this is a dangerous situation honestly I just want to be frank with you this is a dangerous situation it's dangerous in a couple of ways the most important thing that i would tell you about you know this may sound like fatherly advice or something like that but is that you have got to get your shit together in terms of self-protection online.
[6:05] Like sorry man get your head out of your ass shake it off you have got to get your shit together when it comes to protection self-protection online there's a lot of scammers there's a lot of, skeevy, weird stuff out there on the internet, and you've got to get your shit together. You literally talk to this woman, or you've talked to this person, I assume. It's all been on text. It's been two weeks, and you want to spend thousands of dollars flying out to meet her after faceless, voiceless conversations over text for two weeks? Are you crazy? What are you doing? This is madness.
[6:42] Listen, I'm a big one for enthusiasm. I really am a big one for enthusiasm. But you've text chatted with this woman for two weeks, and you're offering to spend thousands of dollars to fly out and meet her. She says, we're not going to meet for a couple of years. She says, no voice chats, no video chats. Seriously, bro, get your shit together when it comes to self-protection on the internet. This is not good and this speaks to a kind of loneliness and frankly a kind of desperation that is going to get you into serious trouble so you have to find a way to deal with the isolation and the loneliness and listen you want to call in at freedomain.com call in at freedomain.com brother send me a message we'll we'll talk but you don't know anything about this woman i mean I mean, I'm fairly convinced she isn't AI, but maybe you meet her and there's a Newton handheld PDA on the desk or something, right? The big issue is distance. Okay, so what is the plan? Let's say that she is everything that she says she is. You have no way of verifying any of that. She's just typing.
[7:57] You say, I want a big family. Do you want a big family? Oh, yes, I want a big family. And then once she knows that you want a big family, she can talk about, she knows you're probably conservative and she can just play it from there. I mean, I don't think she's scamming you. At least she's not asked for any money yet. But you rushing headlong into this and pair bonding with a freaking font is not good. You are in a situation of desperation. And in a situation of desperation, people make bad decisions. This is a bad decision. Now, the fact that you're eager to invest thousands of dollars and significant personal risk, I might add, you fly out to another country on the other side of the world to meet someone you've never met before. And they know that you're relatively wealthy. They know when you meet them that you have credit cards, you might have cash on you, or I don't know, people still use traveler's checks or whatever. But that's highly risky. It's a highly risky situation. And the fact that you're willing to display this level of, honestly, unbelievably dangerous enthusiasm for someone you've only typed with is going to signal you for muck. Maybe this woman isn't a scammer, but the next one might be, or the next one might be. And it might be even worse. Like, this is the kind of thing where you wake up in a foreign bathroom without a kidney.
[9:27] No, don't do it. Don't do it. I'm sure that the photo is pretty and so on, but if you can't even meet in person for a couple of years, you're going to be pushing 30. And then what? And then what? Let's say everything's the case. You talk with her for a couple of years. Eventually, you go out to meet her. Let's say she's everything that she says she is. Then what? So you're pushing 30, and you've got to figure out how to make a relationship work from the other side of the world. Long-distance relationships are time-wasting garbage. garbage. You know, if you want to waste time, I guess you could put yourself in a coma. I'm joking, of course. You put yourself in a coma, wake up a couple of years later, you still age, just last a couple of years. The same thing with long-distance relationships. Long-distance relationships are time-wasting garbage. Solve the distance or don't bother. And you can't solve the distance here. I mean, if it's a long-distance relationship, I don't know, like Newfoundland to British Columbia or New York to Los Angeles. Okay, at least you're in the same country. At least you can legally get married without any hassles.
[10:41] But even those are mostly time-wasting garbage. There's no progress. You get horny. You meet up. You have a lot of sex. You go do cool places. But it's like having an affair. There's no reality. There's no normal mundane stuff of life. It's just all about sex and personal collision and fun stuff and eagerness and sorrow. There's nothing real about it. So long distance relationships are where sperm and egg go to die because you can't make any progress you can't break up and the opportunity costs are enormous, because here's the problem man here's the problem this is why you are in danger no matter what right I mean there's a not outside chance that this is some kind of scam.
[11:30] Or that the woman is certainly not she's certainly not who she says she is I mean without a doubt right she's certainly not the picture because she knows as everyone does know and she would have a certain level of self-protection as well so she would know that the possibility that you would think she might be a scam would be very high so if she cared about you or had any sense of reality she would say to herself well gee you know i mean i obviously i could be a scam some pretty girl on the other side of the world could could be anybody you know it's like that old cartoon from the 90s as a dog typing says well on the internet nobody knows you're a dog so she would want to work very hard to reassure you that she wasn't a scam and she's not doing that well boy right if she is thoughtful and caring and a good person to what raise kids and and your mental health troubles that's uh that's important as well, But if she cares about you, the first thing she'd want to do is establish herself as a real person with a voice and a video chat.
[12:41] And that's the first thing she'd want to do is to reassure you she's a real person. Instead, she's saying we're going to wait for two to three years to even meet. And I assume that means wait two to three years. And there seems to be no schedule. Maybe it's two to three years to talk over the phone, to have a voice chat or a video chat, right? So the danger is, no matter what, even if she's 100% legit, well, then she doesn't understand how to protect you. She doesn't have empathy for your thoughts and feelings, right? right? I mean, she could be in prison and she's getting out in two to three years. She could be in a mental asylum and stuck there for a couple of years. Like, there could be any number of things, but I mean, come on, man. The problem is that out of desperation, your pair bonding tentacles are latching onto this woman with the grip of a circus strongman. And what that means is that you're going to pair bond with this text chatter, and you're going to start obsessing about her, and you're going to latch on to her, and you're going to waste a lot of time, and you don't have a lot of time to waste. If you're in your mid to late 20s, stop faffing around with text chats and find a real woman, local, to date. I mean, if you were 18, 20, whatever, right? I mean, it'd still be a waste of time, but at least you'd have some time to waste. You don't have time to waste.
[14:04] So you're going to latch on to this woman. She's going to, you're going to be, another problem with long distance relationships is long distance relationships, not that this is a relationship yet, they're havens for projection. You can project all of your dreams and ideals and perfections on the person because you don't have to deal with prosaic reality.
[14:27] It's all a fly out, body collision, sex and restaurant fest with no particular reality to it whatsoever. So you're going to pair bond with this text message person? I mean, sounds like you're already doing it if you're willing to throw thousands of dollars at two weeks of texting. And the fact that she's still interested in you when you are throwing thousands of dollars at two weeks of texting, potentially go fly out, meet her, other side of the world, disrupt your life, get on a plane, fly for 14 hours, have a time change go to a hospital go to a hotel stay in a hotel meet up with someone why because you texted for two weeks if she had any sense of self-protection she would never she would like stop texting with you and say if you said well we've been texting for a couple of weeks, i've never talked to you i've never seen you really and so i'm gonna fly out and spend time with you she'd be like whoa there bucko like she that would that you understand this would be huge huge red flags for any mentally healthy woman. It's a huge red flag that you're willing to drop your whole life, fly all around the world for two weeks of texting. That's a lack of judgment. I'm not saying you lack judgment as a whole. I'm just saying here, lack of judgment, lack of self-protection, lack of prioritization, lack of resource allocation that's intelligent.
[15:47] So you're going to pair Bond with this fantasy. She certainly isn't who she says she is. otherwise she would verify it and because she claims to be thoughtful and caring and you know whatever whatever.
[16:01] Then the first thing she'd do is reassure you that she's real with a video chat, right? She'd be eager to prove that so that you wouldn't think she was potentially a scam. So if she cared about you, she would do a video chat to put your mind at ease. But she is not giving a video chat, which means either she just plain isn't who she says she is, or she doesn't care about you enough to reassure your fears. Concerns, legit concerns, right? And again, the temptation for mockery here, I sympathize. I really do. Obviously, you're lonely, you want to get married, and this is being held out. But what this is going to do is waste potentially years of your life and ungodly amounts of money, and it is going to render you undateable for years if you pursue this.
[16:55] You're setting yourself up for a huge failure and a huge waste of you know precious fertility years as a young man and the woman in your life who might be the good woman in your life is gonna sail past while you're busy typing with a potential sex worker on the other side of the world, the opportunity costs of pursuing this kind of thing you're gonna have to sorry man at my advice Vice, pull your head out of your ass, shake it off. This is a hole with no bottom. It is a scam of some kind, right? It's not made a financial scam, but it's a scam of some kind. And she doesn't care about you, otherwise she'd reassure your concerns.
[17:34] Or she'd say, listen, if I'm unavailable to meet for a couple of years and I care about you, clearly you should go and find somebody else. She might be married, right? And maybe she is. Who she says she is, maybe she's married, right?
[17:46] Maybe she's claiming something, but in the video chat, that she might be revealed as grindingly poor in some backwater village in the middle of nowhere, which, you know, I mean, it's not her fault. And, you know, I sympathize with all of that. But as far as a marriage partner goes, probably not ideal. She also, you know, may not. It also may be I need to learn how to speak English better. She might be using some kind of translator. Maybe she doesn't speak English well at all or speak English at all. Maybe she's just running things through a translator that would probably show up. I don't know how good these things are, but probably show up. But no, bro, this is not it. Like, this is not the solution to your your isolation. This is going to exacerbate your isolation. Because what's going to happen is you're going to pair bond, and you're going to dream and daydream, and it's all going to be perfect, and my life is solved, and I'm going to get married, and this woman's going to be wonderful. So you're going to stop looking for alternatives, and this isn't going to work out. And you're going to spend years and ungodly amounts of money on this, and then you're going to come out the other end bitter and angry and frustrated and mad at yourself and mad at everyone around you who didn't tell you the truth, and you then will be harder to date because you'll be bitter, bitter, suspicious, angry, and frustrated.
[18:51] No, don't do it.
[18:53] Don't do it, you got to get a grip. And again, great sympathies for the isolation and the loneliness that would lead you to this kind of stuff. But here's the other thing too. You got to think, look, this isn't going to work. I mean, it's not going to work. It's not even going to come close to working. It's going to be incredibly destructive, even if she is who she says she is, which she isn't because she won't validate it. Like you understand, I just, I really want to emphasize this point. You think she's a caring person. So either physically she isn't who she says she is or emotionally she isn't or both. Because if she's a caring person, she would be rushing to say look i understand you know i mean this you know there's a lot of scams out there and you know we're on the other side of the world the first thing i want to do is reassure you that i am who i say i am and so absolutely let's you know let's hop on a video chat to put your mind at ease because i care about you right she's not doing that so right so yeah just she's not who she says she is she's not who you believe she is she's not who you fantasize she is because a caring person would validate who they were the other thing too is i want you to think of let's say you spend i mean minimum let's say you spend six months and you fantasize about her and you pair bond with her and you know but then things don't work out for whatever reason right she won't talk to you she won't have you know eventually at some point you wake up from the sexual lust phase and And you're like, how the hell could I have ever believed that, right? Like, what was I, crazy?
[20:22] So then you're going to spend, you know, another six months recovering, getting your finances back in order, trying to recover the pieces of your heart that you scattered to the four oriental winds or whatever's going on. And then, let's say, a couple of months after that, you meet some woman and she's like, hey, what's your dating history? He has like, oh, yeah, no, I got involved with a text-only chat with some woman who wouldn't agree to meet for a couple of years and wouldn't agree to a voice or video chat. And I spent thousands of dollars on this and I really got my heart broken. So what is the woman going to think? Like, what is the new quality, decent, local woman going to think when you unburden to her your history of falling in love with a font? She's going to think this guy has the judgment of a soap dish. And look, I sympathize with it. And I'm just trying to give you this, maybe it's a sort of elder male protective sense of things, but this journey that you might be on is going to stamp you as crazy to other crazy people. And it's going to stamp you as unsuitable for sane, healthy people. This is what I mean when I say this is hugely dangerous. And now this is early on, right?
[21:31] And what's happening, of course, there's a whole lot of stuff to untangle here, so I'll just be brief, but yeah, don't do it because you either have to lie about it, and she may find out at one point or another, some friend may mention something, she might find a text message or an email while she's looking for something else, so that's not good. So you either lie about it, which is going to make you emotionally distant, or you tell the truth about it, in which case a sane woman will run for the hills because she can't trust herself to somebody who makes these kinds of judgments.
[22:02] But the other thing, too, is you're going to have to go through, like when this doesn't work out and is a disaster on every level, what's going to happen is you're going to end up mad at everyone in your life who didn't help protect you. Like, how did you end up in a situation where you're texting me? Look, I'm happy that you texted me. I think it's a great thing. But obviously, a radically controversial philosopher in the middle of nowhere relative to you is kind of a last port of call. And I do know that people would rather talk about people in their lives they have established relationships with who care about them, about their problems, rather than talk to me. So I'm like the ER. I'm sort of aware of that. So you're talking to me because nobody else in your life is helping you or has credibility. That's another issue. If you're surrounded by people who aren't going to help pull your head out of your ass regarding this kind of stuff, then when the disasters happen, that's bad. Head because why are you coming to me rather than talking to your father or maybe brothers or, cousins or friends or and why why don't you listen to them right why aren't they putting in a way that helps you listen so this is not a font on the other side of the world problem this is an entire structural problem regarding your relationships you have to find a way to get to better relationships so that you're not exposed vulnerable and potentially going to mess up your your life in this way. So I hope that helps. And again, call in at freedomain.com if you'd like to like to help.
[23:32] All right, so Freedomain, I remember you saying something about a desert phase when we're transitioning from a dysfunctional life to a more virtuous one. I think I'm going through this phase right now. The old relationships are falling, falling one by one, while I don't think I'm functional enough to find, attract, and keep good people around me. Have you found something similar? Any tips on how to deal with the loneliness?
[23:54] Well, it's not loneliness. It's not loneliness.
[23:57] I want you to think of if you are walking in some lonely place, and you see a funny-looking rock, and then you decide to excavate it, and you find a pretty statue from some ancient civilization, right? And you say, look, I've made a statue. Well, that would be an inaccurate statement. Oh, look, I've uncovered a statue is the accurate statement. You didn't make the statue. You just made it visible. It's not creating it. It's just revealing it. It's the same thing with loneliness. If you are in pretend relationships, which is just historically attached dysfunctional proximity, if this is the state of the relationships, and then you say, say, you know what, I'm not going to spend my life on trash planet. I'm going to head out for better people. I'm going to aim for better people. Well, are you suddenly becoming lonely after having all of these rich and wonderful and connected relationships? Well, of course not. So the reason you might abandon existing non-relationships in pursuit of real relationships is.
[25:06] Is because you are lonely in your existing relationships. They're not real relationships. They are, in fact, blocking you from real relationships by giving you pretend relationships, in the same way that I assume heroin blocks you from self-knowledge by giving you the pretense of happiness rather than the real thing. If you're stuck in a room and you have a bunch of plastic fruit around you, and you kind of eat it just out of habit, but it tastes bad, and then you're bored, you try another bite, and so on, well you're not getting any nutrition and you leave that room to get some food because there's no real food in the room and you're hungry now when you're walking down the hall away from that room do you say oh my gosh suddenly i'm really hungry it's like no you left the room because there was just plastic fruit you weren't getting any nutrition you're hungry so you're going in search of real food you understand you left the room because there was no food in it you're looking for food just plastic food you left that room there's no food in it you're walking down the the hallway, oh my God, I'm hungry. No, walking down the hallway did not cause your hunger. You left the room with plastic food because you're hungry and you can't survive there. So don't blame the hallway. Don't blame the journey. Oh my gosh, you know, being philosophical is making me lonely. Nope.
[26:23] Searching for truth is making me lonely. Wanting genuine, real, honest relationships is making me lonely. Wanting people to care about me in my life when I've been been surrounded for years or decades with people who don't care about me in my life, that's making me lonely. No. The people who don't care about you are making you lonely. You follow? Of course you follow. You guys are smart. Sorry. Insult to your intelligence. Of course you follow. So.
[26:48] If you get lost in the woods and you wait for a day or two, and then you're really seriously running out of food, at some point, you're going to have to strike off in a direction. I assume I know a lot of people stay, say, wait and stay where you are or whatever. But let's say for whatever reason, you know no one's coming. So you start heading off, right? You've got to strike out somewhere because if you stay in the woods, you're going to die. It's got no food, right? Sorry, I know this is a really extreme scenario, but I really want to hammer the point home, right? So when you start walking, you're accepting that staying is going to get you killed. So you start walking in the direction of where you think a store, a town, a person, a hut, wherever you can get some food, right? So walking is accepting panic. Walking is accepting that staying is dying. Walking feels terrible because you're accepting that you have to try something or you're going to die. So when you wake up to the lack of connection lack of love lack of care in your relationships when you wake up to that in the world then you realize it's been plastic fruit and.
[28:00] Deep wood starvation your whole life so the loneliness does not come from you becoming philosophical and looking for something better the loneliness is what makes you do that or what impels that. You know, I'm not looking for a wife. I'm not looking for another sexual partner. I'm not looking for romance. I'm not looking for love. Because I already have that. And it's as good as it can be. I can't imagine better. I couldn't design better. So I have all that. So when you have something, you don't look. The reason you're going across the desert is because to stay is to to die or to recognize that the death you've been experiencing through isolation is.
[28:44] Already been happening. The loneliness you feel that is so intense when you start looking for better relationships or real relationships in your life, the loneliness that you feel is the result of history. It's not the result of the desert. You go to the desert because you die in the desert, right? You cross the desert. You try to find something outside of the desert because you wake up and what you thought was a town is in fact a desert full of of sand people and dust, and you're like, whoa, whoa, I just woke up from a kind of drug trip or a delusion that I was among people. I'm, in fact, among dry simulacrum of real people in the shape of sand. I'm going to die here, so I've got to strike off to something better. You say, oh, my gosh, I'm so thirsty. Well, you've woke up to your thirst. The thirst was not created by philosophy. The loneliness is not created by crossing the desert. Here we are piling up the analogies, but it's important. This is how our brain works. at its deepest level.
[29:41] So, you are awake to the isolation, to the lack of connection, and it is the loneliness in where you are that drives you across the desert. The desert does not create the loneliness. Because if you think the desert creates the loneliness, oh, I was in this wonderful, it was a good town, it wasn't great, it was decent enough, you know, it was okay. Then you cross the desert looking for something better. Then when the desert get hard, what do do you do you go back you go back you go back to the sand people right you go back to the sand people sure whereas if you know it's just dry dusty pretend people in some weird sculpted freeze in the desert then that you won't be tempted to go back.
[30:29] I was crossing the desert, but the idea of going back was repulsive to me because back there was nothing. Worse than nothing. It was the block to what was, right? So the way to deal with the loneliness, and the loneliness is like a curse inflicted, by those who want to manipulate and control you through isolation and distance. The loneliness is a curse put on you by dysfunctional people so that you'll collapse your standards and come back to them because they collapsed their standards and stayed in isolated, manipulated, false, lying, trash planet. So it's just a curse. It's just a curse put on you.
[31:08] So when you wake up to the fact that dysfunctional people don't have anything positive to offer you, they immediately pivot to abuse and loneliness. Oh, you're just drifting away from everyone. You're just so isolated. You'll never be, you never have any friends with anyone. You're too ideological. You're too abstract. This is terrible. Like loneliness, then it's just a curse put on you by people who have nothing to offer you except removing the curse right like the the guy who breaks your leg will dangle a crutch in front of you right, look i have something of value to offer you it's like well only because you broke my leg right.
[31:43] So all right let's do one more quickly hopefully this helps y'all uh social media marketing seems seems to have me in a chokehold, particularly when it comes to expensive toys for kids. I see these influencers with beautiful playrooms for their children, undoubtedly thousands of dollars of items, and I feel a massive fear of missing out, almost as if I'm depriving my daughters of the magic of childhood if I don't drop serious loot on these products. If I think rationally, I know my daughter is perfectly content collecting rocks and just interacting with her environment or me, so why do I feel so inadequate compared to these Instagram moms? I I know it's fake. I know it's selling me on a product. Why can't I resist the urge to spend? Right. So I'll tell you a big secret about children's toys. Children's toys, it's father absence. And you'll notice as father absence has increased, children's toys and the addiction to children toys has also increased. So let's say you make $25 an hour and there's a toy that costs $50. That's two hours you can't spend with your family because you're making that money.
[32:47] So shiny toys are absent fathers. Yes, I know, sometimes it's the woman, but we'll just talk in general, right? Like the 95% of the situation. We can handle the odds. We really can. So when you look at a room full of toys, I see a father who has to work to pay for them. So the presence of toys is the absence of the father. And this was true even when the toys were handmade. Usually it's men who are making the toys. The presence of toys is the absence of the father. And as fathers have left the home.
[33:26] Have been bribed with toys. So you're part of a general social trend, which is to replace people with objects. So family bonds and parental bonds and child bonds are weakened so that we're easier to push around, control and manipulate. I mean, I remember as a young man, there were these crazy, like hysterical waves of gotta have it's with kids. There was like, gosh, what were the cabbage Cabbage Patch Dolls, Tickle Me Elmo, there were Beanie Babies, there were, you know, and now there's Pokemon stuff, and I'm, you know, Dragon Ball, and, you know, all this crazy stuff. And what is it? Well, it's obviously the transfer of money, and it is fathers absent from the family to pay for, you know, bullshit shiny trinkets that are meaningless. And they're saying, for your children to be happy, you have to go to work. You have to give them stuff that represents the time you didn't spend with them. I mean, people were paying these absurd amounts of money, you know, hundreds of dollars or sometimes even more for these ridiculous toys. It's a cabbage patch kit. It's like a manufactured hysterica, like sort of tulip mania, right?
[34:45] Manufactured hysteria. And of course, it's a form of money transfer, it's a form of manipulation, and it's a way of bribing children with father absence so they place more value on things than people. And if you can get people to place more value on things than people, then you can make a lot of money, society gets really destabilized, family bonds are weakened, and removing children from the home is the foundational mission of everybody who wants to prey on children. Right? Which is why taking children to daycare, taking children to kindergarten, taking children to school is not so much about the presence of propaganda, it's about the absence of fathers. And the reason I say the absence of fathers or the absence of males is that, I mean, I worked in daycares, I was like the only male for, you know, it felt like thousands of miles around. Out so the purpose of society when it wishes to gain more control the purpose of politics when they wish to gain more control over the citizenry is to remove fathers from the home or to remove, males from the children's environment and you know the rise of woke culture it's just the rise of.
[35:54] Unrestrained female nature unrestrained being it's not balanced by the masculine right i mean the masculine unbalanced by the feminine is not ideal and the feminine unbalanced by the masculine Gillen is not ideal. We're a team. We're supposed to work together. But the tone police and this bizarre human resources psychology, like every male space, the women demand to come in and then they start tone policing and snapping at people and you get this whole HR mentality.
[36:24] And it's funny because there are these memes like, when you've told a joke so good at work that HR wants to hear it, you know, there's this kind of fear, right, about this kind of power that is censorious and tone policing and all about aggressive feelings rather than objective reality.
[36:44] The urge to spend? Yeah. I mean, I get it. I get it.
[36:48] You have been programmed and we all are. I'm, I say this with great sympathy and I'm certainly not above or immune to it, but you have been programmed to think that love means not being there. And of course, to some degree for men, that's true, right? A woman serves the home by being there. A man serves the home by being away, right? And going to get hunter resources or whatever, gathering, or you're having a job or whatever so you have been like so women are programmed to take care of children to the point where this becomes obsessive reality shielding helicopter parenting that stifles children and makes them soft flaccid fat uncompetitive and resentful you you people think oh the the video games is like it's it's a problem with the kids no in general it's a problem with the parents hey if you're home playing video games i know you're safe right so women's desire to keep men safe are supposed to be balanced by men's desire to expose them to risk right you know that old meme of the woman throwing up the toddler on the beach you know what's actually happening is the toddler's going up one or two feet what the toddler feels is going up five or seven feet and what the wife sees is the toddler going up like 20 feet right because she's a very very strong sense of danger. And that's great. You know, I mean, you wouldn't want toddlers to be raised by only men because they'd be exposed to a little bit too much risk and indifference, right?
[38:13] But excessive child-proofing is adult-proofing, like you don't get too adulted because you don't know how to manage risk. And because you don't know how to manage risk, you're easily programmed, right? When you don't know how to manage risk, when you've not grown up learning how to manage risk, and that's one of the most essential things that all living organisms mechanisms with higher functions need to do is to learn how to manage risk but when you don't know how to manage risk you can be told that things are risky and you don't have any sense of proportion, so and so is a threat to our democracy and you go oh this is scary right excessive co2 plant food is a threat to the survival of the like you don't have any way of gauging threats because, you haven't been out there exploring the world making mistakes and getting your strawberry knees and learning how to balance risk and reward.
[38:55] So the video game thing has a lot to do with fearful moms and lower social trust and all of that. But yeah, fearful moms preferring their kids be home so they know they're safe. But the kids aren't safe because they're not out there learning how to manage risk.
[39:10] So excessive safety is the greatest risk of all. We know that from the utopia, mouse utopia experiments and from looking out the window. So yeah, selling a product, absolutely. Absolutely. And, of course, it's easier to buy your kids something sometimes than to engage them in some cool imaginative play. It's a lot of work to create, you know, we're going to take this cardboard box and pretend we're going to Mars, you know. If you're not used to play and all of that, it can be a lot of work. And rather than relate to each other, you would try sometimes to relate through toys, right? And learning to play and all of that's fine, but rather than having a conversation or do some mutual imaginative play that bonds you, it can be, let's roll the dice on a Monopoly board. And that's our structured time together. And again, I'm not saying there's anything bad. I played board games with my daughter, but you need to balance it with the actual connection stuff. So what I would do if I were in your shoes is I would look back at your own childhood and say, did your parents buy you stuff rather than spend time with you? Right? right, which transfers children's allegiance to the media and transfers money from the family to the makers of toys. So everybody benefits except you and your kids. So did you have a situation where your parents were like, well, you know, we put a roof over your head, we bought you all these things, we took you on vacations, you had a new bike every year, and that's our value. No, it's not. No, it's not.
[40:37] Of course, it's a way of programming people to think that, well, the government has real value because it gives you stuff. Well, your parents have real value because they gave you stuff, but everything they gave you was time they were away from you. And they chose that time away from you and gave you stuff for reasons other than affection. Now, of course, you understand it's, I'm not talking about two extremes here. So I'm not saying never buy your children toys. You understand that, right? You follow that, right? But the toys that you buy your child should in general be something that you can play together and connect with right so my daughter was really into amphibians so you know we sometimes she bought these little plastic tubes of like lizards and frogs and so on and we would play with them together so the toys is something that and sometimes you would play with them alone but the toys in general were ways in which we could, connect so of course i'm not saying but you know you see this that it's it's crazy just how like You go to kids' birthday parties, and it's just this massive cavalcade of toys that the kid's never going to play with, really. There's no way to differentiate or focus on that, and there's so many toys. And it's parental absence. It's adult absence every single time.
[41:53] Every single time. All right. Well, I hope that this helps, and thank you, everyone, so much for these great questions. Love you guys to death. Beth and freedomain.com slash donate. If you'd like to help out the show, I really, really would appreciate it. Freedomain.com slash donate. Lots of love from up here, my friends. I will talk to you soon. Bye.
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