0:00 - Introduction
0:49 - The Power of Genuine Listening
5:34 - The Intriguing Theory of Ducks
6:37 - Bald Heads and Communist Provocation
7:18 - Ethics in Business and Employee Selection
10:28 - Problem-Solving in Business
14:22 - The Importance of Listening and Genuine Curiosity
17:00 - Firing Criteria in the Workplace
18:58 - Propaganda, NPC Programming, and Independent Thinking
23:54 - The Role of Friendship in Finding a Spouse
28:25 - The Story of Job: Love, Virtue, and Suffering
33:45 - Entrepreneurship and Life Planning for Success
35:06 - The Balance Between a Stern Voice and Intimidation
36:02 - Embracing Reality and the Pursuit of Truth
36:47 - Enjoyable Aspects of Show Creation
38:56 - Call to Action: Support and Meetup Announcement
The conversation delved into various topics ranging from determining compatibility in relationships based on the first interaction to the importance of truly listening in conversations. It emphasized the attractiveness of genuine curiosity and active listening in connecting with others rather than using conversations for status display. The speaker highlighted the significance of maintaining relationships with integrity, especially in the context of marriage and friendships evolving over time.
The discussion also explored the role of suffering in understanding virtues, drawing parallels to personal relationships, aging, and the concept of loving something for its essence rather than its effects. The speaker touched on the story of Job in the Bible as a reflection of challenges in love and virtue, highlighting the importance of honesty and genuine expression in relationships. The conversation further delved into entrepreneurship, parenting strategies, authenticity in communication, and continuous pursuit of truth and knowledge.
The speaker expressed an interest in engaging in live debates, call-in shows, and private conversations to delve deeper into meaningful topics and interactions. The importance of feedback and audience engagement was highlighted, with a focus on creating content that resonates with listeners. The conversation concluded by inviting support for the podcast and upcoming events while expressing gratitude for the opportunity to engage with the audience on a wide range of thought-provoking subjects.
[0:00] Hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux. Hope you're doing well. Don't forget to check out fdrurl.com slash meetup.
[0:09] Fdrurl.com slash meetup to join us in December of 2024. So questions, found a pile of them. Think I haven't done them before? Let's find out, shall we? How quickly into your first interaction with a girl can you determine how compatible compatible, you will be with each other. Is it how she receives you, like you can make her smile and laugh and she receives you well? She has open body language and wants eye contact. Is it something that's judged in the first interaction or something that can be felt out over time? Thank you for your time. So I remember when my wife and I went out for our first time and I didn't ask her out. She didn't ask me out.
[0:50] What happened was we were on a volleyball team and everybody was supposed to celebrate a win people on the team for a variety of reasons had to back out so it's just my wife and i and my future wife and i and that conversation was electric like i you know that little folder the bill comes in i walked home with that i didn't even realize till much much later that i'd hung on to that um so it was absolutely electric and we just you know marriage is a a lifelong conversation. And the thing that is most attractive, I mean, outside of, you know, there's some physical stuff that you need, but the thing that is most attractive, and this is something that as a public conversationalist in many ways, I've really, really noticed.
[1:34] There are not a lot of people who truly, truly listen, who truly listen.
[1:43] Absorb, process, and respond with active thinking rather than pre-programmed responses. To receive language, to think about language, to process and respond honestly with your own thoughts, without attack. You're not just waiting your turn to talk. For most people, conversations Conversations are an opportunity for status display. So they want to one-up, they want to show you how cool they are, and I did this travel, and then I've got this cool job, and I'm a boss babe, or I'm an alpha male. They're just looking to use language rather than to connect and communicate and share mind and content.
[2:28] They're using it to pursue and achieve status. And it's really really interesting to see so somebody who actually listens to you and responds to you and rolls with the conversation in other words they don't take the opportunity to display status by showing offense right so you understand that showing offense is a high status activity because the master can be upset with the slave and the slave has to take it. But the slave cannot be upset with the master because the master will punish. So you understand the taking of offense and the inflicting of offense and anger and temper is a mark of high status. I mean, the real aristocrats are the easily offended.
[3:32] If your boss upsets you, you kind of have to take it. If you upset your boss, you can't really say anything, right? So the expression of offense and anger and disgust and contempt and so on. All of that is a status operation designed to make you feel lesser and the other person feel like more. It's the same thing too with abusive parents. And this is probably where it comes from, of course. Abusive parents can rage at you. You can't say anything to abusive parents because they hold the power, right? So somebody who's willing to listen to you and doesn't take the easy route of offense or doesn't try to impress you with status, which is another kind of aristocratic approach. Someone who just listens to you and speaks to you back and forth, like you're both human beings curious about each other, is about the most attractive thing and it's been going on for 22 years. And there are some things that get better with age and it makes up for some of the things that don't necessarily get better with age. but.
[4:43] That a conversation between equals in the exploration of thoughts, mind, morals, and reality, you can't get better than that. That's as good as it gets. So the compatibility is in the curious and listening conversation with each other where you refuse to take offense and you ask people, oh, why do you think that? Or what's been your approach to that? So if you say something that would be considered, I don't know, politically incorrect, rather than saying, well, that's just inappropriate, which is a status thing. It's an HR aristocratic thing. You just say, oh, what's your approach to that? Or when did you first think about that? And just the open, genuine human curiosity about the minds, thoughts, and perceptions of another is the most attractive thing in the known universe, in my opinion. All right. Let's see here.
[5:35] Why ducks? I won't be able to sleep or consider any universal abstractions until I know. Here's my theory. Premise one. One, Stef is bald. Premise two, ducks lay eggs. Premise three, bald heads look like eggs, especially bald Caucasian heads, which might be spotted in old age. Premise four, women have a maternal drive to protect and bond with fragile young creatures. Conclusion, Stef could have chosen puppies or kittens as pets for his daughter, but those were lacking philosophically. Why, you ask? It's a fine question, I would say. Look at me being curious about somebody's arguments. Stef chose ducks so that his daughter would subconsciously transfer her maternal instincts that she develops for the eggs towards Stef, whose head, when freshly shaved, is reminiscent of a duck's egg. While proposing that love is our involuntary response to virtue, Stef's secret mission is for love to be an involuntary response to egg-like heads, thereby allowing him to have more persuasive power with female audiences who control sexual access. His daughter is the first test case for this before he scales into the wider population.
[6:38] Right. Well, and of course, if we talk about using my bald head as an analogy for ducks and love, and all of that, we also have to recognize that being bald is a massive provocation to communists, because communists say you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and they like to break bald heads, and certainly they've been focused on that with me. So, a fine flight of whimsy. How do you select employees? I'm interested in how you ensure they are moral to avoid hiring fat people to write recipes for a diet book, so to speak. What level of immoral, unethical, unprofessional behavior would lead to you firing them?
[7:18] I mean, obviously, morals have a lot to do with business, but a business has a metric of efficiency that is not necessarily the case in morals. Can we say morals are efficient in life? I mean, in terms of your relationship, they're efficient. In terms of your way in the world, they can be massively inefficient, as many moralists over the course of human history have found to their sometimes death, sometimes imprisonment, sometimes banishment or ostracism. Sometimes de-platforming. So it is a tough thing. So in terms of, I didn't look for political compatibility. I did look for people who believed in ethics and virtue. And so I was, even back then, partial to Christians because they're going to be moral and honest in general, more so than a lot of agnostics or atheists and i looked for efficiency i you know anybody who's worked with me will tell you i am the opposite of a micromanager what i like to do is to facilitate people's productivity and creativity in the framework of whatever business i'm involved in so if people uh.
[8:34] Just like i think of an eraser on a desk right i mean you move it it's hard to move and then when you stop moving it, it stops. So I don't like people that you have to puppet master. I just don't like to work with them because I find it kind of depressing. So people who have their own initiative, right or wrong, and who come up with ideas and so on is very important to me. People who think of the customer before me is super important to me, right? So.
[9:02] A boss who wants to be pleased is a narcissist. A boss who teams up with you to please customers is a businessman or a businesswoman. So I looked for people who understood business, who understood that the value they had to provide was to the customer, not to me, who understood that although I may sign their paychecks, I don't pay them. They're paid by the customers who knew how to have fun, who enjoyed and loved the challenge of business solving, of problem solving in business, right? Because that's just a lot of fun. particularly in the software realm because you're constantly thrown curveballs by salespeople who promise the moon and yeah i mean i remember one time there was a software, our software product was sold and we i had developed a web interface that that was built from a database of how the windows program looked all of the boxes and forms and labels and drop downs and it would store in a giant database every aspect of the windows program and then it would generate the web interface, navigation, record moving, saving, the dropdowns, everything, the data validation rules, all of that would be taken from the Windows program, put into a giant database, and then the web interface would read that database, sorry, yeah, the web program would read that database and create the interface on the fly. It was really just an amazing piece of tech. And I thought of using that as a product in and of itself over time.
[10:29] But we had a salesperson who promised that this would integrate a Java that because they had a bunch of Java data rules or data rules written in Java and so we had to figure out how the web interface would interact with the Java code and.
[10:48] Comply with or reject the data that met or broke those rules so that was just a big problem and an exciting problem i didn't like the fact that it was promised to the client without and going through me but nonetheless it was like we whiteboarded we racked our brains and it is a kind of combat right life is a combat against entropy because you will constantly feel lazy, you will constantly want to not exercise, you will constantly want to shift your work to other people, because we do have an energy conservation program running in our brains, that's why we have remote controls rather than getting up to change the TV. So life is a constant battle against entropy.
[11:34] And recognizing that there's this tension that you wish to decay, that you wish to be inert, that you wish to conserve energy, that you have to battle against that. And to me, it's not a big, bad battle. It's a fun battle. It's like playing tennis with someone who's really good. It's a fun battle against decay, laziness, lassitude, shirking responsibility, you know, the petty self, right? When something bad happens, our instinct is to blame circumstances or other people. When people in power do us wrong, our tendency is to excuse them even as they attack us. And so our tendency is manipulation and pettiness and resentment. Now, that's not all we are, and it's not even half of who we are, but it definitely is an undertow in just about everyone. I mean, when people are raised peacefully, we'll find out how much of human nature that is. But to blame others, to decay, to be lazy, to shift responsibility, to make excuses based on circumstances, to gossip, to be... That's just decay. That's just decay.
[12:43] And to battle against that decay with your will and your strength and the power of your mind and concentration and muscles and body is, to me, one of the great essences of life. Everything's going to drag you down. There's an undertow that draws you towards a kind of walking death. Right? Half in love with easeful death, living lives of quiet desperation. When confronted, the urge is to lie. When attacked, the urge is either to counterattack or shut down, not listen and respond actively. So the NPC urge is very strong in people to conform and call it good, to repeat propaganda and call it thought, to attack people and call yourself virtuous. All of that is the NPC programming because that's how a lot of human beings survived. So you had to just repeat the propaganda and obey the masters because most people throughout human history were not Genghis Khan, but foot soldiers who would get murdered for not complying.
[13:54] Most people were slaves. Most people were serfs. Most people were owned and controlled. And to think for yourself and to oppose the general prejudices of the propaganda of the tribe was a suicide. So we have the go-along, leaf-on-a-stream, entropy, decay, shut down your higher brain, shut down your thinking, shut down your questioning, because it's too painful when you can't act on any of your thoughts. It's very painful to have them.
[14:23] It's like a man in prison dreaming of his perfect lover. It just hurts even more. So I like people who rage against the dying of the lights It's an old poem, right? Rage, rage against the dying of the light. The light goes out every day in us, right? The light is guttered and blown and the urge to dissociate, to decay, to shut down with video games, with movies, with television, with social media, with distractions, with dating sometimes and so on. The urge to decay, the undertow of decay, lassitude, inertia.
[15:00] That is very strong, and I like the people who fight that and accept it as a natural part of human nature and as a challenge to be overcome that gives you energy, right?
[15:13] All right, so why would I fire people? I fire people when I don't enjoy working with them or they've done something very inappropriate, right? So I give people the room to create their own thoughts and ideas and give them coaching on how to best serve the customers if they just they just don't understand how best to serve the customers then like if they're off doing their own projects what's elon musk said the worst engineering is optimizing something that shouldn't exist in the first place so if people um work on stuff that doesn't benefit the customers just because then it's selfish right then they're taking money from the customers without serving the customers which is a form of subtle theft right it's a form of subtle theft it would be like if i just did everything that I wanted to do, regardless of what was beneficial and most important to you, the listeners, then that would be a form of theft, right? I'd be taking donations just to serve my own interests. And the donations are a reminder, which is a very good reminder, to help serve you. So if people do inappropriate stuff, of course, that's no good. The workplace is a place for efficiency, not inappropriate stuff. And I think we all know what that means. But in general, if they just focus on what they want to do rather than what's best for the business and the customer.
[16:33] Then I don't enjoy working with them because it's just constantly hey there's customers out there hey you've got to provide value because I'm paying them from the customers so that they don't serve the customers.
[16:43] Again that's just a kind of theft that is like saying hey man send me the 500 bucks I'll send you the iPad and then you keep the 500 bucks and you don't send the iPad that would be a form of theft and fraud. And if you say to the customers, pay me and I'll serve you, pay me, and the customers pay you so you'll serve their needs.
[17:01] And if you don't serve their needs, you've just kind of half stolen the money from the customers. So that's a kind of narcissism. I can't abide. All right. So let's see. Then the person should be an entrepreneur, right? Can you give some examples or strategies to contradict people in public to expose their true nature and character? Well, you reason with people and you watch them explode, right? I need reason with people. I mean, you can just go to my Twitter feed, which is still active or has been restored. You can go to my Twitter feed for all of that. Just tell the truth. Just tell the truth. All right.
[17:36] Moral frameworks are intrinsically social because they rely on social acceptance and enforcement. When a new moral framework is conceived, it has to overthrow an existing moral framework, and if the adherents of the old framework aren't happy to be labeled as evil or lacking morally, they will fight the new framework tooth and nail. Does this mean that introducing a new moral framework requires a compromise on some issues in order for it to even have the chance of being widely adopted? This is like a presidential candidate compromising on some of his stances on particular issues in order to be more acceptable to the public. Or, as you've once said, are there any public philosophers who aren't fighting one evil while appeasing another one? Right. Even with the abolition of slavery, the racial discrimination continued through state power. I understand that philosophy is more for the future than the present. I'm just curious how a philosophical movement survives the test of time and it relies on people in order for it to get to the future. We only see the successful religions. For example, we don't see all the religions that fail to gain traction. as part of me wonders if there is more to morality than providing a rational proof, especially since the means of transmission is social. I understand you haven't stopped that rational proof either and have applied it to many facets, such as parenting, relationship, psychology, and history. I also struggle to consider what could be compromised on here without losing something essential about NAP and the UPB, which is the universality. But at the same time, I have doubts about the future success of these ideas.
[18:58] Right. I completely understand where you're coming from. That is not my business. I totally understand where you're coming from. That is not my business. You're right. Of course, a moral philosophy, which is not accepted by the general population, does not get manifested in general society, for sure. But but it does get manifested in the home. So the purpose of UPB, just so you know the general strategy and you understand what I'm doing here. So the purpose of UPB, look at that, the light, it shines in my face. The purpose of UPB is to convince parents to stop abusing their children so that their children can grow up to accept UPB as a framework. Right?
[19:44] So the people who can accept UPB are yet to come, in a whole, in general. So the purpose of UPB is to teach parents to reason with their children according to universal morals, so that the children grow up accepting universal morals, right? If you come up with a new language, Esperanto failed to take root. Of course, it was a sort of socialist kind of language. So if you invent a new language, who do you need to teach it to? Well, the average person isn't going to learn a new language. But if you can teach the parents to teach their children that new language, that's the best chance you have for the new language taking root. So if UPB saves the childhoods of children, they will grow up with an appreciation of and an understanding of a respect for and a love of UPB.
[20:36] And since it benefited them and made their childhoods great they can't say there's something fundamentally wrong with it without saying there's something fundamentally wrong with being reasoned as a child rather than hit, yelled at, screamed, insulted or neglected, right? So you train parents in order to enact UPB in their households with their children, and then those children grow up to accept UPB. So that's my business of getting people to accept UPB as adults, that's not my business. And certainly it was my business. I'm not saying this is not a sort of hard-won bit of wisdom, because I initially thought that since everybody says we want ethics, we love ethics, and since the atheist says we want ethics, we love ethics, but we just can't get them from God, and then I gave them philosophical ethics that could not be disproven, and they ignored or ran away from it, it was like, okay, so that reasoning with people, even when they claim they want something. We want a rational proof of secular ethics. Okay, here's your rational proof of secular ethics. Completely ignore it or you're a bad guy.
[21:43] So, then you have to switch tack, right? You have to switch tack and say, here's how to apply UPB in your personal lives, right? If you can't get a fat population as a whole to accept a diet, then you can't get individuals to accept a diet, and those individuals will become slender and healthy, and then other people will say, gee, you seem to be slender and healthy, what's your secret, right? And, of course, you raise kids that way, it's a different matter, so. All right. A woman says, am I a bad person if I've lost interest in maintaining a relationship with my best friend after she told me she has feelings for me? I mean, it's a sexual feelings, of course. It always means sexual feelings. No, not at all. Not at all. Not at all. See, friendship is how you meet your spouse. That's what friendship is for. Friendship is for how you meet your spouse. So in this case, your husband, right? Friendship is how you meet your husband. You have friends so that you can be in a social circle so that you can meet your husband. After you meet your husband, I mean, I'll tell you this, and I'm sorry to be so blunt. I have great affection for my friends, but compared to my time with my wife, their part of my life is fairly negligible, right? So, of course, I spend every day with my wife, all day with my wife, and so that is, you know, 24 hours, right? I mean, minus eight hours for sleeping. So I spend 16 hours a day with my wife.
[23:13] Minus the time I work and all of that, but I spend, let's just say, I don't know, whatever it is, right? I spend eight hours a day with my wife. Now, I see my friends much less than that. And it's because they have families and they're spending time with their wife and children. So your spouse is your social life. The friends are like dessert, right? You can't live on dessert. And dessert is nice to have, but only once in a while and so on, right? And I'm sorry. And I say this, if you're a friend of mine and you're listening, I love you to death. I think it's great. But we just have to be honest about how much time do we spend on the phone? How much time do we spend going out? Just us. It's rare.
[23:55] It's rare, and there's nothing wrong with that, and when we do get together, it tends to be family gatherings where the kids are together, and all of that's wonderful, and I treasure my friendships, but friends are the bus you take to get to the altar. That's it. And afterwards, you have friendships, and they're fine, and they're great, but they're not particularly important, or foundational to your life relative to your relationship with your immediate family, which is 24-7, right? 24-7.
[24:24] So, if a friend is showing romantic interest in you, let's just say in this case, It's a woman, right? So if you're a woman and you're straight, and your female friend shows sexual interest in you, then it can't be a friendship anymore. And it's going to be a mess. And anything that gets in the way of you getting a great husband is utterly expendable because that's the purpose of it, right? As I said, the purpose of the worker is to please the customer, to generate revenue from the customer. And the purpose of friendship is to get you in a circle where you can meet your husband your future husband to have your future husband know you have social skills can maintain relationships they're dry runs they're rehearsals right so if you um you meet a guy let's say this friend was not gay or didn't express sexual interest in you you meet a guy and he's going to say oh yeah let's spend time with your friends and if your friends are great and you've had those relationships for a long time. It shows you can maintain relationships, that you provide value, and it's a good thing. So you're showing off your skills in relationships to your future husband, which makes him more comfortable that you know how to maintain relationships, you know how to navigate and negotiate, you have quality people in your life. So all of that is just, it's a social proof of relationship competence, which is attractive to your husband.
[25:51] And then you get your husband and your friendships fall away. Like, come on, I mean, let's be honest, right? Your friendships largely fall away when you get married, and in particular, when you have children, especially if your friends don't have children. If your friends have children, you're sharing that journey, but if your friends don't have children, I mean, I'll just tell you my experience, right? It doesn't mean it's true, but I can certainly have thought about it a lot, and I can understand the reasons why. When I got married, my friendships declined, and when I became a father, those friendships ended. Now I got new friendships and they're great friendships and I love my friends and I'm not trying to say anything negative about friendship as a whole. I'm just looking at, I'm an empiricist, right? So I look at the factual proportion of the time I spend with my family and the time I spend with my friends and it is not even close. It's not even close. So that's just a reality. Your friends are there to help you meet your spouse and your friends are there as a compliment to your marriage but.
[26:50] Your friends are busy with their wives and children and husbands and children and you're busy with your wife or husband and children and so if a friend of yours like so this female friend, she expresses sexual interest in you well that's a mess right because you're not gay right so you want a husband now if you have a friend who is romantically interested in you can that friend be objective about a new guy so let's say you keep this friendship but this woman who's sexually interested in you. And then you meet a great guy and you talk to her about, you've met this great guy and he could be the one, but this woman wants to sleep with you. So what's she going to do? She's going to sabotage it almost certainly. This is why you can't have friends around to express sexual interest in you because they can't be objective about the central purpose of your life, which is to find a partner and a mate. So she's going to sabotage, she's going to undermine, she's going to withdraw, she's going to punish you, she's going to be hurt, and she's going to to spoil your initial attraction to the guy who could be the love of your life. So, nope, I completely understand that. What's the superior peanut butter? UPB, universal peanut butter. Crunchy or smooth, what's your favorite cereal in which you hate the most? I tried mini wheat yesterday for the first time. It tasted like hay. And it was the frosted one, too. Going to try the Wednesday Adds cereal tonight. Well, I don't eat peanut butter because apparently it's bad for men's innards. I do almond butter, which is fine. Favorite cereal? I rarely eat cereal. I don't mind a little bit of, I don't know, what do we keep around for Izzy when she was a little special, Kay?
[28:19] Cornflakes is okay with some raisins and a little granola, but I don't eat cereal that much.
[28:25] What are your thoughts on the biblical story of Job? Many atheists see God being a jerk. Well, so the story of Job is really the story of marriage, right? So the story of job very briefly is job loves and worships god and job is very wealthy he's got a great family lots of kids and a big bunch of sheep and land and all of that and the devil goes to god and says, oh yeah but job only loves you because he's wealthy and then god takes away his money and job only loves you because he's got all this land and these these crops and this uh sheep and then diseases go and destroy all of that and then you say well okay job only loves you because um he uh he's got such a great wife, and then his wife gets sick or dies or something, and the same thing with his kids, and then, oh, Job only loves you because he's got health, and then God strikes him down with sickness and so on. And it's like, yeah. So, I mean, there's a story of marriage, though, right? I mean, we understand that this is a neurotic, controlling, abusive guy, right? If this was a human story, this would be a neurotic, controlling, abusive guy.
[29:28] Uh who would put his partner through endless love tests right which would make her that partner not love her right right so um so oh you only love me because of my money and then he withholds his money and oh you only love me because i'm good looking and then he stops taking care of himself oh you only love me because blah blah i'm nice to you and then he stops being nice to her and so you're stripping away all the virtues that would make someone love you and then claiming to be a victim when they stop loving you so i get that that would be a jerky thing to do but why is the a story so popular? Stories are popular because they usually contain some elemental truth about life as a whole, right? So the woman, right? You have to love virtue, though virtue makes you suffer, right? That's the story, right? I mean, you have to love virtue, I think. I mean, I love virtue, even though virtue makes me suffer, right? So look at the story of Job. Look at all the things that I've lost over my pursuit of virtue. I've gained and lost, right? So I'm not playing I'm a victim here, but you know, my life's work was erased. I lost 95% of my audience. Income went down massively. You suffer, right?
[30:31] Threats and all of that, right? So virtue makes you suffer. So if suffering has you stop loving virtue, then you're not particularly virtuous. In other words, if you love virtue because virtue gets you a lot of money and fame and whatever, then do you love the money and the fame or do you love the virtue? Are you willing to sacrifice the the money and the fame in order to have the virtue and so there's that story about virtue but then there's this life you know i mean i think i think my wife and i look great for our age but we don't look as great as when we met i mean it's been 22 years of course we don't right so uh you do you love a woman for her looks well her looks are going to fade right do you love a woman for her figure well her figure is going to get harmed by childbirth and then she's just going to age and And there's stuff you can do, but only so much. And eventually, time wins, right? So, do you love your woman for her lustrous hair? Well, it's going to turn gray. Do you love your woman for her beautiful teeth? Well, you know, teeth age and so on. And again, there's stuff you can do, but time wins eventually, right? So, this entropy and this decay happens. So, what do you love about your partner? What do you love about your wife and your husband?
[31:43] And eventually, one of you is going to die before the other. Most likely it's going to be the male statistically and the woman is going to have years without the love of her life you gotta love anyway, right? You gotta love anyway it's just a rational calculation, I hate to say it, right? So my wife and I, we live into our 80s we'll have a half century of wonderful love and most likely she's going to have to live some years without me.
[32:07] So you get a half century of love and a couple of years of pain that's better than a half century of no love right? So your partner is going to age. Your partner is going to get withered, right? The gums are going to recede. The hair is going to turn gray. You're going to get wrinkles and you're going to sag all over the place.
[32:28] And that's just life. So do you love your partner after they're no longer young, they're no longer fertile, they're no longer beautiful in that physical way? Do you love the spirit? Do you love the thing itself or the positive effects it has on your life? And while it's a bit of a lunatic story with regards to a person, we can understand that you do have to love something for the thing itself, regardless of its effects on you. And that's just deferral of gratification. I exercise size when I don't want to because it has positive effects on me. You know, I use moisturizer twice a day. I use, you know, I moisturize my body because I have kind of dry skin and I obviously want to stay attractive as I can. So, I mean, you just do things that don't feel like doing because you have to love the thing itself, right? And loving the thing itself, even when it has negative effects on you is a test of integrity right it's easy to love the thing it's easy to love virtue when you're flying high and everything's going well and you're getting lots of positive attention and everyone's saluting you in respect it's easy to love virtue then do you love virtue when you're cast out despised rejected and humiliated and attacked and deplatformed do you leverage still then so there is an essential truth in the story of job all right.
[33:46] Uh Stef in one podcast you said that entrepreneurship is a young person's game. What would a life look like for a male entrepreneur? Life path look like? Well, I mean, if you're young and ambitious, you should do it before you have kids. And you should build your business to the point where you can spend time with your children. So you pour yourself into it when you're young, and you can stay up all night and you can travel without consequences. You can change time zones. You don't have other requirements in your life. Let's say you invest your time and resources heavily into building a business until you're 35. five. Then you want to build a family. Choose a wife who's ten years younger at the peak of fertility. Sure. Absolutely.
[34:26] Uh, Twitter is ablaze because people are getting people fired who are proving for and calling for the murder of Trump. Uh, yes. Yes, it is. I mean, if you say, well, you should support free speech because otherwise the blowback could happen to you and then you never apply the blowback, it's an empty threat, bad parent thing. If your toddler can flip from crying to happy on a dime, does that mean it was necessarily manipulation? Or could that perhaps be voicing legitimate concerns and genuine emotion? No, genuine emotion doesn't turn on a dime. That's manipulation. Now, I mean, you don't want to blame a toddler for being manipulative, right? They're just using natural strategies, instinctive strategies to get what they want. But you wouldn't want to support that. What role does a stern voice play in parenting? When does it cross the line to intimidation?
[35:07] Well, we can be stern with people we love. I mean, I have a great affection for myself, and sometimes I'm stern with myself.
[35:17] So sometimes you just, you know, even when life is at its darkest and blackest, sometimes you just have to say, get out of bed and start working. Get out of bed and start working.
[35:27] I mean, I remember in my marriage, we suffered a terrible loss back in the day, and we just, okay, we wanted to paint the house. let's get up, let's go to the hardware store, let's pick the paint and let's start painting. You've just got to be stern with yourself based on affection and based on happiness, right? Because that entropy can happen. The entropy I talked about earlier exacerbates with tragedy. So a stern voice, you just want to be honest. I mean, you can be stern with people you absolutely love. So just be honest. You don't have a stern voice to get what you want. That's being disingenuous. That's being manipulative. You're just honest. If you feel stern, be honest about it.
[36:03] And so just honest expression is the key. You've helped me understand so many giant topics of importance, economics, morality, history, logic, and so on. It's been absolutely transformational for me as I'm seeing embracing reality is paramount. It sounds silly, but it's almost as if you figured it all out. What are some other yet unknown areas of importance you are researching at the moment, if any? Do you ever feel like you've already come to the truth about everything? No, I love doing these new shows because I get great new things. You guys stimulate great thought in my mind. And, you know, like this morning, the whole bit about entropy, I was kind of realizing that as a sort of core principle I've lived with, though not articulated. So I learned about myself. I learned about the truth. I learned important things. I'm obviously very good at communicating those to others. So no, you can't come to the truth about everything. And I hope to keep doing this for another 40 years.
[36:48] What type of shows do you enjoy creating the most?
[36:52] Well, I don't particularly enjoy being in the studio that much anymore. I don't enjoy doing the PowerPoints. As you can see, of course, I haven't done the truth about PowerPoints. I don't particularly enjoy doing that stuff. I enjoy it when trolls come on and we get to debate. I enjoy that live wire stuff of solving conflicts and problems in real time. I enjoy call-in shows when people go real deep and we get those great insights and there's great progress. I'm really enjoying the private call-in shows, which you can request, of course, at freedomain.com slash call. I'm really enjoying the private call-in shows because I can certainly be a little bit more frank and direct than I would be in general, generally consumable conversation because it's just sort of one-on-one or one-on-two.
[37:34] So, I enjoy extemporaneous stuff. The live streams can be a lot of fun. They do get tiring. After about two hours, I can feel my juice is done, because I do pour a lot of energy into all of those. So, I certainly enjoyed writing the novels, though I remain perpetually, occasionally disappointed at the lack of feedback on the novels, but I just have to take it for what it is. And um what else i did not particularly enjoy writing the peaceful parenting book i enjoyed some of it uh but uh it was brutal emotionally so um i'm glad that's done let's put it that way and um maybe talking about writing a new novel because i really enjoy that creative aspect of things i i like it i like the role plays in the call-in shows because this is a great challenge lunch, both for my listener and for myself. And it's amazing to me. It's still amazing to me many years later, many years on, how fluid people are with all that stuff. So those are the shows, but basically the shows I enjoy doing the most are the ones that you guys like the most, tend to be the call-in shows. And so I enjoy those because you enjoy them, and I'm here to serve philosophy and you. And philosophy first, then you. All right, freedomain.com slash donate. I'd love to get your of support. I really would appreciate it. Don't forget all the great goodies available for you as subscribers in particular. And don't forget the meetup, December 6th, 7th, 8th in Florida.
[38:57] We are looking for people to commit to make sure that it can happen. And you can do that at fdrurl.com slash meetup. Take care. Lots of love. Bye.
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