Donor voice chat livestream 15 Jan 2024!
This conversation covers experiences with hyper-narcissistic women, tribal dynamics, parenting growth, and creating future content. Emphasizing boundaries, addressing challenges, and gratitude. Join us on this journey!
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Brief Summary
In this part of the podcast/show, we discuss callers' experiences with hyper-narcissistic women, the dynamics of tribal existence, personal growth in parenting, and the significance of creating content for the future. We emphasize the importance of setting boundaries, adhering to external standards, and addressing eternal human challenges. Expressing gratitude to our listeners, we invite them to join us on this journey.
Chapters
0:00:00 Thank you for your support and kind help.
0:03:25 Recognizing one-sided conversation patterns and setting boundaries.
0:08:37 The dynamics of power and status in relationships
0:12:39 The burnout of empathy in women due to prolonged desirability
0:16:29 Confusion about the concept of having one child in her 20s
0:18:54 Survival Strategies in Tribal Existence
0:20:25 The woman's previous behavior compared to the current conversation
0:27:06 Figuring out the problem with selfish women
0:32:28 Shades of Gray in Life's Choices
0:32:53 The Debate on Exercise and Black-and-White Thinking
0:36:29 The Challenge of Changing Behavior
0:42:22 The realization of breaking up with a narcissistic woman
0:48:59 Challenging the Caller's Approach
0:53:01 Hedonism vs. philosophy: Following absolute standards
0:56:55 Importance of Imposing Objective Standards on Behavior
1:00:25 Thankful for the Conversation and Impose Objective Standards
1:04:17 Aesthetics and Ethics: Writing a Chapter on Aesthetics
1:09:28 Escaping Morality by Denying God's Existence
1:13:06 Self-perception Based on Others' Opinions instead of Reality
1:17:26 Sharing Content and Discussing UPB
1:23:12 Historical Perspective: Slavery and Serfdom in Agriculture
1:26:41 The Question of Morality and Efficiency in Government Actions
1:31:09 The Difference Between Complaining and Problem-Solving
1:33:40 The Pain of Attraction vs. Repetitive Complaints
1:37:00 Greater Impact on Future with Philosophy
Long Summary
In this part of the podcast/show, I am grateful for the support of the listeners and I encourage them to provide feedback. Caller 1 shares their experience with hyper-narcissistic women and their struggles in setting boundaries. They also offer insights on status-driven interactions and the difficulties in establishing genuine connections. Another caller brings up the dynamics of tribal existence and its impact on relationships and childbearing, which I find hard to grasp. Caller 1 reflects on their pattern of choosing narcissistic partners and how their upbringing plays a role in influencing this behavior.
Stefan and I engage in a discussion on personal growth and discipline in parenting. We delve into the caller's resistance to seeking help and highlight the importance of adhering to external standards. We emphasize the role of self-discipline and the avoidance of selfishness in both philosophy and parenting.
Moving forward, I discuss the significance of creating content for the future and its potential impact on future generations. Using the timeless novels of Mark Twain as an example, I explain how content that addresses eternal human challenges is what holds long-term value. Despite having a smaller current audience, shows that touch on the human condition, relationships, and personal virtues carry much greater relevance and impact.
Expressing my gratitude to the listeners for their support, I invite them to join me again on this journey. I stress that while philosophy may not directly change the world, it has the capacity to mold the minds of the future. To conclude, I express my gratitude once again and provide a link for those who wish to donate to the show.
Tags
podcast, show, callers, experiences, hyper-narcissistic women, dynamics, tribal existence, personal growth, parenting, significance, creating content, future, importance, setting boundaries, external standards, eternal human challenges, gratitude, listeners, journey
Transcript
Stefan:
[0:00] All right. Thanks, everyone. Nice to have you by this afternoon.
Thank you for your support and kind help.
[0:03] I have a little bit of time this after.
And of course, I just wanted to say, since this is mostly a donor session, thank you, of course, enormously for your support and very kind help to keep the show going and keep us all in vittles and heating.
Certainly pretty important this time of year. So I just wanted to say thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much for your very kind support of the show.
And, of course, I'm here to serve you as best I can, have philosophy serve you as best I can.
If there's anything I can do better or different, I'm absolutely thrilled to do it.
And if there's anything that you find woefully missing or anything you find woefully excessive, I'm happy to have feedback.
If you want to draw a bone about philosophy, personal issues, whatever is on your mind, I'm thrilled for that.
And I'm not sure that you all need to hear more of me other than perhaps in response to what it is that you have to say.
So all you have to do is unmute and give me a holler, and I am absolutely thrilled to hear whatever's on your mind.
Caller 1:
[1:08] I just wanted to say that thank you very much.
A couple days ago, I had the experience of, how shall I say this, Seeing the dynamic that I typically experience with a relationship starting up and being able to kind of short-circuit it, that I tend to be drawn to.
I've realized now, thanks to a couple of recent podcasts you've put up, that I'm attracted to hyper-narcissistic women, almost certainly due to my…
Stefan:
[1:50] Wow, not just narcissistic, but hyper-narcissistic. How do you differentiate?
Caller 1:
[1:55] Well, so I guess you could say that, as you actually said in the podcast, we all have some degree of narcissism inherent to us. Otherwise, we would die. You know what I mean?
So I guess by saying hyper narcissistic, I'm trying to say narcissistic to an abusive degree. You know what I mean?
Stefan:
[2:21] So yeah i mean i i'm not a sort of kantian person who doesn't have any self-interest in what he does but of course your self-interest should include the happiness of other people and if it doesn't that seems pretty narcissistic but sorry go ahead sure.
Caller 1:
[2:35] Sure yeah so um anyways i um i was able to kind of um i was having a conversation uh with with this woman and she was let's say going on about something that was…
Talking about kind of new agey stuff and uh.
Stefan:
[2:54] Like what like what do you mean.
Caller 1:
[2:55] Oh so she's talking about you know the vibration of the earth and um about how uh, uh let's say ah gee what's she talking about some some nutritional something or other, um and it was the what i'm trying to communicate what i'm going on about this because Because she was going on about it, and I was realizing that it was a really one-sided thing.
Recognizing one-sided conversation patterns and setting boundaries.
[3:25] That it was a kind of pattern in her talking that I felt very comfortable with, and I felt myself being drawn into, and just kind of like slipping into a warm bath, you know, kind of mentally like, ah, I'm comfortable with this. a woman talking about a warm roman.
Stefan:
[3:43] Birth that ends up full of blood from your veins or something.
Caller 1:
[3:47] Like that hopefully a little more relaxing than that but uh you.
Stefan:
[3:53] Know i hear in the long run that's actually very relaxing but anyway go on.
Caller 1:
[3:56] Yeah perhaps um yeah so uh uh that that it uh she was going on about there wasn't any in there for for my thoughts and my opinion on the matter It wasn't, it wasn't a, she wasn't talking because she was curious about what my thoughts and wanted to kind of have that interplay, you know, that a good conversation is.
It was about putting out what she thought and seeing if I was the kind of guy who would just kind of sit back and smile and entertain that, you know, kind of stroke her ego, that kind of thing.
Right. Which typically I will. will.
I'm like a tuning fork, you know, where like, I don't have a deep knowledge about this kind of thing, but I understand that if a tuning fork is, you know, tuned to a certain note, that if it experiences that note, it'll start vibrating.
[4:53] Um uh continuing on if i'm if i'm correct about that um i'm like psychologically built, um due to my upbringing that i when i encounter this kind of personality i just um it's almost like my the the rational part of my brain just starts to to just melt and i start becoming like sexual and start becoming you know totally like in that mode with this with this with this, And I noticed that and I was able to kind of step back and say, holy crap, this is happening, you know, and be able to kind of have boundaries and able to kind of stop and notice myself and notice her, notice kind of what was going on there.
Um and yeah and so i just wanted to say it was you know thanks to recent podcasts that that you've put up that i was able to kind of stop and and also thanks to to the callers who had been um very giving and um very um kind of open about about their experiences um that i was able to kind of take a look at that and see how it reflected with mine and and luckily well luckily whatever and have that degree of self-awareness to to have my radar out and see it this time you know yeah.
Stefan:
[6:16] I mean when you meet new people in this kind of way it's always something i sort of scan for is that are they curious or are they interested in power are they interested in status or are they interested in people because one of the things that happens when you're with somebody somebody who's higher status is they will try to do, either they'll try to do all the talking or they will appear to be avoidant of you.
Like, you know, the cocktail eyes are looking around the room, seeing if there's someone better to talk to and kind of half putting you down just by being in that mindset, or they just talk about themselves.
And I don't know if you've ever been in a situation with a boss where I had this boss, he just kept telling the same stories over and and over again.
And I literally would say, no, no, no, yeah, you already told me, and he would just keep going.
And he didn't actually have to…
[7:08] He didn't have to put quality into the conversation because he was the boss.
So he was so used to everyone just nodding and smiling and laughing and going along with that.
And so if it's not reciprocal, then they're interested in status, power, hierarchy.
And a lot of women, this happens for men as well, but I think it's a bit more true for women.
But a lot of women will either be kind of cold and distant by which they're trying to signal that they're of high value.
Value right friend friendly girls are generally considered to be lower value the only reason they can afford to be friendly is they're not stimulating much male desire but if you're really high a high value super hot girl then of course you have to have resting bitch face because you're otherwise you're just going to generate you're going to generate so much male lust and male attention you're going to end up with all these stalkers so unfriendliness then becomes a a mark of high status, not inquiring about the other person is also a mark of high status.
Like, if the king has a cold, all of the courtiers graciously ask, oh, how is your cold, your majesty? How are you feeling today, right?
But if, you know, if the servant of the king has a cold, the king doesn't say, oh, my servant, how is your cold?
You know, so this mutual interest is then a sign of lower status, or at least not much higher status. So most people these days are just kind of imitating higher status in the hope of transmitting the perception of value.
The dynamics of power and status in relationships
[8:37] And it's really, it's tragic because you just don't get to know anyone.
All you do is try and lord it over people in the hopes that they'll bear down before you.
Caller 1:
[8:44] A couple of thoughts about that. I think that that dynamic, I do think that that is clearly in play with a lot of these situations.
In this particular situation, my, at least, you know, how it hit me was that she was testing the waters with me.
It wasn't necessarily so much about status as it was about seeing if I was the kind of guy she thought I was.
And I was that kind of tuning fork I'm talking about that she could kind of be this narcissistic person and I was going to fall into my role you know fall into the role of of being groomed by this this single mom of being groomed into being um the person who will service the narcissistic in a partner and kind of be there and be there they're they're whatever it's called you know know they're they're they're the other half of that equation um i have seen that uh status thing you're talking about also um with people where it's almost like the subject matter doesn't even matter it doesn't even they could be talking about the weather they could be talking about whether or not you know the wall over there is really colored orange or blue the point is that they're talking and they are expecting that everyone is listening with rapt you know kind of I'm kind of.
[10:05] Uh demeanor and to have someone stop them or halt them or whatever would be kind of unthinkable right even though everyone's kind of hurt like like you're saying everyone's kind of hurt and it's sort of.
Stefan:
[10:17] Well it it it short circuits humility and empathy for women to be too long in the status of free market sexual attraction as a free market sexual attraction is only supposed to be six to twelve months of a woman's life when she's very young right so she turns 18 or you know whatever whatever, debutante ball.
She's supposed to be married off within six to 12 months.
And in terms of men vying for her hand, the men she's supposed to choose from and so on, that's a very heady and exciting time for a woman and all-consuming.
Like we say, oh, women, they're kind of neurotic. And it's like, well, yeah, because they have to figure out on relatively little information, the future of their lives with who they marry, assuming they're not sort of in a arranged marriage or some sort of aristocratic thing.
So women are only supposed to spend six months, maybe at the outside a year, before getting married, where men are vying for their attention and singing songs and writing poems and whatever they're doing to woo the woman.
That's supposed to be a very, very short time frame in life.
[11:22] And then it's done, right? Because then you're married, and you're pregnant, and you're having babies, and your youthful beauty and all of that sort of stuff is burned up on the altar of more generations.
Generations so this flower of youth and and excitement of being pursued and vied after and considered massively valuable and so on well that's that's supposed to be a very very short time frame in a woman's life but now and so nature has kind of designed women to be very excited by that and to love that because they want to be out there in the marketplace to be evaluated and be pursued is very exciting for women because nature's programmed them that way so that they get out out there in the marketplace risk rejection or choosing the wrong guy or whatever but now of course with the modern world it just goes on and on and on if women wanted to they don't settle down if they don't get married and have kids which again happened very shortly after fertility for a lot of women throughout most of history so now women are taking this i'm so desirable men are vying for me and instead of it being six months maximum 12 months it's you know five years 10 10 years, 15 years, you know, 20 to 38, 38, you're starting to hit the wall and so on.
The burnout of empathy in women due to prolonged desirability
[12:39] So you're getting 20 years, you know, you're getting, you know, 20 to 40 times more of that dopamine than you were designed to get.
And I think it just, it burns women out. It just burns out their empathy.
Caller 1:
[12:51] You know, I, I wanted to get your opinion about this, this, um, kind of, you know, thesis I got about the nature of that, that I have the, the sense that it's more cyclical in nature rather than a kind of a one-shot in a woman's life or a person's life.
That it seems like what you're describing, which I think there's a lot of validity to, it seems like that's most applicable to kind of a more modern, by which I mean the last, let's say, you know, 8,000 years, more of the modern existence of humans.
Humans and that from kind of looking at things from a more ancient kind of tribal existence it seems to me like like we're built for you know these you've heard of this this this these groups of of i guess the ideal number is like 120 something or whatever um you know this this study of how many how many faces and how many how many people's um kind of emotions we can keep track of and all this kind of stuff.
And then that given that to be the case, if you accept that as basically right enough to kind of continue, if we're built for a tribal existence, if human beings have been around in this form for, let's say, the last 250,000 odd years or so, and the vast majority of that time has been spent in these tribal groups.
[14:13] That stands to reason that most of our makeup is going to be optimized for that.
Not necessarily optimized for this kind of more vastly existence.
And that if that's the case, people will have been growing up in these cohorts of, you know, 10 or 12 kids that are all kind of growing up in the same group.
They will have been kind of sexually playful with one another and kind of feeling feeling the waters and that kind of thing with this group that's growing up together.
And there's also this kind of so-called seven-year-it type thing going on.
It's a classic thing that happens with women, with relationships in general. Yeah.
Bottom line is, it seems like, to me, that things are optimized for women having one kid per, until they can settle down in, like, let's say the late 30s or something like that, with ideally, like, the… Sorry.
Stefan:
[15:24] Sorry. They have one kid per man until they can settle down in their late 30s? I don't follow.
Caller 1:
[15:28] Yeah, right, right. This is kind of a little off from what one might expect, right? Right. Um, let me back up.
Stefan:
[15:35] No.
Caller 1:
[15:35] No.
Stefan:
[15:35] I'm not saying I disagree. I just, I genuinely don't understand what you're saying. They have one kid with one guy and then settled down in their late thirties. I don't. Yeah.
Caller 1:
[15:43] You know, thank, thank you. Thank you for, for, for that. Um, one of the kinds of things this is also based on is the idea that. Wait, wait.
Stefan:
[15:51] What it's based on. I still don't understand what you mean when you say.
Yeah. Give me, give me how this works in a practical way.
A woman's 15, she's getting, And, you know, she's able to have kids and they don't want to waste time. So how does it work?
Caller 1:
[16:05] So first of all, when I say settle down, right, I'm not talking about, you know, settling down in like a house and you have a kind of your family kind of thing.
My sense of the way a tribal existence works and what settling down means isn't, I don't know if you can use the right word when I say settle down, right? Right.
I think that.
Confusion about the concept of having one child in her 20s
Stefan:
[16:29] Sorry, forget the settling down. What do you even mean by having one kid in her 20s?
I mean, you had to have a whack load of kids just to maintain the tribal survivability because you got 50 percent infant mortality.
Right. Do you mean one kid that lives or because then you've got a 50 percent like you've got a replacement rate of one, which is not.
Caller 1:
[16:46] Yeah. OK, let's see here. So what am I saying here? Right.
Let me back up for a.
Stefan:
[16:54] Second if you don't know that's fine we can move on if it was just a misstatement i don't want to pick apart something that might have been a misstatement but this didn't make much sense to me.
Caller 1:
[17:04] So let me make sure I get your question. You're asking about whether or not she's having one kid with a guy and then attempting to have one kid, like one kid that survives or something like that. Please help me understand.
Stefan:
[17:19] What are you asking me for? You made a statement about she has one kid and then settles down in her late 30s, and I didn't understand that. So if you could explain that, that's all I'm asking.
Caller 1:
[17:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah. that it would be one kid per guy that she's together, right?
And that it's a cycle of having these relationships that tend to last about six years or so.
And that it would be, you know, if let's say she starts having kids, 16 or 17-ish, right?
And then doing the math, oh, she has, let's say, five kids. You've got about 30, 46. Well, okay, so probably more like four kids.
And then the cycle ends on the fourth kid, and she stays together with this guy kind of through her later years, right?
Stefan:
[18:07] But why would she do that?
I mean, if she has a guy who's a good provider, she gets along with, they're emotionally and sexually compatible or whatever, why wouldn't she just keep having kids with that one guy? Why would she wait seven years?
Which, remember, of course, waiting seven years would be to deny him intercourse, because there's no birth control, really, right? Right.
And so she's with a guy, she has a kid and then what? She doesn't have intercourse.
I think I don't follow. I mean, wouldn't you just want the pair bonding to continue and the intercourse access for both to continue and just keep having kids with the same guy?
Caller 1:
[18:43] Again, I don't have a time machine. I don't know exactly what's going on back there. Right. But again, this is just kind of a playing around thing.
Survival Strategies in Tribal Existence
[18:54] This assumes that the tribal existence is, right, that the guys are off, they're going off and they're hunting, they're going off and, you know, having adventures and scouting out the land or whatever, and they're not all coming back, right?
A lot of these guys are getting killed by lions or cave bears or what have you, right?
And so you can't have all your eggs in one basket as a woman.
[19:21] That furthermore, to kind of actually go into that a little more deeply, having a kid per man, if you've got, let's say, you're growing up with eight other guys and some of them are more capable as hunters, some are less, right?
If you've got three different kids by three different really capable hunters who are going out there and getting the beat coming back, I know with myself, when I look back at my very first girlfriend back when I was 17, even now today, if she had a kid by me and a kid by this other guy and a kid by that other guy, and I came back with half of a bison ass, and I'm kind of divvying it up among the different women or something, I'd give her a little.
Because I still have that kind of connection.
And I look at that and I kind of think, why?
The woman's previous behavior compared to the current conversation
[20:25] How would that serve the tribe? How would that kind of fit into this picture?
Stefan:
[20:29] Okay, I got to interrupt you for a second here, because weren't you complaining earlier that the woman was just talking on and on about her own mystical theories and not allowing any input?
Caller 1:
[20:38] Yes, I sure was. Yeah, yeah.
Stefan:
[20:39] Does that strike you as at all familiar to what you're doing to me right now, just out of curiosity?
Caller 1:
[20:46] I had the impression that you were asking questions. I was talking to you.
Stefan:
[20:52] No, no, I'm asking questions. You're still not really answering them. you're saying oh no no it's only theoretical or whatever it is right so you're talking a lot about like it's kind of interesting to me right because everything we're susceptible to we're susceptible to reproducing right so if you're susceptible to being bullied you're susceptible to being a bully if you're susceptible to someone talking on and on about their own mystical theories without, any uh feedback you if you're susceptible to that then you're also capable of manifesting that and to me it's just pretty wild that i appreciate this is not a bad thing at all but to me it's pretty wild that you're saying yeah there was this woman who's just talking about her own theories and didn't really have any input and you know just kept you know moving the goalposts because you know i'm asking for details and you you're like you're asking me that back like what are you asking about and then it's like oh no this is only theoretical and there's no proof and i don't have a time machine i don't know what it was like back then and and it's like then what the hell are we talking about you're doing you're doing you're doing to me what the girl did to you which is It's pretty interesting, right?
Caller 1:
[21:52] Oh, there's definitely a piece of me that's like that. 100%. Yeah, yeah.
Stefan:
[21:55] Okay, so let's go back. Let's go back. What is the problem that you have?
I assume you're not married. You're not a dad. You're not settled down. Is that right?
Caller 1:
[22:06] No. I actually have a dad.
Stefan:
[22:08] Hang on. So do you want to be?
Caller 1:
[22:12] Do I want to be which of these things?
Stefan:
[22:16] Settle down? A dad? I mean, a family man? Married?
Caller 1:
[22:18] Yeah, yeah. I have three children.
Stefan:
[22:21] Oh, you have three children already?
Caller 1:
[22:23] Mm-hmm. That's correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I.
Stefan:
[22:25] Do. And where's the mom?
Caller 1:
[22:30] Two different moms. And I'm, well, broken up with both of them.
Stefan:
[22:35] Okay so this is a self-serving theory about the past that is attempting to justify your own dating and mating decisions isn't it yeah.
Caller 1:
[22:44] No yeah totally it's okay.
Stefan:
[22:46] So this is this is not this is not anything empirical or scientific or abstract or right this is just like what anthropological stuff can i pull out of my ass to justify my own dating and mating behavior Am I wrong?
Caller 1:
[23:01] No, no, no. I heard that that's piece of it. That is absolutely piece of it. Okay.
Stefan:
[23:06] So what happened with these women that you've got three kids by two different women and you've broken up with both of them?
Caller 1:
[23:15] Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, yeah. Let me stop for a second and say, I don't think this is black and white.
I don't think that putting this, I'm just putting this forward as a justification for, you know, what's happened to me in my life and what I've done in my life, right?
I think that that is part of the truth. And the other part of the truth is… No.
Stefan:
[23:38] But you're not talking to me, though, which is why it's so hard to get any input in what you're saying, because you're mostly just talking to yourself with someone else in the room, so to speak.
So what happened with these women?
Why are you, I guess, a single dad? Do you share custody with the women?
Caller 1:
[24:02] Well, yeah. So with the two older kids, with my ex from a decade and a half ago, I have a really bad relationship with her. Used to be good.
And the relationship is spotty at best with the kids. um with my more recent um relation the relationship is better and my daughter is well she's in the other room right now um i'm.
Stefan:
[24:28] Sorry you cut out there so you know she's what.
Caller 1:
[24:30] Oh um my my daughter with my younger daughter who's now nine she's she's over in the other right now so yeah.
Stefan:
[24:38] Okay got it got it.
Caller 1:
[24:39] Yeah we um we've.
Stefan:
[24:42] Got i mean we got a bunch of people who are listening and talking and And we're trying to find something that's of value to a general population.
Caller 1:
[24:48] Thank you, yeah.
Stefan:
[24:51] So what happened, do you think, with these women?
Or, you know, let's say your kids get old enough, you say the relationship with the first two is kind of spotty.
I mean, at some point they're going to ask what happened, why you weren't with their moms or what happened and all.
And what would you say, let's say they're, I don't know, 15 years old or 14 years old, they're asking these questions. and what would you say.
Caller 1:
[25:17] Well I've asked myself that question a number of times what would I say, so again it's not black and white it's not just one thing but the biggies are that I, it's like I fell into a place of kind of what I was talking about initially of servicing saying this narcissistic personality that, satisfied a need that I had inside to satisfy my mom's need to have a little man there.
We had this emotionally incestuous relationship with my mom.
And that that I was sometimes better and sometimes worse at fighting it off and being a good partner or being this, like I was saying, someone who would kind of service this narcissistic personality.
And then with the first woman, after a while, I just kind of had enough.
And I grew out of it and I pushed back.
And when I started pushing back— So.
Stefan:
[26:40] Dad, when did you—sorry to interrupt. Dad, when did you first figure out that you had this pattern of choosing and serving selfish women?
Caller 1:
[26:54] So I'm not sure. I don't know when the, I don't know when the first time is. Um.
Stefan:
[26:59] Well, dad, that's not an answer. I mean, was it yesterday? Was it 10 years ago?
I mean, I'm not asking for the date.
Figuring out the problem with selfish women
[27:06] 4 a.m. On the September the 29th. Right.
Caller 1:
[27:21] When was the first time, you know, It dawned on me slowly, probably in my late teens.
No, that's not true. Even as I'm saying that, that's not true. I think probably my 20s.
In my mid-20s, I realized…
Stefan:
[27:41] And I don't know how old you are, but how long ago was that?
Caller 1:
[27:45] Oh, yeah. I'm early 50s myself. So that was…
Stefan:
[27:49] That's almost 30 years ago.
Caller 1:
[27:52] Correct. Yeah, yeah.
Stefan:
[27:53] All right. Okay. So how long, hang on, how long after you figured out this pattern did you continue to repeat it?
I guess my question is, did knowing that pattern change things?
Or how long did it take to change things once you knew that pattern in your early 20s?
Caller 1:
[28:10] I'm still changing right now to this day you know I'm still working on it's an ongoing process I'm getting better at it hopefully but, yeah does that answer your question please please please well.
Stefan:
[28:28] Because I have memories dad if you correcting me if you telling me how to live and what to do as a parent right, And I don't remember you saying, you know, you can start working on this now, but you'll still be 30 years later, you'll still be trying to sort it out.
It was like, you know, improve your behavior now and do the right thing now and, you know, don't hit, don't steal or whatever it is, right?
I mean, so I'm trying to sort of figure out why you were kind of much more strict with me when I was a kid than you are with yourself, where it's kind of loosey-goosey, nothing's black and white, and you can be working on something for 30 plus years and still not be done.
Caller 1:
[29:07] Well okay so two pieces of that right number one is that i do believe actually that uh i'm going to be working on this to some degree until i'm dead until i'm in the grave you know um i believe that that's probably to some degree going to be the case with with you it's what i've seen with most people is that a problem a problem isn't done it's not just simply like solved and we walk on, on to the next problem or something like that.
This is a problem which is, for better or worse, it's kind of written into my DNA, right?
And that if I think it's done, if I think I've quote-unquote solved it, then it comes back and kicks me in the butt in a time of weakness or what have you, right?
So that's thing number one, is that I don't think a problem is solved and I kind of move on. I think it's something which is like a bad leg.
It's a limp I'm going to have my whole life And that's something I need to work on.
And then the other piece, please, please tell me again. There was another piece to your question I wanted to answer. Can you remember the question?
Stefan:
[30:10] Well, I mean, you're just kind of confirming the first part of my question.
So my question is, you corrected me as a child, like you're my dad, right? You corrected me, told me, do this, don't do that.
And you gave me some discipline as a kid.
Caller 1:
[30:23] Yes. But.
Stefan:
[30:24] Now I find out that in the central issue or the central dysfunction in your life, nothing's black and white. You can't really solve things that's written into your DNA.
So you tried to change my behavior in a fairly absolute way when I was a kid.
But for yourself, it's all kind of loosey-goosey and forgiveness and accept that there's going to be very little, if any, change that's written into your DNA.
I'm just trying to sort of square that circle, if that makes sense.
Caller 1:
[30:46] That's true.
That's not my recollection of things. My recollection is that actually I at least tried very hard to not put forth things like you…
The way you were characterizing it, you know, that, that like an absolute, you need to do this.
Like, um, you're a screw up if you, if you get this wrong or something like that, that it's a process. It's a process of, of working on yourself, you know?
Um, and if I didn't get that across to you at that point, I apologize.
I want to get it across. Okay.
Stefan:
[31:20] So sorry to just jump out of the role play. So you didn't discipline your kids as far as any of that goes.
You didn't say you have to study, you have to do your homework, you have to go to school, you have to not hit other kids, you have to respect property. You didn't do those kinds of standards with your kids?
Caller 1:
[31:35] No, I did, with a caveat there.
I mean, I try to make it clear that it's a decision. You know?
That, I mean, it's not that you have to do this. It's that if you don't do it, this is what's going to happen.
That if you choose to have this bad behavior, then these are the consequences that are going to happen.
Does that make sense do you understand what i'm saying.
Stefan:
[32:03] Uh yeah i mean to some somewhat so you would allow them to not go to school they just had to accept the consequences of not going to school is that is that right well.
Caller 1:
[32:11] Actually okay so this is this is they.
Stefan:
[32:14] Could they could they didn't have to go to the dentist they didn't have to eat any good food they didn't have to get any exercise they just would then just have to accept the consequences is that right Right.
Shades of Gray in Life's Choices
Caller 1:
[32:28] It's not black and white that way.
Stefan:
[32:31] You keep saying that like that means anything. Right.
I mean, I don't know what that I mean. I don't even know what that means.
It's not black and white.
I mean, whether your kids go to whether your kids are in school or not, that's black and white.
Whether they go to see the dentist or not, that's black and white.
Whether they eat vegetables or not, that's black or white. Whether they get enough exercise or not, that's black and white, isn't it?
The Debate on Exercise and Black-and-White Thinking
Caller 1:
[32:53] No, I actually, no. Like, whether or not they get enough exercise, I don't necessarily think that's black and white. Oh.
Stefan:
[32:59] Yeah, it is. No, it absolutely is. No, it absolutely is. I mean, you can say that there's extremes, like they totally sit on the couch or you're making them run up and down flights of stairs and do burpees for 18 hours a day.
But, yeah, whether they get enough exercise, yeah, 30 to 60 minutes a day, that's black and white.
Caller 1:
[33:17] Well, okay, it's black and white that you can measure that. Black and white, did they get 30 minutes, yes or no? Right.
But did they get enough exercise? Like, I don't think that that's black.
Stefan:
[33:27] Well, no, that's what is. That is technically what is enough exercise as far as I understand it.
So, but I mean, they went to the dentist. They obviously ate enough food to do well. Did they have bedtime?
So did they get to stay up as late as they wanted and just deal with the consequences the next day?
Caller 1:
[33:42] Oh, yeah. It's an interesting subject. So this is with my earlier wife, right? With the older kids.
We experimented with what's called unschooled.
Which is putting a label on almost fucking doing nothing for the kids, right?
Just letting things be like bedlam almost for them, right?
This is after going to, you know, a couple of different conferences and a degree of research in the matter.
And, yeah, that did not work out. Go reach out for us.
Stefan:
[34:17] Sorry, why not? And now we're into black and white territory.
Now it's black and white. It just didn't work out, right?
See, when it's your actions, when it's your things in judgment upon you, nothing's black and white.
But in this one, boy, it's just black and white. It just didn't work.
So what happened that was bad?
Caller 1:
[34:32] Head i'm black and whiting it for on a conversational level so we can continue on you know what i mean um there were gray areas too like there were pieces which i think did work pieces which did so um what did.
[34:48] What ended up happening there was was everyone's okay we experimented with allowing them to eat whatever they wanted essentially experimented with allowing them to to sleep whenever they They wanted to get up, watch as much TV as they wanted, et cetera.
And it turned out that it was like one of these experiments with like, how much cocaine do you allow a rhesus monkey to, to, you know, give itself or something like that.
And, you know, this kind of thing where they'll just keep on giving themselves cocaine until they, whatever the drug is, I can't forget this, this classic thing.
Until they're just lying dead on the floor.
The kids were, were, if we'd given them a vat of sugar, They would have eaten away at the sugar until they were dead on the internet.
They were like zombies waking up at odd times in the day, turning on the TV and just drooling in front of it.
And we let that go on for maybe two and a half weeks, maybe three weeks to kind of see if it was going to break through into.
[35:56] To oh my god it was nightmarish the thinking there was was that the philosophy behind some parts of unschooling is that is that you know kids will um naturally um find their own way of doing things right you know whatever and that that did not work out with our kids maybe some other other kids that's true it's a it's a now.
Stefan:
[36:21] I obviously can't speak for your wife but it's no mystery to me why it didn't work with your kids.
The Challenge of Changing Behavior
Caller 1:
[36:29] I mean.
Stefan:
[36:30] You have this whole, I mean, this is not critical. I'm just sort of pointing out if you want to know the causality, at least as far as I see it.
Caller 1:
[36:36] Yeah.
Stefan:
[36:36] I mean, you have a philosophy wherein knowledge really doesn't change that much.
Knowing the right thing to do doesn't really change that much because, you know, for 30 years, you've known that you have a susceptibility to selfish women and, you know, it hasn't really changed that much. You're still working on it.
It's wired into your DNA. So you can't model knowledge leading to significantly changed outcomes, right?
If you were a diet guy, right, like you were 50 pounds overweight, and decade after decade, your kid sees you trying to diet and failing, right?
Caller 1:
[37:17] Yeah.
Stefan:
[37:18] Then, you know, and you say, well, you know, dieting is mostly just a state of mind. It's nothing that really changes anything and so on, right?
Then they're not going to really respect the discipline of dieting, right?
And if you have a general philosophy, which is, and I say this because you're still a parent, right? So if you have a general philosophy which says, yeah, I've known for over 30 years that I have a susceptibility to selfish women, and do you know what I just did the other day?
I got into a real conversation with a selfish woman.
And do you know what else I did? I talked to this philosophy guy online, and I turned into that selfish woman. And so you've known for decades about this kind of stuff, but it hasn't taken root.
It hasn't changed things. And the question then is, why?
Is it generally the case that once you have an insight about your behavior, that 30 years later, it's still manifesting itself?
And if so, why? It's not the case that that's not true for everyone.
Some people have insights, and it just radically changes their behavior.
And it doesn't go back to the way that it was.
And so the question is, for me, what is it in your mind or thought or life that allows you to just have this knowledge but not fundamentally change for 30 years or more?
Caller 1:
[38:35] So first of all, I would say that it's not true. It's not true that I don't fundamentally change this information.
I started off this call.
Stefan:
[38:45] You said it's wired into your DNA. And you didn't even notice that you say, well, you know, all these selfish people with their vague theories that don't add up to much and don't take any feedback.
And then you just did that exactly to me. I would say that's not a massive amount of change, is it?
Caller 1:
[39:00] Well okay so so um the reason i was piling on all that information earlier right about this tribal kind of concept of things right was um there was a fair amount of back information that i needed to get across in order to you know have you be able to evaluate what i was talking about, that that that's what that's what was going on behind that, in terms of the question of the things being wired into my DNA I'm not saying that it's impossible for me to fight back against it what I'm saying is that that kind of the behavior, that I have been kind of built for that doesn't mean I have to necessarily fall through with that doesn't mean I necessarily have to.
Stefan:
[39:46] Was I built for peaceful parenting?
Caller 1:
[39:50] Hmm Were you built for peaceful parenting? I don't think so.
Of course I was. Yeah, yeah.
Stefan:
[39:56] Of course I was built for really quite the opposite, right?
Caller 1:
[39:59] Correct, yeah.
Stefan:
[40:00] But I don't give myself the out of saying, well, you know, I'm making little turns on the steering wheel.
It's going to drift over decades and it's baked into my DNA.
I don't give myself those excuses.
It's just not something I'm ever going to do. It's not something I attempted to do.
30 years after I come up with peaceful parenting, I'm not still manifesting aggressive parenting and then giving myself an out called, well, you know, things change.
It's not black and white. It's in my DNA.
I'm really fundamentally concerned about the excuses that you have rather than absolutes.
Caller 1:
[40:34] Oh, yeah. Please don't understand. Please don't get the impression that I'm putting forth these, that I'm saying it's okay.
It's not okay. It's absolutely not okay for me to be getting into relationships with narcissistic women. That's not alright, right?
Stefan:
[40:52] I don't care, but are you?
Caller 1:
[40:56] Well, no.
Stefan:
[40:57] Are you still getting into relationships with narcissistic people?
When was the last relationship with somebody you would describe as selfish?
I mean, other than the woman you were just chatting with at the beginning of this conversation, when was the last time you were in a relationship with somebody who was selfish?
Caller 1:
[41:15] Well, so that wasn't a relationship that I was describing in the beginning.
The woman I was chatting with a couple of days ago, right? I mean, unless your term of sense of…
Stefan:
[41:23] No, no, that's fine. I mean, you know, someone you got into a relationship with.
Caller 1:
[41:28] Well um the mother of my daughter who's in the other room right which is uh that was 10 i guess it was 11 years ago that we got together and we've been broken up no but when did you.
Stefan:
[41:41] Uh when did you split up.
Caller 1:
[41:42] So um i broke up with her probably nine times let's say no actually that Okay.
Stefan:
[41:52] Just save me the grief. Just when did you end things with her, finally?
Caller 1:
[42:00] Three years ago. We're trying to think about this for a second.
I think it was three years ago now.
Stefan:
[42:07] Okay, so almost 30 years after you realized you had a susceptibility for narcissistic women, almost 30 years after you first realized that, you finally broke up with the narcissistic woman.
The realization of breaking up with a narcissistic woman
Caller 1:
[42:22] Okay hold on hold on you say well.
Stefan:
[42:26] You're in your 50s right you're in your early 50s right yeah.
Caller 1:
[42:29] But but if i understand you correctly you just claimed that i this is the first time that i broke up with a woman due to her narcissism or due to my my realization that she was narcissistic this is the first time that i i've you know kind of put my foot down in 30 years just like that did i understand that correctly or not.
Stefan:
[42:46] Well listen you can you can go off on your own conversational flight or we can just talk about what i'm talking about i asked you when was the last time when was the last time you were in a relationship with a narcissistic woman and you said well yes it was three years ago when it was when i broke up with the narcissistic woman right and you said got your understanding of narcissistic women and your susceptibility to it in your early 20s and then in your late 40s which are closer 30 years you finally up with a narcissistic woman then you had another conversation with a narcissistic woman and then you acted in the way that you had described with me, so I'm not sure the problem is entirely solved.
Caller 1:
[43:23] No, I didn't claim that it was solved.
Stefan:
[43:25] I know, I know you didn't claim that it was solved. And I'm telling you that why it's not solved is you keep giving yourself all of these, all of these excuses.
And the major issue that I have with that is you're the father of three children.
Caller 1:
[43:37] So I disagree. I disagree that the reason that I haven't solved it is because I'm giving myself excuses.
Stefan:
[43:47] Okay, why do you think you haven't carved it?
Caller 1:
[43:51] So.
Because I haven't done enough work on it, essentially, right? And by salt.
Stefan:
[43:59] That doesn't really answer the question, right? So why haven't you done, I mean, after 30 years, right?
And you listen to this show and so on, right? We've never done a call-in, have we?
Caller 1:
[44:08] No, we have not.
Stefan:
[44:09] And how long have you listened to this show for?
Caller 1:
[44:14] So, it was 2014, 15, I think I started.
Stefan:
[44:21] Okay, so nine years or so, right?
Caller 1:
[44:24] That sounds right, yeah, yeah.
Stefan:
[44:25] Okay, so for nine years, you've known that you can have a completely free call-in, takes two hours of your life, with somebody who's really, really good at untangling these kinds of patterns, right?
Caller 1:
[44:38] Sure. So.
Stefan:
[44:39] Why haven't you? And just out of curiosity, it's not a big attack, I'm just genuinely curious.
I mean, if this is the big issue that you're wrestling with and you have a free resource to help you work on it, which has been pretty successful with just about everyone else, why wouldn't you, in nine years, you've had two hours free.
So, I mean, you're here talking to me, right?
So, why wouldn't you take that resource?
Caller 1:
[45:05] I was afraid. I was afraid of encountering it, you know, of really being vulnerable.
Um, also a piece of, of not feeling worthy, you know, not, not feeling worthy to call in and, and, and talk about my needs.
Um, trying to think what other pieces are, are at play.
Um, yeah, fear, fear of what I, why, what I would encounter. Um.
Stefan:
[45:37] So a fear of what you would encounter and a concern about feeling vulnerable. Is that right? Right.
Caller 1:
[45:42] Yeah. And also, also not feeling worthy. I think it's a piece also, like I didn't want to, I said that like.
Stefan:
[45:47] I got to tell you, bro, I got to tell you that is an unbelievably selfish set of excuses.
I'll tell you why, and maybe I'm being a jerk, and I'm perfectly happy to take that case.
So why should you have called in to deal with the selfishness or the narcissistic susceptibilities or whatever we want to deal with these issues?
So you've got these things where I don't feel worthy and I don't want to be vulnerable and whatever it is. I'm afraid of what I might uncover.
That's all about you, right? So why should you have called in?
Caller 1:
[46:25] To be a better father, to be a better partner for them.
Stefan:
[46:28] Right, it's about your children.
Caller 1:
[46:30] Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Stefan:
[46:31] What's best for them?
Caller 1:
[46:33] Yep.
Stefan:
[46:34] So for nine years, you've got a free resource. I'm happy to take the calls.
Call in at freedomain.com. Happy to take the calls.
Caller 1:
[46:43] For nine years.
Stefan:
[46:44] You're like, well, I this, and I that, and I'm nervous, and I don't want to be vulnerable, and I don't feel worthy, and this, and that, and the other, right?
Caller 1:
[46:52] Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's one way of looking at it.
Stefan:
[46:55] It's like you're not taking your kids to the dentist because you're nervous of dentists.
Caller 1:
[46:59] Sorry.
Stefan:
[47:00] Kids, your teeth have to rot because daddy's nervous of dentists.
You know, I'm really susceptible to narcissistic people.
Caller 1:
[47:08] I recognize there's a kernel of truth to what you're saying.
I think this is a bit hyperbolic.
I think this is kind of taking it a bit far, but we can keep on going.
Stefan:
[47:18] No, you're just giving me another defense called it's not black and white.
You just fog out every time I bring you an absolute. loot if you had been solely focused and look i'm not the only solution here obviously but it was a free solution that you knew about for nine years if you had only focused on what was best for your children would you have done the call-in if.
Caller 1:
[47:41] I had only focused on what was best for my children would i have done the call-in okay look what i i the the way you're phrasing it like that like Like, the answer is yes, but there's so much more to it than that, you know what I mean?
Stefan:
[47:57] No.
Caller 1:
[47:58] No.
Stefan:
[47:58] Now you're just bringing up relativistic fog, it's not black and white, it's complicated. It's complicated stuff I don't care about. I don't care about.
Would it have been better for your children if nine years ago you had confronted your susceptibility to narcissism?
Caller 1:
[48:14] I was working on confronting it. I absolutely was working on confronting it. Yes.
Stefan:
[48:18] But it didn't work.
Because you continued on for another six years without solving the problem.
And you admit to yourself, or you say now, the problem still isn't solved.
Would it have been better for your children?
Now, whether it was talk therapy, whether it was, I don't know, whatever you would do, whether it's calling me or something like that, I have a fairly good track record with this kind of stuff.
Would it have been better for your children if you had taken every available resource to deal with this issue in the past.
Challenging the Caller's Approach
Caller 1:
[48:59] Let's back up for a second. Let's back up.
This is a dynamic which I've listened to a number of call-in shows.
This is a dynamic which occurs a lot.
It doesn't work for me.
Characterizing a problem that a caller has, or that I have, and saying that I clearly haven't worked on it, or what I've done so far hasn't worked because I still have the problem, right?
Stefan:
[49:34] Well, no, but also because you continued in a relationship with a narcissistic woman for six years after you started listening to this show, right?
Caller 1:
[49:42] That was, yeah, and this is…
Stefan:
[49:46] And you had nine different breakups, right? Which is incredibly destabilizing for your children, right?
Caller 1:
[49:51] It was very bad. It was terrible.
Stefan:
[49:53] Okay, so forgive me. I think you can understand that from my shoes, it didn't work.
From where you say cap with the mother of your children is not a success oh.
Caller 1:
[50:07] It's clearly not a success yeah no no.
Stefan:
[50:09] Okay so so we agree that it didn't whatever you were doing didn't work.
[50:19] Yes yes and i'll tell you and we can close on this because i you know you got a lot i'll tell you why i'm doing this and again maybe i'm being a total jerk and you can dismiss everything i'm I'm saying that's always more than a possibility.
So here's what I see as selfishness.
Selfishness fundamentally is a refusal to surrender yourself to an objective metric.
It's a refusal to surrender your own ego and preferences to an objective standard or metric.
Now, my concern is that justifications and the fog and the DNA, it's wrapped in my DNA, and I'll be working on the form of self-execution to project your own preferences to an external standard.
Now, for me, again, I've done good things, I've done bad things, but one of the things I think that's done been fairly good is just saying, I'm not going to raise my voice, I'm not going to yell, I'm not going to hit.
It. I'm going to focus all of my energies on that which is best for my daughter and my family and so on.
And it's an absolute standard. There's no excuses.
There's no, it's not black and white. There's no, it's my DNA.
Because to me, excuses and selfishness, and look, I'm not calling you just a selfish guy or anything like that.
I'm just saying in this particular area, which we all have to keep an eye on.
Caller 1:
[51:41] The.
Stefan:
[51:42] Selfishness is what I prefer, what I feel more comfortable with, rather than what is objectively right, or true, or good, or needed, right?
So when you said to me, Steph, I've heard this dynamic, it just doesn't work for me.
Like, who cares what works for you?
It's not about you, you're a dad.
It's not about you. It's about what works for your family, for your children.
And so you are still looking at your own feelings and preferences as the standard by which you're trying to navigate.
And it's not going to work.
Because this is a show about philosophy, not about self-intelligence.
And just saying, I'll do what I prefer, I won't do what I don't like quite as much, is hedonistic.
Caller 1:
[52:31] Just help me understand more. I'm going by, I'm using my feelings and preferences as…
Stefan:
[52:39] Because you said, well, like I said, well, why didn't you call me? And you said.
Caller 1:
[52:43] Well.
Stefan:
[52:43] I didn't feel quite good enough, I didn't want to confront. And so that's a subjective preference. I am nervous about this.
I don't know if it's going to go well. I don't know what I'm going to find.
I don't feel worthy or whatever you're saying. This is all just emotions.
Caller 1:
[52:59] I agree. Yeah, yeah.
Hedonism vs. philosophy: Following absolute standards
Stefan:
[53:01] Philosophy is when you say, I have a standard by which I'm going to act.
And your level of personal comfort, while interesting and important to you personally, is absolutely irrelevant to what you do.
Caller 1:
[53:17] Please understand, I'm not saying that this is a…
Stefan:
[53:20] No, no, you're just telling me that I've misunderstood something, that it's not black and white, that I have done the… I get all of that.
I'm just going by the general principle. I'm not saying you've never done anything selfless. Of course you have.
I mean, I'm not trying to say that, and I don't want to get into the fog of subjectivity again, right? right?
I'm just saying that based upon all the patterns, if you really do want to follow philosophy, then you have to have standards that you just follow.
And it's like, yeah, it's uncomfortable.
Like, you know, like I had a sore throat this week. Did I want to do a show?
I did not, but I've made commitments and I end up enjoying them and it's a good thing to do for the community.
So I'll do the show. You know, when I wake up with a headache, I don't necessarily want to go and exercise, but I know that exercise is important and I'm an older father, so I want to to stay healthy for my daughter, and I want to stay attractive for my wife, so I'll just, go and exercise. It's just having that absolute.
If all I'm doing is following what feels right or good or preferential in the moment, I'm a hedonist.
[54:19] And my suggestion to you is that the hedonism is kind of like an excuse, whereas if you have the absolute of saying, I can't keep, let's say, I can't keep having these breakups.
Jeff's pretty good. I know about him. I'll call him, right? Maybe it'll work.
Maybe it won't. But it's worth a try. It's worth a try.
And then, but what you do is you say, well, I don't really feel like it.
And then that's enough for you. And then you don't. And that's, but whether you feel good or bad or right or wrong about it is irrelevant as As to what you do.
What you do is what's best for your children. Maybe that's calling me.
Maybe that's six million other things. I don't know, right?
But whatever you have been doing hasn't been enough.
And that strictness, this is why I said this is why your kids didn't take to unschooling, which is they didn't have a model of discipline.
Like my daughter is, she's not an exercise fiend now, but she exercises every day or two.
Now, I have not told her to exercise. I've mentioned it a couple of times, probably would be good and so on.
But she has seen me exercise for as long as she can remember.
And she's seen me do it when I don't feel like it.
She's seen me drag myself off a couch saying, I don't feel good, but I'm going to go do a show.
[55:47] So she has seen that level of discipline and so I don't need to convince her to do things, so you want to model this kind of discipline to your children because what you've modeled is well, I know that's a thing that could be kind of good it only takes a couple of hours of my time, but, you know, I have these fears, these nervousnesses the anxieties, the insecurities or whatever it is so I just won't do it, and that's what you're modeling for your kids.
You know, I'm attracted to your mother, so I'm going to get together with her.
Oh, we've had a big fight. We're breaking up. Oh, I'm attracted to her again.
Oh, we've had a big fight, so I'm running.
It's just emotion, an unstable emotion, and not the discipline of objective standards.
Now, the way that you combat selfishness, which we all have.
You know, I'm with you down there in the trenches, brother. We all have this, right?
But the way that you combat it is to say, I have a set of standards that are rational and empirical and useful and helpful and right and validated and all of that. And…
Importance of Imposing Objective Standards on Behavior
[56:55] I'm going to pursue those standards. Now, that's going to kick up some emotional stuff, which is worth dealing with and all of that.
But the self-indulgence of saying, it's the right thing to do.
I don't feel like doing it.
So I'm just not going to do it. That's not philosophy.
The whole point of nutrition is, like I was at lunch with my daughter today, and there was a dessert that was 1,400 calories.
Calories now i'm telling you man i'm telling you man man brother to brother i could mount i could face plant in that dessert and i could eat another one yeah yeah never full never satisfied i can go to a buffet and i have to like saw my phalanges off rather than take another meringue right so and the waitress comes by it oh it's so good at this time the other's like nope i appreciate that but uh just the bill and go because it's not the right thing for me to do or anyone to do my opinion to eat a 1450 calorie dessert even to split it right so the nutrition is because we want to eat stuff that's bad for us exercise is because we don't feel like moving.
[58:05] And you have to have a standard of discipline i think if you want you i mean because especially because you kind of you're saying to your kids no we can't unschool because you lack discipline Discipline.
So now you have to have discipline imposed from outside, right?
And I would say that for yourself, just say, okay, what are the standards that I have no excuses for?
Like, I don't have any excuse for raising my voice at my daughter or anybody that I care about.
I don't have any excuse about hitting or, I'm not saying you're doing any of these things, but I'm just saying, I have no excuse. Like, it won't do it. It's not a thing.
[58:38] It's not a thing. I won't do it. There's no excuse. And of course you train yourself out because your impulses, like your emotions, they seem so incredibly strong when you indulge them, right?
Like they're like these giant towering tsunamis of preference.
[58:54] But then when you train them and you say, well, no, like now it's not hard for me to go exercise, not hard for me to go do a show.
At the beginning, it was tough when I didn't feel like it, but you know, it just becomes a habit. It's like the Scott Adams has this thing about exercise.
And he says, Like, even if I don't have time to exercise, I'll put my gym stuff off on, I'll go to the gym, I'll stand in the doorway, and then I'll turn around and go and do whatever I have to do.
You just have to get used to it.
And the more you tame your hedonism, the less powerful it is and the less it will dominate your actions.
And uh i think if you say well i'm kind of get get hooked into these narcissistic uh people then you're hooked into people who don't have standards and narcissism is the refusal to subject yourself to any external standards whether it's empathy or morality or um self-restraint or or whatever it is right and the narcissist although i am the standard of value i am whatever i want is good and whatever i don't want is bad and and self-indulgent in the emotions and so on.
So to fight your susceptibility, in my view, opinion, of course, right?
To fight your susceptibility to selfishness, you must impose objective standards on your own behavior.
[1:00:10] And then you won't feel like you're not worthy because you will have developed some self-respect.
So sorry to sort of, I know you've got a kid to go and chat with, and I really do appreciate the conversation, but I just wanted to say thank you.
Caller 1:
[1:00:24] Thank you.
Thankful for the Conversation and Impose Objective Standards
Stefan:
[1:00:25] Brother. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for the chat.
Caller 1:
[1:00:28] Yeah.
Stefan:
[1:00:29] All right. I'm all ears. It's funny because, yeah, I was kind of thinking about that and it just kind of came to me in a rush that what was going on in that call.
It's kind of a funny thing how these instincts work.
But yeah, I got some more time if anybody wants to chat. I'm all ears.
Caller 2:
[1:00:46] May I start?
Stefan:
[1:00:47] Yeah, go ahead.
Caller 2:
[1:00:49] Okay. I hate even doing this this way because I'm so pressed for time right now.
I have to get back to work in minutes. I have so many things I could ask you.
Stefan:
[1:00:57] That's more me jaw-burning with the last guy. Sorry, go ahead.
Caller 2:
[1:01:01] No, you're good. I just, I mean, the opportunity doesn't always arise to get a Q&A with you.
So I always have so many things that I'm just curious what Steph would say.
But I guess I'll condense it to two things. I just want to share with you something.
I spoke to you, I think, like a month or two ago about a buddy who was doing libertarian content specifically on the subject of ethics.
I mentioned him to you. I don't know if you recall that, but I just wanted to send you one of his essays on objective morality, specifically proving the NAP.
It's a different argument than the one I gave you before.
And I just thought as somebody so interested in ethics, you'd be interested in that. So I'm going to send that to you.
Of course. And then, oh man, I don't even know what I want to ask about. You know what?
I'm just curious about some of the terminology used in that discussion you just had.
I think you had a lot of great points. but um coming from the objectivist camp uh as as you once did and i think in many ways you would probably still identify as an objectivist i i think it's a little interesting you didn't like discern between like rational egoism and um you know subjective whim worship there which is what it seems like he was uh giving into and i was just curious about the terminology there uh what made you use the words the way you did because i know well i mean i.
Stefan:
[1:02:22] Assume he's not an objectivist so So I try not to use terms that would be outside people's already understood mindset, if that makes sense.
Caller 2:
[1:02:33] Yeah, yeah, I gotcha. No.
Stefan:
[1:02:35] It's like the word anarchy, right? I mean, there's a common parlance for it, which is very different from, you know, how I would define it.
So I sort of have to bow to convention to some degree.
So I wasn't going to try and define the sort of rational egoism and so on.
And I really wanted to get across this.
Narcissism is the refusal to subject yourself to any objective standards, which is why a lot of mysticism tends to be narcissistic as opposed to science, which is more, at least ideally more, objective so i didn't want to have to define a bunch of terms and then have him try and follow along in in language that he wasn't used to.
Caller 2:
[1:03:09] Certainly yeah that's why i said like terminal like i had questions about the terms because the points you were making were still that of you know the the stuff that i was just referring to right like you referencing the objective standard that was all within line of the things where i was just mentioning so um yeah i was just curious about that okay um i'll just bug you about one more thing i that's been on my mind you're not bugging me at.
Stefan:
[1:03:33] All go ahead.
Caller 2:
[1:03:34] Okay uh i appreciate it so um coming from the you know molyneux camp of of learning libertarianism and metaphysics and epistemology and all these things i started reading rand two years ago and i've gone on down a great journey i've met a lot of cool people and i'm helping write a book on philosophy right now it's a merging objectivism and uh libertarianism them, which in many ways you've done, obviously.
And I'm going to be writing a chapter on aesthetics, and I get into conversations every day about ethics, and I was just really curious, because I started revisiting some stuff on UPB recently, and it turns out maybe I just need a better grasp of UPB, but something that regularly comes up in the debate.
Aesthetics and Ethics: Writing a Chapter on Aesthetics
Stefan:
[1:04:17] You said you were writing a chapter on aesthetics or ethics?
Caller 2:
[1:04:21] Aesthetics but like i we're i'm sorry sorry i what i was saying is i'm going to be writing a chapter on aesthetics but i regularly talk about ethics that's like the subject that fascinates me the most i think i'm pretty well versed in metaphysics and epistemology i think i mean i can always get better obviously but ethics is like the the main thing that uh concerns me and i probably discuss every single day with uh my buddies that are writing this book and um like i said i was i I was revisiting some UPV stuff.
And it seems like one of these arguments people pose at you all the time is that you can't bridge the is-ought gap.
And so I did some searching through your catalog about the is-ought gap.
And I'm a little confused about your position on it to try and wrap this up as quickly as I can. I don't understand why the is-ought gap is relevant.
As you would call it, it would be a self-deniating statement to say you can't get an is from an ought.
They're doing it. And the moment that they tell you that. Yeah.
And as far as I can deduce, all statements are ought statements.
If it's a statement directed at someone, you're telling them, you ought to hear what I'm saying.
You ought to believe me. You ought to engage with this.
I don't see what kind of statement could it be a normative statement, an ought statement.
So anyways, I'm sorry if that…
Stefan:
[1:05:39] Yeah. I mean, so for instance, a chimpanzee can't get an is…
Sorry, a chimpanzee can't get an ought from an ears because a chimpanzee, our knowledge doesn't have any capacity for abstract philosophical thought, universal thought.
But yeah, human beings, language is an ought. You ought to use the correct terms.
You ought to address people in a language they can understand.
You ought to try and correct false statements. So the moment, if I say you can get an ought from an is, the moment somebody says you can't get an ought from an is, they've just given me the whole ought from an is, that I ought to say things that are true, that I ought not to say things that are false, that my ideas ought to to correlate with reality so yeah the moment you correct someone the is or thing is deep in the rear view and should never be discussed again by anybody who's not just a total troll so i'm with you there thank.
Caller 2:
[1:06:23] You okay yeah i just never understood why like in your debate with uh rationality rules this was even a relevant thing to discuss i don't i checked out the.
Stefan:
[1:06:32] It's a midwit thing and i yeah it's a midwit thing and i sort of hate to say that about um well i i am happy to say that about about stephen woodward or whatever i can't remember know what his name was but rationality rules i think he's completely made but uh of course uh hume was a great philosopher and so on so the you can't get an or from an is is is a great and challenging question it's like the cartesian question of if you wipe everything blank and you have to build your knowledge up from scratch what can you absolutely be certain of these are great questions but just because so what happens is someone says well you can't get an or from an is and it feels kind of true and it seems kind of true and of course it is a great secular god that you cannot get an ought from an is because almost all of modern secularism is the desire to escape morality and so when if you're a christian the ought and the is are synonymous god created the universe god creates the ought the ought and the is are synonymous.
[1:07:32] It's like saying a man makes a clock. Well, the purpose of the clock is to tell the time.
Well, you can't get the purpose of a clock from a clock. It's like, well, of course you can, because it was designed to create it.
So if God decides to create the universe and God gives us moral rules, the ought of the is are intertwined.
So along comes Hume, and he says, you can't get an ought from an is.
And all the people desperate to follow him and escape morality grab onto that and are like, yeah, you can't. There's no prescription against murder written into the DNA or written into the atomic structure of the universe.
Yes, you're right. And then they can fly free of all moral restraint.
Satanism and secularism are very closely intertwined.
And I know this in particular because after I proved secular ethics, people did not grab onto that, but rather mocked it, laughed at it, and scorned it because they don't want to have any moral rules because it interferes with their narcissism.
So, yes, it's one of these things where Hume says it.
The question is, why is it believed?
Why is it widespread? Every time I look at an idea these days, they're almost all of them false.
So the question is, okay, who does it serve? Who does it serve?
Who does this idea serve, right?
There's no such thing as IQ. Okay, who does that serve? Global warming is a catastrophic anthropogenic catastrophe.
Who does that serve? Because when things are just obviously not true.
[1:08:55] Or at least open to significant question but they're accepted and repeated and trumpeted it's because it's serving power and power is the avoidance of morality power is the use of morality in order to subvert and destroy morality the common good turns out to be the good of the ruler right so the question is who does it serve and you can't get an aught from an ears gives people a great sense of relief because then you know what they can do if they want to get rid of morality.
They just have to stop believing in God.
Escaping Morality by Denying God's Existence
[1:09:28] I'm free, baby. It's like you've got these chains and all you have to do is whisper a magic spell and the chains vanish.
And so the reason why people hang on to, oh, you can't get it all from an is, is because they can simply will away, the existence of morality by not believing in God and hanging on in pathetic desperation to the Humean chant of you can't get an ought from an is.
And that's why, and then they start doing bad things. They start doing wrong things.
They start doing selfish and immoral or downright evil things because they've got this magic wand that gets rid of morality calls.
You can't get an ought from an is, and I don't believe in God, so there's no such thing as morality. And then what happens is, They do some pretty bad shit. And then what happens is someone like me comes along and says, oh, by the way, you can get an alt from an is, and it's actually really obvious.
Oh, that feels good. That's like steak through the heart stuff.
That's really, really awful.
It's like who's like a chain smoker because they're like, smoking doesn't cause cancer.
And then after 30 years of chain smoking, someone comes along and says, oh, yeah, no, it totally doesn't. Here's the proof.
Oh, God, what have I done? done right what have i done is really foundational to this kind of stuff so i hope that makes some sense.
Caller 2:
[1:10:46] Yeah and what i think about in in regards to i mean it coincides with what you said in some way um it's really odd that these people do this obviously the main reason like you said to escape having to be like morally responsible for their action but uh the thing is i know they're not sitting there questioning in their own head and justifying every single movement they make and every breath of oxygen they intake and every waking moment of their existence isn't justified in their head questioning, well, ought I breathe? Ought I eat? Ought I be alive?
They're not doing that. That's only as a means of escaping morality.
And I think that's obvious, right? This is the the.
Stefan:
[1:11:31] Sign of a software but if you if if you want the dopamine of virtue and virtue gives us the greatest dopamine and and it has to because virtue is so bloody dangerous right virtue is so dangerous in the world that you have to have a giant um dopamine dump in order to to get it right so so they want the dopamine dump but they don't want to be good they just want to feel good, they just want to seem good they want to be viewed as good they want to be viewed as wise and and good, and seekers of truth, and this, that, and the other.
So they make a whole bunch of polysyllabic baffle gab up, And then they could just feel like, yeah, I'm good, man, I'm wise, I'm into science, I'm rational, I care about the poor. I could just make up a bunch of stuff.
And then some people are wired that other people's opinions are a viable substitute for actual reality.
It's a weird thing. I've never quite gotten it, maybe to my detriment, of course. Well, sometimes to my detriment, sometimes to my benefit.
But there are other people, I mean, you see this.
There's people who are like 300 pounds, and other people say, you look great, and they switch from looking in the mirror with horror to listening to other people say, you look great, and they're like, wow, I do.
[1:12:54] Like, there's something in the human mind that substitutes other people's opinions for actual facts.
Caller 2:
[1:13:02] For an objective standard of what, you know.
Stefan:
[1:13:04] Looking means.
Self-perception Based on Others' Opinions instead of Reality
Caller 2:
[1:13:06] Right? Yeah.
Stefan:
[1:13:07] Yeah. Yeah. So, so, um, did, you know, the old, did these jeans make my ass look too big? It's like, honey, it ain't the jeans.
Caller 2:
[1:13:15] Right.
Stefan:
[1:13:15] So do these jeans, have I gained weight? No, you look great.
Right. And they're like, whew. So get on the scale. Don't ask me.
What am I supposed to do? Maybe. And I, even if you did gain weight, maybe it's muscle.
Right. So because I work out weighing myself, it's always kind of a challenge, right?
Cause if I've done more weights recently, then then I'm going to seem heavier because muscle weighs a lot more than fat and so on, right?
So I usually just like do my pants fit or it's kind of all I've got going for me or whatever, right? So, but yeah, there's a whole bunch of people out there.
[1:13:48] Who have entirely founded their self-perception on the views and opinions of others.
[1:13:57] So some guy who's just some crappy factory worker who has never, he's got potential, but he's just never bothered to upgrade his skills.
He's just sat there and resented and complained and not really worked that hard.
And then some communist comes along and says, hey man, you're the real hero of the outfit.
Your boss is just a parasite and he's stealing from you and you'd be way better off if you owned this factory and like he doesn't look there and say well you know i really don't work that hard and i i really don't um i don't really contribute that much and i've never taken any business courses and i don't really understand the customer base and you know i you know the boss is put up all his own money and took all of those risks and and sleeps in the factory sometimes and so so the so the communist comes up and just sort of sows these seeds of discontent and frustration and anger and rage in the guy. And the guy's like, yeah, I do.
I do deserve more. And rather than, okay, if I do deserve more, I should go and negotiate for more. I should, you know, up my skills or whatever, right?
So there's this whole class of people. And sometimes it really does feel like the majority, those people who are perfectly happy to unplug reality from their mind and just jam in other people's opinions and live off that.
But the problem is that once you make that switch, anybody who tries to switch you back is perceived as a deadly enemy, which is why philosophers, objective philosophers.
[1:15:19] Tend to get so much hate and hostility, is people have lied to themselves and said that other people's opinions are just as good as reality.
And then when someone comes along and says, nope, and that's kind of what I was doing with the first caller, right? He had a bunch of opinions.
I'm I'm saying, well, based on the evidence of the facts of the matter of what you've told me, blah, blah, blah, right?
And we had this battle event about whether things were, what was true and what was false.
So, yeah, the people who, they say, well, I don't want to be good.
I just want to be perceived as good. I don't want to be wise.
I just want people to comment and say, hey, man, you know, you're totally right.
You're saying some really fascinating stuff.
I couldn't agree more and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
[1:16:03] And they don't want to be right. they just and you know this from objectivism right this is nothing new to me this is an old uh oh i mean oscar wilde was writing about this in the picture of dorian gray so yeah they second handers right the social metaphysician they don't ask what is true they ask what is perceived to be true and then they're susceptible to bullying and because they're susceptible to bullying they become bullies and then anyone who comes along with objective facts and tries to wrestle with their soul and it really does feel as close to wrestling with the soul, as a secularist can process.
You're wrestling with their soul and you're trying to unplug, the opinions of idiots and plug in actual facts, truth, reason, and reality, and they fight you like hell.
They fight you because they've drifted a long way from virtue, and they are now addicts. They are addicts to the positive opinions of others.
They're addicts to the positive opinions of others.
And it's a whole lot easier, of course, as you know, to say to an unhealthy person, you're healthy, than it is for an unhealthy person to actually become healthy, lose weight, exercise and all of that and it could cost them their entire social group because once you've plugged yourself into other people's opinions rather than actual facts you'll lose everyone around you if you start turning towards facts and you just you're in a you're on trash planet and nobody wants to go off planet because it's cold out there among the stars hope that makes some sense.
Sharing Content and Discussing UPB
Caller 2:
[1:17:26] Yeah no absolutely i i appreciate it i'm gonna get to work here um i really appreciate your time again today uh i just forwarded you that essay by my buddy and again i don't know if you've checked out his youtube content i think it's amazing uh work in the realm of ethics so if you have anything to say about it i'd love to hear it um i'd like to show share him your preferred uh explanation of upb i've watched many videos and yeah so you read the original book from.
Stefan:
[1:17:56] From Essential Philosophy. It's my free book, freedomain.com slash books.
Essential Philosophy has the most boiled down and accurate description of UPB.
Caller 2:
[1:18:10] Okay, got it. I need to brush up on it myself. So, hey, thanks again, Steph.
Stefan:
[1:18:15] Thanks, man. Great questions. I appreciate it. Have fun at work.
Caller 2:
[1:18:17] You have a good day.
Stefan:
[1:18:19] All righty, righty. Should we do another? Should we do another? Yes, sir.
Caller 3:
[1:18:24] So, this is the first time I'm speaking to, I'm honoured.
So I wanted to ask you something actually you brought up in the last question, talking past each other, for lack of a better reference to it, so using Ayn Rand terms, the normal colloquial sort of terms, how can you navigate in a question, hey, we're going to talk past each other because anarchy equals, you know, lawless crimes versus no government type thing.
As a non-hick move, would you approach a discussion with someone that, hey, you need to understand we don't need to talk about each other without understanding?
Stefan:
[1:19:07] I'm sorry, you're kind of garbled to me. I'm having trouble hearing what you're saying.
Caller 3:
[1:19:12] I apologize. I'm exhausted my questions. Yeah.
Stefan:
[1:19:19] Just a little slower and if you can enunciate a bit more, I'd appreciate it. Sorry about that.
Caller 3:
[1:19:23] Being an Aussie, that's how I rumble So, forking past each other, when, for example, bringing up anarchy in the usual reference of lawlessness versus anarchy without government in a discussion, how do you not be a dick in a discussion to bring up that we're probably going to be be talking past each other um 60 percent of the time.
Stefan:
[1:19:53] Right no and that's a great question and the phrase talking past each other it can be annoying or you two are just talking past each other and people say that and it can be kind of annoying because usually it's just a kind of statement but i think the kernel of truth that's in it is uh have the terms been defined so if you're an anarchist like an anarcho-capitalist then if you say the government should not enforce enforce these laws right and then somebody says well by definition that means a lawless society, and of course if by government laws that's what you mean by laws then yes clearly a society without the government enforcing laws is a lawless society if by laws you mean government laws that's i mean if i if i say we should take down this fence you're saying well that's just It's like, yes, yes, it is.
So if somebody means by laws, government rules, then yeah, they're right.
It's a lawless society.
[1:20:58] But if you mean rules that are effectively, cheaply, and justly enforced, then we've got a different, then we have a different matter.
Then we have a different matter. so of course the thing is that most people associate government functions as the sole provision of those functions so the way it kind of works is people say well we have roads the roads are built and run by the government and i'm sure if the roads could be built and run by non-governmental entities then that's what would have been done in other words they say well we have to have had countless societies that tried having non-government roads and as a result of of them trying to have non-government roads.
The roads weren't built, the roads weren't enforced, and then the governments that built better roads, like the Romans, they took over everyone.
And so it's the only efficient way to have roads.
[1:21:50] Made and maintained is by the government. So the general perception that a function that is provided by the government and is provided by the government just about everywhere must always be provided by the government.
And other societies must have tried different things, but it didn't work out.
And therefore we've settled on this.
There's a kind of conservative element to it, which is where people say okay so we have you know an argument pair bonded marriage.
[1:22:21] And societies have tried a variety of things that tends to be the best thing or another conservative argument is if you find a a gate in the middle of nowhere like in the middle of some field there's a gate you don't just tear down the gate you have to first you have to figure out what it's for right and i remember this talking to a programmer at microsoft many years ago reading an an article and the guy was saying, well, you know, you've got all this code and you don't know what it's there for.
And you figure, well, it's just, this is inefficient.
You know, this is ridiculous, right? Why is it caching all of this stuff in memory, blah, blah, blah.
And then you find out that the reason the code was there was that, you know, what if somebody, you're saving to a floppy disk, back in the days of floppy disks, you're saving to a floppy disk and then someone takes out the floppy disk in the middle of the save.
Historical Perspective: Slavery and Serfdom in Agriculture
[1:23:12] And so that's what all of that code is for, but you haven't really thought about it in that kind of way.
So you have to figure out why things are there before you change or get rid of them.
Now, I think a good analogy is to say, okay, so prior to, say, the 14th century, was slavery and or serfdom the standard way of agriculture, right?
Either you had direct slaves or workers with some nominal economic freedoms who were still tied to the land like livestock.
Start and the answer of course is that yes across the entire world there was no such thing as a free market in agriculture there was no uh it was either serfdom or slavery or some combination, thereof and you would say well was it the case was it the case that society had tried a whole bunch of free market stuff but it all was settled on slavery and serfdom as the best ways of organizing agriculture and people would say anybody who knew anything about history would say well no No, we just kind of evolved that brutal fashion of dominance and subjugation and so on.
Work needed to be done, and it's way better to have a slave do it than to do it yourself.
[1:24:26] So because of the sort of brutality and primitive prehistory of the species, we inherited from a brutal and violent age, we inherited slavery.
I mean, let's just subsume serfdom among that because it's just a different kind of slavery.
[1:24:43] So, you wouldn't say that all societies have experimented with a wide variety of agricultural organization including a pure free market, but boy, you know, the most efficient thing was slavery.
It's like, no, based on the brutal prehistory, the absence of machinery, the absence of private property, the absence of automation, and the absence of, you know, stocks and bonds and a wage market economy and all of that, we just inherited this brutality called slavery.
We say, okay, so slaves pick the crops, right?
And what was it, Nadler, the Democrat politician, was just like, well, we have to have illegal immigration because otherwise the crops will rot in the ground, the vegetables will rot in the ground.
Well, that's the argument, right? And the argument is because slaves pick the crops, if there's no such thing as slavery, then the crops will not be picked, right?
And this is a completely false argument, of course.
It's absolutely a false argument. It's basically the equivalent of saying, a man rapes a woman, but if he doesn't rape the woman, she'll never have sex.
Like, it's a completely insane argument, but we accept it for reasons of psychology and power mongering and propaganda and so on.
[1:26:00] So, if somebody says about roads, well, this is the way it's always been done.
And you say, well, you know, prior to there not being slavery, slavery was the way that agriculture and other work was done, right?
I mean, before there were steamships, there were galley slaves, right?
And galley slaves was really the only way that you got ships across the ocean.
So we would sort of understand that. And it wasn't like people had tried all these steamships, but just found galley slaves were the most efficient way of doing these things, of course, right?
So, generally just trying to get people to understand that just because the government does something doesn't mean it's moral, doesn't mean it's the only way to do something, and certainly doesn't mean it's the most efficient way to do things.
The Question of Morality and Efficiency in Government Actions
[1:26:41] The question is not efficiency. The question is not can you imagine an alternative.
The question is the morality. morality slavery is immoral it is a violation of the non-aggression principle it's a violation of self-ownership it's one of the worst things ever in human history if not the worst thing ever given the opportunity cost of the free market that it cost so if somebody says law means government government fiat do this or else, well then yeah, okay.
But that's like saying agriculture means slavery.
[1:27:21] Now of course, somebody will perfectly accept that agriculture does not mean slavery.
Certainly there's agriculture that relies on slavery, even in the modern world.
There is also agriculture that does not rely on slavery. There's slavery without agriculture, and there's agriculture without slavery.
And there is of course also agriculture with slavery.
[1:27:43] And there's, of course, slavery in vast fields that don't involve agriculture.
But if you say that social rules means government fiat, government order, government decree, then, of course, most social rules are not enforced by government decree.
[1:28:01] And if you, you know, if the person doubts that, just say, oh, you know, try bringing up IQ in a social situation and see how many have a law against it, right?
Just see how well that's enforced.
You know, try showing up to a dinner party dressed only in a common Miranda hat and your underpants and see how social rules get enforced without the state.
Okay, so saying to people that clearly agriculture is not just slavery, even though it was through almost all of human history across every culture and every civilization that ever existed, and clearly social rules are not just the government.
And we questioned slavery and eliminated slavery because it was deeply immoral.
[1:28:41] And the absence of government fiat does not mean the absence of rules, and the presence of government fiat does not mean the presence of positive and healthy and efficient and moral social rules.
And of course, we can all think of endless amounts of laws that were passed and still exist in the world that are deeply immoral.
This is the argument that, you know, the Soviet constitution, the constitution under the communists, was incredibly liberal and positive and healthy and productive and gave people lots of rights, but it was never enforced and it was just a piece of paper, right?
So laws can be corrupted and generally are.
There are tons of rules, very positive and healthy social rules that are enforced without laws, and the fact that governments enforce laws doesn't make it right, doesn't make it moral, and it certainly doesn't mean that there aren't better alternatives in the same way that agriculture being based on slavery didn't make slavery right or moral and certainly didn't mean that there weren't better alternatives.
Does that make some sense? it.
Caller 3:
[1:29:43] Makes a lot of sense so that was a good example of um what we should do continue with our syllogisms and um uh whatnot uh in our discussions and usually um something that follows on with that um rather than uh suggesting that we're going to pass it uh talk past each other continue with the reasoning that you just went with that's fine in a not so um available time or environment, milieu-type environment.
Just say a man and wife, partner, girlfriend, and we understand that men are going to want to solve versus the woman wants to be heard in a bit of intimate time.
How do we maybe suggest to the woman that, hey, we're geared to solving problems?
You know, we could talk about a little bit about what you're thinking and that sort of thing.
But also, we have a right to, that's the way I'm geared. I'm just not going to serve a problem.
Stefan:
[1:30:47] Yeah, I mean, I don't quite follow this distinction between men and women, and I understand the general one, which is that women want to talk about problems just to feel heard, but men actually want to solve problems.
I mean, I've dated both kinds of women, in fact, once I found out. I'm sorry?
Caller 3:
[1:31:07] It was a bit too general on my part. No.
The Difference Between Complaining and Problem-Solving
Stefan:
[1:31:09] No, no, it's not your fault at all. No, I mean, I think what you're identifying is a general truism that people accept as a whole.
But in my experience the competent women do want to solve problems, incompetent women want to complain as do incompetent men they just want to complain right a stitching bitch as they used to call it right you get some knitting and you just complain about your husbands or the world or whatever right but so this idea that when a woman says for instance i'm i'm having this problem at work this guy's being really mean to me, and then the man says, well, you can try this, this, and this, or whatever, right?
Or maybe you should leave your job or whatever it is, right?
And the woman says, I just want you to listen.
Then what she's actually saying is, I don't want to solve the problem.
I just want to complain about it.
Now, it's not a particularly male thing. I mean, if you've ever known women who are competent in solving problems, they don't like hearing other women complain about problems without wanting solutions either.
So, to me…
Caller 3:
[1:32:07] Minority, yeah.
Stefan:
[1:32:08] Yeah like if if and look there's lots of men who want to complain about things without solving the problem either you hear like uh you know my girlfriend is this that and the other it's like well you should get her to stop doing that or you should break up with her hey man what are you talking about that's extreme not black and white so uh no i i don't i don't particularly and i don't think anybody does i don't want to hear someone complain about a problem without at least i mean I mean, I'll listen a couple of times for sure, yeah, but if it's a repetitive problem, yeah, I want to solve it.
Of course, of course I want to solve it. I mean, and if you want women to understand this, right?
If you want women to understand this, then what you do is you say to the woman, if she's complaining without wanting a solution, you say, okay, listen, man, listen, honey, uh, there's this woman at work. I'm really, really attracted to her.
I mean, she's so hot.
[1:33:08] She's so hot. And, and she's like completely flirty with me too.
Like it's crazy. crazy leaning over me boobs half full and out flipping back her hair and laughs at everything i say keeps wanting to come to lunch with me and sit like uncomfortably close to me she's got this great perfume and her hair smells fantastic and you know now of course what's your girlfriend gonna say she's gonna get really upset right and then you say no no no i i just i just need you to to listen.
The Pain of Attraction vs. Repetitive Complaints
Caller 3:
[1:33:40] Yeah, yeah. And she'll say.
Stefan:
[1:33:41] I don't want to hear that. What do you mean you're attracted to someone?
Yeah, now that's how I feel when you complain without wanting a solution.
Caller 3:
[1:33:49] Yes, awesome. You got me in the, oh my.
Stefan:
[1:33:51] Oh jeez.
Caller 3:
[1:33:52] That's no good.
Stefan:
[1:33:53] All right, hang on just a sec. Sorry about this.
Oh sorry about that um just had a call about a piece of technology so okay but yeah i mean so she's like the the pain that you feel if i'm attracted to another woman is the pain that i feel when you don't want a solution to a repetitive problem.
Caller 3:
[1:34:27] Yeah, yeah, that's an awesome little reasoning sort of comeback. Thank you, Stefan.
Very, very great insights in those two little blurbs from me. Thank you so much.
Stefan:
[1:34:40] You're very welcome, man. All right, let's do one more quickie quickie.
If anybody has a question or comment.
And listen, by the way, again, I just really want to reiterate how grateful I am for you guys to have supported the show and keep us afloat.
And just thank you, thank you, thank you.
It really does mean the world. I know we've got a smaller audience now, but there's some real pluses to that.
And the stuff that we're doing now, let me tell you sort of very briefly the benefits of the smaller audience.
The massive benefits of the smaller audience is that our work resonates for all time.
The stuff that I'm talking about, the skewing condition stuff, this is relationship stuff, this is conversational stuff, ethics, virtue, and all of that.
So rather than me doing another presentation on what's happening in Ukraine or another presentation on the Paris Peace Accord or the climate change, all of that stuff kind of comes and goes.
Goes and of course i have this view which i'm sure you can understand and you probably experience this too that how many how many emails do you think people send me about a work i did on some terrorist attack in paris eight years ago they don't because that was a singular event and it did get a wider audience and there was value in that i'm not going to pretend there wasn't i don't have any regrets for that but it comes and goes and it has very little interest or relevance.
[1:36:09] To people in the future because it was a very specific thing the example that i always have in my own mind is something like tom sawyer or huckleberry finn or other works that mark twain did samuel clemens well he also had a weekly newspaper column that ran for decades i think and nobody cares about that stuff nobody reads that because it's all the news of the day the moments of the day so he's like well you know but i get much more feedback in the moment from my newspaper columns but what do we care about centuries later or a century and a half later we care about his novels we care about the stuff that is more timeless the stuff that is more human the the stuff that connects us in a more visceral way.
So taking away the cocaine pig trough of politics, in a way, was hugely beneficial to the future.
Greater Impact on Future with Philosophy
[1:37:00] We have a smaller audience now, but we have a much greater effect in the future, because the shows that I do about human condition and relationships and personal virtues and call it and so on, those speak to eternal human challenges and issues, as opposed to.
[1:37:19] Brexit or you know the politics of the moment which has a certain i guess historical interest for people in the future but what people will listen to the most in the future is the stuff with the smaller audience now that i'm very very clear on uh that we are losing eyeballs in the present but gaining minds in the future and the ratio is you know one-tenth the audience is at at least a hundred or a thousand times the relevance of the shows in the future.
And given that philosophy doesn't have much musculature to try and change things in the world that is, except at the personal level, the fact that we can have a much greater impact on the future not only keeps me going, but makes the shows for me even more enjoyable and powerful now than they were in the heyday of the show.
So I hope that helps, at least from my perspective, make clear what I'm working on or thinking about or looking at.
All right, well, it looks like a good time to close down. I really, really appreciate it, everyone. Thank you so much for dropping by.
What a great deal of pleasure to have this opportunity to chat with you guys, and I will see you on Wednesday night for Wednesday Night Live.
Thanks again for all of your support. If you're listening to this later, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show and join these fine people who I think can be happy with their supportive philosophy over the course of our lives, and lots of love. Take care. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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