0:00 - Introduction to the Podcast
6:42 - The Nature of Judgment
9:57 - The Immune System of Society
17:46 - Thoughts on Ideology and Appearance
22:11 - Processing Feelings in Society
24:50 - Protecting Children in Public Schools
In this episode, I delve into the profound questions submitted by our listeners. We tackle the complexities of freedom, virtue, and the challenges of navigating personal growth in an increasingly complicated world. Inspired by a recent exploration of Larken Rose's thoughts on liberty and the evolving acceptance of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, I emphasize the importance of examining the core issues affecting personal autonomy and moral understanding. The dialogue pivots around the often overlooked consequences of childhood experiences on our adult lives and the empirical need to measure our progress in promoting virtue and combating evil.
I further illustrate that as an entrepreneur, I am driven by tangible results—an aspect I believe is critical for anyone advocating for meaningful societal change. For instance, I propose that successful measurement of our efforts is essential in the fight against injustices, such as foreign aid inefficiencies or the impact of central banking. The aim is not merely to spread awareness but to foster genuine change in practices that infringe upon the non-aggression principle. This perspective gives way to deeper discussions on moral accountability, as I invite listeners to reflect on their own contributions towards promoting virtue and recognizing the root causes of evil in their lives.
Our conversation also touches upon the challenges of managing personal judgment and identifying the societal influences that shape our perceptions. Engagements with callers reveal a spectrum of emotions as they grapple with the complexities of morality in daily interactions. I advocate for a deeper understanding of others' backgrounds and experiences to cultivate empathy, especially towards those who seem to defend harmful narratives or systemic evils. It’s about finding common ground while remaining steadfast in our commitment to virtue and justice.
Moreover, the increasingly ubiquitous nature of usury in society prompts us to dissect the moral implications of financial systems that prioritize present gains over future sustainability. I confront the emotional responses society has towards loss—be it the death of a pet or personal failure—and urge listeners to confront these feelings authentically. The discussion around perceived judgment highlights how society weaponizes terms, yet I argue for the necessity of discerning healthy judgment from harmful societal expectations, ultimately allowing us to reclaim our capacity for assessment.
Drawing on various real-life experiences, I suggest that a balance between hard work and relaxation is crucial to avoid burnout in our ever-demanding lives. We explore the fine line between personal choice and societal pressure that shapes our understanding of well-being, especially in relation to the promotion of virtue. As callers share their own hurdles, we collectively seek ways to sustain enthusiasm in our endeavors without succumbing to the pitfalls of coercion or aggression.
Listeners are encouraged to reflect on the evolving societal dynamics, including the complexities within urban environments and their impact on mental health. I outline how disconnection from essential life processes can lead to delusion and irrationality, urging a return to tangible realities that ground our existence. Lastly, our exploration of Bitcoin's potential reinforces the significance of recognizing the historical cycles of value and currency in shaping our future. I conclude with a call to action for parents navigating the challenges of contemporary education systems: take an active role in safeguarding children's development through informed choices and increased awareness of prevailing ideologies.
This episode is a rich tapestry of philosophical inquiry, practical advice, and heartfelt discourse, all aimed at fostering a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well. Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain. Great questions from listeners. Facebook, freedomain.locals.com. Subscribe, star.com, slash freedomain. Hope you'll check out the show and support the show. Larken Rose opinion I found his YouTube and it got me thinking why that guy's views aren't higher, around 100k views on best videos. It also seems that the ideas of liberty are spreading and the world actually starts to accept bitcoin do we have a change maybe the part that is so missing is the curing of the childhood but ideas are his ideas are correct in essence yeah i mean my understanding is lock and rose as he tried to tell you do their no paying of taxes thing had a whole thing presentation prepared and was not even allowed to make his case and it was jailed and all kinds of terrible stuff uh you know it's not great when you have a kid in my humble opinion companion uh smart guy creative guy and and passionate guy and um you know like railing against the powers that be doesn't it doesn't mean much if nobody notices that you exist and nothing really changes right then it's just shouting into the wind in the middle of nowhere i'm not saying that about him in particular just in general there's sort of an insight that happens right? There's an insight that happens when you pursue self-knowledge.
[1:26] And the insight is this.
[1:33] Who's done me the most evil, right? Who's done me the most evil? And in my experience, it was people in my personal life when I was a child. They sort of done me the most evil. And that's the most evil that you can do the most about. You know, you can go against those who do evil, against children and you're actually making progress you're making strides and i don't know uh mr rose's opinion of child abuse and evildoers uh regarding children i don't know but uh.
[2:05] You actually want to, because I come out of a very empirical tradition philosophically and also because I have been an entrepreneur for over 30 years, results are all that matter. Plans are fine. You can have the best marketing plan in the world, but the question is, are you actually making progress? There's just a spreadsheet reality to being an entrepreneur. You have to make the numbers. It doesn't matter what you project. It doesn't matter what you imagine. It doesn't matter what you think. You actually have to make the numbers. You actually have to sell goods. You actually have to move products. You actually have to make payroll. And with that empiricism comes a, okay, well, if I'm going to dedicate my life to promoting virtue and fighting evil, then I have to have something measurable at some point, don't I? I have to have something measurable. Well, I produced a bunch of articles about the evils of foreign aid and the central banking. It's like, okay, that's great. But the production of articles is like the production of business plans. It doesn't actually change the movement of one particular thing. Well, you know, I'm spreading awareness. I'm just okay well when I was in marketing that was all the fallback right so I was director of I've been chief technique I've been director of technology chief technical officer and director of marketing so director of marketing it's always a fallback position right you you spend uh you know half a million dollars on a marketing campaign and it doesn't move any product.
[3:26] So then what do you say no no no I'm raising awareness of the brand you know you simply move it from the column of something that's measurable to something that's not measurable i'm raising awareness i'm positioning the brand i'm you know whatever right but the if you are in a sense selling the promotion of virtue and the thwarting of evildoers then at some point shouldn't you be able to measure that shouldn't you be able i went through the whole metrics like uh i have through this show, reduced a billion to a billion and a half instances of violations of the non-aggression principle. At least a billion to a billion and a half violations of the non-aggression principle have been directly changed or prevented by the show. So I have something measurable, as opposed to, well, I've been talking about the evils of the military-industrial economy. Okay, what's changed? What have you actually done? What have you achieved?
[4:21] So I'm a measurable guy. You can't manage what you can't measure. So all the libertarians say, well, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. It's like, okay, what specifically have you done to promote virtue and thwart evil? Not like raising awareness or general this. Like, that's all just nonsense. I used to literally laugh at people who would try and tell me. They'd give me a specific goal. You know, give me X amount of dollars and I'll produce X, Y, and Z. And then I'd agree with them. And then when they'd come back and they'd say, well, I didn't achieve X, Y, and Z. In any tangible way, which is kind of what I promised. But what I did do was I raised awareness, and I positioned, and I promoted, and it's like, okay, how's any of that measurable? And, yeah, anyway. Why is usury still not outlawed? So usury, of course, is the lending of money for interest, which occurs because the present is better than the future because the present is guaranteed, the future is not. So we want money in the here and now rather than money later because we know that we're going to be here now, but we don't know if we're going to be here next year. And we're mortal, right? So if you want to start a business, you need someone to invest in your business and they're going to need a return.
[5:28] So usury is the lending of money for interest because the present is more valuable than the future. And it would not be outlawed because it's not a violation of the non-aggression principle to lend someone money for interest, right? All right. How have you been? I have lost track of you for a bit. You really had an impact on my trajectory. In Peaceful Parenting, Philosophy, if you end your video of, quote, forgiving your mom. Yeah, it's interesting. So the people who lost track of me, people who kind of vanished when I was deplatformed.
[6:01] Well, Bitcoin has gone up 400% or 500% since I was deplatformed. So I'm sorry that it cost you so much money to not follow me, but what can I do? What can I do? All right. Hi, Stef. You've done so many call-in shows, and in my opinion, and the greatest at shining a spotlight on a person's free will, often doing so with patience, kindness, empathy, and sympathy. As appropriate, do you have any advice or insights about how or if it is possible to achieve this when feeling disgusted or repulsed by what you're hearing or seeing? Some context. I've recently become more vocal about discussing my standards and morals with people following years of mostly self-censorship and observed disgust, and in the odd extreme case, feeling repulsed to the point I'm looking for physical conversational exits to end it.
[6:43] These are people usually sharing sad at times difficult and challenging stories slash things in their lives but they neither want to hold themselves nor the people they are complaining about accountable am i being too judgmental yeah judgmental is just one of these words that invented is invented by people who don't want to be judged.
[7:02] Uh and judgmental is often uh weaponized it's a weaponized term so people who say don't be judgmental are judging you for being judgmental like it's a self-detonating argument i judge that you shouldn't judge i judge it negative that you're judging so you shouldn't judge but that's a judgment judgmental itself is a self-detonating statement because it's judging you and generally it's people like everybody wants to have the weapon when the other person doesn't right everybody wants to have the weapon and the other person is disarmed, right? Governments want that, criminals want that, I should be the only one with the weapon, and it happens in terms of debate as well.
[7:38] So, you know, racism, bad, except for, right? And there's always this asterisk where you get to change whatever definitions that you want so that you get to wield the weapon and the other person doesn't. Judgmental is a term that is deployed by people who want the power of judging others but never to be judged in return, and so they use the term judgmental. In general, look, I have a tough time with some callers, I have a tough time with some callers, I get impatient, particularly, of course, when it's somebody who's an elder sibling talking about abusing a younger sibling. As a kid, that can be tough for me. In general, you just, you have to go earlier and earlier and earlier to get more and more sympathy, right? So you look at somebody who's really dysfunctional in the present, if you rewind enough, you'll see some of the factors that influence them, not determine it, but influence them to become that dysfunctional. So you go back earlier and earlier. Oh, well, tell me what happened before that and what happened before that. Keep going back earlier.
[8:36] And there are people, of course, who've become inverse of morality, right? They've been so attacked and broken and made bad moral choices themselves that all they do is defend evildoers and attack the virtuous, right? It's sort of an autoimmune disorder in a sense, psychologically speaking, or from a social debate standpoint. So what's happened is you want an immune system in society that opposes evil and promotes virtue in the same way that you want an immune system in your body that defends healthy cells and attacks bacteria and viruses and so on. But of course, an autoimmune disorder is when I'm no expert. This is just my obviously complete amateur, non-trained thought about it. But an autoimmune disorder is when your immune system attacks healthy cells rather than dangerous cells, right? It attacks healthy native cells rather than dangerous foreign intruders or incursors. Incursions? Incursions. So it's same thing can happen with people from a moral standpoint that all they do is defend evil and.
[9:48] Attack virtue, right? They have become so corrupted by evil and by bad choices that they have become the inverse of virtue, and those people are extremely dangerous.
[9:58] You know, like every time somebody gets executed, there's six million people saying, well, he was vindicated, he's wrongfully executed, you know, this is appalling, this is a travesty, every criminal is innocent, and everybody who promotes virtue is committing hate speech, right? This is just, it's an inverse and it's when people get so toxicified often as a result of abuse slash propaganda slash bad choices people become so toxicified that they attack that which keeps them safe and defend that which puts them in danger alright, hey Stef do you think you'll ever release something similar to the Ayn Rand lexicon your definitions are great and I'd love to have them in some kind of master document that's interesting I think that would be a task for AI, myself so we'll look into that thank you Hi, Stef. Thanks for taking the time. My question is, how do you find a good balance to avoid burnout from work and exercise?
[10:51] Thanks. I understand it's sort of a general question and apologies if you answered this before, which is possible. For context, I'm trying to work off physical and financial consequences of the last few years of careless behaviors and finding it amazing, but taxing, seeing good results, but feeling a bit overwhelmed at times and curious about this.
[11:07] And thanks again. Well, look, there are times when you just have to work really, really, really hard. I mean, there are just times when you're just going to have to buckle down and work really hard. After that, it should be followed by a certain period of relaxation. Otherwise, you become a workaholic, and that subtracts from the amount of work that you can do productively over the course of your life. You know, like if you spend eight hours a day doing maximum weights, all you'll do is injure yourself, right? And then you can't exercise, and you get flabbier. So you need to have a balance. The way that I do it is I just don't force myself. Myself i don't make myself do stuff that's that's kind of important don't like don't make like this morning uh i had a couple of things to do in the morning and i wanted to come out and get some sun and uh talk about these great questions but uh i don't make myself do stuff and of course as you get older like there've been a couple of times uh over the course of the show where i don't really feel like doing a live stream right i'm just kind of i'm kind of tired i'm a little low energy or whatever. But I always say to myself, look, once you get into the live stream, the demon cocaine gods of philosophy will take over and you'll be fine. Like you'll just get the energy, the audience will give you the energy. So you just have to recognize that you'll probably get into it fine.
[12:24] But, yeah, you don't have to work out. You don't have to relax. You don't have to work hard. You don't have to diet. It's all a choice, choices and consequences and so on. So, yeah, don't make yourself do stuff. But, yeah, I mean, I remember there have been times in my life where I've had to work really hard because I've made commitments. Or when I started my business, I was doing 60, 70, 80 hours a week for a while. But I was just so excited to have my own business that it was well worth it for me. So there are times when I've had to work hard to pay off debt and so on. When I was in my teens, sort of mid-teens onwards, I worked two, sometimes three jobs to pay bills, took in roommates because it was just great to have my mom out of the house, right? So it's just choices and consequences. It's just choices and consequences. Remind yourself that you are free to do and to not to do. It's just choices and consequences in that way. If you just bully yourself, you are depleting your future enthusiasm, right? Like someone can force you to do anything, but they just deplete your future enthusiasm. You know, your boss can frighten you, I suppose, yelling at you, threatening you to fire, to make you work a weekend so that some project can get done. And all that's happened is then your boss, he'll get that weekend, but he's lost your generative enthusiasm. He's lost your excitement and happiness.
[13:42] It probably will cost you sleep or peace of mind and therefore you're not as good at concentrating. So coercion or aggression can achieve things, of course, in the short run. It's like a drug. It achieves things in the short run, like cocaine for happiness, at the expense of the long run. So it's the same thing with forcing yourself to do stuff. Holding a gun to your head metaphorically in order to make yourself do stuff, you'll do stuff, but it simply destroys your future enthusiasm. So if I don't feel like working out, I always say to myself, I don't have to work out. I don't have to work out. And they've been, you know, sometimes I'll go two days without working out because I just really don't want to, and I just have to trust that it will come back, and it usually does, right?
[14:24] I have been working, says someone, with some AI, not yours, since you posted that AI code-producing video, and wow, did they hate you and refuse to create apps that help people connect off of the main socials. To get responses, I have to change words, like children to dogs and parents to pet owners. Do you have any funny, sad, frustrating stories that you could share about working with AI?
[14:42] Well, I mean, I've not done much with AI as a whole because, I mean, I understand why you'd say it, and I don't have any complaints about the sort of colloquial way of talking, AI doesn't hate me. AI doesn't have any emotions. And people as a whole, they don't hate me. There's nobody out there in the world who hates me. Oh, yes, but Stef, there's all this negative stuff about you. Yeah, I get that. They hate the consequences of virtue on their conscience. This is really, really important to understand. People don't hate me. I'm a really nice guy. I enjoy the world. I want the best for the world. People don't hate me. They hate the effects of virtue on their conscience.
[15:19] Right? Like if somebody hasn't seen a friend for a while and they were both kind of tubby and lazy and they see their friend and their friend is ripped. I look down at myself like I am, right? But their friend is ripped. He's quit smoking. He's quit drinking. He's got a great girlfriend. He's exercised. He's lost weight and so on. Then he's going to feel frustration, sadness and resentment and some hostility. So he doesn't hate that his friend has gotten healthy he hates the effect of that that getting healthy of his friend has on his own conscience and free will and responsibility so uh and with ai it's tough right it's very tough to find a way to box ai into a particular document set it always goes back to some larger cloud source all right somebody writes something uh why is china such a wonderful country gdp has grown exponentially 800 million out of poverty clean amazing advanced mass and peaceful multimillion population cities, all this in just a few decades while America is turning to crap.
[16:15] Well, it's an interesting question when you think about China as a whole. Say, well, but it's communism.
[16:23] Yes, of course, that is the general way of phrasing it. But I've seen a picture sort of struck with me. There's some road was being built and some guy didn't want to sell. So they just built the road in China around this guy's house. So no eminent domain, nothing like that. Seize your property in that kind of way. Right. I mean, who knows? Right. But it's a well in China, you can't criticize the leadership and you can't criticize communism. And it's like, yes. And in the West. You can't criticize X, Y or Z group. It's not particularly different in that way. So, yeah, it is a it is a wild thing to see what's what's going on in China. him. All right. Will you do Joe Rogan's podcast? I did do Joe Rogan's podcast three times. The first two were very positive, very friendly, very happy. And then I don't know if he'd got orders from someone or somewhere or whatever happened, but he sort of lured me down with the promises of a positive show and then totally ambushed me and brought up all of this nonsense. So I mean, it was fine and all of that, but I wouldn't go back on that man's show if you paid me, you know, without apologies, which of course won't be forthcoming. Did those nipple tassels I sent you arrive yet?
[17:47] Well, I had to have something on top of my birthday cake. Why do you think perfectly rational people are still considering voting for Kamala Harris? I just did that one yesterday. What color undies are you wearing presently? See, that's what they call a false assumption.
[18:01] How do I raise my son to overcome and win in our weird feminist world we live in? You have your... You know, there have always been crazy people. Ideology has just unmasked them, right? So there have always been crazy, dysfunctional people when there was more of a sort of uniformity and conformity of belief than they were covered up because they knew how to pretend to be virtuous. One of the great positives of the modern world is crazy people are advertising their craziness with wild hair colors, weird haircuts, nose rings, tattoos, and weird ideologies and pear-shaped anti-patriarchy body shapes and so on. So in the past, people were able to much more bury and mask their dysfunction. Function now it's like watching tigers roam around without any high grass right they're completely obvious and and clear so there's pluses everyone's looking for the minuses the fact that there is much less quote social conformity enforced has meant that the crazy people are allowed to fly their true colors right in your face and then you can make your choice based upon that. I mean, I just remember when I was younger and you see all these weirdos with strange appearances and so on, and I just never quite understood that. It's like, it's less work to just look normal.
[19:22] It's less work. You don't have to get tattoos or piercings or sit there with blue hair dye. Like, it's just easier to look normal. And why not just look normal? All right.
[19:34] Recently, a friend lost their dog and went on antidepressants to avoid feeling the pain. Why? Why would you be that upset about losing a dog? I love dogs, don't get me wrong. Love dogs, love pets, love animals. But the idea that you would become depressed because your dog died, well, that's because people project all of these fantasies onto dogs. Dogs are just biochemically wired to pair bond with you. That's it. They're not loyal. They're not defending you. they're not virtuous you know we don't deserve dogs they're too good for us and it's like they're not virtuous at all they're just four-legged beasts chemically wired to pair bond with local mammals and we've hacked into that to have them pair bond with us rather than their own kind right, dog loyalty is a hack that comes at the expense of the dogs you're exploiting a hack in the the biological system in order to have the dog bond with you. I mean, if you were to say to the average dog, hey, do you want to bond with this biped who will probably cut your balls off and even if they don't, you'll have absolutely no chance to reproduce and have a family of your own, or would you rather be running wild with a bunch of dogs hunting and mating and having a cool, exciting, natural life? Now, of course, dogs would not prefer to be castrated and or the end of their genetic line, because you won't allow them to have any pups.
[21:01] So it is a certain kind of exploitation. Now, again, human beings are more important than dogs, so the fact that we've exploited a biochemical hack in order to defend our sheep and selves from predators, I'm fine with that, but let's not pretend that the dog loved you. Like, for God's sakes, man, forget that your pets don't love you! They don't love you! They're just biochemically wired to respond to positive stimuli, and that's it. They don't assess your virtues. issues, they don't assess your moral courage, they don't assess your integrity, and so on. Well, but it'd have to be nice to them. And it's like, yeah, well, yeah, of course. And that's part of the hack. So I... I don't get it. I mean, I guess this is people who have invested way too much fantasy life into their pets, and that has come probably because they've been burned or have had harsh treatments by adults, right? But if you've been badly treated by adults, the answer is not to then engage in a Dungeons and Dragons-style typhling fantasy relationship with your biohacked dog. That's crazy. Deal with the pain of what people have done to you and then find better people to be with.
[22:11] All right. I notice more and more we are becoming a society that avoids processing our feelings. How do we get here? And I suppose more importantly, how do we get out of this mess? Thank you. Love your work and long-time subscriber.
[22:22] Well, of course, the powers that be don't want us to process our feelings for pretty obvious reasons, and people do that. Why do big cities always turn blue? Because big cities are akin to zoos, and animals in zoos turn weird. You've got monkeys trying to mate with their drinking bowls and so on. People kind of turn crazy. And so big cities, the other thing with big cities is that the way we stay sane is to process limitations. Limitations that sanity rationality is about and entirely wound into the concept and process of limitations like we have an economy as i've said before because human desires are infinite but resources are finite how do they get allocated there are no solutions there are only trade-offs right so the further you are disassociated from reality the more you fantasize about your virtues So...
[23:23] When you live in a city, how disconnected are you from that which keeps you alive? How disconnected are you from farming? How disconnected are you from electricity generation? How disconnected are you from the manual labor that keeps your world going? You are a deluded, semi-psychotic, pseudo-aristocrat who lives in a world of fantasy because everything that keeps you alive, all of the brutality and labor and sweat and blood and tears that keep you alive has all been abstracted and moved away and so you end up in a very deranged state because you just don't know about any of the things like this is that keep you alive there's this meme which says well this is like weird guy like with a man bun this is a hipster who's like yeah i genuinely believe that society is going to collapse says the meme in you know 10 or 20 years which is why I get a useless degree and live in a big city. It's very strange. Why did I used to dislike you? Probably because you were told to rather than coming to the source. What is a reasonable price target for Bitcoin? Will it be just gold 2.0 or the next one world currency?
[24:35] Well, this is no advice. Don't buy or sell anything based upon what I'm saying. This is just my own personal opinion. and I've been saying this for well over a decade, that I view 750k US as a reasonable price point for Bitcoin.
[24:50] How can parents protect their children from what is happening in the public schools? You don't even need to ask me that question, right? Obviously, if you can homeschool, homeschool. If you can get them to some school that more closely aligns with the values, do that. Failing that, if your country doesn't allow you to homeschool, move countries. And if even that that's impossible, then just keep them as alert and aware of the propaganda as possible. How much are you worth? Well, infinity, because wisdom has no price. Thanks, everyone. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Would massively, massively appreciate it. And I really do appreciate your thoughts, care, time, support, and attention over the great philosophical conversation we're having, the best in the world ever. Take care, everyone. Bye.
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