[0:00] It should be like undoing a bra, getting that button going on the camera, but Happy New Year, everyone.
It is, do you know, once in a lifetime, once in a lifetime.
The date today is 1-2-3, 1-2-3.
Everybody's felt that. You've felt that depth, power, and complexity of this magical, vaguely sinister date, 1-2-3, 1-2-3.
Anyway, so, Happy New Year. Are you New Year's people?
Start your own tech firm to buy, build, and install towers for the internet, bribe government to break monopoly. Yeah, I'll get right on that.
Because Lord knows, the world needs another businessman and not a moral philosopher focusing on the health and happiness of childhood. That's right, that's right.
So, I have topics, of course, as I am wont to do, but I'm also happy to hear, what you all have to say, of course.
And hit me with a why. Why? Are you somebody excited by New Year?
Do you care? You know, of course, when you're a kid, your birthday is like super fun, right?
Then as you get older, you're like, eh, you know, just another day, just another dollar.
And it's slightly less exciting to have your birthdays. And are you that way inclined?
[1:21] Do you find New Year's to be an exciting time? I remember disliking New Year's.
Well first of all it's tough to find something as exciting as your imagination on new years unless you're i don't know skydiving directly into the tip of the dubai firework parade or something but it's tough to find something as exciting as you see in movies and uh also um i remember oh gosh i had a girlfriend of this we had this battle a couple of new years because she's like i'm going going to spend it with my parents. And I'm like, what now?
Well, you know, they're, they, they like spending new years with me. And I'm like.
[1:59] Uh, so, you know, well, we can do something the next day. It's like, what, New Year's Day when everyone's hungover? Yeah, let's get right on that.
But are you a New Year's person? I like it. I like it as a whole.
I think it's a fun time for reassessment. It's a fun time for planning goals and all kinds of cool stuff.
Happy New Year. Happy New Year, Philip.
Thank you for your kind wishes. Of course, this is Happy New Year on the bright side.
It's not much time left for the year to get any worse than it has been.
Yes but there's always next year there's always 13 hours from now so you know have hope things things can always get worse inverting howard jones ho joe ho joe uh beginning of january gary says beginning of january is always a bit depressing no more holidays and the weather here in ohio is always cloudy due to that due to the great lakes just gotta get through january and february you know that sad thing seasonal affective disorder or seasonal affect disorder ah you know i can kind of get that um i ain't seen the sun in three damn days uh last week week and a bit in canada i was just watching viva fray who was like yeah back he's a florida guy he's a he's a lawyer from from montreal who moved to florida but i think he's back for christmas and And he's like, yep, haven't seen the sun in over a week.
[3:23] That's kind of true. That's kind of true. All right. Let me just make sure everyone's cooking and chipping away and chatting away here.
Hello from Russia. Hello. Nice to meet you. Hello back.
Oh, man, you ever do this? You ever do this?
It's depressingly common. moment um most of human productivity that the internet has provided and that there have been some wonderful provisions of beautiful productivity from the internet unfortunately almost all of it has been erased because the caps lock gets left the caps lock gets left on too often i think i'm right about that i mean statistically rationally philosophically empirically that is just a fact the number of times i've typed out a message to someone and i look up and it's like oh Oh, CAPS was on, and I don't want to scream at them all.
So you either boot up Word, copy and paste it, and shift F3 it to get it down to the lowercase, or you just type it all again.
And, of course, the number of times that you've got the lowercase beginning and then the uppercase because CAPS lock is on.
I like CAPS lock, but I'd like to put it in a headlock and slowly choke it out because it is just one of these things that just is completely backwards.
[4:38] Is that a coffee mug or a bucket? This is a coffee.
It says, ask me, and I'll ask the internet, because I'm on the internet.
So it is a coffee mug, but it's decaf.
[4:55] I went out for a brunch with my daughter, which was really nice.
And we talked about New Year's, what she thinks about it.
And we also talked about that phase in your mid-teens. I'm assuming she's going to hit it in her early 30s But the phase in your mid-teens Do you remember this phase?
Your parents are kind of like gods to you When you're younger They're just all-knowing, all-wise, all-perfect And everything, And then when you get into your mid-teens You're kind of like I guess they're human after all They have some weaknesses, some vanities Some foibles, some hiccups Some moodiness And all that kind of stuff So we were talking about that phase And I was obviously loftily instructing her In my typical patriarchal fashion that she must never, ever go through that phase. Well, maybe with her mom, but never with me. Never.
Or I threatened to make jokes to the waitress.
Ooh, that's, I think that's a punishment that should be, if not already is, banned by the Geneva Convention, which is dad jokes to an attractive waitress.
Oh, oh, not good, not good.
So just a reminder before I get into my topic, again, happy to answer your questions. questions.
Oh, let me just go back here and see if there are questions that I missed at the very beginning.
Oh, boy, weren't you all here earlier? Okay. Let's see here.
Yeah, the question about addiction. I think that's good. Right before New Year's, which makes sense. Makes sense to me. What else do we have?
[6:25] Thank you, Jay Park, for your tip. I appreciate that.
This is, of course, the last tipping day for 2023 for uh free domain uh i appreciate that welcome back sleepless cat oh i think i'm about to either start scatting or rapping because scatting is the white man's rapping 2024 is going to be a sturdy year je suis aqui good morning parson molyneux ah yes Yes, yes, yes, yes. All right.
Happy New Year. It's not a tech guy. I don't need a tech guy.
I just need tech to stop faffing up.
[7:04] I reminded that post, Demotivator's website, consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up. It's true.
Well, it's funny because I actually have been, I'm a chief technical officer of a software company.
I've been working with computers for 45 years and it's still hard.
[7:26] You hate automatic autocorrect? Oh, yeah. Caps lock is a demon.
Transition to using shift only. Yeah, yeah.
[7:34] I used to think I had seasonal affective disorder throughout my 20s, but it was APS, asshole, proximity syndrome. Yeah, very true. Very, very true.
I disable caps, locks, and switch it to control. Super nice.
Did you ever buy the bowls? Yes, we did buy the bowls. And then we bought more bowls because they weren't quite right.
P. Thank you for what you do. Have a two-week-old due to your convincing.
Oh, congratulations. And happy new baby year to you. Wonderful, wonderful thing.
[8:04] I'm moving in with my man tonight. I've been living alone for a few years.
Any advice? Ah, that is a very, very good question.
Living with men. Living with men.
Get used to the windy gases. It's like swamp water in a hurricane. So let me just get here.
Thank you for your tips. So yeah, if you'd like to help out the show, freedomain.com slash donate.
I would appreciate that. Are you adopting Tim Pool's fashion line? Oh, geez.
You're right. You're right. oh but but i don't i didn't get my hair done i got my hair done by time and the sandstorm of, male pattern baldness i started making dad jokes in my late 20s it must be something genetic i was worried because i still wasn't a dad now that i am i feel justified and not all embarrassed by my dad jokes i mean it's a very interesting phenomenon and we'll we'll get to sort of why there is such a phenomenon as dad jokes.
[9:00] But it is a very real thing. It is a very real phenomenon, not to be taken lightly, like ball lightning on the balls.
[9:09] All right. So let me get your questions.
And you can, of course, tip on Rumble. You can tip right here on the app on Locals.
I quit eating plants. Now gas is no longer an issue. Yeah.
A friend of mine tried the five-bean diet many years ago, and he says, like, I just can't spend that entire time being a hurricane.
Like i just can't be the center of wind for southern ontario i just can't do it i just like you know you ever try this thing where it's like you need more water than you think so you drink a lot of water and it's like i can't spend my entire day either peeing or needing to pee i just i think i'll just wait till i'm thirsty the amount of money that gets made from people saying well you may feel this but it's wrong your body may have evolved to tell you when you're thirsty but it's wrong your body may have evolved to tell you when it's hungry but it's wrong and it's like Like, it's like the new, you know, all of your animal impulses go against God.
It's the new way of just saying that.
All right.
Rearrange all this furniture, but first tell them to buy some. Very good.
Very good. All right. So I would get to advice for living with men, which will be shocking and horrifying, if not downright appalling. But let's...
[10:28] Uh, interesting, okay.
Ah, interesting. Sorry, Windows has this new thing where Notepad is now tabbed.
I used to keep them all separate, so.
It used to be all tabbed.
But no. All right, close that off.
And so yeah I used to just be able to keep them all in separate windows now they're in tabs, uh oh yeah we did the iq thing boom.
[11:14] All right. Sorry. I'm pretty sure I put this someplace useful.
There we go. It's being an addict, a mental disorder, and not a choice.
If so, are the actions of an addict regarding theft, harm, et cetera, the result of the disorder and not choice as well?
I've recently bumped heads with two women on these questions and both were unsettled and no longer wanted to talk with me.
I have a really hard time agreeing. The second question isn't a choice. choice.
Sorry, second question. Is being an addict a mental disorder and not a choice?
I don't know. The second question isn't a choice.
Is being an addict a mental disorder and not a choice? If so, are the actions of an addict regarding theft, harm, etc. a result of the disorder and not choice as well?
Yeah, I don't know what you mean by this. I don't know what you mean by the second question, but I will talk about addiction from obviously an amateur, your untrained philosophical perspective so an addict can be determined whether something is a disease can be determined by the billion dollar question the billion dollar question and this is way back in like the first six months of the podcast i think it was so the billion dollar question goes something like this if you have a disease can you not have that disease for a day if I give you a billion dollars.
[12:36] So if you have cancer and someone gives you a billion dollars, you can't not have cancer for that day.
If you have multiple sclerosis or you have whatever, right?
Like if your tooth got pulled out for decay, you can't get a billion dollars and have that tooth back or not have multiple sclerosis and so on, right?
Or Tourette's, if somebody offers you a billion dollars to not have those outbursts, You can't do it. Or epilepsy, you just sort of get the idea, right?
If you get a really bad sunburn and somebody says, I'll give you a billion dollars to not have a sunburn, then if no matter what the incentive, you can't make a different choice, then I think that's a disease.
Now, you could say, of course, when it comes to something like a mindset, like ennui or depression or something like that, a billion dollars.
Of course, if you have depression, someone offers you a billion dollars, you're probably pretty, at least a little bit happier for the day and so on.
But if you have, like if you're a nicotine addict, right?
If somebody offers you a billion dollars to not smoke for a day, you cannot smoke for the day. Right? So it's just a matter of...
[13:54] Incentives and choice if you can choose it whatever the incentive the incentive if world peace or whatever it is right i i will introduce you to your ultimate boyfriend or girlfriend, if you don't smoke for the day now if you're an alcoholic and somebody offers you a billion dollars to not drink for a day you cannot drink for the day right if you're a food addict and someone says don't eat bad food for a day i give you a billion dollars the billion dollar question And the billion dollars is just an analogy for whatever is the most incentivizing thing for you, right?
So if someone says to you, if I give you a billion dollars, can you alter this?
Well, if you can alter it, it's not a disease.
It's in the free will. It's in the aspect of free will.
And that's just a really, really, you know, if somebody says, I'm a sex addict, okay, well, I'll give you a billion dollars if you don't screw anyone today. day just just today samantha right just that's from sex in the city not anyone i know but.
[14:59] I'll give you a billion dollars if you keep your legs crossed like a pair of rusty old scissors just for the day well a sex addict cannot sleep with someone for a day if the incentive is sufficient and so of course i developed this in part because of the question of child abuse so Say, well, my parents had a really bad childhood, and because they had a really bad childhood, they became abusers, right? They became abusers because.
[15:28] They had a really bad childhood. Okay, well, that's to say that the bad childhood, like dominoes, causes them to be abusers, which would mean, like, if, for instance, you didn't get enough food as a kid and you grew up stunted, like you had sort of height issues, or you were short, that is...
A very real effect, and it can't be changed. Like, you can't become taller and then shorter and then taller and then shorter.
However, abusive parents can very easily not abuse you.
And in fact, they very constantly don't abuse you when you're out in public, when you're in front of a policeman or a priest, when they're at a teacher-parent conference.
There's all kinds of places, and you're at the mall, and there's a security guard around.
Abusive parents spend most of their time and all of their time out in public with you not abusing you, right?
If you have some violent parent and you're, quote, acting up or misbehaving in public, the parent says, you wait till we get home, right?
Ah, you wait till we get home. Now, is it to say, well, my parents' bad childhood caused their abuse, caused them to become abusers.
It's like, well, when they're out in public, they still had their bad childhoods, didn't they?
When my mom was out in public, she was still born during the war, didn't sort of shift personalities or history.
There was no alternate timeline, no sliding doors nonsense. since.
So, she had the bad childhood, and yet when we were out in public, she didn't abuse me.
[16:56] So, it can't be the bad childhood that causes the abuse, because the abuse doesn't occur in public, but the bad childhood is it. So, the bad childhood is a constant.
So, it's not the bad childhood that causes the abuse. It's the choice.
Now, you can say, well, because they had a bad childhood, they're more likely to abuse.
Well, I don't know that that's necessarily true. True, you can say, well, statistically, it does seem to be true that bad childhoods trigger more abuse, but that's also because we don't have the philosophical ethics of childhood and all of this kind of stuff. So we can work.
Some of these effers do beat their kids in public. Ah, that's tricky.
That's tricky. It certainly does happen. It certainly does happen.
But do they do they beat their kids in public when they will get arrested? right?
[17:55] Do they do it when they can get arrested or when they will get arrested?
Nope, usually not, right?
So I've never seen someone beat, I mean, I've been around the world and all that. I've never seen someone beat their kids in public. I've seen them yell at their kids in public.
[18:10] But not in church. In church, I've never seen anyone yell at their kids.
I've seen them hiss at them. I've seen them take them outside, but I've, you know, I've never seen.
So if you have the capacity to not do it, it's not, you're not dominated by the past.
If you have the capacity and you exercise the capacity to not do something, you're not dominated by your past.
So, David Bowie had two different eye colors because he got into a fist fight with someone when he was in his early teens, and so he had two different eye colors, and a haunting, nicotine-fueled, skinny vampire look, and a great mop top, but he couldn't change that.
So, his eye color, his damaged eye, was the result of something that happened in the past.
He couldn't change it. You couldn't give him a billion dollars to have the same eye color. Just, that wasn't going to happen.
Somebody who's grows up really short because they didn't get enough food as a kid they can't intermittently become taller like it's just fixed that's beyond their will you can't get them a billion dollars to become taller but if you say because i've just had this um i was talking to a call-in show with a woman i mean the family life was so bad that her sister ended up getting murdered and she was like well my parents my parents their bad childhood is like that's not That's not causal.
If you can think of one time when your parents restrained from hitting you because of negative consequences to them, then it was not the past that caused their problems.
[19:39] It was not the past that caused their problems.
[19:44] Trauma is trying to heal you, in my humble opinion. Trauma is trying to heal you.
What trauma is doing is it is giving you negative stimuli for being traumatized so that you don't re-inflict the trauma.
Right, so when you're traumatized, if you've been abused as a kid, you've got the angel and the devil on your ear, right?
The angel is saying, look, you know how bad it is, the last thing you'd ever want to do that to someone else, right?
You know how bad it is, the last thing you'd ever want to do is do that to someone else.
That's your future. That's your future children. That's your conscience.
That's your higher self.
That's your reason. That's your virtue calling you to, ah, you know how bad it is.
[20:30] Like, I know how unpleasant it is to be screamed at by a parent.
That's why I've never raised my voice at my daughter. Never have.
Never called her a name. Never raised my voice.
I mean, occasionally we get irritated with each other, but we always talk it out and it actually ends up better.
So you got the angel on your side saying you were hurt so don't hurt others you were hurt so don't hurt others and then you got the devil on your side which is basically your parents trying to destroy your soul by having you repeat their evils right satan claims another soul if you listen to the devil your parents saying well they're wrong yell at them uh they're wrong hit them assert authority be good be the roman right uh from my novel the future which if you haven't read at freedomain.com slash books.
You should read it or listen to it. It's fantastic. It's fantastic.
A great book. It's my out of shrugged for what it's worth. So now if you ever want to know what we're fighting for, you should just listen to my novel. It's free.
My novel called The Future. And then, well, you can listen to the present and then the future, right?
So I wrote a contemporary novel called The Present and then I wrote a science fiction novel called The Future because I'm all about creative names for books.
[21:40] So if I give a coke addict a million dollars then they may not have an addiction problem they have a supply it only becomes a problem for them if they have no supply from the addict's POV not from reality, I don't know what that means sorry, that's super unclear that's super unclear.
[22:02] Uh, let's see here. My father started screaming in public a few times.
Again, see, you're looking for the edge cases, right?
But you're looking for the edge cases.
What I said was, if there was one time when they did not abuse you because the consequences would be negative to them, then they had the ability to not abuse you.
Which means that they were not dominated or dictated by the past.
[22:34] I saw someone spank their kid right in front of the store. Yes, but spanking in many places remains legal and is considered good behavior.
It's considered good parenting.
[22:46] Dave says, I think berating them in public is more dominance on the witnesses and also an invitation to get into it with another person.
They are feeding off creating chaos and fighting with the kid and whoever dares step into it with them.
It's insulting to people with real illnesses when alcoholics say, I have an illness. Yes, of course, of course, right? But you're trying to strip mine the sympathy.
Like, addicts are manipulative. The addicts are liars, emotional terrorists, and manipulative.
So if they can get you to view them as having an illness, right, then that's bad, right?
Phil says, I too have never seen any child being abused in public.
However, I've heard the occasional, you wait till we get home, which to me, in agreement with your point, Steph, seems like someone who has a choice to control their temper.
Yeah. Right. Right.
You can't, um... if you have an epileptic seizure, you can't say to your epileptic seizure, not now, let's wait till we get home.
It just happens. I don't know if you've ever had this happen once or twice in my life where emotions just overwhelm me and there's no chance of them not overwhelming me and you burst into tears, maybe even against your will or you have a laughing fit almost against your will or whatever it is, right?
But where even the emotions seem to be outside of one's control as a whole.
[24:05] So, now, I think we can also say that somebody who is an addict did not start off with a full-blown addiction, right?
Somebody who was an addict did not start off with a full-blown addiction, right? Let's take an obvious one, which is smoking.
So, with smoking, you choose to smoke your first cigarette.
And then you have, I guess, a positive experience, and then you choose to smoke another cigarette. and then you choose to smoke another cigarette.
And over time, you begin to develop this kind of addiction, right?
Now, even if we say, well, once the addiction is full-blown, they can't stop themselves.
They become so physically dependent, this, that, or the other, right?
And, you know, I remember this when the lockdowns were happening in Canada, or at least here in Ontario.
When the lockdowns were happening, they left the liquor stores open.
Like they closed the schools they closed libraries and malls and but they left the liquor stores open, and i was like well that's kind of crazy and but people were telling me if somebody's a serious alcoholic if they don't get alcohol they might die like if you don't have um some sort of medical help with the transitioning or something like that.
[25:25] And so, alcoholics may be in a situation where they could die without alcohol.
Apparently this is true, I'm just going to accept it, I have no expertise on alcoholism.
[25:44] Now, you can say, well, at that point, it's kind of beyond free will because they have to have alcohol like we have to have oxygen, like without alcohol, they die.
And it's like, okay, so yes, there are times, let's say that that's a state kind of beyond free will, right?
It's certainly beyond regular free will, because in a sense, they have a gun to their head called alcohol deprivation that will cut, they're in a state of coercion in a sense, because they'll die without the alcohol.
Sure, okay, but they still chose to get there, right?
I mean, if some guy chooses to jump off a bridge, he is now no longer able to flap his wings and fly or reverse gravity or stand Flintstones-like in the middle of the air or bounce off a cloud.
He's going to fall and he's going to smash himself up in the water.
[26:25] So there are things that you choose. Well, I mean, everything we choose reduces choice.
Everything we choose eliminates choice.
But that doesn't eliminate free will. Well, I'm choosing to do this live stream this morning, which means I'm not doing anything else.
I'm not reading the audio book for Peaceful Parenting. I'm not learning how to do cartwheels.
I'm not wrestling with my printer to get it to work.
I have a printer in the house that used to work with Windows.
Now it doesn't work with Windows. Can't even see it. But no problem printing from a tablet.
So, it's just funny.
Oh it's just funny stuff is all such garbage it didn't used to be things used to work pretty well but it's all such garbage these days so yeah you you can look at someone and say well they don't have any choice now sure but they had choice in the past and that's why free will is important because some choices you make well every choice you make eliminates everything else right.
[27:28] If you go for dinner at a restaurant you are eliminating every other place in the world that you could eat from, right?
Cashing pigeons with a trident and a net, right?
If you go, like I went for brunch this morning with my daughter and that eliminated every other place that I could go, every other thing that I could eat, every other activity I could be engaged in.
So yeah, that makes sense.
So yeah, if you see an addict and they're in the late stage of their addiction, where you could say, you can make the case that they have no functional free will left, okay.
[28:04] So, yeah, I get that. I get that. But if I don't train for a marathon, I can't run a marathon.
So, I mean, saying that people don't have a choice, well, yeah, I accept that.
I accept that. I mean, it's certainly more than possible that by the time my, by the time I met my mother, like in terms of like being aware of her identity and so on, gosh, let me just, let me do this math.
I'm going to think I was my earliest memories are about 10 months old but I was probably in terms of my memories with my mother I was probably maybe 3 years old, so sorry to do this in my head but oh now I need num lock, 3 years old 1969.
[28:56] So yeah my mother was in her early 30s by the time I had any particular conscious awareness of her, her choices, and her behavior.
You're going to eat till, you're waiting to eat till four? It's New Year's! Eve!
Oh, you're going to eat and then have half-digested stuff for dancing? Yeah, that's good.
I'm going to a very dangerous buffet tonight. A buffet! A Jimmy buffet. Anyway.
So yeah, my mom was in her early 30s. Now, she had been, you know, cruel or mean or abusive, of whatever.
So, how much functional choice did she have to be a good person by the time she was in her early 30s?
Not much. We can even say zero. But that doesn't mean that her past did it to her.
That doesn't mean that her past did it to her.
[29:47] I can't give anyone the past.
Free-willed preacher man. Right. Now, Now, in general, and the guy to go to for this is Gabor Maté, M-A-T-E, with all kinds of swirly hieroglyphic accents and circumflexes and so on.
But Gabor Maté, G-A-B-O-R-M-A-T-E, has been on the show a couple of times.
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts is the book to go to very, very briefly.
People who are unhappy, who then take a drug, they go from like minus 50 happiness to plus 50 happiness.
[30:24] And they've never experienced that before. So they think that life is just kind of miserable and they're kind of sour, pessimistic, negative, or difficult, or whatever it is. They've abandoned all ye hope, those who've entered into the world.
And then they go to either a normal or slightly elevated level of happiness and they realize the burden they've been carrying.
[30:41] But because they're short on dopamine and they get something that adds dopamine to their system, they go to a normal level of human happiness or slightly higher, and then they crash back down below minus 50 to like minus 75.
And this is where the addiction cycles because they've felt normal they felt normal or slightly better than normal probably for the first time in their life and they realize the pain that they've been having and so and then they crash even lower right because when you get external dopamine your body stops producing its own internal dopamine to some degree again this is all amateur nonsense don't take anything i'm saying with any seriousness i can't give any medical advice and this is just just ridiculous nonsense opinions, go talk to the experts, but my way of understanding it goes something like, you're unhappy, you take a drug, you get to normal or slightly above happy, and then you crash below even the level of unhappiness you had before, but now you really experience the unhappiness and you're desperate to get back to normalcy, so you take the drug again, but instead of getting to plus 50, you get to plus 25, and then you crash down to minus 100, and you start this cycle, right?
You start this cycle. People take drugs not to feel high, but to feel normal, to cease agony.
Like a lot of people are alcoholics because of social anxiety.
[31:51] They don't know how to interact with people. They don't know how to be normal with people.
So they drink to disinhibit themselves, to remove their anxiety, to remove their paranoia, to remove their uneasiness.
And they can't socialize without it. But then when they're alone, they feel very unhappy.
So it's more like the drug of alcohol allows them to socialize, which removes their unhappiness or distracts them, right?
[32:18] By the way, chat is past time to have read. It's past time to have read the future, but today is a good time to start correcting that if you haven't read it. Yeah, it's a great book. It's a great book.
Now, if somebody is unhappy, but they think that's the human nature, right?
So, hit me with a why if you've ever known a really cynical, negative person or group or people.
[32:42] A really negative or cynical group or individual i i certainly have in fact i wrote about this my friend group in my teens was pretty cynical very cynical and yes yes yes yes right so what cynical people do well the addiction is not to the thing the addiction is to the justification justification, right?
[33:04] It's very hard to grow an addiction without the justification.
Now, sometimes people later on are mad at their addiction, they hate their addiction, so they don't justify it anymore, but then they're already addicted, right?
So the way that you grow an addiction is you make it a virtue, right? You make it a virtue.
So people who are drunks, they're like, hey man, I just like to unwind, you got to stop being so uptight, life is there to be enjoyed blah blah blah blah blah right the weed people are like uh nuts this way like it's a it's a truly it's a weird deep half nature fetishistic cult the weed people are just brutal when it comes to this kind of stuff because the addiction is not to the substance the addiction is to the justification if that makes sense right so cynical people what they do is they say you know life life Life is pain.
Life is difficult. Life is problematic.
And the only people who are happy are the stupid people, right?
Shiny, happy people holding hands from that R.E.M. song, right?
[34:08] The only people who are happy are the people who are programmed, major media consuming idiots.
To be happy is to be wrong, is to be shallow, is to be foolish, is to ignore the grim depth of the human condition.
Now, of course, if you define happiness as foolishness, if you define happiness as being an idiot...
Then you won't pursue that which will make you happy.
And you won't pursue that which will make you happy. Of course you won't.
Any more than you would pursue anything that would reduce your IQ.
Like if there was some pill you could take that dropped your IQ by 20 points, would you take it? Nope.
And so if happiness indicates an IQ drop of more than a standard deviation, right?
And it's probably even higher than that, because the people who were my friends in my teens were all super smart.
They all went on to really high intellect careers and all of that.
It was all really good. All really good.
[35:22] So, for them, it probably would be, they would go from 130 to like 85, we're talking like three standard deviations down, like from IQ 130 to IQ 85 would be their guess as to go from unhappiness to happiness.
They would have to just cripple and destroy their entire brains, right?
So, they don't want to do that because they enjoy being smart.
Smart now i get so smart people can be a little bit more anxious smart people can see because they can see further over the horizon and worry is sort of part of the european certainly the northern european tradition right it's worry because you got to worry about the winter you got to worry about predators you got to worry about like there's things you can control anxiety is about the things you can control you got to worry about germs you got to worry about sick people you got to worry about uh the war and and but things that you can do something about you You can wash your hands, you can prepare for the winter, whatever it is, right?
They are often also the most sarcastic and snarky people. Right, right, right. So that cynicism is really, really tough.
All the cynics in my life were bright.
A sarcastic sense of humor requires intelligence. Yes, that's right.
Somebody says, you're right in my case about being uncomfortable around people, but I never took drugs or used alcohol. Never found it easy to be around strangers.
Once I know people better, it gets easier somewhat.
Right, right. I have a cynical streak for sure.
Same team friends were very cynical. Yes, yes, yes. Let me just go and check the comments here.
[36:51] For a billion. Ronald says for a billion. I'd stop drinking for sure. Yeah, yeah.
Career or business advice for a 23-year-old Vietnamese male with disability, crippled body, who drops out from computer science college. Thank you, Steph.
I couldn't really, that's a long way from my experience and a long way from anything I'd be able to particularly help you with. But I'm sure that there are services that you can call to get some career advice about that kind of stuff.
[37:19] Let's see here. It's almost impossible not to social drink in Russia on New Year's Eve.
Yeah, but you can nurse a drink, right? You can nurse a drink all night.
One of my friends was famous for that in his late teens. Just nurse a drink all night.
Like you go to the bar and just buy a drink. and just, we'd joke it was basically just evaporating.
[37:49] So, let's get to your messages. I was surrounded by sarcastic people as a kid and into my 20s. We all had screwed up houses, right?
[37:59] An old friend of mine used to say, he says, Steve, I've got to get my head straight, by which you mean I need to get high.
Right. So the real addiction is to the justification.
You just get zero alcohol beer. Yeah, but it actually tastes fine.
It actually tastes fine.
Healthiest way to drink is to let it evaporate. Yeah, it doesn't really seem that there's any good amount of drinking, right? There's any sort of safer, healthy amount of drinking.
Best show on the interwebs. And only a few of us are getting the privilege of catching it live.
Yeah, well, you know, I get it. I mean, I don't listen to other people's shows live, although I will occasionally listen to replays. So that's fine.
Hang around members of a dry church. That can help. Right.
So it's the justification. So cynical people justify their cynicism by saying to be intelligent is to be cynical.
You can't fool me. I'm not going to. I can't buy it. That was sort of the constant refrain of my friends and my teens. I just, you know, I get religion. I just can't buy it.
Like, it's a sales thing. Everyone who's trying to convince you of something is a con man.
All love is just biochemical attachment for the sake of reproducing babies.
It is just awful. I mean, it's awful. Without enthusiasm, I don't know why you'd...
Sorry, that was a little too harsh. I will keep that one. I'm addicted to Pellegrino. Burpmeister 101.
[39:25] So you you know you've made it when i'd like some water sparkling water sure oh oh my god i've made it as opposed to tap water with some rusty ice cubes in it but without without enthusiasm i have no idea how anyone enjoys life like without enthusiasm like or how how appealing how how can anyone be appealing who is really too cynical to enjoy life to to have anything to look forward to have any enthusiasm or anything like that. Oh, it's terrible.
[39:59] It's terrible.
So you end up with other people like that, right?
The drive for water is greater than the sex drive.
Not if there's a busty water nymph involved. Then I think the two kind of merge together.
Water feels great when you're dehydrated. Oh yeah, of course.
Uh dave says my life is so much better sober the men i used to be friends with who are drunks and potheads would never ever give it up it's contagious to be around they're not part of my life a big red fat on people as they can't accept i don't drink ever uh you're a water snob oh i just i mentioned fluoride and say i need to burp that's the way it works for me so yeah the real addiction is the justification and that's why people when you take away their justifications.
[40:47] If you take away their justifications, they get really angry at you because then it exposes the need, right? The need hides under the justifications.
Now, smokers, to be fair, know that they're addicted, they know smoking sucks, and they rarely make justifications.
Although I did see an interesting graph that when England banned smoking in certain places, productivity stopped increasing, which is pretty wild.
Uh nicotine is um an intellect and creativity enhancer and um that's one of the reasons why society is against nicotine but pro-marijuana right like they'll legalize marijuana and you see lots of pro-marijuana messages in in movies particularly like these trash comedies, so you'll see weed promoted but nicotine denigrated now of course neither is best but at least um nicotine makes you sharper and more creative and it can raise your intellect so to speak so not i'm not recommending it obviously right but it's being addicted to top tier philosophy a thing do we want to cure if it is no i don't think so it's not like an And addiction is something that smokers get shit done.
That's true. That's true. That's true.
[42:13] Sorry, I'm trying to follow a conversation, but. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you want to get something done, find a smoker. I mean, I hate to say it, but it's kind of true.
It was kind of a well-known trope in work that the smokers were like, oh, yeah, they'll shop, they'll get it done.
People are like, well, they take smoke breaks. it's like yeah but they get five times as much done when they're not on their smoke breaks than you ever will so it's sad but true it's sad but true and of course it's not completely accidental that some great philosophy came out of the west after the discovery of tobacco nicotine like from the new world and all that kind of stuff so um it's it's complicated but i mean obviously not Not recommended, but it's a, of the mental stimulants you can take, caffeine will have some of the more positive effects, while of course the negative effects are emphysema, COPD, lung cancer, death.
So, you know, don't do it, but, you know, there is definitely that aspect that it tends to raise intelligence and creativity, at least in the short run.
[43:12] So, what I'm saying is that when somebody starts off unhappy, they take a drug and they feel normal, or slightly above normal, or maybe significantly above normal, and then they crash below, they have a question, right?
They have a question, and the question is, well, why was I unhappy?
Why was I unhappy? Now, why they were unhappy is because, you know, they were traumatized as children, they're not living their virtues, and in general, the people who re-inflict their traumas on others tend to be the most unhappy of all.
Like the people who re-inflict their traumas on others tend to be the most unhappy of everyone.
[43:49] And you're unhappy because you're not living virtue, right?
And not only are you not living virtue, but you're spreading misery, discontent, unhappiness, cynicism.
You're spreading immorality or amorality.
And so you're unhappy. Now that's the real answer for the most part.
And of course, while I have sympathy for people who've gone through child abuse, I don't have sympathy for those who are re-inflicting their child abuse on others, right?
Or causing other people to be immoral or amoral, like spreading cynicism and all of this sort of stuff.
[44:28] So, oh, I'm so sorry, I missed it. It's not really updating me on the tips.
Let me just make sure I get through these. Thank you, Jay Park. Thank you, Matt.
Thank you, Existute. Existute? Thank you, C2.
Spark, thank you. P. I appreciate that. And of course, if you'd like to tip, it's really, really great.
Nicotine is not a bad drug, but tobacco is a terrible delivery system, right?
Don't do it, though. If you start taking nicotine, your body will reduce or stop making it endogenously.
Hence, you will be dependent on exogenous sources to feel normal. That'd be true.
I was thin when i was a smoker in my 20s i ran on donuts coffee marlboro's and pot, yeah oh yeah there's like there's an ode to smoking and atlas shrugged like the the fire of the cigarette is the fire of the man's mind and yeah man she really did love her nicotine and her uh speed for um for drugs.
[45:31] Let's see here but on the flip side is dates if i didn't have these snarky friends as a teenager i don't know if i would have made it out of high school in my crazy house the cynics and the sarcasm gave us all the common language and helped build friendships or i would have been alone we all congregated in theater especially the technical end we were a twisted family with a common goal and nasty attitudes.
So cynicism is not that there are bad people in the world. Cynicism is that.
[45:59] Not that there are liars, but everyone lies, except the cynic.
Cynicism is a form of unearned virtue.
Because you say, I know that everyone lies. I look down on everyone.
Everyone is false. Everyone is manipulative. Everyone is dishonest.
And I'm the only one who sees it, or maybe we're the only small circle that sees it.
So it's a way of elevating yourself by looking down on others without actually having to be virtuous yourself.
Yourself yeah it sounds like the uh the this was my uh one of the few comedy things i've done was significant sections of my novel the god of atheists uh there's a boy band and they they say well we want to be a boy band but we want to have an edge so they call themselves boy band with those two little german dots over the o boy band with an umlaut i don't know i just love that boy boy band the umlaut is our edge and um they were very cynical and very funny and very bitter and very damaged and very damaged so yeah so it's a way of saying well i'm not going to be smarter i'm not going to work to be wiser i'm just going to hang around with unwise people and consider myself superior so rather than saying why am i unhappy what they do is they say well when i get get together with these people and i smoke weed you know we're exploring the depths of the universe we're opening up human consciousness i'm being creative i'm letting go of my bourgeois restraints and i'm i'm dancing with the rhythm of the universe like they come up with all this.
[47:27] Phantasmagorical hypnotic bullshit to avoid why they're unhappy which is they're unhappy because because they're immoral.
[47:40] If you're too positive, you're naive, and if you allow bad things to happen to you, if you're too negative, you're a cynic, and you won't allow good things to happen to you.
Yeah, I mean, obviously, you need, cynical and naive are two extremes, and you need that Aristotelian mean, but I remember, I very clearly remember, oh, God.
[47:58] I this is going to sound bad but i was always the backseat guy oh it was terrible i was always the backseat guy i never had a car i never had a car i didn't get a car to my early 30s i i never had a car and so my friends would all they had cars and i was like i was usually the last guy to be picked up whenever we were going anywhere so i'd always end up in the backseat and if there was three of us i'd just be the backseat guy and you know what the backseat is you know no control over of the music all you see is people like the side view of everyone having fun and laughing and you lean forward trying to catch the conversation but the music's kind of loud so eventually you just give up and sit in the back seat and smile vaguely and you know some comedians is like you try and make contact with other people in the back seats of cars and wave at them play little hand games and you know maybe you draw on the dust or whatever it is but you're stuck in the back seat i was a backseat guy and i remember my friends and i we were at young Young and Eglinton, and they were trying to find a place to park.
[48:53] And there were these girls dressed up. We don't know why.
I mean, it could have been a wedding party or something like that.
But there was a gaggle of like 10 or 15 girls all running up the street and laughing. And they looked beautiful.
The sun was out. And, you know, just one of these flashes in life where you just get these perfect little postcard memories of something that's really quite lovely. And I love the fact that they were laughing.
They were going someplace they were very excited to be. They had dressed up, their hair, they're just beautiful.
And it was just a lovely little, in the midst of a gritty street to see these.
[49:25] Naiads and dryads and nymphs running up in their beautiful crinoline to get someplace fun.
And I just thought it was kind of delightful. And my friends in the front seat just immediately fell on them mentally, like a bunch of barking, rabid dogs. Like, oh, I guess they're running.
You better run along to get to the surgery residence.
You better run along to write your LSATs. You better run along to get your law degree. you just could run along and you get all these wonderful things you brainiacs you know just like because these women were beautiful and happy they had to be stupid they had to be stupid.
[49:59] Right? They had to be stupid. And so there's that cynicism that if they're happy and enthusiastic about something, they have to be retarded.
And I was just like, you know, one of these things that just kind of, this was towards the end of my closeness to these friends, because it was just like, it's kind of toxic, man.
This is not, this is kind of toxic.
And it's terrible. I thought it was actually really nice. I thought it was really nice.
Smoking the ruins taste buds is that right, I quit the cynicism then the bad food then the cigarette and then the pot in that order well good for you, so the way I think the way that people get addicted is they're unhappy not because of bad childhoods they're unhappy because they're not dealing with their bad childhoods and they're spreading their trauma so they're doing wrong they're doing immoral things, and not evil, like they're not like killing people or anything, right? Not beating people up, right?
But they're immoral in that they're doing things that are destructive to other people's happiness without prompting, without need, right?
I mean, if you escape a kidnapper, he's unhappy, but that's just, right?
So they're unhappy, they're doing wrong, and so they get into smoking, they get into drugs and so on, or whatever it is, or cynicism was the big one.
[51:25] And then they reframe it as something positive, right? They reframe it as something positive. It's wisdom.
It's self-acceptance. It's hanging out with cool people.
It's not doing the mainline bourgeois thing. Like these people always hate the suburbs. Always hate the suburbs.
Little boxes on a hillside. Little boxes full of ticky-tacky.
Right, so they're just like the weeds theme, right? They hate the suburbs. They hate the suburbs.
Oh, little boxes, everyone's the same. It's not true.
All their shitty families were all the same, but that's not the case, right?
They were cynical and negative and hostile and bitter, angry deep down, but they reframed that anger as wisdom and happiness is to be an idiot. And so.
[52:15] You find something that relieves your misery. In this case, it was a false superiority of cynicism.
And then you justify it and then you keep doing it to the point where you can't stop doing it.
Like you hollow yourself out right like if you start with smoke weed and you're unhappy and then you smoke the weed and you feel normal or slightly happy and then you miss the weed because it makes you more unhappy you can either confront and say well why am i unhappy and it has to do with the fact that you're probably being immoral and then you just jump into the weed and back into the weed but you can't say well i don't want to confront myself i'm just going to do the weed thing because that feels bad right that feels bad so then what you have to do is you have to justify it by saying you know we're just um loosening up and we're having fun and and all that kind of stuff and then eventually you hate it and you realize what an addiction it is but only right as i always said the devil will reveal everything to you when it's too late to change right the devil will reveal everything to you when it's too late to change.
[53:18] Yeah this is a paul johnson thing we talked about in intellectuals, there's a line from anna karenina which goes something like every happy family is alike but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way and paul johnson wrote this uh in his book intellectuals a tolstoy right and he said no this is not the case at all really i mean dysfunction Function, misery, addiction, they're all the same thing, all the same.
Miserable families are all miserable the same way, but happy families allow for individuation and different interests and different perspectives.
And they're all different because they allow for the flourishing of individual personalities.
Whereas, you know, beaten kids have that hang dog staring at the shoulder, staring at the slumped shoulder, staring at the ground situation where everyone just seems kind of the same.
Have you ever moved to a new place and been alone and unemployed?
No, I mean, I've moved to new places.
I mean, I moved around quite a bit when I was working out north as a gold-panner prospector, but no.
Or, I mean, in schools, when I'd go to university. I went to a bunch of different schools, but that's not quite the same as unemployed. That's when I was a kid.
[54:32] My dad stopped smoking when he narrowly missed being T-boned by a drunk running a red light. He'd gone out to get smokes.
Yeah, because you can take that as a sign from the universe, and then you can substitute mysticism for your will, which I don't think really...
When I think cynical, I think Bill Maher.
[54:53] Yeah, I remember reading many years ago a guy rather plaintively writing into a doctor saying, you know, well, I quit smoking, but now I gained 20 pounds.
I mean, isn't it better to just smoke and be thinner? And of course, the doctor wouldn't let him have that false dichotomy, right? right?
Sorry, you've got to not be fat and you've got to not smoke.
That's just the way it is.
[55:20] How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been, how gloriously different are the saints, yeah.
Weed makes you complacent. Complacency is being comfortable when you shouldn't be, and that opens you up to a lot of danger, yes, for sure.
Yeah, like people say, like, anxiety is the worst thing. It's like, no, it's not. Lack of sense of danger is the worst thing.
All right, I'm moving in with my man tonight. I've been living alone for a few years. Any advice? Right.
Right. it's a great question it's a great question and i really really really appreciate, you asking it let me just jump over to rumble here and see if i get any uh you the man thank you zombie i appreciate that i appreciate that happy new year is this pre-recorded yes no, reading comments live yes that's right i get nothing done on part well that's the point right that's the point to drug you into uh avoiding any kind of personal or social improvement or change it's very tragic.
[56:25] Somebody says I quit marijuana more than two and a half years ago after smoking for two years the part that makes me the most angry is the self-development I miss by making my unhappiness masking my unhappiness with weed yeah for sure, I mean weed is like I mean addictions as a whole are kind of like this demonic, red-fisted grip on your soul and when you take away the justifications and have somebody actually confront the fact that they're not in control of their life because they're an addict.
[56:49] Then they i don't view like when i would post against various addictions back in my sort of social media heydays and people would get really enraged at me i don't take it personally right i mean to take a sort of extreme example if demons were real and possessed people and you are exercising the demon the holy water and the lord's prayer whatever it is you're doing and the demon screams all these insults at you you don't take it personally it's just the demon doesn't want want to give up control over the soul he's got right so they're screaming you f this you mf that and you know all of this head spinning around and you know vomit spraying james wood style so, but you don't take it personally it's just the demon doesn't want to give up right the demon doesn't want to give up control and so when you come in as the priest which takes away the justifications which is the demon's fuel and food the demon gets mad you know like if you diet you're the bacteria that live on whatever food access that you were giving they will complain and make you uncomfortable it's like it's not personal they just like if you cut out carbs then all the bacteria that fed on the carbs gets mad and upset because they don't want to die and make you uncomfortable and all of that right you're actually just a mechanism to feed your gut bacteria for the most part right so, All right, so living with men.
[58:12] The key to living together happily is humility.
Now, you live with someone, guaranteed something they do is going to annoy you.
Maybe a couple of things they do are going to annoy you, right?
And it's very easy to then feel superior and say, well, this person is being annoying and they did this, they did that. I don't like this, that, or the other, right?
They just put their dishes in the sink. They don't put their dishes in the dishwasher.
Why is it that they throw their, like, I'll do the laundry, but why is it that they don't put it in the basket?
They just leave it on the floor and you can just get these things, you can set them up, and they just chafe at you and just chafe and chafe and chafe.
And every single time you see it, it bothers you. And maybe you'll mention it a couple of times.
Maybe there's some change, maybe there isn't.
And then the great trap and why relationships fail for the most part is.
[59:16] Someone does something, like your man does something that bothers you.
[59:22] You swallow it for a bit, you remind him a couple of times, and then you take it personally.
Right so let's say it is he doesn't put the dishes in the dishwasher he leaves them in the sink right it bothers me i gotta take this maybe he doesn't rinse it properly he doesn't rinse things properly before he puts them in the dishwasher like any number of frankly retarded things that people get mad about when they live together so the general pattern is it bothers you every time and you don't just sit there and say well he's different and the humility is saying I do things that annoy him too.
I don't mean to. I don't mean to annoy him, but I do things that, because, you know, you both have lived apart, right, for a long time.
For most people who get married, they've lived on their own for a couple of years at least. They've developed their habits and their way of doing things.
And so the general pattern goes something like this. He won't rinse the dishes properly before putting them in the dishwasher.
And I was actually wrong about this. Somebody emailed me when I said, well, why do you need to rinse things?
Because it's already a dishwasher. They come out clean. And apparently there's these traps in the back, these sieves and if you don't rinse the dishes the sieves collect bacteria and that's bad for you so i had a number of people email me who were experts in the field so i was wrong about that never tell my wife but i was wrong about that i'll never admit it any other place but here because at least you know at least this is just private private convo so he doesn't rinse the dishes and you get annoyed and the annoyance goes up maybe a little bit each time.
[1:00:50] And you don't sit there and think well um.
[1:00:58] Maybe I'm doing things and does it matter? That doesn't matter.
Is it worth a conflict over putting things in the dishwasher?
Now, the reason that people get mad at these things, and I'm sure you've seen these videos where some woman is complaining that some guy's electronics are laid out on a table or his tools are in the garage laid out because he's in the middle, like, heaven forbid, you're in the middle of a do-it-yourself project and your wife cleans up your tools, right? Right. But.
[1:01:25] And so the woman is complaining that the man's got some stuff lying around and then the man takes his woman by the hand, leads her up to the bathroom and shows her all of the face and hair crap that's on every square inch of the bathroom surface. Right.
And that's just the humility where you say, OK, so she's doing some things that are bothering me, but I'm doing things that are bothering her.
And either we can start to fight about these things or we can just let it go.
Like it doesn't matter it doesn't matter right i i mentioned this before this is really heartbreaking story about the woman she was like married to a guy for like 50 years and he was constantly complaining that he wasn't putting his clothes in the laundry hamper but just leaving them on the ground or by the laundry hamper or something and the guy dies she comes back from the hospital and she sees his clothes on the ground and she's like i i can't tell you what i wouldn't give to have this problem for the next 10 years like i can't i i she burst into tears like i can't i'm i'm i'm absolutely appalled that i will never be able to put his clothes in the laundry hamper again like this is the worst thing worst thing ever right which is tragic right and then all those stupid fights about this stuff what does it mean what does it matter who cares who cares.
[1:02:32] So that's just the beginning of the problem so what happens is he won't rinse the dishes it bothers me it bothers me it bothers me because of vanity which is well i'm perfect i never do do anything that bothers him he only does things that bothers me it's a form of false superiority right it's a form of false i'm perfect he does annoying things right so then you tell him listen i really really need you to like will you please just rinse the dishes before you put them in the dishwasher now the man then then what's happening is you you're mom and him like you're turning into a mom and there's nothing less sexy than a woman nagging and turning a man into a mom and look it it happens the other way too but i think this is a woman talking about this yeah she's talking about moving in with her guy never mom your man like do not mom do not lecture him do not scold him do not uh complain at him do not nag him that's mom stuff and that's just gonna kill, like if if that doesn't kill your sex drive you're living with a psychopath in my i'm just joking right but if if you momming him doesn't kill your romance then you've got a very disturbed individual in my opinion on your hands so you might not want to do that or maybe do it and find Find out and get out.
So then what happens is this terrible connection happens in the woman's mind.
Oh, it's brutal. And it's brutal.
And the terrible connection is this.
[1:03:59] If he loved me, he would rinse the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Ouch.
Literally, the relationship is, the doom of the relationship is sealed when that connection happens.
If he loved me, he would rinse the dishes. So now it's not about the dishes.
It's about, does he care about me at all?
[1:04:31] So the man is feeling resentful because he also is doing a bunch of things which she's not thanking him for right the typical thing is that the man does a bunch of things that he's not thanked for but every little thing he does wrong he gets nagged at so he's resentful and then so he doesn't want to obey the woman because she's not praising him right he doesn't want to surrender to her will because she's not praising him for the things that he does that she should appreciate you know like Like, usually the woman does stuff inside the house, the man does stuff outside the house, right?
So he may be mowing the lawn, he may be taking care of the driveway, he may be shoveling the driveway if you live in a cold climate, and so on.
And he doesn't get praise or thanks for it.
Of course, he may be paying all the bills, too. He doesn't get praise or thanks for any of that, right?
So then, what happens is, the fate of the relationship is sealed.
And it doesn't mean the relationship ends.
It just means that the quality of the relationship is going to collapse because now the stakes are way too high for any appeasement or compromise or shrugging things off because now the love test is, does he rinse the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher?
If he doesn't do that, it's because he doesn't love me. He doesn't care about me. He doesn't respect me. He doesn't listen to me.
[1:05:53] And you're doomed because now what you can't give that up. Now you have to get him to rinse the damn dishes because if he doesn't, he doesn't love you and you can't love him back.
And the relationship is a false and fake and he doesn't care.
And he's only there for sex or whatever nonsense is going on in your head.
Now it's like, well, if, if, if he loved me, he'd rinse the dishes.
So then you put more and more pressure on him, which means that you're more and more momming him, which means he's going to flip to his mid-teen self of resisting maternal maternal authority.
Because the only way that you were able to marry him is because he resisted the maternal authority of his mother and was able to pair bond with a woman.
So the fact that he fought his mother's controlling or nagging nature is why you're with him.
And now you reproduce the scene of his most successful and essential battle, which is resisting maternal authority.
You're now recreating that scene and you're attempting to impose maternal authority on him him, and he won't do it.
He won't do it. And so the fact that you're trying to control him, he's resisting that control, which is what men do, but you see him resisting your control as him not loving you, so you increase your control.
Anyway, you get how this works, right?
You get how this works. Oh, it doesn't work, right?
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
[1:07:20] Let me just see if I can get your comments.
I hate what we did to my brother. I can't talk to him anymore because he believes it will cure cancer.
That's so interesting. Most dysfunctional families are very similar from those who are not.
Oh, come on. I mean, you've heard, you probably haven't listened to all thousand plus, but I've done like a thousand plus call-in shows with people over the years, more probably, and the unhappy family dynamics are all the same. They're all the same.
There's a lot of difference in healthy family dynamics. Yes, that's right.
Lee says, I was exposed to marijuana at age 11 by an older sibling who's five years older, being a neglected child that made me feel normal.
It's been so hard to shake, but I know I'll get there. Thanks for talking about this, guys. Oh, you're welcome.
[1:08:12] Seen a video by a young lady giving good advice for men and women.
A woman breaks up after many years, and all he gets is, you should have known. own.
No, you should have told him. Letting resentment build over years is self-destructive.
Why should she have told him?
There's this funny thing. It's a bit of a female thing. A bit of a female thing.
Men do it too. But I think it's a bit more of a female thing.
Where it's like, I'm bothered so I need to tell him.
Why? Why?
My God. Half of relationships is shutting up.
I mean, that's equally for men or for women.
I mean, if you're a married man, this is all theory for me, right?
If you were a married man and you see some really sexy woman, you're at the mall with your family, you see some really sexy woman, what do you do?
Oh, well, I must share this with my wife. Wow, she's really sexy. Right?
[1:09:18] No no you don't do that any more than you want your wife to go oh that guy's super hot you know the guy with the abs that you don't have he's super hot like you don't want that like half of relationships is keeping you canceled, nothing wrong you don't need to share everything so if your husband is doing something that bothers you you don't have to say it you can always just take the radical step of working to not be be bothered, right?
And the way that you work to not be bothered is you have the humility of knowing that you're annoying too.
Everyone's annoying from time to time.
Yeah, I don't recommend cohabiting before marriage either, but it sounds like this one's a done deal.
Says, many thanks, Steph. This relationship has happened because of your advice in March.
I need men every second of the day. Humility is great advice.
Bless you. Well, thank you. And I hope it works out really beautifully for you.
[1:10:17] Is it normal for women to confuse preferences with commands?
Like if a man says, I prefer blondes over brunettes, women act like they've heard, dye your hair blonde immediately.
That's an order. And fight against the command they have imagined.
Well, if a man prefers blondes over brunettes, and his wife is a brunette, she should never know that fact.
She should not know that fact. Right?
[1:10:54] Because that's a shallow physical preference, which has nothing to do with the moral qualities of the love of your life and the mother of your children.
[1:11:07] Like if a man says, I don't know, I like a big butt, does that mean that the woman goes out and gets a Brazilian butt lift or something?
Thing well no he i don't know uh if say how he does something bothers you work it out then not bottling it up over years resenting him for not doing it your way either accept it or train him, is it important is it important, thank you david i appreciate i appreciate your support is it important important.
Like seriously, have the deathbed perspective.
Like on your deathbed, are you going to look back and say, boy, I'm sure glad I spent years mad at my husband for him not rinsing the dishes.
That was really, really time well spent. My gosh, that was fantastic. fantastic.
Couldn't have spent my time any better. Thank you for all that frustration, that alienation, that distance, that lack of sex, that lack of intimacy, that lack of fun. Boy, that was a great thing to do.
[1:12:25] Uh somebody's asking steph do you do non-recorded talk therapy sessions how much for a six-pack of you listening to me complain about my kid's mom uh i'm i'm really sympathetic for that i really sympathize for that um no i don't do non-recorded therapy i'm not a therapist right so i don't do therapy at all um but no i don't do the non-recorded stuff because i really do want, people's challenges to uh help instruct the world as much as possible so i appreciate Appreciate the offer, but no.
I remember my mom got annoyed having to always ask me to take out the trash.
I didn't mind doing it, but she expected me to do things like that without asking.
I felt it was her job to remind me.
Of the two sexes, and yes, I mean two, who tends to be more virtuous in your estimation?
Well, men tend to be better at preventing more slow-moving disasters, and women tend to be better at preventing more quick-moving disasters.
But I wouldn't say either one tends to be more or less virtuous, in my opinion.
No, it's a great question. We have different areas of specialty as a whole.
[1:13:33] Is it worth it?
Why must men resist maternal authority? I grew up in a certain minority culture where there's a lot of mama's boys, and there's a great shame on young men who resist maternal authority.
Growing up, I was looked at different by my family by having many arguments with my mother, and eventually I fell ground down, which sent to my growth as a man for many years. Why must men resist maternal authority?
That's a great question. Let me just make sure I get the whole thing here.
Why must men resist maternal authority?
Because you can't have any leadership in your own household if you're subjugated to maternal or female authority. We say female authority, right?
But the first authority figure we need to overthrow are our own parents.
And by overthrow, I simply mean challenge and think for ourselves and not assume that everything they say is perfect or like not just be photocopies, copy-paste of them.
So yeah, you have to resist maternal authority because if you can't have any leadership in a marriage, then you're codependent.
And I don't mean you lead the marriage, but you know, there are certain areas where my wife has authority. There are certain areas where I have authority.
Right, that's how it's worked out. And so if you can't resist female authority, authority, then you can't assert any authority in a relationship with a woman, which means you're not going to get a woman who's going to respect you.
[1:15:00] Hopefully that, I could go into that in more detail, but hopefully that makes some kind of sense.
Can you expand more on why cohabiting before marriage is not a good idea?
I have some ideas like people devalue each other by treating each other like cars that need to be tested, but I want to see if you have more thoughts.
Well, if a woman is worth living with, why isn't she worth marrying?
Daniel, it's your first live stream. Fantastic. Fantastic.
Spartan says the key to living together is agreeing on every item having a set place that you agree on.
I don't know about that. That seems like a bit rule-based.
You're annoying sometimes, she's annoying sometimes. Be annoyed together and don't try and fix everything. I mean, that's something.
So a woman, if you say to a woman, and this is generally more of a female thing, if you say to a woman, I want to live with you, I want regular sex, I want to save money, and I want regular sex and regular companionship, but there's no way in hell I'm going to marry you.
[1:16:05] Ouch. I'll give you the equivalent for a man. The equivalent for a man, and I got into this situation once, the equivalent for a man is a woman who says, oh yeah, no, I want you to take me out on dates, I want you to pay for everything, I want you to set everything up, and I want you to pick me up and drop me off, and I don't want to see a bill the whole time, but i'm never going to date you i'm never going to be your girlfriend right so i want all the benefits of being your girlfriend but i don't actually want to kiss you sleep with you cuddle with you be monogamous so i want you to pay all the bills but i'm not going to be your girlfriend.
[1:16:47] Well, as a man, how would you feel about that?
Well, you'd be, that'd be kind of gross, right? That'd be a gold digger or something like that, right?
Steph has the authority on the dishwasher, his wife on the router, that much is abundantly clear. That's funny.
So the woman is going to view it as an insult that you want regular sex, companionship, save money, but you don't want to marry her.
I mean, how long do you need to test drive a car before you buy it?
Dave says, no woman will trust you if you can't take a stand against her whims or if you can't resist her. If you can't resist her, how can you protect both of you against the world?
That's not a male-female thing. If you have someone in your life who agrees with you about everything, isn't that kind of gross? I mean, that's clearly not about you. It's not about them. It's not about having a relationship.
Daniel says, this is really difficult for me since it rings so true.
What is difficult about it? Now, somebody had their dream.
They had their dream. They had their dream.
[1:18:17] Oh that one we did and close that oh wait uh somebody says i often think about inflicting emotional cruelty on my parents been no contact for the last about eight months is there a simple reason for this i think that one's from last live stream so i will toast that and thank you for those i will try and get this done today if not today tomorrow those of you who've um i put out out this regular call for questions on free domain dot locals dot com.
[1:18:46] Boo, boo, boo, boo, boo. Once that you've decided on a killing.
First you make a stone of your heart.
[1:19:01] And if you find your hands are still willing. Then you can turn a murder into art.
All right. Did the addict one? Did the maternal one?
[1:19:20] No, so agreeing with somebody is manipulation, right? Over-agreeing with someone is manipulation.
And I don't like being manipulated. I just don't like being manipulated.
I mean, we all have that temptation, and I get all of that, but I really, really don't like being manipulated.
And the people who agree with you or don't challenge you or don't have any skepticism about what you're saying, are trying to drug you with compliance and control you through subjugation.
Like, if you think about dogs, when dogs have a dominance problem, then the older dog, the bigger dog, growls and pins the other dog down, and then the other dog bares his throat and submits.
And through that submission, he controls the bigger dog.
He controls the aggression of the bigger dog. right so pretending to be helpless pretending to be agreeable pretending to not have your own opinions is an attempt to manipulate and control others so.
[1:20:34] My big takeaway is to work on my faults that my indulgence and addictions was used to treat the bad feelings.
I only cover them up, not solve them until I face them. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.
What about sex before marriage? I mean, it's very common throughout history.
Like a third of the recorded marriages in the 19th century in America were shotgun weddings.
So, I mean, it's very common to have sex before marriage.
Ah, yes, thank you. The dreams, there we go. Thank you so much for helping me out there. I really appreciate that.
A big thank you to Paula. I appreciate that. All right.
Hi, Steph. My dreams are often, maybe once a week, filled with zombies, monsters, or vampires chasing after me.
It goes about 10 years like that. I don't see and would not describe them as nightmares because I always fight and can for the most time defeat them.
There is no substance abuse or no financial problem in my life.
I've obviously verbal abuse in my childhood, but could that be a connection to those dreams?
Thank you for your great show. Now, doing dreams without more detail is tricky, but hey, I'm all about the tricky. I'm all about the high wire act.
I'm all about the sticking of the landing from 20,000 feet.
So I will do my best to do this, right?
[1:21:52] Now, your dreams are not about physical creatures.
They are about imaginary creatures, right? Zombies, monsters, vampires.
So it's not like you're having a dream about a bear breaking into your tent or you're having a dream about a shark in the water or something like that.
Now, if you have dreams about things that don't exist, your dreams are telling you that the danger to you is mental, is psychological, is thought-based, is imagination-based, or something like that.
Because your dreams are saying that the threat to you is not coming from anything in the real world.
[1:22:28] World. Zombies, monsters, vampires, and so on, right? So this ties into the fact that verbal abuse was the problem in your childhood.
So verbal abuse is obviously not physical abuse, but it creates distorted thinking within your mind.
In other words, the problems that you have aren't out there in the real world, they are in your mind.
I mean, the problems were out there in the real world in that your parents verbally abused you, but the problems that you're facing, The danger that you're facing is in your head. And how do we know that?
Because every monster in your dream is in someone's imagination.
It's in their head. They're not in the real world. So the dreams are not preparing you.
Like, you know, you see these dogs who are napping or whatever, and you can see their legs twitching. You know they're chasing some rabbit in their dreams. And the dreams are training them.
Right? The dreams are training them to hunt rabbits. Right? To hunt real rabbits.
[1:23:29] So you're not going to run into zombies or vampires in the real world so it's saying that the dangers that you face the problems that you face exist in the realm of language right because if you think of the word vampire vampires don't exist in the world vampire only exists as a mental category as a concept they don't exist in the real world right there aren't human beings who dissolve in the face of sunlight and are opposed to garlic and live off the blood of other human Like these things don't exist in the real world, right?
And so when you have dreams about unreal things.
[1:24:04] Your dreams are telling you that the danger that you face is not external.
It's not out there in the world.
It's in the realm of language because all of these creatures are defined by language, not by empiricism, not by facts, not by reality.
They don't exist anywhere except in language, right? Zombies, human beings that are dead that shuffle around and eat the brains of others.
They may exist in politics but they don't exist in the real world zombie is a word so the danger is language based the danger is, words and so I would assume that it's pointing you at unresolved issues to do with verbal abuse you know kicking out the verbal abuse is really tough, thank you I really really appreciate that and again happy new year tips are greatly appreciated it.
[1:24:52] This is the last day for 2023, of course, that you can tip, and I would really, really appreciate it if you could.
Have you ever talked about the underwear dream? I don't know that I have.
Could you please do the philosophy of cognitive distortion called magical thinking?
[1:25:16] Oh magical thinking is basically that you can have the effect without the cause, that you can have the effect without the cause, yes so some sir humphrey with jim hacker is a minister and prime minister in the british sitcom yes minister yes prime minister he calls manipulation professional guidance about agreeing until his mind is changed for him yes uh sir humphrey is is brilliant at that about how you control someone through being uh yes minister you know being very sort of positive and and uh, helpful and all of that, but really controlling the person, right?
[1:25:51] I don't think that a shotgun wedding is what they mean when they ask about sex before marriage.
I think the assumption is that they don't get married. No, a shotgun wedding is when the woman is pregnant, the girl is pregnant, or the woman is pregnant, and the community forces the boy or the man to marry her.
So yeah, magical thinking is when you think you can get the effects without the cause, right?
So somebody who wants to be buff without working out, somebody who wants to be more slender without any diet or exercise, somebody who wants resources without earning them or being of some, like, without voluntarily getting them, thinking it's virtue. So when you want the effect without the cause.
So cynical people want superiority without improvement. They just want to put everyone else down.
They want to give everyone else shortness pills so that they feel taller, right?
I don't know what the Amidabaya dream is, by the way.
Always been grateful for my hqf high quality female telling about you i've told many people about you you are real much appreciated thank you i want money without working well you can get money without working um i mean without working productively you can get charity and things like that.
[1:26:59] For the donors, sorry, I'm getting some requests here from the donors to please share the Peaceful Parenting chapters in text form.
Yes, I will. And also, should we? I think we should.
I think we should. You know what? You guys are, again, I really appreciate you guys being here on this New Year's Eve.
And here is the Peaceful Parenting audiobook feed.
And normally it's for, like, donor heads, but you're here. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
And there is your feed. You can copy and paste this into any podcast, catcher, iTunes, or whatever you're using.
And it will give you, we have 14 chapters now in the Peaceful Parenting book.
We're about halfway through.
It's about 14 chapters. And I will be writing a shorter version when this is all said and done.
I will write a shorter version, which I'll keep to 100 pages or less to just summarize the arguments and the perspectives. perspectives.
So, all right, let me just go and check here.
I promise once I get my credit card situation straightened, I'll join your channel.
Oh, you can't do it from this account. You were a supporter when I was a supporter when you were on YouTube. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Thank you so much.
So I'm V. Thank you so much. Happy New Year. I wish you the best.
Thanks for your content. Thank you for your support. I appreciate that.
[1:28:19] Any recommendations on how to stop unconditionally loving someone who absolutely despises you, but you have a kid together?
What do you mean by unconditionally loving someone? Boy, I was just talking about magical thinking, wanting the effect without the cause.
Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
Love is. Love is what I got for you. Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
So since love has conditions two conditions being the person you love is virtuous and that you are virtuous those are the two conditions so there's no such thing as unconditional love unconditional love would be biological attachment you know like like uh animals have with their offspring right they don't they don't value their offspring for their virtue they value because they're genetically programmed to have dopamine whatever oxytocin baths when they're in the presence of their offspring and so on right you know like every kid you know when when my daughter got ducklings the ducklings would follow us around oh they love us so much it's like no they're just programmed to follow the biggest moving thing around that's all they're just programmed it's not love so so yeah i unconditional love is a blank check that's going to drain your bank account dry on every conceivable level so how do you make it stop.
[1:29:43] I don't know I'm happy to answer how blunt do you want me to be, do you want me to be 1 to 10 how do you get a bad person out of your heart, how do you get a bad person out of your heart 1 to 10 how blunt do you want me to be, Is love our involuntary response to evil if we're evil? No. No.
No, you can work together as evil people, like you can have a criminal gang that works together, the bank robber, the getaway driver, and so on, right?
So they can work together, but there's not love, right?
Will there be a paper copy version of the book? I don't know yet. I don't know that.
[1:30:41] Roundhouse kick, alright alright alright, I donated before the live stream at freedomain.com slash donate freedomain.com slash donate is a good place to donate I think it's got the least overhead if that makes sense and thank you of course for your donation this morning. I appreciate that.
Yes, freedomain.com slash donate is a good place to donate.
I, of course, love the locals platform and it's great. So if that works better for you, that's totally fine with me.
I'm not going to have any complaints about donations as a whole.
Alright. We are going to perform an exorcism. Blunt is cool.
Go to 11. Alright, Gorzak.
Alright.
[1:31:37] You've got a bad person in your life. You've got a bad person in your life.
You've got a vampire in the house. And now, of course, one of the most powerful things about demonic possession, about vampires, all these sorts of monsters, the cool thing about these stories is the one thing they have in common.
You have to invite them in.
[1:32:16] When you claim to love a bad person, all you're doing is avoiding your own corruption.
I mean, you told me to be blunt. I mean, with all love and affection, and, you know, we've all been there, and this is not any kind of high, holy place that I'm coming from.
But when you continue to love a bad person it's because you don't want to confront the corruption within you or around you that had you open the door to the vampire and say come on in, here right here jugular right here come on man sharpen up those pearly whites drain me dry come on in let me make you a key here's the code to the security system you come on in, right why did you do that why did you invite the bad person into your life why did you marry the bad person why did you have a child with the bad person why did you give the bad person a child, why.
[1:33:17] Why?
I had bad people in my life. I'm not, you know, I'm not above this.
I'm telling you from, like, we're both in the trenches. We're both in the trenches.
Why did I have bad people in my life?
Because just about everyone in my life is bad. And I didn't want to see that.
I didn't want to see the trash planet I was living in. I didn't want to challenge that.
I didn't want to try and escape it. I didn't want to look for anything better because I wasn't sure there was anything better out there and I kind of bought into all the propaganda.
I'm not saying everyone in my life was bad. But for the most part, I mean, they're not in my life now.
As soon as I went full philosophy, bye-bye.
[1:34:09] Loving them is pretending to love your own bad decisions and you have to stop loving your own bad decisions if you want to be wise, if you want to be virtuous, if you want to be happy, if you want to be safe and secure. You have to stop loving your own bad decisions.
And if this person is in your life and it was a bad decision to have this person in your life, claiming to love them is just avoiding the reality of the fact that you invited her in.
And there were other quality people around you didn't invite in. You begged her to come.
You took her out. You dated. You did all kinds of funky stuff, all kinds of fun stuff, all kinds of cool stuff.
You slept with her, you bought her clothes, jewelry, a diamond ring, you married her, you gave her a kid.
[1:34:54] It's not your love for her that's the problem. It's your fetish for your own bad decisions.
To dislike her, if she's done wrong, doing bad, whatever, right?
I'm going to accept that, I don't have her side, right? So if she's doing bad...
[1:35:16] That's on you. I mean, the fact that she's doing bad is not on you.
She's her own person with her own sovereign will and free mind.
But the fact that it affects you, that's on you.
The fact that she has control over a child, that's on you, because you gave her the child.
Now, maybe nobody in your life warned you about her. Maybe people in your life did warn you about her, and you didn't listen. That's on you.
Maybe people in your life didn't warn you about her, in which case their lives are dysfunctional, because they're not warning you about a dangerous woman, which means you have other dysfunctional people in your life, and the last thing that dysfunctional people in your life are ever going to do is warn you about some new dysfunctional person. They'll kind of like it.
It's your own bad decisions, that you're attached to, not her.
[1:36:24] Happy New Year, Steph. May Allah light your path. Well, I appreciate the sentiment. Thank you.
When you've been groomed by a bad person, you might feel attached to them, but it's not love. Letting go is a necessary ego death.
No, it's not. I mean, sorry to be annoying. No, no, no. But it's not an ego death fundamentally because that's...
Back to back, they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other.
There was a sort of nonsense poem when I was a kid that made no sense, right?
You know that we can't spot evil entirely on our own.
You can't win a war entirely on your own. You can't hunt difficult prey entirely on your own.
You can't build a house these days entirely on your own.
Again, we can think of some exceptions, but like a modern sort of house, you just can't get all of the expertise, right?
So, if you have bad people in your life, that is a social problem.
That is a social situation.
[1:37:44] If you have a bad woman in your life, that's to do with parents, siblings, friends, extended family, family, everyone and their dog who knows you and claims to care about you, right?
They say, oh, I know you. Your name is Bob, right? I say, your name is Bob.
Actually, no, let's get your real name or your screen name. Gorsek.
Gorsek the Magnificent. All right. Says, hello, Gorsek. I love you, man.
You're a great guy. Yeah, I love you, right? Yay. You're wonderful, right?
[1:38:21] And yet, what do they do?
What do they do? Do they protect you from evil?
Do they protect you from predation? Do they notice evildoers in your midst?
You can't escape this logic. I told you last show, man. Logic solves everything.
Logic fixes everything.
Logic fixes everything.
My watch thinks I'm working out. That's how hard I work for everyone and me. So...
Most people, how many people, let me ask you this, it's sort of the height of your social life, your family life, how many people in your life claimed to care about you?
For me, it's probably about 20 people. Probably about 20 people in my life, in my 20s and early 30s, claimed to be in my life and really care about me.
They just really cared about me. Some of it was I love you, some of it was kind of implicit, we've been friends for decades, or whatever it is, right? it.
So when you were in the height of your social life, and maybe that's now, maybe it was in the past, what was the maximum number of people you've had in your life who claim to care about you?
Tell me that number, please. What was the number of people in your life at the height of your socializing?
Zero? Don't believe it. I don't believe it. You never had parents, the parents never cared about you, you never had an extended family. Come on, people.
[1:39:47] So somebody says about that many, about 50 to 10.
Does that mean 50 to 100? Oh, about, oh, 5 to 10, about 5 to 10, 2 maybe 0.
So 2, 2 people in the maximum people you've ever had in your life who care about you. It's 2.
Ever. Friends, family, extended family, people who you hang hang out with.
At the height before I got married, about 30, friends and family.
All right, now we're cooking with gas, right?
20, 30, maybe 5, 15, 20 to 30, 30, 15 to 45, 15, 10. Right.
Now those, I believe, the self-pitying, I have no one who ever cares.
I just don't believe that.
I think a lot of us here care about you, Steph. I appreciate that, and that's very kind, and I'm obviously pouring heart, mind, and soul out to try and do my best for you guys as well.
So thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Now.
[1:40:40] Let's say 20 right you've got 20 people in your life because that was my number so it's everyone's number because i'm a female no i'm kidding right so um let's say 20 because some people more some people less right so let's say you get involved implicitly 100 people two maybe is now no no no i said maximum not now six okay right fair fair all right so we'll say 20 people maybe it's less maybe it's more whatever it was the first question you asked that got the low numbers oh like now, i thought i said pretty early on that it was in the maximum church school giant extended family yeah people who claim to care about you people who claim to care about you all right.
[1:41:25] This is gonna hurt right this is gonna hurt but logic solves everything logic solves everything it just doesn't solve the pain of what logic solves but i'll tell you right logic solves solves everything.
Oh, sorry, let me get to the actual, the actual guy who had the question.
Max was probably 20. Okay, so the guy who's got the crazy ex, the abusive ex, I assume, had 20 people. Okay, 20 people, so we're right.
So there's 20 people in your life who claim to care about you.
They claim to love you. They claim to have whatever, right?
I mean, they may not say it. Maybe it's just friends of many years.
They wouldn't say, oh, bro, I love you, or maybe if if they're drunk or whatever, but they care about you. All right.
[1:42:09] Now, we can only love virtue if we're virtuous, or love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
Because I've defined that doesn't mean I created that. That's been true for all history, all across time, all across as soon as we develop the capacity for morality, love was our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
Now, if 20 people in your life let you get taken down and half-destroyed by a corrupt and immoral person, there's really only a few possibilities, right?
There's really only a few possibilities that can happen if 20 people in your life let you get taken down by an immoral person.
Either they have no capacity to recognize evil they have no they have no clue who's good who's bad who's crazy who's sane who's right who's wrong who's moral who's immoral who's loving who's a psycho who's kind who's sadistic they have no clue whatsoever about any difference between good and evil right and wrong they are absolutely peak ignorant shark liver amoral, they're barely mammals when it comes to predators they have no capacity, to determine good from evil right from wrong.
[1:43:35] All right? So they can't love you. Because if they can't figure out who's virtuous, they can't love you.
Because love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
Which means that if they can't determine right from wrong, they can't possibly be virtuous themselves, and they can't identify virtue, so they have no capacity to love and no object of love.
The capacity to love is our ability to be virtuous.
If we're virtuous, we have the capacity to love. love, finding somebody to love is finding somebody who's virtuous.
But if they have no idea what virtue is, they can't be virtuous themselves, which means they have no capacity for love.
And they can't find a virtuous person because they can't possibly identify a virtuous person.
It'd be like me saying to you, okay, I want you to grab just one atom, just one atom, just one or two atom, that's it, just grab one.
It could be a nitrogen, helium, whatever, CO2, deadly, right?
I just want you to grab one atom. You're like, I can't grab one atom, it's not possible. They're too small. I can't see them. I can't grab just one.
I can maybe grab a hundred million, but I can't grab one, right?
So, if they have no capacity to, tell good from evil, then the fact that you got taken down by an evil person, all right.
[1:45:03] A blind person can't warn you against dangers that are only visible a deaf person can't warn you against dangers that are only audible so we don't blame them because they can't identify those things right some blind guy up in a apartment building see someone walking into traffic we can't see anyone walking into traffic.
So he can't yell down and say, hey, you're walking into traffic, you can't see it.
So if we say the people around us who fail to protect us from immorality, well, they just can't tell good from evil. Okay, well, then they can't love you.
They can't love themselves. They can't be virtuous. They can't tell the truth because telling the truth is essential.
It's necessary, but not sufficient to be virtuous. And the first virtue is always honesty.
[1:45:57] So then the people who claim to love you are lying. Because they won't even protect you from a beast.
Like imagine if I said I don't even want to say it to me.
So imagine that there's some guy he says, oh my I love my wife so much she's everything to me, I would do anything for my wife she is my world, my life, everything blah blah blah, right?
[1:46:21] And then they go on a safari and his wife, there's some lion stalking them and he sees it and he just moves ahead so to make sure that the lion eats his wife and not him.
Like, can we believe that he would do anything for his wife, he loves his wife, she's his world, if he watches her get stalked and eaten by a lion when he could have done, they could have jumped into the bus, they could have done anything, right?
You can't say that he loves her and also let her be taken down by a predator, in the same way that those around you, friends, family, I don't care who they are, they can't claim to love you and also what you get taken down by a predator, by a predatory human being.
So one possibility is they can't identify evil in any way shape or form right okay then it's not a relationship now there's another possibility which is they can identify evil and they, just let you get taken down why because they're sadistic because they enjoy it because misery loves company because they want to punish you for something so they're cold and they're cruel and they see the lion approaching and they're like, hey, you know what?
You got a sunburn on your leg. You should really rub some ketchup and marinate on that because they know the lion's coming, right?
[1:47:37] So when you say, well, it's ego death, it's like, no, no, no.
If you have been taken down by an evil person, everyone in your life has accountability.
Everyone in your life. You have some accountability for sure. Absolutely.
But everyone else in your life has accountability and either they can't determine evil, In which case, I mean, I don't believe that for a second.
Or they can determine evil, but they're fine with you being subjected to it, right?
So when I was in a bad relationship, and it wasn't a terrible relationship, it wasn't abusive or anything, but it just wasn't, I mean, now that I've been in a great relationship for over 20 years, I know the real difference.
When I was in a mediocre relationship in my 20s, nobody warned me about it. Nobody.
Nobody. Nobody warned me about it. Nobody said, oh, I don't know, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, so either they can't figure out what's not working for me, or they like that it's not working for me. I mean, it's the only possibilities, right?
Either they can't figure out that people are dangerous or they want you to get mauled.
[1:48:31] Now, having people around who can't figure out who the predators are when we live in a predator-filled world is really dangerous.
I mean, would you think of evolving in Africa where, you know, the hyenas or the whatever, the beasts of prey, the lions and tigers and jaguars and panthers and whatever, right? That they can attack you.
Would you let a blind guy guard you at night while you slept, knowing the predators could attack you?
Maybe that you couldn't even smell them like they know enough to approach from, downwind or something like that right so would you would you let a bad guy like would you let a blind guy protect you from predators no because you can't see the predators, and we can't get into a safe world because we live among human beings and human beings are the greatest predators on earth that's why we're the apex we're literally the apex predator we're at the top of the predation chain we are the apex predators and yet we have all these people in our our lives who won't protect us from predation.
[1:49:30] So, that's what you're avoiding. All of that stuff.
All of that stuff. Why didn't anyone warn me that a relationship wasn't great?
Because they wanted me to fail because I was into philosophy.
They wanted to punish me for having questions, for having comments, for having criticisms. Right, son?
I thought you meant number of people who claim to love you and actually did my bad oh sorry I'm sorry if I was unclear if only my IQ would consistently translate directly to rationality, but IQ alone won't do it because you need your gut right you need your second brain there's great wisdom in the gut in the unconscious in the emotions you can't IQ can't do it alone, IQ is just one of the gears you have for getting around in the world.
And when you have a hill, IQ doesn't work.
No virtue in my family of origin, says Dave, and very little in my extended family. Repeated that in my friends for ages, just as I was starting to grow and escape.
Then I married a non-virtuous woman and invited her messed up family to help.
Them all keeping the cat quagmire. Yeah, for sure.
[1:50:43] Oddly, I'm able to pick out red flags for others, but when I'm fooling myself, self my vision is blurred by the matrix of lies i tell myself about the people i wish were virtuous but aren't yeah yeah yeah i mean do you know what the opposite of integrity is i mean you could say corruption but that's the effect millions of brilliant ancestors in your gut yeah for sure, what if a person what if the person can identify predators but as cowardly is that possible possible no it's not possible because for you to say to someone are you happy i'm not sure this relationship is there's something not quite i mean it could be wrong just explore and are you happy and is this the like the best and right so that's not um that's not a huge amount of courage right for the guy to say to his wife being stalked by the lion get on the bus right that that doesn't mean he has to fight the lion he just has to get his wife to safety so it's not a coward it's not not a courage thing.
[1:51:46] What is the opposite of integrity? The opposite of integrity is greed.
[1:51:54] Is greed. The opposite of integrity is greed. So why is it that young men get involved with dysfunctional women?
Why is it that young men get involved with dysfunctional females? They get involved with dysfunctional females because they're greedy for sex and they're greedy for romance and they're greedy for companionship and they're greedy for cuddling whatever it is right they're greedy why is it that people um betray others uh for financial gain um and so on i mean i was in the business world and i saw a lot of uh greed and dysfunction in the business world right and greed and the dysfunction kind of went hand in hand right so when you say well i have all these lies i tell to myself and that's all this you're throwing a lot of fuck into the the whole situation right i mean why are you going to be like they literally call it temptation temptation is for the unearned right temptation is for the unearned you want a relationship, without the requirement of virtue because you're concerned that if you have the requirement of a virtue you'll be alone and i can't guarantee that you won't but i guarantee you that you'll never ever be more alone than when you're in a bad relationship.
So not being in a bad relationship is the least isolation and loneliness you can possibly have.
[1:53:18] Right? Not being in a bad, because you get in a bad relationship, especially if you get married, have kids and so on, that person is in your life for the next 20 years.
Functional people don't, healthy people don't probably want to be around that kind of stuff.
You can find exceptions and all of that, but yeah, it's, you'll never be more lonely than being in a bad relationship. relationship.
We say, oh, but I could end up alone. It's like, well, you're worse than alone.
You're distracted, alienated from yourself, hostile to your own instincts, hostile to your own ethics, unloved, unlovable, unloving.
And having the bad people around you is keeping the good people from actually caring about you.
A false affection is the ultimate antidote to real love.
[1:54:11] So yeah you're avoiding the knowledge the deep knowledge of everyone around you, and you're avoiding the deep knowledge of yourself and your own capacity which we all have to make bad decisions we all have the capacity to make bad decisions and when we have people around us who care about us or claim to care about us they are directly involved in our bad decisions, You can't claim you love someone and then say, I have absolutely nothing to do with your bad decisions.
Because if you love someone, part of what you do is you help them not make bad decisions.
[1:54:56] All right. All day long.
Seeing past relationships with rose-colored glasses. All day long, especially a helpful skill when you're super young, but it's one of those tools that needs to be ditched later on. It can't help you as an adult.
This thought process helped me change the rules I live by as an adult, the old rules of survival strategies for a helpless boy.
Dysfunctional women for men can be sexy and reminds them of home.
Well, I hear what you're saying, and again, I'm sorry to be Mr.
Nitpicker, but it's not necessarily that dysfunctional women are sexy.
It's that dysfunctional women will put forward sex as a way of distracting you from their craziness, right? you know, the hot crazy matrix and so on, right?
So they'll put themselves forward as a sexual, hyper-sexualized manner, they'll put themselves forward with sexual availability, they'll sleep with you early on out of a form of self-contempt or self-hatred.
Do you think that people living in scarcity are more prone to greed, or is it always a moral problem?
Well, the reason that people live in scarcity is because they were prone to to greed in the past, right?
So socialism leads to economic decay, leads to scarcity and hyperinflation and so on because people were greedy for the unearned before.
[1:56:09] It's not that, it's not the greed causes, sorry, it's not the scarcity causes greed, it's the greed causes scarcity.
Greed for the owner and causes scarcity. Like, you know, the typical example being the woman who has sex with you right away has a huge problem with sex, has a huge problem with self-esteem, and you'll end up having no sex over time.
Because she doesn't really like sex, because she has to use it to manipulate men to get to like her, and then you have to lie to her and say, oh, sure.
Sorry, microphone tipped a little there, but we're back.
[1:56:47] Sorry, microphone tipped a little bit there. I'm not sure when that happened, but I'm sure we'll survive.
So yeah, a woman who will have sex with you early will stop having sex with you later, which is why a lot of people end up in these sexless marriages or relationships, because you had to lie to her and say, no, no, no, it's you I care about.
And it's like, no, you're just there for the sex. Let's just be sort of frank about that.
[1:57:09] All right, look at that. We've done ourselves a cozy two hours.
Thank you for your tip, my friend, Gorzak. I appreciate that.
Listen, don't ever tip more than you can afford. Please, please, keep your money for food, for rent, for all kinds of good things, right?
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I'm grateful for it, and thank you so much.
And let's just get, I can't have been that long since my last tip on locals. It can't be.
It's the last day of the year, and I then do my finances.
So if you could help out, as you know, like, I mean, expenses have gone up because I have two employees, so two people I work with now.
So if you could help that out, this is why we got French Revolution. It's why we got the AI.
And remember, listen, I'll give you this, right? I mean, if you're listening to this or watching this later, you should definitely check this out, right? So there's a promo, right?
[1:58:19] Free domain dot locals dot com slash support slash promo all caps upb 2022 i'll put this in the chat window here too so you can sign up and you can see if you like it uh there's incredible stuff in the uh in the uh supporter section uh remastered audio uh um my album review of the wall uh we've got uh the audiobook for peaceful parenting steph bot ai the history of philosophy series that's 22 a great philosopher some of my most amazing work in my opinion uh a whole bunch bunch of Q&As.
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[1:59:10] And you say, I have a promo code, all caps, UPB2022, and you get a month free.
If you sign up for a year, I'll give you two months for free without starving to death that's as uh as kind as i can be while still being responsible of course to the finances so of course i'm talking allegorically i'm far from starving but uh i i appreciate your help and support it uh means the world to me and uh it really does help out with what it is that we're doing so if you're listening to this later free domain dot locals dot com i would very much appreciate that uh support and help and don't forget to check out the free books free domain.com slash books a whole bunch of free books there because lord knows you can't get enough of me just with the live stream so you might as well get the books to check out my novels the god of atheists just poor almost the present the future and i think you can get the pdf of revolutions which is my very first book that i would consider sort of a real real kind of book so have yourself an absolutely gorgeous lovely beautiful and wonderful.
[2:00:12] New Year's, I will talk to you, gosh, when are we? Yeah, a lot of truth abouts and all of that.
Happy New Year tax season stuff, yeah, yeah, no kidding. No kidding, no kidding.
We'll donate directly on your site, yeah, freedomain.com slash donate if you would like to help out that way. Again, very gratefully and humbly appreciated.
And of course, you know, thank you. this is like 2024 is my 19th year of philosophy in the public square i started in 2005.
[2:00:47] 2024 my 19th year or maybe it's my 20th year i can never quite get that one down but it's my 19th year in the public square i probably should really do something uh something on that uh.
[2:01:00] On that day of the actual anniversary yeah we'll figure out something to do that's cool But yeah, 19 years, public philosophy. And look at that, we're still doing new stuff.
We're still doing cool stuff. And we're still answering great questions.
I've done some fantastic call-in shows lately, which maybe we'll throw one out.
Ah you know we'll throw one out tomorrow nobody's gonna listen to a call-in show on new year's eve so um we'll throw some some wild stuff that uh that's that's been working uh i talked to a guy yesterday who's got dreams of murdering his girlfriend that was quite intense and exciting she also have dreams of him murdering her so we had to really unpack that kind of stuff and uh some yeah some really wild call-in shows which we'll get around to but i've been fairly busy on a variety of um tech and administrative stuff oh just the joys of the entrepreneurial life so yeah we will see you guys next year and what is it the third that we're going to do our next one right yeah that's right it's the third so we will see you on the third i of course have got a couple of shows before then and i can afford a lemon thank you that's over on d live i appreciate that as well so have yourselves a wonderful afternoon and evening and happy happy new year and I will talk to you soon. Podcast number one, November 20th, 2005.
Some articles were written before that. Yes, that's right. That's right.
We should do a 20-year anniversary philosophy retreat. Oh, that's a good idea.
[2:02:29] It's a very good idea. All right. Lots of love, everyone. Take care.
I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Happy New Year.
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