0:06 - Introductory Thoughts
1:33 - Financial Challenges
3:43 - Movie Discussion
6:18 - Time and Relationships
7:11 - Medical Trust Issues
7:44 - Classroom Challenges
8:24 - Consumer Spending Trends
8:47 - Tariffs and Government
11:45 - Tariff Implications
14:36 - Negotiating Tariffs
18:34 - The Nature of Evil
25:16 - Historical Credibility
25:31 - Per Capita Debt
25:53 - National Debt Discussion
26:51 - Taxpayer Responsibility
29:52 - Parenting and Authority
37:00 - Honesty in Relationships
40:25 - Reflections on Communication
45:10 - Parenting Techniques
52:09 - Engaging Children
1:10:50 - Curiosity and Learning
1:20:12 - Discussing Human Sexuality
1:28:29 - The Beauty of Creation
1:29:55 - Closing Remarks
The podcast episode begins with a reflection on a recent call-in show in which the host engaged in a lengthy conversation with a caller who claimed to represent God's morality on Earth, leading to a discussion on the challenges of addressing grandiosity in dialogue. The host mentions an increase in listener cancellations mainly attributed to financial strains, echoing broader economic concerns in the West. He emphasizes the importance of audience support, suggesting that even small donations can significantly impact the show’s sustainability.
In the following segment, the host invites listeners to share their questions and comments, seamlessly transitioning into reviews of recent cultural media, specifically the film "Conclave," which delves into the intricacies of papal elections. The host critiques various actors' performances, expressing disappointment with their inability to move beyond their established tics. He views the film as visually stunning, with an intriguing underlying message that he believes the filmmakers may not have intended.
The discussion shifts to the state of the economy, where the host notes a stark divide between businesses that secure government contracts and those that do not. He speculates about potential economic implications should Trump return to power, hinting at a larger narrative about political influence and the economic challenges facing citizens trying to navigate a system that rewards certain interests over others.
Listeners share heartwarming anecdotes about how their parents met, providing a moment of levity amid the heavier topics. The host observes a stark generational shift in attitudes toward relationships, lamenting the modern tendency to delay significant life decisions often attributed to a fear of rushing into commitment.
A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to discussing the perceived decline in trust towards medical professionals, particularly post-COVID, highlighting how public opinion has shifted due to perceived collaborations between doctors and pharmaceutical companies. The host applauds the growing skepticism toward authority figures, linking it to broader themes of societal transparency and accountability.
The conversation then moves toward fiscal responsibility and the complexities of tariffs. The host navigates the nuances of trade policy, explaining that tariffs serve both as protective measures and negotiation tools. He elucidates why high tariffs can be self-defeating, ultimately harming domestic industries while benefitting a select few. The host tackles notions of political and economic power dynamics, indicating that the very structure of government intervention often serves to concentrate wealth and power among a privileged class, raising existential questions about job security and economic fairness.
As the dialogue shifts back to personal narratives, the host emphasizes the importance of addressing moral failings honestly in relationships, using concrete examples from listeners' lives to illustrate how withholding truth from those who have wronged us can enable continued harm. He stresses the concept of moral responsibility and the necessity of confrontation in order to foster possible redemption and growth.
Towards the episode's conclusion, listeners inquire about various parenting strategies, particularly in cultivating resilience in children. The host underscores the importance of allowing children to experience frustrations and challenges to develop grit, while at the same time, he highlights the need for parental understanding and support. He explores the balance of nurturing and discipline in parenting, advocating for an approach that involves open dialogue rather than protective intervention to help children cope with the complexities of emotion.
In a lighter yet profound farewell, the host discusses human sexuality, denouncing the shame often associated with it and celebrating its role in creativity and human connection. He concludes the show with a reflection on the fundamental messiness of human existence—birth, relationships, and emotional experiences—ultimately asserting that beauty can emerge from the complex fabric of life.
The episode wraps up with a call for listener support, encouraging more engagement through donations and participation in related online communities, while expressing gratitude for the audience's time and interaction. The host mentions plans for the upcoming holiday of Halloween and looks forward to future discussions, underscoring the vibrant dialogue cultivated through this shared space.
[0:01] Good morning, everybody. 27th October, 2024. I hope you're doing well.
[0:06] And, yeah, I was just saying to the callers, I did a call-in show last night for two and a half hours with a guy who believed that he was the incarnation of God's morality on Earth. And let me tell you, tackling grandiosity is quite a challenge. It's quite a challenge. It was really a great conversation. That's going to go out for donors soon. So, if you would like to help out, you know, we have just a, I mean, a bleed. We've had a bleed of people who've canceled, and I've asked them why, and for a lot of people, of course, it's just the finances of the modern economies in the West are brutal. And so if you have any, you know, an extra cup of coffee a month or a week or something like that, you can sign up for, you know, 5, 10, 20 bucks a month, that would be very helpful. That would be very helpful. And so, yeah, nobody, I think one person said that they don't listen as much anymore. But everybody else who I've asked has said that it's the finances and of course I sympathize with that I understand that but if you do have any extra cash that you would like to do help support philosophy I would really really appreciate it I dare say I would say the employees as a whole would really really appreciate it and if you could sign up at freedomain.com slash donate or freedomain.locals.com or subscribestar.com slash freedomain seems like a bit of a tongue Twister, we would all really, really appreciate it. Thank you.
[1:33] All right, so let's get, to your questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, whatever is on your mind. I am overjoyed to hear and help. Hit me with a why. I guess we can start with this. Hit me with the Y if you've seen the movie Conclave. It's a movie about the election of a Pope. Have you seen the movie Conclave with Ralph Fiennes and, oh gosh, what's his blobby, baldy name? Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, who, I don't know, it bothers me when these actors can't overcome their tics.
[2:23] No, you haven't? Okay. Well, it's worth watching. I think it's worth watching. I mean, beautiful. The music is beautiful. Of course, it's the Vatican, so the environment is beautiful. And the message is interesting. It has a message that I'm absolutely convinced the filmmakers did not intend. So, I won't give out the spoilers. I'll wait until some people have seen it, and then we'll maybe talk about it afterwards. What do you guys think about the economy? I notice that if your company is not selling to the government, your company is not doing too well. Yeah. Well, can you imagine if Trump wins and Elon Musk is the Department of Government Efficiency, there will be a massive wrenching change in the economy. It's not just the government workers. It's everyone who has fostered and developed contacts within the government in order to get, quote, free money from the next generation through the pillaging of national debts, uh, all of the, you know, monstrous in human form who pillaged the unborn, we'll get very upset. We'll get very upset. So it's going to be a pretty wild time in America. It's either slow decline or wrenching change and wrenching change is going to be, uh, uh, well, it's going to be quite aggressive to put it mildly.
[3:43] All right. So let me just see here.
[3:50] I liked this story. So this woman wrote, I love hearing stories about how my elderly patients met their spouses. One man married 50 years told me he worked at a grocery store and accidentally dropped a lady's eggs while carrying them to the car and says, well, now I've got to take you out for breakfast. They got married three weeks later. That's lovely.
[4:17] And um i thought those were some nice stories, i married my former wife's best friend at her suggestion and yes they're still best friends, i don't know man there's something about this i've i've i've surmounted and platonically arisen above all human material evolutionary concerns that just seems kind of weird to me, my grandma was a waitress and my grandpa was a visitor from out of town at her restaurant i guess when he left the city she put an ad out in the papers looking for him and a few weeks later he came back to the restaurant and asked her for a date they'd been together for over 30 years now nice nice my parents didn't know each other but ended up at the same party mom was in the kitchen and dad came in saying i don't think we've met mom worked out saying and we never will eight weeks later they were married and it's been 58 years dad said he saw her as a challenge, well that's a shit test and a half right, Grandma worked at a diner when she was 18. For weeks, my grandpa would come in in his army uniform trying to impress her. One day, she dropped food on him and said he'd have to wear something to go dancing in while she cleaned it. Married two weeks later and 70 years together.
[5:40] My parents met on a blind date in 1962. They married 10 weeks later and were deeply in love for over 62 years. I mean, do you hear these stories? I mean, I was considered fast for meeting, dating, getting engaged to, and marrying my wife all in 11 months. But, of course, everybody's got slow motion sickness, right? They got slow motion sickness. Everything's got to be so slow. And you've got to vet. And you've got to challenge. And you've got to wait. And don't rush. And don't hurry. And you have forever and ever. Amen. And then you panic and make bad decisions, right? So I'm always trying to remind people of the passage of time.
[6:19] I mean, if watching me throughout the years doesn't remind you of the passage of time, I don't know what will. But time waits for nobody. Time, not just a fairly mediocre Freddie Mercury song, but a factor that we all need to remember. Time is passing and it doesn't come back. So one thing you can't make more of, land and time.
[6:44] Well I guess you can make more time by becoming healthier now this is I don't know how accurate I say this you know the stuff that I get from X I don't know how accurate all this is but, physicians and hospitals dropped from over 70% in 2020, to 31.4% in 2024 so 31% of people trust their doctor.
[7:12] It's really fun watching Joe Rogan talk about the propaganda machine. That, in my view, he's part of. But anyway, that's. Oh, what could you say? What can you say? One person writes, after COVID, I would barely trust a doctor to take my pulse. So, yeah, the demystification of doctors is really something. You know, how much doctors got paid for vaccinations and how beholden they are to pharmaceutical companies and so on. The demystification of doctors is really, really important. The demystication of all authority is really, really important.
[7:44] Somebody wrote, he wrote on August the 1st, my philosophy class is 95% female, all studying climate change and social justice. I'm going to be ripped limb from limb. And then on October 24th, he wrote, okay, last day of this class today. Today, they explicitly discussed why we should kill rich people or at least seize their assets and make it illegal to be rich. Not exaggerating. Glad it's over. What can I tell you, man? this is just going to be going to be rough.
[8:16] So, one of the funniest consumer spending stats is that, on average, women spend more than 100% of their monthly income.
[8:25] So, in one month, the average single American male consumer spends $3,608, or 98.6% of his income after taxes. The average single female spends $3,515 in one month, or 114.7% of her income after taxes.
[8:48] Ah you don't need money when you look like that do you honey, oh my gosh, trump considers trump considering ending all federal income taxes and replacing them with tariffs, and people um people have an odd view about tariffs people have an odd view about Tariffs. So, tariffs, of course, as you know, is when you put a tax on goods coming in from another country. Now, this is a brief history of this kind of stuff. After the end of the Second World War, the Americans allowed the Europeans to have tariffs on American goods, but did not have tariffs on European goods with the goal of revitalizing the, I mean, Maribond bombed out and destroyed European manufacturing base. And this, of course, is like every government program. It just sticks and sticks and sticks. What do you think about tarries? Do you like them? I don't know what tarries are. I hope you're not referring to tariffs and didn't check your typo. I'm still annoyed about typos, although I will not nag people for asking complicated questions. Yes. Yeah, just check. You know, just read. Just read before you send. I mean, give me the basic courtesy you'd give someone you were emailing a business letter to. That's all, because it's my business, right?
[10:18] You would double check a business email wouldn't you i mean i think it's reasonable to ask for the same amount of respect it is my business it is my show and it would be helpful so with regards to tariffs so there is an old argument that comes out of the um austrian school and the old argument goes something like this well let's say that america came up with a cure for cancer and japan came up with a cure for heart disease. America came up with a cure for cancer, and Japan came up with a cure for heart disease. Now, let's say that Japan banned or put a massive tariff or banned the importation of the American cure for cancer. Should America, in response, ban Japan's cure for heart disease? Well, the argument, of course, would be no. I mean, the fact that Japan wouldn't accept the American cure for cancer doesn't mean that America shouldn't accept the Japanese cure for heart disease. So I get all of that, and that's certainly a good argument. But the question, of course, is how the hell do you lower tariffs?
[11:22] How do you lower tariffs? So the problem with tariffs is, like all government interventions, it creates dispersed costs and concentrated benefits. Right? So in America, the sugar industry, for some time, I don't know, I haven't looked into it lately, but for a long time, they had very high tariffs on the importation of foreign sugar. Right?
[11:45] And there's lots of places that produce sugar a lot better than America. So the sugar industry lobbied the government for big tariffs on sugar, which raised the price of sugar significantly, which is one of the reasons why they switched to high fructose corn syrup and other ungodly Satan armpit sweat juices of doom.
[12:06] So, of course, the average American consumer ends up paying, you know, a couple of dozen, maybe 50, maybe 100 dollars a month, which they don't really trace back in excess sugar costs. But the sugar industry makes ungodly amounts of money so the sugar industry has all of that money multiplied to lobby the government but there's no particular interest for the dispersed costs of sugar for consumers to get together and really work hard to overthrow those those tariffs right so if you're the sugar industry and your profits are double or triple because of the tariff you'll throw tens if not more tens of millions if not more into lobbying for the government but if you are, let's say you make 25 bucks an hour and sugar tariffs cost you 50 bucks a year, it's not really worth you putting more than two hours into it. So concentrated benefits, dispersed costs are a big problem.
[12:58] Now, the reason why the medical analogy falls short, right, that if America comes up with a cure for cancer and Japan comes up with a cure for heart disease, well, those are just net benefits as a whole, right? But the problem is if you have, if a country you want to export to has high tariffs on your goods and you don't have tariffs on their goods, then they sell into your market and hollow out your job base.
[13:32] I mean, people in a country should have the ability, I know this sounds radical, but people in a country should have the ability to get a job, right? And this is, I think, one of the reasons why the diversity stuff is tough for some groups, because anybody who targets your ability to get a job is targeting your survival, right? Because if you can't get a job, you can't have a wife, you can't have kids, really. So everyone who says you can't be hired, I mean, it's about as aggressive a thing as people can do to your birth rate and your reproduction, which is kind of what we're all here for. So it is not at all a peaceful thing to pass legislation that says certain people can get jobs and certain people can't. That is, it's eugenics, right? It is a form of eugenics, which is government intervention in the birth rate using force. So if there are high goods, and in America, like there's 100% tariffs on cars, like you cannot sell manufactured goods, or at least a lot of manufactured goods into Europe.
[14:36] So then how do you change that?
[14:43] How do you change that? So, Trump is talking about massive tariffs on various places, and people who don't understand, I mean, sorry, I mean, I don't mean to, I try to avoid, although I'm not always very successful, I try to avoid thinking that people are idiots. But in this case, it's just not thinking things through.
[15:06] So, the reason that Trump will threaten massive tariffs is not to raise tariffs, but to lower them, right? So if you go to China and you say, we're going to put 100% tariffs on this wide variety of goods, that's to get China to come to the table and lower their tariffs on American goods. I mean, you'd rather expand existing industries than have to create entirely new industries. So I don't know what people are thinking. Are they thinking that Trump just wants massive tariffs? No, he doesn't. He's kind of a free market guy in a lot of ways. So Trump would threaten or anyone would threaten to raise tariffs on foreign governments in order to get them down at the negotiating table and saying, well, we're either going to match your tariffs, we're going to match your tariffs, right? And then they're going to say, okay, well, then that's going to cripple our domestic industries. That's bad. So we need to lower our tariffs. Because if you say to another country, I'm going to match your tariffs, it's not because you want to raise tariffs, but because you want to lower tariffs. I'm not sure why this is controversial. I'm not sure why this is, I mean, maybe it's just people who don't negotiate. I mean, all they do is bully and escalate and de-platform. Well, we could be talking about a certain group, but.
[16:20] And, of course, tariffs as a whole, they're, of course, a violation of the non-aggression principle in that you're initiating the use of force among peaceful traders. But what do you do when somebody is initiating the use of force against your domestic citizens, right? I mean, economically, right? If Europe and China and other places have these massive tariffs, that's the initiation of force against your citizens who want to sell peacefully into a country but are ripped off at the border. So what do you do? tariffs are then a form of self-defense to reduce the amount of coercion in the economic sphere. So it's not just like, well, Trump's supposed to be a free market guy, and he wants all these tariffs, man, it's just going to be hyperinflationary. It's like, no, no, no, tariffs, I don't know, it's like, tariffs are just like, threatening tariffs is just the start of the conversation. I don't know why this is like, why this is so confusing to people. It gets people to sit down at the table. Why on earth would Europe or China or why on earth would they want to lower tariffs? They can sell freely into the US market and the US cannot sell into their market, which raises the value of the companies domestically, which means that the rich people who run those companies are going to be very keen on your political situation.
[17:37] There's a funny thing out there and I was susceptible to this when I was younger. I'll tell you straight up, man, I'm a little bit less susceptible about it now. But I was susceptible about this when I was younger, while I'm like, well, people would just end up, you know, the curve of the universe, Ben's World's Justice, people would end up doing the right thing in the long run. It's like, nope. No, people respond, especially in an amoral post-religion pre-UPB society, it's just a pure state of nature. It's nature red in tooth and claw. People are just following their own benefits. There's no morals, there's no abstract virtues or anything like that. So, So it's really important in life as a whole to not put things through a filter, right? You know, the people, oh, I hate Donald Trump. He's an idiot, right? And therefore, if you think someone's an idiot, you'll just interpret everything they say as idiotic, right? So, yeah, I don't, I mean, it's just a way to get people to sit down at the table and.
[18:35] Negotiate the lowering of tariffs. I don't know why this is controversial. Version uh most of the uh this is from luke croman somebody wrote this on rumble uh most of the oil commodities manufacturing people etc are in the bricks plus most of the debt and deficits are in the west yeah yeah yeah the debt the the the west has sold its future right i mean you think of the countries think of the countries like um faust right faust is uh goethe's famous character and it's been written by a lot of people but he uh faust sells his soul to mephistopheles, Mephistopheles is not your name so he sells his soul to the devil and gets immediate, happiness and fame and money and all of that, and then this turns fairly empty fairly quickly but he's already trapped at the contract he's going to lose his soul and then spends the last sort of third or half of his life in dread of hell, There is no drug like fiat currency. There is no drug like fiat currency. Because fiat currency is one of the drugs you're forced to take, whether you like it or not.
[19:47] So, the West sold its soul, sold its virtues for material gain. That's what debt is, right? That is particularly intergenerational state debt, right? It is selling your future, the morals and soul, and integrity and credibility of your elders, right? I mean, I don't know if you guys had this experience, but it was like a lightning bolt to me when I first, I must have been maybe 11 or 12 when I first found out about the national debt. And I didn't know about unfunded liabilities till later, but I just remember, I was just, you know, I would read the newspaper that'd be sort of sitting around or I'd go to the library to read books because I didn't want to be home. And I just remember reading about the national debt and it was like this crazy number, right? Like my brother and I used to fantasize, ooh, if we had a million pounds and we think we could buy jumbo jets, all kinds of crazy stuff, right? And I can't remember. Let's have a look at this. I think I was still in England, so I was probably 10. UK national debt history. What is the UK's national debt history? What was it back in the day? What was it back oh gosh can we go any further back.
[21:09] Ah history of the national debt as proportion of gdp uh what do we got here let's zoom in, uh so yeah for interest payments on u.s global national debt no i'm just wondering what the actual figures are. Anybody, if you can figure out, what was the national debt of England in 1976?
[21:34] What was the national debt? I bet it was crazy high. Like in 1962, the debt was absolutely monstrously high. 2024, the UK national debt climbs to its highest figure since 1962 as a percentage of GDP. So it was crazy how high the national debt was. and there was no, I mean, there was no plan to pay it off.
[22:12] I mean, I remember asking my mom, how's this paid? And she just left. I mean, I also remember asking my mom in Canada, it seems like a recession, but it doesn't seem like a recession. And she said, it's because I still have a job. She taught me a little bit about econ. But, um, so I just, I just remember like the whole credibility and edifice of society fell away. Of course, also, when I was in boarding school, from the ages of six to eight, there was a massive coal shortage and meat shortage because the government protected controlled cartels and unions were on strike. And so, how the living hell is society. In 1976, thank you, the UK's national debt was 14 billion pounds, 40% of the country's GDP. The UK was facing significant economic challenges, including high inflation and rising unemployment, which influenced fiscal policies and borrowing. So when I was in boarding school, we were cold and we were hungry. And of course, there was this basic thing that, how is a society supposed to have any credibility when it can't feed me, can't keep me warm, and has sold off my future?
[23:29] How? How? I mean, if you really want to help me out, and I appreciate this Wisen box part, if you could help me out, I don't know if you can find this, but if you could find, per taxpayer accumulated UK debt per capita. I guess national debt was 14 billion pounds and adjusted for inflation. I know that's a lot to ask. If you can find it, great. If not, I know there's some websites you can type these things in. What was the per, I mean, ideally per taxpayer, but at least per capita debt in 1976? Because I'm not sure exactly the population of England in 1976 and so on.
[24:18] And, and of course, there were the first whisperings when I was in England of the grooming gangs and so on. So, yeah. So there was just like no, no credibility. I mean, you can't feed me, you can't keep me warm, the economy is groaning, and I'm like, you sold off my future. So that's when I first began to think, yeah, maybe this is all nonsense. Like, maybe my elders have no credibility, right? Maybe they don't know what they're doing, and I don't know if you've had that moment. I'm sure you have had that moment where you say it's all lies and nonsense, right? How can they possibly tell me that I need to do the right thing when they sold my fucking soul to foreign banksters for the sake of bribing the electorate in the here and now?
[25:16] How can they possibly have any credibility in telling me what to do?
[25:32] So, they sold me on an auction block. So, per capita debt of £250 in 1976.
[25:53] So, that's equivalent to £1,200 to £1,400 today. But that's the sorry that now you have to do it with net taxpayers right, so I mean and I'm sorry like it's just it's an ugly calculation and I don't know if anyone's done it but that math is wrong it seems a little low I could be wrong but, what you need to do with regards to national debt is you need to figure out net taxpayers in the private sector right net, taxpayers in the private sector, right? Because you can't include those retirees. You can't include children. You can't include women not in the workforce or men not in the workforce. You can't include any of that stuff. You can't include people on welfare, right? You have to be, who's going to pay the debt? Well, it's not going to be the public sector that pays the debt because they're paid by taxes, right? So the public sector is not going to pay the debt.
[26:52] It is the net to taxpayers in the private sector who have any chance, if there is a chance, to pay off the national debt. And you can't even really include people whose wages are artificially high through government protections of unions.
[27:15] So I just remember, like, it was really, it was really heartbreaking because when I was a little kid I was very patriotic right I mean I grew up on the stories around uh World War II and the English finest hour and and so on and uh I remember my there was a Lassie movie and that was going to be on TV and there was a little scene of a machine gun uh because I guess Lassie was at war or something and my brother had to go out and he was really upset because we both wanted to watch this war movie together I ended up watching it and I remember thinking that's kind of a rip-off because there was only one tiny bit of war. The rest of it was like Lassie, being Lassie. And I was very patriotic. St. George, the dragon, land of hope and glory. I was very patriotic when I was very little. And then when I got older, England just turned really seedy. The entirety of the decade of the 70s was a shitstorm of hedonistic, greasy, P. Diddy seediness.
[28:25] It was, it was vile. It was vile. It was vile. Gross sex sounds from all over the apartment complexes, pornography littering the streets all over. It was just, it was just seedy, gross, vile, decadent, sweaty, greasy, unshaven pornstaches. It was just vile. It was just a vile, vile environment as a whole. Welcome, King.
[29:06] It went from land of hope and glory, to land of decadence and decay. And then, of course, that's what brought Margaret Thatcher in, right? And then I remember the feminists all hating Margaret Thatcher. And that's when I first began to really think that the feminists were also full of crap, because the feminists hated Margaret Thatcher, and they hated Ayn Rand. And these are two of the most successful women in terms of politics and literature who've ever lived. But they, so they didn't care about the women thing. It was just a front for socialism and communism, right?
[29:52] The national debt will be very hard to pay off in light of less than a replacement birth rates, meaning that eventually there'll be fewer taxpayers and a shrinking economy. Can't pay off the national debt. You can't. It's not possible. Unless there would be some absolutely miraculous productivity tool, which, right? So, no, it is not going to happen. I mean, the only thing that's kept the economy going is computerization. That's the only thing. The efficiency of computerization is the only thing that have kept the Western economies going. that's the 20th century motor company device out of Shrugged is computerization and computers.
[30:34] It's a brutal place in the West. Yeah, there's no possibility of being able to pay off the national debt. It's not going to happen. And it's not even a close call. All right. So let me get to your questions and comments. And of course, if you would like to tip, I would appreciate that. No tips yet. FreeDomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I would really, really appreciate that. You can also go to FDRURL.com slash locals to get a promo code that gives you access to the premium stuff. And don't forget to check out, we have the call-in AI is public at the moment. So you can check it out and see just the AI is very cool. The AI is a very, very cool. All right, let's see here.
[31:39] Good morning, Stef. I have a question, but I'm not sure if it's appropriate to ask on this forum. I just started reading a book, Real-Time Relationships, and on page 69, Why We Succumb, the last paragraph there was a statement that says that allowing other people to treat us badly is a subtle form of aggression against them. This is sort of a mind-bender, and I was wondering if you could delve into the concept of slave morality. Thank you. Well, I actually just talked about this with my caller last night, who claimed to be morality incarnate. And he had, in the hall of evil of parental abuses, this guy, and honestly, I really can't think of it without becoming extraordinarily emotional, the amount of abuse that this guy suffered at the hands of the people his parents delivered him unto. Is, it's beyond comprehension. It's almost beyond, I mean, it is beyond comprehension, just the amount of abuse that he suffered, he and his sister.
[32:42] Now, he's a Christian, and he has never confronted his mother on the evils that she was responsible for being perpetrated upon him, right? I mean, she chose these people to take care of her children, and what these people did to those children is beyond comprehension. It is, I can't comprehend it. So I asked, did he ever talk to his mother about the staggering sins that were visited upon him under her care, custody, and control? And he said, no. He said, no. And I said, and you're a Christian. He said, yes. And I said, does God forgive unrepentant sinners?
[33:41] Does God forgive unrepentant sinners? He says no. And I said do you think that you know better than God? And he said well no of course not right? And I said so by not confronting your parents, you are damning them to hell. Because clearly their own conscience isn't troubling them enough to bring this up with you to make sincere apologies to seek restitution to sob and cry and rend their garments in horror at their history. His father was an alcoholic and his mother was his mother. So by not providing feedback to people, we don't provoke their capacity for reform and redemption. Like, your toothache is your friend, right? Your toothache is your friend because your toothache is saying, something's wrong with your tooth, go get it fixed. And that way you don't swallow all the bacteria that can end up damaging your heart or maybe even killing you or it becomes some systemic bone infection or goes into your side. I don't know what, right? I'm not an expert, but this is sort of my understanding about how it might go. So your toothache is your friend.
[34:49] By causing you suffering, it is convincing you to act in a better manner. So when people have done great evils against us, or even minor evils against us, when we withhold telling them and talking to them honestly and frankly about it, we are preventing them from feeling the discomfort that might get them to improve their behavior, face their own conscience, and become better. Now, whether you believe in God and punishment and hell or not, by withholding honest feedback, we damn people to not changing for the better.
[35:26] I mean, if your wife keeps gaining, five, 10 pounds a year and you never tell her anything and you say she's fine, you're actually participating in harming her. Right? You're not saying, whoa, hang on, you can't fit into that. Let's get on the scale. Let's sort this out. I mean, maybe I've gained some weight, but you know, if, if your wife keeps gaining weight and you don't tell her or give her feedback or anything like that, then you are condemning her to injury and ill health to a large degree, right? It's what my father said when I was in my twenties once, he just said, it's not a sudden weight gain. It's the two pounds a year you've got to watch out for. Two pounds a year over 30 years is 60 pounds. I think you can get some of that just by not adjusting your food as you age because your metabolism slows down to some degree.
[36:27] It's almost impossible to hate someone more than an evildoer who's harmed us that we withhold honesty and correction from. We are letting them continue down the path of evil without feedback, without interruption, without attempting to contact their conscience or anything like that. It is, you know, when people say, you have to find peace with your parents before they die and so on, and it's like, okay, that's fine, but not through lying, right?
[37:00] When you lie to people and you pretend that they're more virtuous than they are, you collude with the devil that keeps their conscience at bay and have them continue down the path to the destruction of their souls.
[37:21] Right? If you're supposed to, what, there's an old joke about like a married couple, you're married when you send a nude and your wife says, okay, which mole do you want me to check on? If some friend of yours has some giant mole on his back and you don't say anything about it, you must hate that guy. If he's got some giant, scary, red, whatever, like blistery mole, he should go and get that checked out. But if you don't tell him about it, you would only do that because you want him dead or harmed, right? We have, as a species, developed a social conscience, which is why propaganda works, a social conscience. So we can't see our own behaviors objectively very easily. But other people can see them, which is why, you know, when I give people insights in a call-in show, I'm not sitting there saying, oh, I'm some sort of super genius. It's because I'm on the outside so I can see more easily, right?
[38:20] I mean, prior to mirrors, we couldn't really see our backs, right? So we needed somebody else to check our back if we had a mole or am I cut or how bad is my sunburn, you know? And it's the same with a conscience. Our conscience is shared, right? Which is great and terrible, right? With a shared conscience, you can program people into hating individuals and groups. And we see this happening all the time, right? So we share our conscience. And if you are part of somebody else's conscience network, which is all relationships beyond the superficial, right? All relationships beyond the superficial, we're part of other people's conscience network. We're social animals, which means we have offloaded operations of our consciousness to other people. In the same way that we can sleep at night because some people will guard us. In the same way that we don't have to have eyes in the back of our head because we can go back-to-back in war and guard each other's rear, watch each other's six.
[39:20] So our conscience is social. We have offloaded, which is why when you choose your companions, you are choosing your conscience. Because if your companions are dishonest, then you have essentially farmed out aspects of your conscience to people who won't give you feedback, which trains you in a conscienceless sociopathy. If you have people around you who aren't going to tell you the truth if you're not doing the right thing, if you're drifting, if you are doing wrong things, if you are lying, if you are lying by omission if they don't call you out on it, then your friends are participating with the sociopathic elements in all of us that want to suppress the conscience so that evil can flourish. So if you have people in your life who are doing wrong and you don't tell them you are training them into a kind of sociopathy. Thank you, Edward. Thank you, Adam. You are refusing to be their conscience. In other words, they have a terrible toothache and rather than have them experience the pain you are mixing narcotics into their coffee so they can't feel the toothache.
[40:26] Well, the only reason you'd want someone to not feel a toothache is because you want them to get even sicker. Even sicker.
[40:43] Refusing to be honest with people about moral issues is a form of murderous hatred in a way, you want them to suffer you want your vengeance upon them for them never to become better because they did you so much harm and i i won't participate in those quote relationships i won't participate in dishonest conscience-eliminating, sabotage relationships. I find that vile. I find that repulsive. It makes me, like it makes the gorge rise in my throat, the idea that I would withhold from evildoers the wrongs that they've done in order to condemn them to a life of shallow, empty continuance of evil. No, thank you. So that's what I'm talking about with regards to that stuff. And that's why, that's why thou shalt not bear false witness it's very important, all right and thank you for the uh info on the uh uk debt, but i don't think it's 1400 pounds i don't think that's true All right. Sorry, I missed this question about...
[42:06] Current debt in the UK is $2.7 trillion. Yeah, for sure. I'm so sorry. I'm just missing this question on someone's daughter. Must have been before then. Load more messages. Do you have any advice for helping cultivate grit and determination in my daughter? I've realized that I have over-nurtured her by being too quick to intervene when she experiences frustration. I have admitted to her and I'm working to resist that tendency myself. But do you have any advice on additional ways to foster determination? That's a great question. This is from a mom. So let me ask you this. Where is her father?
[42:56] Where is your father?
[43:02] Sorry, where is her father. Because I understand that, that for moms as a whole, for moms, the impulse is to prevent the child from suffering.
[43:16] Because moms are hardwired to deal with babies and toddlers. Babies and toddlers cannot learn by experience. They cannot learn by suffering. Okay, he's absolutely present, our rockin' primary breadwinner. Okay, so let me ask you this. And it's no criticism. I'm just curious in this. I'm sure there's great answers for this. So just for my own knowledge, why did he not intervene when you over coddled your daughter? Why did he not say, no, no, no, let her, let her, she'll be fine. Right? Because learning how to deal with negative emotions is not something that babies and toddlers should ever do. But when you get older than that, you should learn how to deal with negative emotions, which means that, and the mom's impulse is to rush in and make everything better and give a hug and and so on and the father's impulse is to say no no it's it's fine right you know this is the old thing where the the kid is learning how to ride a bike and the mom is like freaking out and and what if they fall it's like yeah they'll fall and then they'll learn how to be careful like you you by preventing pain we're preventing learning right so how did your why did he not intervene and say with regards to, your daughter no no no there's not there's too coddling right it's too coddling.
[44:34] It's too coddling this is not this is not good, and that's why I thought maybe he wasn't present and I'm glad to hear that he was.
[44:47] But that's what I want to know. And also, if you can just tell me, you don't have to tell me explicitly, but is your daughter in her early teens, mid-teens, late teens, late single digits, what age are we looking at here?
[45:11] I think he has, but I've refused to listen. But then he's not your rock like why uh she's 10 okay okay so when your husband has said to you, don't coddle our daughter and you didn't listen again i'm not trying to nitpick or i'm certainly not trying to nag or anything i'm just curious why didn't you listen i mean your husband you love him, you say he's your rock and your primary breadwinner, which is wonderful, but why wouldn't you listen to him?
[45:55] That's a big question, right? I don't know if you're a Christian and whether the male is supposed to have more authority in these matters, but why wouldn't you listen to your husband? Because then you're saying that his perspectives on parenting are wrong. But why would you have a child with someone who you didn't trust their perspectives on parenting? And again, I'm not trying to be naggy or anything. I'm as a genuine, I think it's a trauma response in myself.
[46:25] Well, sure. I mean, if you've gone through excessive pain as a child, then a child's discomfort is difficult. But that's why we have partners, right? So again, your conscience is offloaded. This is one of the reasons why marriage is so powerful, is that your wife watches your back, your husband watches your back, and you don't have to do it all yourself. I mean, it's not just two can live as cheaply as one. is two can be twice or 10 times as good as one because you've got somebody watching your back and reminding you of your conscience. Okay. So, and I sympathize with this, of course, right? And then my question then would be, with regards to your husband, did your husband identify this as a trauma response and say, you should deal with the trauma, not by acting out to undermine our daughter, like preventing our daughter from experiencing frustration or upset is not healthy. And so did your husband know about your trauma response and did he say to you, this is not the right way to deal with it, you know, with all due respect and sympathy, this is not the right way to deal with your trauma is to prevent your child from having upset or try to. So did he say that? And maybe this would be better for a call-in show and of course you can always do that. You can do it public or private, freedomain.com slash call-in. So we could do it that way but because it's kind of tough because i know there are these delays and all of that so all right well we're waiting for that to come back.
[47:54] Uh debt to gdp ratio in the is 122 but it's in the us 122 percent yeah yeah, and of course debt and unfunded liabilities kills the birth rate, he knows about it but didn't say anything to me about it being a poor trauma response, yeah.
[48:20] You know, and we all do this from time to time, and I sympathize, but it's very tough, right? It's tough when the past wins, right? There's a powerful line, at least for me, in my novel, The God of Atheists, where a highly traumatized and dysfunctional young man is writing a song, and he says about himself, this is what remains when history wins. This is what remains when history wins and listen there are times when history is going to win and then you've got to fight that right you've got to fight that history winning and and live in the present and not inflict your own history on your children i get that and we all have varying degrees of success regarding that so you manage your own feelings of anxiety or or stress or whatever you manage your own feelings by preventing your daughter from going through necessary human experiences. And again, I know this sounds harsh. I don't mean it that way. I'm just trying to identify what happened and we need to have a clear eyed view of what happened. And again, we've all done it to some degree or another. Absolutely. Right.
[49:32] So you used your daughter to manage your own feelings and thus prevented her from going through necessary developmental dealings with stress, negative emotions, and frustration. So now, you have to apologize to her, you have to figure out how to make restitution, and you're just going to have to stop intervening. You're going to have to take your husband's lead. And you know, it's a beautiful thing when you surrender to the authority of your spouse. My wife is right about a lot of things. I'm right about a lot of things. My wife is right about a lot of things. It's just a beautiful, easy, lovely thing. When you just say, yeah, we're going to do it your way. Yeah, we're going to do it your way.
[50:17] I grew up in apartments. When my wife got pregnant, she's like, we've got to have a house. I'm like, okay, I don't know why. I grew up in apartments. And it turns out she was right. So you just say to your spouse, you're right. Let's do it your way. It's beautiful. So you tried this thing of not doing it your husband's way. And now you just do it your husband's way and give him charge of that and deal with the feelings, right? And again, I'm not saying that's super easy, but But the only solution to things that haven't worked is doing the opposite of what didn't work, right?
[50:51] But you do have to apologize to your daughter for making it more tough for her to experience negative emotions because she should have had... Like, when should children be able to manage negative emotions? I would say starting roughly... It depends on the kid, right? But starting roughly the age of four or five, they can start to deal with negative emotions. Yeah, so she just asked, right? So obviously, babies shouldn't learn how to deal with negative emotions, because the baby's negative emotion is, do this or I'm going to die. Feed me or I'm going to die, right? Because if a kid doesn't get fed, a baby doesn't get fed for long enough, they can die, right? I mean, it's true for everyone, much more true for babies. So babies should not learn how to deal with negative emotions. With, well, I would say with one exception, which is self-soothing with regards to sleep, that babies do have to learn at some point, and I can't remember exactly how old my daughter it was under a year when we did let her cry it out because it was actually just because we were getting so little sleep it was becoming dangerous to drive and so on and we just had to right so, that's learning to deal with that she's fine and she's a great sleeper now and no trauma or anything like that because she learned that she could put herself to sleep without having parental intervention but so I would say that's an exception to the general rule but in terms of dealing with negative emotions, yeah, your kids are going to get disappointed.
[52:10] They're going to want to win a game, and they won't win a game, right?
[52:14] So what did we play? Go Go Giraffe was the first game that we played with my daughter. It's a flicky spinny thing, and it's a fun game. And then they're going to get occasionally frustrated that they don't win.
[52:26] But in general, the reason why we get frustrated when we don't win.
[52:33] Is because we don't enjoy the game, right? If you enjoy the game, winning becomes less important. And the reason why kids end up with an overemphasis on winning is they don't enjoy the game. They don't enjoy playing the game with their parents, say, right? Maybe because the parents are overcompetitive or something like that, right?
[52:58] So, if kids enjoy the game, the winning or the losing, like you've already won, right? So, my daughter and I, we used to have these epic games of Monopoly that would sometimes last two weeks, right? And we'd keep lending to each other because the game was so much fun to continue. And the purpose of the game was not to win or lose, It was so much fun to play, right? And so, yeah, Izzy did also teach me that to some degree about games. I'm a tiny bit of a competitive guy, which I think is fine. Obviously, you want to have that Aristotelian mean, not completely indifferent to winning, but also not winning is the only thing that makes life worthwhile, because that's a sure recipe to that 15 minutes of ecstasy that follows winning, followed by a return to normalcy, which is, you know. So, yeah. Now, this is massively helpful. Thank you so much, Seth. You're absolutely welcome. And again, if you want to do a call in, I'm obviously happy to chat. And I'm sure your daughter will be fine. So don't panic. Do not panic. But so my daughter enjoyed the game more than the winning or losing. Right. And this is sort of the Dungeons and Dragons thing that you enjoy the exploring. You enjoy the puzzles. You enjoy the banter. You enjoy the comedy. You enjoy the imagination. You enjoy all of that. Scouting and then sort of the winning or losing stuff doesn't really matter that much so.
[54:27] So and there's a sort of tradition like up until the second world war in America if there was a split up in the family the kids went with the dad so there generally was the idea and I think this is in Judaism as well that the mom is super helpful to the kids up until around the age of seven and then the dad becomes more important as you go forward and so on, right? All right, let me just get to your questions. And again, tips are welcome. Bit of a quiet day, but I'll try to do better. I'll try to do better. All right. What do we have here? I'm so happy that I can't stop crying.
[55:11] I'm having trouble avoiding sweets. I asked my wife to hide the cookies and baked goods. She complains that it feels like she's mothering me by doing so. Is she right? And how to get over sweets addiction.
[55:24] I can tell you sort of my experience. I've been a year almost of minimal sweets. I've had like a couple of desserts and a little bit of ice cream here and there, but not doing sweets. So, in general, I find myself, here's what I do. I have, if I have a feeling like the urge for something sweet, I'll have some no sugar added, no fake sugar added yogurt. I'll put in some, I like my combo of the blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries, a pinch of granola, and then like two swirls of honey. That's good, man. That satisfies my sweet tooth like nothing else. So I will do that now. Is there sugar in that? Yeah, there's a little bit of honey and there's a little bit of sugar, but it's very minimal, right, in the granola. So it's not like I don't do any sugar added, but it's not like a piece of carrot cake. Now, with regards to your wife, I would have some minor concern if you say, I need to cut out sweets. Thank you, Nicholas. I need to cut out sweets for my health, right? So you say, I need to cut out sweets for my health.
[56:48] So my question would be, why doesn't your wife also get sweets out of the house to help you?
[56:59] I mean, when my wife had restrictions on her diet based upon being pregnant, I just, you know, my wife obviously didn't drink coffee while she was pregnant. So I didn't like, mmm, coffee's so good, you know. I would be like, yeah, I'll give up coffee over the time that you're pregnant, for sure. Or at least I'll switch to decaf, right? I'll do that. I don't want you to be going through this challenge alone, you know, when I decided to give up sweets, my wife was like, well, yeah, let's just make sure we don't buy any, right? That's going to help, right? So that's not mothering me, that's just caring for someone, right? You know, when she had to give up things for various dietary issues, and, you know, she's a vegetarian, and for a year or two, I didn't really eat meat because I didn't really want her to have that bother. And I found out it just didn't give me enough energy for exercise and all of that. So I went back on meat, but I wasn't like mothering her or I wasn't like fathering her or anything like that. It's just, you know, see what you can do to make your partner's life easier and better.
[58:03] So it seems to me, oh, the sweets are for the kids, but I guess they don't need them. Okay, then say to the kids, right? But it's not who they're for. It's that your wife says, well, I'm just mothering you. Well, she's helping you. 92% dark chocolate with berries and Greek yogurt is my go-to. Yeah, except for the dark chocolate, it sounds like Satan farted chalk in your mouth. That's a bit of a problem with that, right?
[58:34] So the sweets addiction probably has to do with managing negative emotions as a child, right? So if you have, I don't know if you've ever had a long hike with a heavy backpack, but every now and then you just got to take that backpack off, you got to lean against the tree, you got to stretch out. It's like, oh, so nice, right? Feel like you're floating, right? When you've had a heavy backpack. So when you have a, when you're a child, if you're burdened, if you're neglected or abused or there's a lot of unhappiness in the house, then you're burdened. And then the question is, you end up being addicted to any positive experience. And you need that in the same way you're crossing the desert. You've got to get from one oasis to the other or, right, you won't make it. So if you're unhappy as a child, then you look for just about any positive interaction or any positive experience that you can get, like oasis in the desert. And so I've noticed myself, of course, I'm fine not eating anything during the day. Like, it's what, 12 or 4 p.m. I haven't eaten anything today. Oh, thank you for the tip. I haven't eaten anything today. I'll probably eat something after. But I could go easily till like dinner time, not particularly eating anything. But I find that in the evening, I want to eat. So the reason for that, of course, is that as a kid, it was very stressful when my mother came home. Right? So I would want to counter that stress with food. Right? And...
[1:00:04] So, you need to look for the patterns of when you want the sugar. And I would guess, I don't know for sure, thank you, Anthony, I would guess as a whole that you dive into the sugar when you are experiencing some negative emotion. And that's just a habit that you had as a kid, which is perfectly natural and perfectly healthy, to have that habit as a kid, to look for some positive experience. Experience because if you don't have any positive experience you flirt with nihilism and self-destruction i'm not kidding about that like if your life is just this dull trudge a burden misery unhappiness you are desperate for positive experiences because you want to live because if your life is just relentlessly negative maybe you throw yourself off a bridge i don't know right, so as a kid you had to you you grab the sugar because it gives you i don't know what is it release dopamine or it's like because it gives you a positive experience i don't assure the biochemistry behind sugar but it gives you a positive experience and of course we're programmed to like sugar and bright colors because that had us eat fruit which is essential for especially the vitamin c for staving off scurvy and and so on right so you grab sugar as a way of.
[1:01:26] Avoiding negative emotions it's a form of self-drugging right in the same way you have a headache you take an aspirin right so if you're feeling down you'll take some sugar in that moment i used to have this sometimes with buying uh buying buying computer stuff electronics right i'd be like oh it's been a while since i bought something i had to buy something right and i'm over that right i just i don't need any more uh but and, So my issue is that if you're appealing to your wife for help with a sugar, like a minor sugar addiction, if you're appealing to your wife for help and she understands this, then the last thing she would do is complain about having to mother you and humiliate you in that way. Because when your wife says she feels like she's mothering you, that's about as unsexy, anti-equal feeling that you can get. So if your wife understands, as I hope you understand, that you have a sugar addiction in order to manage negative experiences, then if you ask for help from your wife and then she complains that she's mothering you, that's going to give you a negative experience. it's going to make you more likely to eat sugar. So she needs to give you a positive experience in order to help you get over the addiction, if that helps. For me also.
[1:02:43] Sometimes I needed a change of environment and sometimes you just need to move and fresh air or whatever it is. And sometimes you're just thirsty or, you know, so try a bunch of other things to see if that helps. All right. Uh somebody writes uh let's see do we have i think that's i think this is a uh a woman, oh yes sorry uh hi Stef when i get overwhelmed or frustrated during the day i'm a stay-at-home mother i will take my babies nine months and two years with me and go have a bath slash shower to self-regulate when my toddler is getting tired or crying a lot to the point where we can't talk it out i tell her to lie on the couch with a soft blanket and stuffy since I know that helps to calm down, and then we talk after about it. Is that a good approach, or what can I do differently?
[1:03:35] Okay, so I'm going to assume obviously there's no medical issues or anything like that, but why is your toddler crying a lot? Two years, right? Why is your toddler crying a lot? Because crying is a signal for parental comfort. Do you have, and I say this again with great sympathy and affection, but do you have difficulties comforting your two-year-old? How do you feel when your two-year-old is unhappy? How do you feel when your two-year-old is unhappy?
[1:04:17] If you have, if you weren't comforted yourself, right, this is a really, really important to understand when you become a parent. When you become a parent, the deficiencies in how you were parenting are unavoidable, right? This is why a lot of people get postpartum depression or go through, you know, real challenges when they become parents. Because if you weren't taught the language of comfort, if you weren't comforted yourself by your mother, in this case, I assume it would be your mother, then, you're going to get stressed when your toddler is upset because you have not been taught the language of comfort. The physical language, the love language, the verbal language of how do you comfort a child if you yourself were not comforted?
[1:05:14] It's tough. Like, if you wake up in Japan and somebody's really, really, really upset, but they don't speak English and you don't speak Japanese, how are you supposed to soothe them? Right? You're going to be a little tense because you won't even know what the problem is, right? And toddlers, of course, can very rarely verbalize what's wrong. And so how do you comfort babies and toddlers in the pre-articulation of emotion stage, which the articulation of emotions is tough? She wants me to sit and play with her while I'm trying to make dinner or something along those lines. Okay.
[1:05:59] Well, I only have one child. So, you know, with all of the due humility of that, my daughter always wanted to be held. Always always always always she was like velcro koala girl right she always wanted to be held, and she didn't like to go outside she was indoor baby and always wanted to be held so everything that i was doing and there's actually a video where i was announcing one of my speeches and i was walking around the room with my daughter in the uh the baby beyond or whatever they call it the little kangaroo rucksack and so every time i would do anything i would my daughter would be on my hip, right? I'm making a coffee, my daughter's on my hip, and I'm explaining what I'm doing. I'm making food, same thing. She just always wanted to be held, always wanted to be carried. Now, again, I'm saying this with one child, so I get all of that, but...
[1:06:51] Your child will probably be happy if you're including her in what you're doing, right? So, children want to do what their parents are doing. Children, we're programmed to mirror what our parents are doing, right? Because that's how culture, knowledge, language, everything transferred, morals, religion, it all transfers down, usually through the maternal line. So, with regards to your daughter, if you're making dinner, put her in a high chair explain everything you're doing put her on your hip and it'll slow down your production of dinner but so what? So dinner takes longer so what? it doesn't matter so, if you if you say well I can't parent you right now because I'm making dinner, she's going to view that as a rejection and it's going to be frustrating and upsetting with her because she wants to know what you're doing.
[1:07:51] And why? Because she wants to be you, and she can't be you if you don't share what you're doing. She wants to grow into you, right? We're programmed to grow into the same sex parent, because her genes want to reproduce, and you are the person who successfully reproduced, so she's going to want to copy what you're doing. But how can she copy what you're doing if you put her away every time you're doing something that she wants to learn how to do right.
[1:08:28] It'd be like uh paying a lot of money to learn how to uh turn clay into vases and then being put outside every time clay was being turned into vases it'd be really frustrating right.
[1:08:42] So a play is not the fundamental function of parenting it is the transfer of knowledge and skills she says that's true and she does help a lot she has a stool and she helps me in the kitchen lots but she does get bored and wants me to come play toys with me why does she get bored, why does she get bored, if you're making jokes and you're laughing and you're poking holes in the flower and you're I don't know putting a little bit of cake batter on her nose like why would she get bored, if you're engaging with her and please understand I'm not saying you're not engaging with her or anything like that I'm just saying that if she gets bored, I would imagine that's because you're distracted it.
[1:09:34] But I've never experienced a child get bored when we are talking about important things. And I worked in a daycare, as I said, I kept the kids spellbound by telling the story of the Silmarillion to them. They wouldn't even go out to play. They're just all these kids, you know, from ages five to 10, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, they all sat there listening to this story. And again I'm not saying you've got to be some big storyteller but if your child is why is she getting bored oh well kids you know they don't have the same kind of attention it's almost like no kids will maintain attention for things that they're interested in, I remember I mean I get that kids can be a little restless my daughter in particular I was just talking about this with my wife the other day so when she was very little we would go I would take her to the library and they had this sort of story circle and so on. She never wanted to sit in the story circle, never. She'd get up, she'd just board, she'd want to rule. She crawled around, she walked around. I remember taking her up to the sink in the back where she'd play with the water and so on. She did love the bubbles and the woman would always come and get her when the bubbles were coming out, the woman who ran her, just adored her.
[1:10:50] And you just got to work with the kid and what the kid finds interesting.
[1:11:02] Kids learn about themselves by parents asking them questions about themselves, an inner life is cultivated by curiosity from the parents oh what did you think of that or why did you think that or what did you have the thought what thought did you have right before this and, you summon an inner life through curiosity i don't think it develops in particular organically and Some kids are able to reproduce it through reading fiction. That was the way that I did it. Nobody was curious about my inner life, but I read a lot of fiction when I was a kid and wrote fiction when I was a kid. So that's how you can develop an inner life as a whole. But children are definitely programmed by nature to want to copy their parents. And also the other thing too, tell her stories about when you were a kid. Help her understand that you're not some magical giant authority.
[1:11:53] That you were a child too. My daughter was very interested in stories about what happened to me when I was a kid, right? Because I mean, it wasn't all bad, right? And good things happened to me when I was a kid and things that I learned and how I learned to write a mic and the problems that I had and, you know, get that universality of the cycle of life stuff. And if you talk to her about how your mother taught you cooking or how you learned cooking or things you've made a mistake with, I remember telling my daughter, I had a dinner party when I was in university. I was at degree and I had a dinner party and I made a seafood quiche for the dinner party I mean one of the things that I made but unfortunately I used a sugary pie crust and it was.
[1:12:39] Hilariously catastrophic I mean take shrimp scallops cheese eggs and bake it into a sugary, pie crust and you have a concoction that should open up to a portal of vileness that would suck everyone through against their will people would like they took a bite and it was like shocking to them they didn't even spit it out they were so stunned and um i remember the woman uh was, hey can i can i see that like do you still have the box for this i'm like yeah yeah i threw it out and she's like bro this is a pie crust what are you trying to do what are you trying to do to us i'm like oh whoop whoopsie whoopsie oh well you know it turns out you can have a great dinner party just by ordering pizza that was quite legendary at the time so i think we've all have stories like that, right? All right. Thank you, Chris.
[1:13:43] Any other last questions, issues, challenges, and problems, my friends? What's the best opening line to a song? Welcome back, my friends. It's the show that never ends. We're so glad you can attend. Come inside, come inside. That was your version of the salty jello experiment. I know. I've always been quite attracted to outspoken women. I can't trust women who smile and swallow. Wait, that sounds bad. Well, you know what I'm saying.
[1:14:26] What is your favorite opening line to a song?
[1:14:33] Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? I mean, that is a epistemological question, or a metaphysical question. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Am I getting more stimulus from outside, or more stimulus from inside? But mama just killed a man i've talked about this many years ago mama just killed a man put a gun against his head pulled my trigger now he's dead uh that's uh that was occurring at a time when freddie mercury was completely uncorking his insane hedonism uh like there he was going to the kind of nightclubs with golden showers and and scatological uh play and like he was just completely uncorked his hedonism and all self-restraint was gone i don't think the drugs were helping that much and that that's when his his self died so i think that's why, nothing really matters anyone can see anyway the wind blows well let's blow jobs and like he just went completely nuts on um promiscuity uh like just absolutely appalling stuff but, fame did not do well for that man.
[1:15:57] Oh yeah I just told I mean you can do a search for Bohemian Rhapsody.
[1:16:07] So you think you can scorn me and spit in my eye that could be ejaculate in the eye so you think you can love me and leave me to die well he died of uh of aids right of course the song was written before that became a thing but it is around the the true self, and he ended up leaving his fortune to marry austin who was his first love so i think it was about the descent into uh the hellscape of hyper promiscuous gay behavior.
[1:16:59] Yeah, Mineshaft. That's the one. So Mineshaft is a club that Freddie Mercury would go to.
[1:17:17] From the popular sex club that opened in 1976, forced to close in 1985. And it was just absolutely wild what went in there. So the mineshaft was entered through a dark stairway, led to the second floor where a visitor was greeted by the famous posted dress code. You had to be strictly leather and then eventually masculine presenting wear. It prohibited colognes, suits and ties, dress pants, sweaters, rugby shirts, disco wear and drag. The archetypes of this code influenced the creation of the ironically popular musical group The Village People it was a full on sex club it was an after hours leather bar with no dancing and sex sex sex, once inside most patrons were naked or nearly so with footwear required, the sex playrooms it was just appalling, what went what we're down to walking let's see here known for its dark sexually charged interiors the club was wanted as a filming location oh yeah cruising with Al Pacino was filmed there, and it was, let's see here.
[1:18:44] That was a mafia owned leather bar, the mind shaft had bathtub for water sports a sling for sex activities, there was a back room where there was plenty of oral anal rimming fisting and sadism and masochism, let's see here.
[1:19:18] The Anything Goes Club said that it hosted some scatological fetishes although Wallace said the club was kept very clean with lots of bleach, so I mean that's where Freddie Mercury ended up and so I think that this was that this song is about the loss of restraint and so on, Sorry, I did miss this. My oldest kids aged 11 and 9 want to know where babies come from. We go to our farm every day and they want to know why there has to be a rooster to have baby chicks and how did I get pregnant with them, etc. When did you have this talk and how much did you tell at what ages? We have younger ones too that we're not going to tell the whole info to us yet. Are you donated on locals? Thank you so much. I saw that this morning. I appreciate that.
[1:20:09] Well, what is the issue with this?
[1:20:13] As a whole oh sorry and just while you so what what is the problem with this i mean, is it is it like when you said where does poop come from it's like well you're you you eat a lot of food and then your body takes the stuff that it needs for your muscles and your bones and your health and your growth and then whatever it doesn't need uh it it throws out it descards through your butt right so that's you know that's not you know can be kind of funny but it's not stressful right so uh with regards to talking about where babies come from it's funny how there is this kind of shame right well it's gross well it's this well it's like it is a it is a biological function and um i mean obviously you wouldn't talk about the aesthetics of it but adult sexuality is a beautiful thing in life. It almost makes up for, no, actually more than makes up for taxes. So you would say, I mean, I would assume something like, well, you need a sperm and you need an egg and they combine and then the baby grows and then it comes out.
[1:21:24] And you can, if there's a pond, you can, you know, doesn't the, there's eggs, there's the spermatozoa that come from the male frogs and you know they combine and that's where you get frogs and it's it's an amazing it's a miraculous truly beautiful incredible thing that happens that we grow from something you can't even see to all of the complexity that we have so.
[1:21:53] Um, I mean, I don't know, let's see here, did you talk about genders? My oldest kids, well, 11, again, if the oldest kid is 11, obviously you really have to talk about all of this before the period comes, right? So, I was nervous to tell them sex ed too early. But you're putting education about human sexuality in a wildly different category than every other biological function. And, you know, I think what's really important is that you don't communicate shame about sexual matters, or it's gross, or it's negative, or it's bad, or something like that.
[1:22:37] I mean, obviously, you don't tell little, little kids about it, but I wouldn't tell little, little kids about digestion either, right? So, when they're asking questions, you can talk about it in ways that are honest and direct, but, you know, I think, personally, I think the important thing is to not communicate to your children that there's anything negative or gross or disgusting or weird or bad about sexuality. Because it's not what you communicate so much as how you communicate it. If it's like, you know, oh, well, that's, you know, it's kind of, you know, it's like, then they have a negative perception and conception of sexuality.
[1:23:26] All right. Did you ever see a concert at Maple Leaf Gardens? I did. A friend of mine, I was always trying to give him Pink Floyd, and he was always trying to give me Rush.
[1:23:38] And a friend of mine took me to see, well, I went to go and see a Rush concert. I just remember that line, concert halls, and then the whole, like, went bright and all of that. I remember an interminable drum solo from the drummer, who had a really tragic life and then died of brain cancer.
[1:23:56] Um, so I did see a concert there. It wasn't particularly great. I preferred seeing concerts at the concert hall, Massey Hall. And I liked the, um, down at the lakefront. It was good, good for concerts. Hi, Stef. Good to catch you live. I'm the guy that had that viral tweet about you a few months ago. Hope you're well. Hey, Ryan, that was pretty cool. That was like my like five, six mil, right? If I remember rightly, or was that the one that went seven or eight mil? Uh, I, I appreciate that. I thought that was interesting. it was very very enjoyable to see everyone's like oh my god i completely forgot about that guy is he still drawing breath is he still alive people you know it's funny because when, you know cheesy hollywood actors point webcams at the sky people can find where his webcam is It's based upon the contrails and the weather. Like, people can find anyone, anywhere, anytime, anything. They can find it on the internet, except one of the world's biggest philosophers. I am just invisible. You just, it's just, you can find cameras by Transformers actors, but you just can't find freedomain.com. Isn't it amazing?
[1:25:12] Isn't it amazing? Isn't it amazing? But yeah, I appreciate that. I thought it was a fun tweet. And I appreciate you, uh, you, uh, posting it in this one. Uh, I am well. Thank you. I am well. All right. Last comments, calls, questions. Let's see here. What do I have?
[1:25:38] I mean, I know, I know because there does, there is perceived to be a fair amount of shame around sexuality. Uh, and I don't quite get it myself. I don't quite get it myself. Other than, you know, maybe it is very, human sexuality is like the opposite of platonic idealism. I mean, making babies is a fun, squishy, messy, fluidic business. And the growing and having of babies is a farty, gotta pee all the time, indigestion, can't lie on your side, messy, milky, bloody business. And it is very, very meaty, physical, and non-spiritual, non-ideal, non-abstract. It is, you know, our abstractions grow out of the meat of material matter. And for people who are really addicted to abstractions, their souls and gods and platonic ideals and so on, there is a certain amount of repudiation of abstract eternal virtues and values with the messy, meaty, milky production of a human being.
[1:26:57] I know some Christians where sexuality is portrayed as shameful to the youths. Yes, this is an old quote from Shakespeare, right? But to the girdle do the gods inherit, below is all the fiends, right? So God is head to waist, everything waist and below. It's the devil's. It's the devil's. But I find the fact that beautiful, wonderful, true abstractions, ideals, art concepts, books, poetry, that all of this can grow out of the mangled, messy, meaty production of actual human beings. The fact that we can get the concept of the soul out of the mere meat of the gruesomely produced body is incredible. I think it's one of the most beautiful things around.
[1:27:49] It's almost like Michelangelo carved David while looking at a bloated, rotted corpse of a narwhal, you know, that out of this sort of bloated, messy thing, physical thing, you got this abstract, beautiful statue. I mean, that's, to me, the fact that abstract beauty can grow out of the messiness of the meat puppet that shrouds our skeleton is just incredible. It is one of the most amazing, miraculous, beautiful things, that meat can produce magic. That that which is mortal can produce eternal truths that which dies can live forever in ideas, ideals and art.
[1:28:29] That Pythagoras is long dead but his theorem remains as true as ever, that Socratic reasoning is as valid a method of inquiry now as it was 2500 years ago when Socrates walked the earth that he lives forever that mere mortal meat can produce eternal beautiful absolute truths is one of the most amazing transformations in the known universe and sexuality is the keystone and engine that produces all of that so it's really hard to not view it as the foundation of beauty that out of the mess of sexuality and the mess of childbirth and the cutting of umbilical cords and the bleeding and the meat and the right that the the milk and the like out of all of that can grow all the beauty that is in the world.
[1:29:25] That michelangelo's mother splashes blood on the floor and he splashes paint on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel. It's amazing. Absolutely incredible. Absolutely incredible. And I think we should respect and feel positive towards human sexuality, because it is where everything of truth, beauty, value, and virtue comes from. All right. I think that's a good point at which to end. I really appreciate everyone dropping by today.
[1:29:56] If you're listening to this later, of course, if you could help out the show at freedomain.com slash donate, I would really, really appreciate it. That is very kind. And you can, of course, go to freedomain.locals.com. You can go to subscribestar.com slash freedomain and gain access to some great communities to chat with. And thank you guys for dropping by today. It is a beautiful, beautiful way to spend some time on a Sunday. And now it's family time, going on a nice long hike with my daughter. And it's going to be great. So have yourselves a beautiful, beautiful afternoon. And we will talk to you. Yeah, we're talking to you. Gosh, when is Halloween? Thursday. Thursday. Okay, well, I'll talk to you before Halloween. All right. Have yourself a beautiful evening, everyone. Thanks so much. Bye.
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