0:00 - Beginning of Conversation
2:32 - Social Hysteria and Deception
6:06 - Trump's Potential Second Term and Consequences
9:24 - Anonymity and Feedback in Call-Ins
14:46 - Dealing with Grief and Loss
18:14 - History, JFK Assassination, and Zapruder Film
22:30 - Recorded History and Manipulation of Facts
23:23 - Decision-Making for Future Generations
24:07 - Consideration of Running for Government
26:31 - Consequences of Being Right in Politics
26:44 - The Lack of Apologies
27:44 - Personal Growth and Recognition
29:07 - Political Dilemmas and Deceptions
33:20 - Bridging Divides and Economic Ideals
38:50 - Shifting Focus from Politics to Philosophy
44:57 - Revisiting Past Discussions on Miko System
50:41 - Austrian Economics and Comedic References
53:01 - Retreat Details and Graduating Helplessness
On the 21st of July 2024, during our supporter-only murmur voice podcast session, a listener raises a thought-provoking question about distinguishing the impact of a difficult childhood from personal choices. I stress the importance of acknowledging how a troubled childhood can shape one's adulthood and the significance of honesty with oneself to overcome past challenges. The conversation transitions to a discussion about potential outcomes after a hypothetical re-election of Trump, balancing economic improvements with social conflicts stemming from diverse opinions on the matter. Emphasizing the need to steer clear of individuals promoting harmful ideologies or posing threats, I highlight the importance of setting personal boundaries aligning with one's values.
We delve into the complexities of modern warfare, touching on propaganda, border disputes, and societal unrest. A listener queries about the "How to Find a Girlfriend" series, prompting me to mention plans for future updates. When faced with personal struggles shared by a listener post-miscarriage during a discussion about potential actions in a Trump presidency, I offer empathetic support, stressing the vital process of grieving and healing.
The conversation evolves to discuss introspection, self-deception, and the role of philosophy in fostering self-awareness and making informed decisions. We tackle the challenge of confronting self-deceit despite access to valuable insights, underlining the necessity of introspection and accountability in personal growth. The dialogue spans diverse topics, from individual hardships to geopolitical complexities, with a core focus on inspiring critical thinking, self-reflection, and continuous self-improvement. Encouraging listeners to apply acquired wisdom to their lives, we aim to stimulate introspection, growth, and ethical decision-making through engaging conversations and thought-provoking exchanges.
[0:00] All right, so here we are, 21st of July, 2024, and we've got supporter-only murmur voice. We are only supporters. Now that means you can ask me just about anything, but the answer to the question while you gather your questions, at what point do we begin to recognize whether our current situation is due to a troubled childhood or our own poor choices? Sorry for being lazy earlier. Well, the reason why your troubled childhood is inflicting your present is because you're lying to yourself about your troubled childhood. Now, when you had a troubled childhood, you had to lie to yourself in a way to survive and all of that. But what you do when you become an adult is you take a big, deep breath, a big, deep breath, and you say, great, I don't know, I can stop lying. I can stop lying. I mean, imagine if in order to escape some totalitarian country, you had to pretend that your wife was your sister. Right? For some reason, some legal whatever it is, right? So you had to pretend that your wife was your sister in order to escape some totalitarian country.
[1:16] So what you do is after you escape the totalitarian country, do you still pretend that your wife is your sister? No, that would be weird. That would be weird.
[1:34] So you turn Turn to your wife and you say, well, I'm glad that's done. And you give her a big old meaty, sexy kiss, right? You don't do that with your sister. But you do. So when you're past the peril, you stop lying, right? Does that make sense? So when you're past the peril of your childhood, you tell yourself the truth about your childhood. I get that your parents don't want you to if they were abusive. You say, I get all of that, but you just tell the truth. All right, so let's see here. Do you think things will be better for a short while after Trump gets reelected? I don't know what you mean by better. Economically, yes, there will be some improvements, but socially, there will be a huge amount of conflict.
[2:32] I mean, people are really hysterical about Trump, right? Really, I mean, crazy hysterical. Trump told people to, what was it, Biden the other day He was tweeting about how Trump told people to inject bleach during the time of COVID. Total lie.
[2:49] But it doesn't matter. If deception gets you resources, most people will lie. All right. But socially, the only way things get better in America, and in many places around the world, is if you stop consorting with people who want you dead. If you stop consorting with people who want you enslaved, right? So, there was a, I don't know, whatever it was, a significant portion of Democrats, who wanted people's children taken away if those people didn't want to vaccinate their children, like they were, and they wanted them thrown in concentration camps and forcibly vaccinated and so on. Now, anybody who remains in any kind of social engagement with somebody who wants their their children taken away because i mean they want to violate the nuremberg laws right, of informed consent and never being forced into medical procedures and always having free choice so if people wanted you thrown in the concentration camp forcibly injected, with mystery mrna juice and your children taken away because you disagreed with them I have no clue whatsoever no clue whatsoever as to why.
[4:03] People would be friends with anyone like that like why would you break bread with people like that they wanted your life destroyed because you disagreed with them and wanted to maintain bodily integrity and free choice in your medical care.
[4:20] And now that the dangers of the covid shots have been revealed they actually wanted you to put your life and your health at some risk, for not much benefit right once it Biden just got COVID again right, Steph I asked you before how could NATO and Russia get into a war with nukes around and you responded there are many ways to wage wars could you please expand on that Yeah, I mean, so wars are no longer fought on lines with soldiers, for the most part. I mean, at least with two nuclear armed powers. Wars are fought with propaganda and, you know, weaponized human movement and the crumbling of borders and the destruction of countries to loose populations on the world. So wars are no longer fought with lines and battles and all of that. Any update on the How to Find a Girlfriend series? No, I haven't. Sorry, but I will get to that at some point.
[5:28] All right, let's get here. Other than maybe just maybe closing the border for a while, Trump won't do much. Well, of course, the other thing too is that he's, the stakes have become enormously high in American politics because there's been such aggression against Republicans, from the Biden administration that they fear a blowback, right? And so there's going to be a lot of attacks upon a second Trump presidency should it happen. If he abolishes government funding for education, that could make a real difference.
[6:07] Well, certainly, but then you're going to have to deal with riots, right? When you put a lot of bureaucrats out of work, particularly if there's been a lot of diversity hiring, you're just going to get riots. I mean, it's really tough. All right.
[6:31] My wife had a miscarriage a few months back and now she doesn't want to get pregnant until we pay the ten thousand dollar remaining on the mortgage well i'm i'm very sorry about that of course right miscarriages are tragically common like sometimes third of pregnancies can end in miscarriages so it's very sad and i i really do sympathize but magical thinking is a terrible way to deal with grief, right? Well, I'll get pregnant again when we pay off this. Like, no, you have to mourn the baby who died and deal with that grief. But it's this magical thinking. It's just a way of postponing things, thinking you'll feel better later, but you only feel better when you process the grief, right? Somebody says, I found I've been lying to myself for years. I thought I was being moral when I actually was just doing whatever I I could to escape bad feelings. My conscience is quieter now, but I do feel bad I lied to myself for so long. I'm finding it hard to deal with.
[7:30] Well, this show has made things a problem for people because we could claim before this show, right? Before this show, we could claim that we didn't know, or you could claim that you didn't know. But if you've been around this show for a while, you know, this is why I'm constantly telling people you have to act well. Once you start to get involved in this show, you have to act well. Because if you don't act well, you can't claim the excuse of a lack of knowledge. If you listen to call-in shows and you listen to self-knowledge and real-time relationships, the problem is that there's no plausible deniability once you've been exposed to really great philosophy. So So, this is why I say, this is not a passive conversation. You have to evaluate what I say. Determine whether it's true or false. If it's true, you have to act on it. If you don't act on it, you won't have any excuses later, and that's pretty scolding. This is not something that you just listen to and, oh, that was interesting, and blah, blah, blah. And I've said this, you know, I've said this on countless call-in shows. Like, you've been listening for eight years. Disaster happened three years ago. Why didn't you ask me beforehand? Why are you asking me now that it's all a giant mess? Why didn't you ask me beforehand?
[8:55] So it is hard to deal with. So if you've been around this conversation where, you know, honesty is promoted and good things happen with people who are honest and, you know, the resource is free. Like, call-ins are free. Like, call-ins are free. You say, oh, privacy, privacy. Okay, well, we can disguise your voice. Maybe just maybe we can negotiate to make it donor only, right? It can be pretty anonymous, right?
[9:24] I mean, if you look at Kevin Samuels, there are people with full audio and video, and they're saying, I live in Houston, and here's my whole video, and here's my income, and here's my job, and here are my problems, and here's my personality, and you're just a voice with no geographical identification. And again, we can adjust the voice and all of that. so the problem is if you can get great feedback for free and you continue to.
[9:57] Go down the wrong path to lie to yourself to do bad things to do wrong things things you know are wrong again I.
[10:05] Can't have sympathy for you all I can do is give you the best information available in the most entertaining and engaging fashion for free like I can't do more than that I can't inhabit your brain I can't slither up your spinal cord like some tiny snake right all i can do is give you the best information in the most engaging and entertaining fashion possible for free right the books are free the call-ins are free there's no ads right all i can do is that everything else is on you, I have fulfilled my end of the bargain more than just about anybody else right I have fulfilled in terms of like I'm not writing these dense abstract complicated texts that are really hard to parse and figure out right I'm not writing like Kant's critique of pure reason or the world as will an idea or like I'm not writing this really dense complicated I mean I'm engaging I'm engaging, I'm colloquial, I don't use technical language, I have listened to thousands of people tell me what they desperately need from philosophy, and I provided it in a way that is free, available, engaging, entertaining, interesting, and consumable.
[11:29] So, I have absolutely, and look, if there's more that I can, if there's more that I could do, I'd be very happy to hear it, right?
[11:44] If there's more that I could do, I'd be very happy. I'm not going to do it to the point of self-destruction, because then there's less. I'm aiming for maximum philosophy in the world, right? So, pulling back from politics, when politics was getting increasingly dangerous, and death threats and bomb threats were getting increasingly specific, let's say, well, I mean, I'm aiming for maximum philosophy in the world, which means to the maximum, but without self-destruction. So, I feel, I feel, and I believe, and I think there's lots of empirical evidence that I've done as much as I can do. Right. I've done as much as I can do so if you've been listening for years and you're still lying to yourself, that's entirely on you, and maybe you just have to confront the devil in your heart.
[12:42] It's always possible with you, with me, with everyone. It's always possible that maybe we just like doing wrong. Maybe we just like lying to ourselves. Maybe we just prefer it. Maybe it's just easier. Maybe we're corrupt in that way. It can happen. It does happen on a regular basis, right? So if you find it hard to deal with the fact that you've been listening to this show, consuming what I think is the best philosophy the world has ever seen, with participation with the listeners. I'm not taking all of that mantle myself, especially the call-in shows, which is the most popular thing in what I do. The most popular thing. If you have been listening to the call-in shows, and like, oh, that's really interesting. Oh, that's super interesting. Oh, that guy's got some real problems. Oh, that's really insightful. And you're not applying it to yourself, that's on you. I can't do better than what I'm doing. I'm always aiming to do the best I possibly can. I can't do better than what I'm doing. It's not like I have all of these great insights and call-in shows that I just keep to myself. It's like I put everything into these shows, everything that I've got into these shows.
[13:58] And I'm not sure if you want me to say don't feel bad for lying to yourself when you've had access to the greatest philosophy in the world. Again, not just me, it's the callers and even the people I interview and work with and so on. I'm not saying, ooh, I'm this. So if you're still feeling bad, I'm not sure how I would disagree with you. You're finding it hard to deal with. Well, why not? Why shouldn't you find it hard to deal with? Do you find it hard to deal with like I should just have these bad feelings go away? Why should they go away? That doesn't mean they're there forever, but why fight them? Maybe they're right. Maybe they're right.
[14:47] All right, so let me get to your questions. She is suffering. Oh, the wife of the miscarriage? Yeah, so the bad news is it's a very painful thing to go through. The good news is you can get through it because miscarriage is so common that if we couldn't handle it, we wouldn't have survived as a species. So you can handle it, but it's very tough. Do you have a rough timeline for the events in your novel, the present? And do you think it's possible that Bitcoin and free market policies could replace the current system before it collapsed like that? Well again i'm no expert on this but i would strongly suggest trying to find a way to get citizenship or access to more than one economy as a whole you know i don't know if they call them passport bros or something like that so i would strongly suggest um you can sometimes get it through ancestry you can sometimes get it through other things maybe start a business and you can try and get work or start business visas in other places but i think it's important to be a little bit nimble. And no, Bitcoin and the free market can't replace the current system before it goes through whatever significant wrenching it's going to have to go through. No, I can't. I can't do that in time. Can we get your opinion on this young Trump shooter? Have you seen his pictures wearing makeup and women's clothing?
[16:11] Well, that's not him. I haven't really... I mean, it is a little odd that CNN was live-streaming Trump's speech, which they haven't really done much of with any of his other speeches. I find that kind of odd. I find it odd, of course, that people were calling out to security that there was a guy up there with what looked like a gun for dozens of minutes before anything happened there was a cop who went up there and was the guy waved a gun at him and he came back down they're all on radio they're all on phone i don't i find it odd that how did he get the ladder in right i mean i don't know the answers to any of these things right and i'm no expert on this stuff of course but how did he get the ladder in carrying a ladder is horrible uh as far as i understand it too and there's so many rumors swirling around i can't verify any of this stuff but some of the stuff i've read i was wasn't the young man stopped with a viewfinder that seems kind of important like when he was getting in so i don't i don't know why the most obvious place to shoot someone from was not covered i don't know why there are snipers up there uh who are looking.
[17:26] All over the place but in particular they'd look for there and they they can see him enough to shoot him i don't know why uh apparently the because he wasn't the young man shot right after he shot at president trump in fact shot president trump so i don't know why a sniper would have this guy in his sights and not take the shot does he need approval i don't know that you do i i don't know how this works but i i can't imagine that if you're a sniper protecting a president that you need approval to take a shot at a guy who's about to shoot the president like that that wouldn't make much sense to me. I mean, wouldn't that just be, that's what you do? I mean, you would have that goal ahead of time, right? Oh, you would have that. That's your job, right?
[18:15] Somebody says a past friend who's an optometrist. But so the other interesting thing too is that, so when I was in my teens, I was obviously so desperate to get out of high school early that I took a summer school course with a really crazy teacher, history. And he brought, I found him really boring and I was tired and bored and sometimes would get kind of dozy. He got really mad at me about all of that, which I've talked about before. But he did bring in a guy who did like, I think a whole half day, like four hours on the JFK assassination and the Zapruder film and all of the, you know, the JFK stuff, right? You know, there's this whole giant industry about all of this kind of stuff. And i remember the teacher was like oh that wasn't boring now was it right and you know i thought it was interesting um i i you know so so that's the case right that's the case with one bad video.
[19:17] And i don't know does it have audio i can't even remember right so that's a prudent film with jfk Okay, so that's one bad video. Now we have, you know, high-definition camera angles from every direction. We have cameras covering the whole thing. We've got drones up there. We've got audio. We've got, like, the whole thing is just wall-to-wall, THX, 60 frames a second, 4K video, and people still don't know what the hell happened. And didn't they just say, Stephen Paddock, with the Las Vegas shooting that I covered many years ago, they've just finally closed the whole thing and said, yeah, we can't find a motive.
[19:52] So what's interesting to me, because I studied history, of course, oh, and by the way, I forgot to ask for donations in the show. I know you guys are donors. If there are any additional donations, I would really appreciate it. Because, you know, we're talking about some spicy stuff here, of course. But, um...
[20:09] So, this is the state of history when everything's filmed, right? That's the wild thing about the Trump era, is that, you know, like the fine people hoax, right? That Trump said that neo-Nazis were fine people. He didn't. He said they should be condemned utterly. So, or that Trump, you know, led an insurrection when he said to people to make their voices heard peacefully and so on. Or that you can take over a government by walking through buildings without weapons. Like, I mean, it's, so what's wild is this is history when it's recorded, right? This is history when it's recorded. Thank you for the tip. This is history when it's recorded. What is history like when it's not recorded? Well, it's all got to be a lie. Like, people lie about history that is, the facts, the truth can be beamed into their ass in less than a second, right? So you can, someone who believes in the fine people hooks, right, with Trump, you can send them the actual video, and they can watch it, and all of that can be laid to rest in about 20 seconds.
[21:25] And people still believe it. Or when people say, oh, Trump dumped all of the food into the koi pond, he was just following what the Japanese prime minister had done. Or Trump told people to drink bleach or, you know, whatever, ivermectin is just horse dewormer. Things that are just so easy to solve. And so the wild thing is, this is history with the facts can be sent directly to people in about a second, right? You can just find the full video of Trump's Charlottesville speech. You can just send it to people, right? And in fact, I remember there was a Trump conference where they just played that whole speech, right? And people still believe it, and they still say it. So history is highly manipulated, even when the facts are instantly available to everyone who carries the portal to the truth. People carry this portal to the truth around with them at all times. It's a portal to facts around with them at all times.
[22:31] And they still believe lies so when people can see the truth they still believe lies, now with history you can't even see the truth because there's no video there's no audio like most of human history it's wild so you know now when it's like well what happened here what happened there it's like yeah Yeah, I don't know. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. All right, somebody says, a past friend who's an optometrist said the people who don't take the vaccine should be denied health care. I can't keep company with her and have integrity with myself unless she sincerely apologizes and make restitution. You know, it was really close, man. It was really close. In Canada, right, the trucker's convoy made all the difference, right? It was real close to getting ugly, like seriously ugly.
[23:23] Sometimes I ask myself if I have to explain what I'm deciding to do to my adult daughter in 20 years, will I be happy to tell her or will I regret having to tell her? That can help for sure. I've only been listening to you for a while. I feel I should have found you earlier. I only stumbled across you from your interview with Connor. I've done a call and it is helping. Good. So again, I'm talking more to the people who've been around for longer. If you've been around just more recently, I recognize that and I appreciate that. Then you should give yourself some forgiveness because we live in a culture of falsehood. Culture in general is falsehood, right? Otherwise, it's just facts and truth, right? The important phrase in culture or the important syllable in culture is the first one that it's kind of a cult, right?
[24:08] I'm considering running for local government slash state government in the future. I feel somewhat of an obligation to do so. Is that to save things? Is that to save things?
[24:21] Somebody says, I've been listening since 2011, slowly turned my life around and now doing better than ever. Thanks, Steph. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. That's lovely to hear that it's been 13 years. There is nothing to be excited about in politics now. It's become a zoo that serves to domesticate and corrupt us. Well but i mean i would certainly say see the trump thing was the people actually got a voice right i mean it's pretty wild to see the democrats and it's kind of predictable and this is why i mean i've been sort of thinking about this year right the debate and the election cycle and so on and i'm so glad i'm out of it i really am i mean because you know what would have happened right so if i'd still been in politics i would have pointed out and said oh you know biden seems to have some cognitive issues he seems to be not quite all there and people would be like horrified, appalled, attacks, threats, de-platforming, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so they would have denied it and denied it. And then what happens when people, it's revealed in the interview, right, that he can't particularly function very well, and he's had the nuclear launch codes for years, right? So what happens is you get attacked for telling the truth, and when the truth comes out, nobody circles back, apologizes, and makes restitution. So they're just training people out of telling the truth, right? So, like, all the people, myself included, who said that the Russia collusion conspiracy theory was a hoax, right? I said all of that, and I'm sure that was instrumental in helping me get deplatformed, right?
[25:43] So I look at politics and I think about all the things that I was right about, and it's not that hard to be right when you have basic principles, right? So I said that the Russia collusion conspiracy theory was a hoax, and the General Flynn thing was unjust, and all of that. I said all of that. So you get deplatformed, and it turns out there was nothing there, and it was a hoax. When I talked about the Hunter Biden laptop thing and the Washington Post getting—you couldn't share the article, and were they banned from posting about it or even banned from Twitter? I can't remember now, but that changed the election. And I said that that was unjust and wrong and bad and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, you get deplatformed and it doesn't, like, if you turn out to be right, I mean, what do you get?
[26:31] I mean, obviously you get some satisfaction and so on and it's good to be right, it's better to be right than to be wrong, but you lose, you know, so much and then what?
[26:45] You know, do I get apologies from people who said I was wrong and said I was bad and whatever words they would use, and it turns out I was right? Do people circle back? And I'm not just talking about the platforms or anything like that. I'm not talking about just that. I'm talking about, thank you, Thomas. I'm talking about a wide variety of things, right? I've been right. And what do people do? There's no circling back. They don't care. You still lost everything. There's no apologies. There's no restitution. There's no recovery. There's no return of funds. There's no return of interest. There's no rehabilitation. People just move on like you were never right.
[27:44] Listening for two months, my husband has noticed a marked difference. I do keep finding lies I told myself in the past inside my thinking. Incorrect conclusions. Again, sympathies, we all have them, and they're certainly well praised, right? So, let me just see here. Boom, boom, ba-dum. All right, let's see here. Yeah i mean people believe lies even when the proof is instantly available to them right so i said this on a show a while ago i'll just touch on it briefly here but i don't know if you heard it or not but socrates had a theory according to plato we don't know and now i don't even know what socrates believed because he didn't write anything down that was safe right so socrates said that that evil is just a form of ignorance that if people knew the truth they'd be virtuous And that's been completely disproven by modern technology because now everyone has access to the truth, right? So the lies that were told about me that got me deplatformed were false. And it's easy to share and right, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what happens, right? Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
[29:07] Biden hiding dementia by excuse of long koof which is after effects of the clot shot pfizer begged white house not to use that excuse due to him having six boosters is that right well and he still got covet anyway right.
[29:22] Well and and what is it now um uh the the uh the democrats who are just you know they're all about trump is gonna endanger democracy well i mean they kicked bernie sanders off to make sure Clinton got the 2016 one. And now they're trying to figure, I mean, Biden was voted as the nominee. And now they're just trying to figure out how to get Biden off. Like how can they remove Biden? Who's the will of the people? I mean, it's all too silly, right? So what am I going to say about politics? Like, what am I going to say about politics? People refuse to believe the evidence of their senses. I mean, Biden's cognitive decline was evident for years. He's never the smartest a tool in the shed, but the cognitive decline was evident for years. You know, that shuffle, the thousand-yard stair, the inability to navigate stairs, I mean, it was clear, right? And I'm sure they've got him on all kinds of supplements, let's say, right? So, this is evident for years. So, people are willing to deny the evidence of their senses, right? That the lies told about Trump.
[30:27] Were evident for years. And even the lies that Trump says, right? Trump says, we built most of the wall. It's like, Like, what, you built like 50 miles out of 3,000? So, I mean, Trump is, of course, not particularly honest at times. You know, he's a salesman, and I get all of that. But so people, what are my PowerPoints going to do when people refuse the evidence that's directly in front of them? What?
[30:55] He says, somebody says, I've been quite ambivalent about you being out of politics. On the one hand, I'm glad you're focusing on the personal aspects of philosophy. On the other, I felt very anxious about politics for a long time. Seeing you make very popular videos on it did make me feel better. Yes, because then you feel like the political problems are being sorted by somebody with a big reach and a good communication style. No, that would be the skeleton of the park beat bench meme. Still waiting for my apologies for my deplatforming. Steph, your presentation about Israel and Palestine is still a great intro to learning about that conflict. Thank you. Yeah, there's no restitution. So you get punished because people think that you're wrong. And then when you turn out to be right, there's no restitution. So you're just training people to not tell the truth. Society is just literally training people to not tell the truth. Okay. So you don't get the truth. And then you see what happens, right? Okay. Overall, it's definitely better, I think, because I can actually deal with issues in my life instead of watching this political conflict thinking it's making a difference.
[32:12] I am learning about Orthodox Christianity. In their system, delusion is demonic in origin and demonic influence must be consented to by the human being. Interesting. Yes. You have to, the people's belief in the virtue of the state is the cause of the problems. People's belief in the virtue and necessity of the state is all that's needed for a society to go through these wrenching collapses. Okay. Well, if you believe that If you believe human beings can handle near-infinite power and that violence can lead to virtue, what can I tell you, right? RFK would have won the DNC nomination, do you think? But they hate him more than Trump. Would have been a great fight. Yeah, so RFK is, um, you know, didn't he want people jailed for being skeptical of climate change? Uh, yeah. No, it's, uh, yeah.
[33:20] Thank you for watching. uh to me honestly it would just be i sort of hate to say it would be beneath me or whatever but it would be um a kind of a waste i think of my abilities, to be talking politics at the moment and also so i was trying to bridge right i was trying to bridge people i was trying to bring the left and the right together right as a whole right as i was trying to bring the races together by talking about the controversial stuff i was talking about just trying to get us together in a common platform so we can discuss things without violence so that was really the goal and of course trying to help people on the left you know the the goal i think for a lot of the people who were into the Trump thing, the goal was, well, the economy's going to shit, and unfunded liabilities are insane, like probably well over $200 trillion now, which is many multiples of times of the American economy. So the goal was get a free market guy in there. We reduce government expenditures because jobs are being created, right? You cut the bread tape, you cut the taxes, and you cut the capital gains and jobs are going to start being created.
[34:36] And this was happening. Food stamp usage went down and welfare usage went down and so on. So people were transitioning from costing the government money to making the government money. They were transitioning from welfare to work, to paying taxes, right? Now I know some of the jobs were nonsense and all of that, but that was the general idea. Can we find a way to pull up before we hit the ground, right? Can we get a soft landing, right? Can we transition to a more free market, pocket pulling people off government dependents putting them into taxpayer classes so that we can find a way to avoid a crash right that was the general idea and you know many people worked enormously hard to bring that about at great personal cost right i'm not saying i was instrumental i'm just saying that a lot of people did that and i think that was the general idea, And people decided to not take that path. Which, you know, for those who worked for the Trump stuff, I envy their good conscience in a way, right? So you gave people an out and they chose not to take it. So it's like if there's a drug addict and you say, hey man, you can come sleep at my house, I'll pay for your rehab. Come sleep at my house, get off the streets, I'll pay for your rehab.
[35:55] So then if he spends a night or two at your house and then disappears into the streets again, it's sad, but the relief is having a good conscience, right? That's the relief, isn't it? Oh, good. At least I don't have to feel bad, right?
[36:14] At least I don't have to feel bad. It's why I made peaceful parenting. People said it's too long, so I worked for a month or two to make it shorter, and I did cut it down by more than half. And so now it's free and short. It's as concise as I can make it without losing the essence. So it's free and it's short. So why did I do that? Well, because if people said, well, I want to share it with people, but it's too long.
[36:46] So now it's as short as I can make it. It's a couple hour read at max, and you can get the essence of it with an hour or two. And people spend 20 hours a week or more on media and video games and social media and stuff like that, right? So what I've done is I've made the book as short as humanly possible. It's free. so decades of work and research distilled down into a book that took forever to write and has massive amounts of actual scientific evidence so it's not just moral arguments it's all the scientific facts the rk stuff and the ace stuff like everything right now the rk stuff is touched on but just tangentially but the the other stuff is just there right it's just there, so what that means is that i've i've taken.
[37:39] This is the first time a competent philosopher has taken on the parent-child relationship, other than in passing right i mean there's a couple of kids in gold sculpt and natalie shrugged and john lock talked about it a little bit and but this is the first time a competent moral philosopher has taken on the parent-child relationship first time philosophy has been around for 3 000 years this is the first one i think maybe there's someone else who's done it i've never heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't happen but certainly a prominent public philosopher has taken on the parent-child relationship and and the morality of parenting.
[38:17] And i've made it i've read it as an audiobook uh it's available as in a variety of ebook formats you can read it online there's a shortened version and it's all free and that means means, yeah, the bomb in the brain stuff is in there, absolutely, right? Absolutely. So I've done that so that future parents have no excuse.
[38:50] So somebody says, I'm also fine with Steph leaving politics behind. I only wanted to touch on it enough to help me decide when it's time to run for the hills now. I think when Steph stopped doing politics, I was mad because it forces introspection rather than playing with the notion politics will solve life's problems. You know, the thing is too, here's the funny thing, right? So you think of the amount of time, effort, and energy that goes into people fussing and worrying and writing about and commenting on and describing and reacting to politics.
[39:17] Politics. It is probably the single, politics is probably the single biggest productivity drain in the world. If all of the energy that is poured into analyzing and fussing and worrying and spending the hundreds of billions of dollars or trillions of dollars around the world and the media and like if all of that was turned to parenting, we'd have a paradise in a generation. The opportunity costs of commenting on politics is enormous and I really only recognize that Because I did time before politics. I started True News a couple of years after I started the show, right? And that's what drove the growth, right? So, and I put, you know, tens of thousands of hours into reading about, talking about, interviewing on, analyzing politics and presentations and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, tens of thousands of hours. And I've no regret about it. I'm happy that I did it. It's fine that I did it for me. But the opportunity cost of that look at all the things i've done since i've stopped doing politics right more call-in shows uh i've done i've written two novels another book uh two books really because i count peaceful parenting the short version is two books and the second was in some ways harder than the first and i've just done some really great and wonderful stuff by not doing politics and that's great all right.
[40:30] Somebody says, I find philosophy far more interesting. This conversation is a lot less interesting than your philosophical discussions, I think. Hmm. Interesting. Somebody says, I'm still optimistic. I think Trump has nothing to lose this time and will be much more effective than before. The optimistic scenario is that technology under a much freer market enables so much decentralization that society can advance. For example, with ideologically segregated communities and private education. Have you looked at the US debt clock website? Numbers look horrible. Yeah, they're, I mean, unsustainable, right?
[41:08] I see government as the ring in Lord of the Rings. The ring was too powerful to corrupt anyone who held it. Lord of the Rings, a story about the government. I think I did a whole show about this with Duke Pesta years ago about Lord of the Rings, which you should definitely check it out, fdrpodcast.com. Just do a search for Pesta, P-E-S-T-A. We should probably create a playlist of those, by the way, James. dreams. But Lord of the Rings is a story about sophistry, because it can only influence. It has no direct power. I wish peaceful parenting was required reading in school. Yeah, society would be better off. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think I'm the first. Can you imagine what would happen to some kids if they went home and lectured their parents on peaceful parenting? I think it might might be better as prenatal reading before people have anything to lose. Well, I hope that kids won't do that. But, yeah.
[42:09] Your best work came after you dropped politics. That could be true. Yeah, it could absolutely be true. That's pretty good of politics, though. I've also come to appreciate Steph getting out of politics, but it is nice to talk about the world now and again, right? You know, if people don't want the truth, they can't flourish. I mean, in some ways, they can't survive in any way that I would find meaningful. I like that you decided to touch on politics again. I don't care about the detailed stuff, but I find it important to keep track of the overall state of the world and society. I hope you will keep doing that. Yeah, for sure.
[42:53] Will there be a duck named Duck Pastor to honor Dr. Duke? Pester pester i would appreciate a pester playlist and a general movie review playlist although it's funny because many years ago to james's eternal delight i programmed what i called the philosophization which was a way of doctoring the playlist to get just what you wanted so you could you could get a playlist you'd say i just want shows on history that are more than 90 minutes long or i want shows on politics under 40 minutes or i want call-in shows dealing with family issues that are longer than two hours and you could just create your whole playlist and it would just give you your own playlist that was and wouldn't update with new shows but it would be definitely there as sort of part of the private shows right you like the crusades video with dr pester oh the truth about the crusades was quite quite powerful and quite revelatory to me, that's back when stoian was working with us.
[43:51] I thank you for the tips I really really do appreciate that I thought you were referencing pasta from Africa comedy, does pasta come from Africa I don't understand the comedy there is a movie review RSS feed oh is there oh good we have most of the tools to make custom feeds it needs to be wired up are we resurrecting the philosophization, I doubt it I doubt it boy that's old code now man But yeah, it was good. You could just, you went through a whole wizard and it would just create a feed that you could copy and paste into anything and get all of the shows that you wanted. That was very cool.
[44:29] I need to listen to that Lord of the Rings video you did, yeah. Sort of. James is hedging. Sort of. I was proud of that philosophization. I thought it was some great coding. Do you still have your Miko system work on FDR? I really enjoy those. I only found one or two episodes on free domain. So you're donors, right? So what you need to do is go to premium.freedomain. I'm going to check because I think this is it.
[44:58] Uh oops not if there's a typo premium, yeah you go to freedom you go right now to premium.freedomain.com, and as donors you'll be all set or no don't you have to log in some other way uh just look at the top of the feed at um on freedomain.locals.com, uh the top of the feed has links so if you go to uh premium.freedomain.com, actually let me just let me i'll just do a search here i think that the mico system stuff came back up there but that that that work was kind of destabilizing for a lot of people all right hang on.
[45:49] Uh yes there is 2008 2009 i did a three-part series on the mico system introduction utility and evolution sorry part one is introduction part two is evolution part three is utility and you can get that um just by getting to premium.freedomain.com and you can of course is that one installable as an app? James, can that be installed as an app? Probably not, right? Because you need to get through. So yes, you can go to premium.freedomain.com and you can find some of the older shows. And I think those were published originally on the general stream, but it just caused some people to kind of freak out. So we ended up making it premium as far as I remember. So yeah, it's pretty powerful stuff. So yeah, it's right there.
[46:50] It requires an access code to listen to. Okay, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Can I get the feed for the infamous premium chat from Thursday with the guy who said to Steph to stop his monologue pretty please? Yeah, that's going out in the next day or two. So, the morning when I watched the Twin Towers collapse and saw many in society believe the media who almost instantly blamed a guy in a cave somewhere. Yeah. I went down the 9-11 rabbit hole pretty hard back in the day. Like, really hard back in the day. And it is tough. It is tough. It's tough to know. Oh, episode number? I don't think there are episode numbers for the premium shows. At least I don't see it here.
[47:45] Is this a conversation or a monologue plows onto a monologue thursday chat is planned to go out tomorrow yeah, yeah that was wild so this is a guy who came in he said people who doubt perform better and he was completely certain that he was right it's funny right it's funny well if you don't doubt yourself you don't do well at all i'm absolutely certain that i'm right and i won't answer any of your questions so this is what i mean when i say people say exactly they say exactly what they mean and exactly what they're about right from the very beginning you know my my adrenaline started kicking in right when that guy started talking i knew we were going in for a ride i just knew it my my heart started pounding my adrenaline because i get i get geared up for combat right so i'm having a very interesting pleasant chat about shyness and this guy comes in And, you know, super guns blazing. And I'm like, I go into combat mode right away, right away. And I was happy to do it. And I thought it was a very interesting conversation. He also seemed to think he was shy. Yeah, that, well, he wasn't shy. Yeah, so it was a show on Thursday, and I was, it was a call-in show. Like, people could talk if they wanted.
[49:07] But people didn't have that much to chat about, so I was doing a long speech on shyness and pathology and problems and arrogance and all of that. And I thought it was a very interesting speech. and then this guy just unmuted himself and interrupted nobody else had wanted to talk and then he's like it's just a monologue you just get can anyone else talk that kind of stuff right so yes it was uh it was good gladiator mode that was actually the rudest person i've ever experienced, yes he was he was he was great all right um.
[49:38] Let's see here, I would actually enjoy Steph talking more about the positive political movements in the world like in Argentina and El Salvador but didn't the guy in El Salvador just start talking about price controls, sometimes I get very hopeful could use this insight to temper my excitement I'll confirm that I should start learning Spanish yeah there will be a gold scholarship that will open up for the smart people that's why it's important to stay mobile there will be a place where the smart people go I mean maybe it's the bunkers in New Zealand I don't know right but But yes, yeah, he was extraordinarily rude. Now, here's the funny thing as well, is that he was very rude. And normally, I'm pretty sympathetic. You know, I know that they have a tough childhood, this, that, and the other, right? So normally, I'm pretty sympathetic. And that guy, you know, for better or for worse, I was just like, you know, you're just an asshole. At the end of it, I'm like, I gave him every chance, every opportunity. And I'm just like, eh, you know, you're just an asshole. And sometimes that's just the way it is.
[50:41] Yeah the 9-11 stuff I've talked about this before even if the most paranoid and fever dreamed theories are true it doesn't really the evidence is all destroyed and nobody's going to believe anything, Lichtenstein seems pretty based Hans Adams is an Austrian economist oh that's good we love the Austrian school myself self. All right, I've been going for almost two hours. Any other last questions or comments or little tips? Little tips? You know, be like the guy with leprosy having sex with a prostitute and say, I left a tip. Just, you know, just a little bit. Just a tiny bit. To make up for all that I've lost. All that you can't leave behind. Freedomain.com slash donate is a pretty good place. Anyways, anxiety usually causes my brain to shut down and forget simple things. Right. No, I like the heart-pounding debate stuff. I do. I think it's great. You know, I enjoy it. I like it. It's my combat, right?
[51:50] Last little rant for the end? No, I don't have a lot of energy for last little rant. For the end? I'm sorry to leave you so unsatisfied, my lady, but that's just the way it's going to be. Always leave them wanting more. Well, not always. Not outside the bedroom. I'm on Telegram. It certainly seems to attract a certain type. No, I was glad to have it. It's funny because we tried to get it going on Skype and it didn't work and then we got a great debate out of it, so. Are lots of people responding to the Free Domain Conference retreat survey? Yes, I think. Yeah, I am a tease. Absolutely. Oh, here comes the... Oh, I'm sorry, the rant is, oh dear. Premature elaboration, can't continue. Oh well, here's a cigarette. So, that's because you have to graduate yourself out of helplessness. So when you're a kid, if your parents argue with you, you have no power and you have to submit, right? You have to submit. But you have to gear yourself up to combat where you can win, right? So, I mean, I usually win debates. Obviously not always. Sometimes I'm caught and that's fine. but um you just you have to sort of step yourself up to that right you don't just jump yourself into the prize fight right you got to step yourself up by doing little things here right all right um.
[53:01] Any other last comments questions suggestions uh and i will be posting maybe today maybe tomorrow we'll be posting more details about the location and cost of well i think we'll have a cost to start, right? To make sure we get people locked in and all of that. Remember when Steph did that flat earth debate? Yeah, that was interesting and that was fun and I had a lot of sympathy for that guy. He was very lost and sad and obviously, occasionally I wonder how he's doing now because that was a lot of fun and all of that. And wasn't the guy who was defending J.K. Rowling against the transphobia arguments, he got fired, right? He was just like a calm guy who was curious and he ended up getting fired. Well, people don't want their reason they just because reason interferes with free stuff right reason interferes with free stuff and a lot of people are just into the free stuff so all right all right well thanks everyone so much if you're listening to this later and you're a donor this will just go out to donors if you're listening to this later and you're a donor freedom.com slash donate to help out the show and we'll see uh people's level of interest and support oh the debate against the vegan oh yeah now if you are i had a debate about abortion with a woman that was really ferocious. I actually, I had to get really ferocious with her because she was really insulting. And you can find that on premium.freedomain.com. It was a really powerful debate about abortion and all of that. So you should check that out. It was really, really good.
[54:31] The vegan debate, it hasn't been for a while, so I assume it's old. But have yourselves a wonderful day. Thank you so much for your support. It really does mean the world to me. And I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you.
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