Shownotes
0:00 Introduction and Safe Space
4:08 Concerns about Vaccine Development
8:34 Economic Pressures and Decision Making
16:42 Resisting Propaganda and Internal Rebellion
20:11 Pressure from Family and Social Expectations
25:30 Lack of Long-term Safety Data
31:03 Uncontroversial Facts and Refusing Denial
32:03 Employment and Vaccine Mandates
34:20 Challenges of Changing Professions
38:19 Selective Sphere of Consideration
1:11:28 Finding the Right Path
1:19:10 Forgiveness and Restitution
1:27:16 Violence in the System
Join us in this podcast episode where we create a safe space for donors to engage in a private conversation covering a range of thought-provoking topics. A caller questions the notion of taking a strict stance on dating individuals who have received the COVID vaccine, sparking a discussion on concerns about potential long-term effects and implications for future generations. We delve into the ethical dilemmas surrounding vaccine decisions, reproductive choices, and societal pressures, highlighting the complexities individuals face in balancing personal convictions against external influences like job requirements and societal expectations. I emphasize the importance of critically analyzing propaganda and standing firm against societal pressures, commending those who resist conformity. Throughout the conversation, we underline the internal struggles individuals encounter when confronted with challenges and stress the significance of acknowledging the nuances of decision-making processes amidst external pressures. We further explore Stefan's perspective on judging individuals who have faced economic or career consequences for decisions he hasn't personally encountered. Stefan expresses sympathy for those forced to make tough choices due to societal pressures or economic hardships, touching upon the lack of long-term safety data for vaccines and the challenges of discussing factual information rejected by some due to differing beliefs. A caller introduces the topic of unemployment benefits and vaccine mandates, leading to a discussion on the complexities individuals navigate in decision-making based on their profession, beliefs, and societal expectations. We also delve into the ongoing nature of vaccine requirements and how individuals navigate these decisions amid varying circumstances and opinions. Stefan delves into the concept of the "sphere of consideration" and its impact on his interactions with others, highlighting that those who insult or attack him lie outside his sphere of consideration and generally do not affect him. He explains his stance of not hating or wishing harm upon them but considering them beyond his considerations. Stefan emphasizes the importance of caring equally for all individuals being more of virtue signaling than a realistic approach, stressing the significance of reality and rational discourse in interactions. He conducts a cost-benefit analysis to determine who he engages with, emphasizing individual responsibility for mistakes. Additionally, Stefan shares his views on humanitarian issues, advocating for honesty regarding personal investments in global suffering. The conversation continues with Stefan discussing the varying levels of sympathy he holds towards individuals based on their actions and circumstances, distinguishing between practical choices made under duress and vehement support for harmful actions against others. He emphasizes the responsibility individuals carry in accessing and comprehending information, highlighting personal choice in shaping one's circumstances. Stefan underscores the importance of delineating who he cares about and setting boundaries in relationships based on shared values and actions. As the discussion evolves, Stefan delves into his views on sympathy, responsibility, forgiveness, and restitution in various situations, stressing the importance of individuals acknowledging mistakes and seeking restitution. He tackles the complexities of moral actions and notes the lack of accountability in society, touching on topics like violence, societal compliance, and the repercussions of past events such as COVID-19. Engaging with callers sharing personal experiences, Stefan displays empathy and understanding while exploring the moral implications of individual actions. The conversation delves into the ramifications of societal beliefs, personal integrity, and the value of self-reflection in navigating ethical dilemmas. We wrap up the episode with Stefan expressing gratitude to participants for their time and support, underlining the significance of engaging in open discussions on challenging topics.
Stefan:
[0:00] Well, hi everybody, thanks for joining. This is for donors, and in general it doesn't go out, maybe a little snippet here and there out to the mainstream, but this is sort of a, it's a safe space.
It's a private space where we can chat about whatever's on our minds, and given that this is not a solo show, but in fact a chatty chat, I'm all ears.
If anybody has any questions or comments or criticisms or thoughts or whatever you feel like sharing, I'll just give you guys a pause if you want to unmute and make it go.
Caller:
[0:30] So I wanted to ask if you thought that having a hard line when it comes to dating women with the COVID vaccine is a solid no.
Is that too ideologically intense or is that too high of a standard to have?
Stefan:
[0:48] Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting question. Question, what would be, are you leaning to or against that?
Caller:
[0:56] I'm solid against at this point. As in, if I meet a woman that's got the COVID vaccine, it's a very hard sell at that point, I'll say that much.
Stefan:
[1:05] And what are your primary concerns?
Caller:
[1:08] The number one is that we don't know what the long-term effects are going to be.
I know with cardiovascular health, that's been a point of concern.
The other major concern is I don't know what long-term effects have been visited upon their DNA.
So how is that going to affect the future of my bloodline if we have kids together and they have this maybe innocuous but present difference nonetheless that wouldn't have been there had they not got the mRNA therapy?
And then on top of that, it kind of says they went along with it, you know?
Stefan:
[1:48] Right, right. And what about, I mean, so you don't have kids yet, but you want to have kids.
So this would be sort of, to some degree, a reproductive question. Is that right?
Caller:
[1:59] Yeah. Well, and then there's also the concern of, you know, what's going to happen next time there's some calamity?
Is it going to be a huge issue in the marriage or relationship that whatever the next incarnation of the vaccine is, you know, I don't want to get it, but she does. Let's, you know, so there's that issue as well. well.
Stefan:
[2:13] Right, right. Now, I mean, what about sort of the counter example of a woman who got vaccinated because, you know, she was a nurse and she wanted to help out during the pandemic.
She didn't want to, but it was required.
She wasn't willing to ditch her whole career and, you know, do that sort of helping out during the pandemic thing.
And, you know, she regrets it and she did the bare minimum and she never wanted to coerce it onto others.
And, you know, you know, there there could be some mitigating factors from a moral judgment standpoint.
I mean, that doesn't affect whatever might be going on with the body, but that would be something with regards to that, if that makes sense.
Caller:
[2:51] Yeah, certainly.
Stefan:
[2:54] So which is your bigger concern, the psychological or the physical?
Caller:
[2:59] In that case, yeah, the physical.
Stefan:
[3:01] Right, right. Yeah, it was just, there's a British fellow who, I don't know, kind of looks like me in a couple of years maybe, who refused COVID data, and he was pointing out that the excess mortality in the UK for two years was like 70,000 people or something, and the entire bombing of the Blitz was like 40,000 people in World War II.
So, yeah, it's some creepy stuff. I don't know.
With regards to the facts, obviously, I'm not competent to make any particular judgments. I do know that the two extreme positions seem to have been disqualified, which they often are, right, in society.
So the two extreme positions were it's totally safe and effective.
Stefan:
[3:49] And everyone who took it is dead in two years, right?
And I heard, of course, the mainstream perspective of safe and effective, which, I mean, even the contracts that government signed with the pharmaceutical companies contained with it, you know, we don't know the long-term effects of this.
Stefan:
[4:06] I mean, of course they couldn't. I mean, that's not even an IQ question.
Like, something which has developed in a couple of months is not going to have long-term safety data, you know.
Absolutely, by definition, that's not even, you know. I remember when back in 2020 or whatever, they're developing the vaccine.
I was like, hey, man, just tell us what steps you skipped. That's all. Just tell me that.
It's normally 10 years to develop a vaccine. It's 94% failure, right?
You claim to have done it in a couple of months with 100% efficacy and 100% safety.
So tell me why the other ones take 10 years if you can do it in a couple of months.
And what steps have been skipped, right? I mean, what did I use?
I used the analogy something like if you have, you know, you got some cottage and some guy is going to build you a dock, right?
And one guy says it's going to take 10 days and it's going to cost you $10,000.
And the other guy says I can get it done in two hours for 50 bucks.
Stefan:
[5:07] You know, those two are so, and the guy who's been building all the docks is the guy who says it's going to take a long time.
So those two numbers were they had such discrepancy then of course that would be the media would be asking that but of course the media particularly the u.s is uh largely funded or significantly funded by pharmaceutical companies through advertising so i mean there were just those sort of basic questions how many of y'all here don't obviously give me any personally identifying information but how many of y'all here faced termination if you didn't get vaccinated and hit it.
You can just type in the text if you want.
Caller:
[5:52] Not termination, but I might have been kicked out. I didn't, my job was a car time. They didn't ask, but I didn't say anything.
But I think if they knew, there might have been a problem.
Stefan:
[6:03] Right, okay.
Okay.
Stefan:
[6:10] So, I, of course, didn't face termination.
I mean, I faced termination for telling the truth, with the deplatforming but i didn't face termination for like the termination of my career for not getting the vax and and some people kind of faced that right i mean they couldn't come to work i i know that it's that there's a lot of scatterings of these kinds of things some people it's like okay well if you get tested twice a week at your own expense whatever you can stay other people where you have to and and so on and other people if they had to travel for their job there were like the secondary effects like if you had to travel for your job and travel required a vaccine then you kind of had to it wasn't a requirement of your workplace but it was a requirement of your job which was a requirement of travel so there were a lot of people who faced termination of direct or indirect income through that through this situation situation.
And I think, I think we can all appreciate the difficulty of that.
Now, I mean, everybody's like, stand tall, stand tall in the abstract.
And I get that. I really do.
But there were a lot of people who faced a massive amount of economic pressure.
And of course, that wasn't accidental, right? They had to take the jab to put food on the table.
Stefan:
[7:38] You know, jabber job, jabber job, job, right? And that's tough, man. That's tough for a lot of people.
I don't know if you've ever lived sort of paycheck to paycheck, but like most people do.
Stefan:
[7:49] Most people do. And so for a lot of people, the perception was, however true it was or wasn't, who knows, right?
But the perception was, I have to take this to keep my job and I'm living paycheck to paycheck, so I don't have a lot of savings.
And of course we can blame people for that. And I do. I mean, I mean, I get viscerally angry at people who don't save money because it's really, really tough to have a conscience if you don't have any money in the bank because then you're just a slave to your spending and you can't afford to take a stand.
You can't afford to take a break.
Having some savings in the bank is like having some goodwill in your conscience.
So.
Stefan:
[8:35] For them, they say, okay, well, if I don't take the jab, then I lose my job.
And then if I lose my job, I have to get another job in the same field pretty quickly.
But if I try to apply to other jobs in the same field, they're going to require me to be jabbed, right?
Stefan:
[8:56] So it's a tough situation. And again, you know, we can say to people, well, you should have saved money in this, that, and the other.
But let's say they had, I don't know, six months savings.
Right that they could get by for six months i mean six months is to me the bare minimum of what you need to have in the bank or in savings to get by but let's say they had six well did it look like the mandates were going to be done did it look like society was just going to sail on or you know everybody was told well there are new variants and you're going to get more jabs so people would there's a calculation right it's a calculation where people say, oh you know okay well if i quit this job to avoid the jab then i have to leave this whole field because everybody's going to continue to require more jabs, right?
And they were talking, I don't know, I've really kept track of this stuff, so you guys keep me up to date, of course, but I do think that people were told and believed that it was going to become like an annual requirement that you had to get the jab because there were variants and so on.
And I haven't really heard much news of the variants lately.
I haven't really been following this. I view the mainstream media as somewhat similar to exploring Chernobyl like a certain amount of time and you've got to boogie out, otherwise something bad's going to happen to your DNA almost, right?
So I think there was a, you know, everyone's telling you it's safe and effective.
Stefan:
[10:17] And I lose my job, I lose my career, I can't survive because nobody's hiring people who aren't vaccinated.
And, you know, I mean, it's particularly true, I think, for white males who face some discrimination in hiring and say, well, if I quit, then I got to go and try and compete against, you know, minority boosts and all of that.
It's, it's, I can, I can sympathize with the decision making process in a sort of deep and visceral way.
And I do think, you know, I'm not trying to nag here at all, but I just sort of feel that if you were in a position as I was, where it was not too, too terrible to not get vaccinated.
I mean, it was somewhat terrible, obviously, but it wasn't too, too terrible to not get vaccinated.
I could continue to do my sort of life's work and still had some form of income and all of that. but for the people who were facing the jabber job choice, and particularly, as you know, I think the majority of people live paycheck to paycheck.
Stefan:
[11:26] And sort of add into that the perception that if you don't get the vaccine, then you could kill grandma, and you won't come to family dinners.
You can't come for Thanksgiving. You can't come for Christmas.
And, you know, the panic and the rage that was sort of floating around at this time was really quite staggering.
And so this is so, I think people face, and, you know, remember, most people are, you know, in the matrix, they're what we call normies, which is, it's not a big term of derision. It's just, you know, most people accept what they're told, right?
And this is sort of the idea behind the big lie, right?
So the big lie is if you can get society founded on some giant lie, then people are really desperate to believe it because the alternative is to realize just how much we were manipulated.
Stefan:
[12:27] And I'm sure we've all gone through this process where when you realize just how much society is manipulated, you can't view it the same way again.
You're kind of outside the biodome of popular delusions.
And while you are closer to the truth, what it reveals about society and its machinations is pretty tough.
So none of this is to say, you know, do or don't. I don't know, but I would say that it's pretty tough for a lot of people.
Because the bigger the lie, the more corrupt the institutions that are pushing it.
And if there's a huge lie, then people have to look and say, well, gee, most of society's institutions are corrupt. And that's really tough for people.
That's really tough. You know, it's really tough to wave the flag and sing the anthems and all of that.
If there's a lot of corruption around.
And people, I understand that. I think we've all regretted sometimes looking into things and not being able to see the world the same.
I mean, in general, I think the journey is worth it, but there's certainly times where it's distinctly unpleasant.
And I think this was one of these times. And you can tell, really, because there's no post-mortem.
There's no discussion afterwards of what we got right, of what we got wrong.
Stefan:
[13:50] And there's no reckoning. It is like society is just this big dysfunctional family where things got kind of crazy and wild and bad.
Stefan:
[14:00] And there's no talk about it afterwards. There's no talk about it afterwards.
It's kind of gone from people's discussions. I don't know if you guys have noticed that or if you're in sort of touch with that world, but it's just gone.
Like all of the hysteria, all of the fear, it's all just gone.
And by logic, it shouldn't have.
But so yeah i mean as to whether you should or shouldn't i mean i i don't know in particular, i would certainly view and this isn't particular to covet i would view anybody who resists propaganda to be a real find like anybody who's able to stand up against, propaganda now not of course not everything about covet was propaganda right i mean there was a virus and i think that alpha was harmful to some i mean elderly people people with pre-existing in conditions, people who were severely overweight.
I mean, I don't know for sure, but I sort of believe and accept that.
So, not everything about COVID was propaganda, but anyone, not COVID specific, but anyone who's able to stand up against propaganda is...
Stefan:
[15:10] A pretty powerful person and someone you can genuinely admire and respect, as I admire and respect you guys who stood up to it, as I hope that you admire and respect me who stood up to it, and publicly too.
So I think that looking for somebody who resists propaganda as a whole, you know, so somebody, the psychological thing would be somebody who said, well, I didn't believe X, Y, or Z, but I knew I had to do it, or whatever negative consequence.
Okay well we can we can argue the cost benefit of that but at least they were resistant to the propaganda intellectually if that makes sense and there are it's sort of a french philosophy philosophy position which is not usually a mark of any kind of good thinking but it is the idea that sort of the myth of sisyphus right so sisyphus is this guy who was cursed was it sisyphus yeah it's cursed to roll the rock up the hill and then it it rolls back down again and he's got to roll it back up again and rolls back down again and this is his curse forever and i think it was someone who said that okay well if you are sisyphus you can't get free of your fate, but but at least what you can do is you can disagree with it in your mind you can rail and rebel against it in your mind and that may be the greatest freedom that you can have you You don't have to accept your fate.
You don't have to view it as just. You can view the injustice of your punishment.
Stefan:
[16:40] And rebel against it, even if you can't change your fate.
And I think those people are pretty rare. I mean, they are often the source of progress.
And it's to be admired. If somebody rebelled in their mind while conformed in reality.
Stefan:
[16:57] I think there's value in that, which doesn't necessarily solve long-term biological effects or reproductive effects and so on, but I think that's something that's important.
I try to be humble, but I'm just so great.
I try to be humble insofar as when it doesn't cost me a massive amount, it wasn't for me, well, I'm living paycheck to paycheck, and if I don't do X, I lose my job.
Stefan:
[17:28] If I'm not in that situation, I try not to be too harsh with people.
Now, too harsh is not an argument, so I understand all of that.
But if I'm in the same position as someone else and I make a better decision, I think I can take some genuine pride in that.
So there are a lot of people who avoided contentious topics that I felt and I knew were necessary. I took on those topics and paid the price.
So I think I can have some pride in that. But I didn't face, I can't pay for groceries if I don't do X. I didn't face that.
Stefan:
[18:04] And for the people who did, I can't get myself, and maybe this is false humility, I'm certainly happy to be told that if you've got a good case.
But if I'm not, if nobody's saying to me, you can't survive if you don't do X, like economically or whatever, you can't have a career, right?
If you don't do X, you can't survive.
Because I didn't face that, the people who did face that, I can't judge them by what I did.
Now, of course, I can say, yeah, yes, but you know, I did save some money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So I had more options. And that's certainly true. I get that.
But in that particular situation, I have a tough time getting to the place where I can just say to people, well, you know, you should have just not done X or Y or Z because I didn't when my life is quite a bit different.
And of course, not everyone can do what I do, just as I can't do what other people do.
But I do have some sympathy. Sympathy.
I don't have, of course, the sympathy for the people who just demonized others, right, over that whole COVID thing.
I don't have much sympathy for that. That, to me, is just appalling.
And I'm not even close to imagining trying to just wave all that away or forgive all of that.
Stefan:
[19:25] But the people who took the jab because they faced economic ruin if they didn't.
Stefan:
[19:34] And, you know, the other thing too is that some people, if some emergency happens in their family, right, like someone gets sick and can't work and maybe they don't have disability insurance or something like that, then they can go to their parents or other relatives and they can often get helped out financially, right? right?
Give you some money until you get back on your feet kind of thing.
But this was different, right? Because this was different because, you know, the anti-vaxxers were so demonized and, you know, they were killing people by not taking the vaccine.
Stefan:
[20:06] Remember the winter of severe disease and death or whatever was being talked about.
And so the parents who felt very much at threat because they were older from COVID, if the kids were, if their kids didn't take the vaccine and face negative economic repercussions, I think the parents would have been less patient with that or less understanding or less sympathetic.
And so, yeah, there were a lot of factors that came together.
So, you know, it's tough.
I obviously, I would look for somebody who's an independent thinker as a whole.
I would look for that primarily.
Stefan:
[20:46] And how that manifested may not be as apparent in externalities as it is in internalities.
So, I mean, when I was an entrepreneur, I did business with government entities.
Now, I was a libertarian, not a voluntarist, so that wasn't as much of a contradiction.
But so people would look at me as I do business with the government and say, ah, you know, whatever, if he's got criticisms of government power.
So sometimes your internal beliefs aren't fully manifested in your external actions, but to me, I would be looking for the internal belief system that is independent of propaganda and evaluates based on reason and evidence rather than what's popular and enforced, how that manifested in external actions would be less important to me, if that makes any sense.
Sorry for the long, hopefully not too windbaggery, a set of comments, but that's my thought.
What do you guys think?
Caller:
[21:42] Let's ask if I can jump in.
Stefan:
[21:45] Yep.
Caller:
[21:47] So what do you think about this idea? I remember during the pandemic or even before then, if you were to talk to someone about, okay, maybe save some money or save some food back then, I think you'd be called a conspiracy theorist.
There were a lot of social conventions back then.
Stefan:
[22:04] I'm sorry, you'd be called a conspiracy theorist for telling someone to save money?
Caller:
[22:08] Well, that and save food if you want to.
Stefan:
[22:10] Oh, it's to get food. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry. I thought you just meant save money, because that doesn't seem to be a conspiracy theory position.
But yeah, food and water or whatever. Okay, sorry, go ahead.
Caller:
[22:19] Yeah you'd be like okay well something something might happen something was like it's coming you'd be like okay save money save food you get prepared blah blah um from the winter basically and then they would say oh well you conspiracy theorists blah blah i think even during even during uh the lockdowns if you had if you talked to someone who hadn't taken the jab yet and okay you shouldn't take the jab for xyz reasons they would say propaganda box stuff even even even after that if you were to talk about, oh, you shouldn't take the vaccine, even now after everything is known, there's also this fogging and stuff like that.
So even like, I can understand where, I can understand having sympathy for people, who have, I guess, the grasshoppers who didn't prepare for winter, right?
But even if you tried and tried to talk to them, they wouldn't have accepted, they wouldn't have accepted your advice anyway, is what I'm trying to say.
Stefan:
[23:16] Okay, so is your question, what's your relationship to people who don't take good advice and insult you?
Caller:
[23:26] No, no, I'm trying to argue against...
Stefan:
[23:28] No, no, because you did say conspiracy theory is an insult, right?
Caller:
[23:31] Well, yeah, but I'm trying to argue against the sympathy that you have for people that make bad decisions.
Stefan:
[23:37] Well, no, but I'm not having... I didn't say to people who insult you.
To people who attack and insult you when you try to give them good advice that's not what i was talking about i was talking about the people who um who are facing economic ruin and social appropriation and cut off from all of their support systems and so on and can't pay their, grocery bill that they right that that's a different matter right so and also people who people who may have disagreed with it may have taken the jab they and they didn't want to and and they didn't like it, and they didn't...
I was talking about the people who didn't say, oh, yes, well, the people who don't take the jab should lose their rights of travel and things like that, right?
So I just want to differentiate that, right?
So the people who, whatever situation, you give them good advice, right?
And then they insult you and undermine you and mock you and ridicule.
Is that the kind of people you're talking about? I mean, that's a good conversation, I think, but I just want to make sure I'm clear.
Caller:
[24:42] Well, those two, but I'm, I want, let me move the goalpost a little.
Let's say they haven't insulted you specifically, but they dismiss the good advice that you give them.
Stefan:
[24:55] Well, they can't dismiss it without insulting you, can they?
Caller:
[25:00] I guess not directly. They wouldn't assault you directly, but they would say your ideas are wrong or misguided or that you don't understand the world and blah, blah, blah. I guess, yeah, I guess.
Stefan:
[25:10] Well, listen, I mean, I'm perfectly fine with people telling me I'm wrong and misguided and don't understand the world.
I mean, because it could be true. I mean, it could always be true, right?
But my concern is not with people who make mistakes and condemning people who make mistakes, because we all do make mistakes.
Stefan:
[25:31] With regards to the JAB, there was no long-term safety data.
I mean, there couldn't be. I mean, there couldn't be. Because they rolled it out very quickly, right?
So there was no long-term safety data.
You couldn't get a hold of the trial data, and the manufacturers demanded immunity from liability.
No long-term safety data, They didn't release until, they wanted 75 years, was it, to release the data?
I can't remember which company it was, but they wanted 75 years to release the trial data until a judge forced them to release it, and the trial data was pretty appalling.
And there couldn't be long-term safety data. They wouldn't release the trial data, and they demanded immunity from liability.
Stefan:
[26:27] These things were all well-known, right? And they were not controversial, right?
I mean, if you said to someone, there's no long-term safety data for a vaccine that took months to develop, okay, what was the number? What was the number from five months?
Was this, I mean, not totally start to end. I know the technology was older, but the technology had not been successful prior as far as I understood it.
But it was not super long, right? Does anybody remember? Like, what was the, I don't want to just say a short amount of time, but I want to get something more specific.
I mean, how long was it?
Between saying we're going to do this vaccine to saying the vaccine is ready to go.
Caller:
[27:07] I don't think it was more than a year.
Stefan:
[27:09] I think it was less than a year. Yeah, I think it was. And I think it was not a little bit less than a year.
Of course, the other argument is that they held back on the vaccine for, until after the election, because they didn't want to give Trump the victory and blah, blah, blah. are, right?
So of course there can't be long-term safety data in something that's a novel technology, that's developed in less than a year, right? And I think by the time the vaccine rolled out, it hadn't been very long since the end of the human trials.
And so they probably had five months of data which they weren't releasing about the effectiveness and risks to humans so by definition they couldn't have long-term safety data i mean no matter what because you can throw a lot of money at a problem but that money isn't going to change time right if.
Stefan:
[28:08] So, now, people, this couldn't be argued, right?
It couldn't be argued that there was long-term safety data, because there wasn't.
It couldn't be argued that the trial data had been released, because it hadn't, and it wasn't going to be released. At least there was no indication of that.
And then they said, we need 75 years to release it. and it couldn't be argued that the manufacturers were accepting liability right because they had written into their contracts that they couldn't be sued for bad effects right these things were not controversial in terms of like there's nobody who could say that's not true is that fair to say i don't know how many conversations you had with people about this but.
Caller:
[28:55] Well they wouldn't so they wouldn't outright like so in that context because i had this happen a couple times specifically where Yeah, so even though it was factual, like what you just said was the case, people would still almost like instinctually push back against the dominant narrative in their head that the vaccine was safe and effective.
Because to acknowledge that this safety data wasn't coming out for 75 years would kind of be a knock against that.
Stefan:
[29:21] Well, no, but so they couldn't tell you that you were incorrect and then point you at the safety data before it was released, right? I mean, before a judge forced it to be released.
And they couldn't say that we have 10 years worth of safety data in something that was developed in less than a year right and tested on humans for only a portion of that and they couldn't say no no the manufacturers are accepting liability, So, while of course there's lots of room for disagreement in the world, if people, and there's more that we could talk about, but these sort of seem to me some of the least controversial factual statements.
Stefan:
[30:07] So, if people rejected that and insulted you for stating facts that were not controversial, the facts are not controversial. controversial.
In other words, there wasn't big disagreement about whether the vaccine took less than a year to develop, right?
I mean, some people say, well, the technology has been worked on for a long time and so on. Yeah, but this particular, right? On humans, this particular coronavirus thing, right?
So nobody could say, yes, well, you'd be even more of a conspiracy theorist if you said that the vaccine development started before COVID was in the wild, right?
So nobody Nobody could, and it's not controversial to say you can't sue the manufacturers, and it's not controversial to say that the trial data was not being released, right?
So, I mean, these, I can't, anybody who would argue those basic facts, I wouldn't have a discussion with.
Stefan:
[31:03] Like anybody who said, oh, no, you can sue the manufacturer, when I say, look, here's the, you can't, right?
Stefan:
[31:11] Then I just wouldn't have a debate with someone like that because that would be a sign of significant mental functioning problems.
So now people could say that you can't draw any conclusions from these things.
Right? So they say, okay, these are the facts, but you can't draw any conclusions, right? And then I would say, yes, I agree.
I agree that you can't draw any conclusions. Therefore, you can't say it's safe and effective.
Because saying it's safe and effective is drawing conclusions.
Now, if you're going to say we can draw conclusions from this set of data, then we can talk about what conclusions we can draw.
But we can't say we can't draw conclusions because the dominant narrative is we can. Does that make sense?
Caller:
[32:03] Yeah, it does. It does. But if I may push back against your economic point, in most US states, the unemployment benefits were so...
I mean, it was crazy how much money they were handing out people who lost their jobs.
And for most of the questionnaires that you would take before being entitled to these benefits, you just had to have lost your job.
There wasn't an exception that you wouldn't get paid if you were fired for not taking the vaccine, if that makes sense.
Stefan:
[32:34] That is an excellent point and I really really appreciate you bringing that up and that does solve some of the short-term things but if you know I'm trying to think of like about professions like a nurse or something right where it was just like you had to have the jab and she says okay well let's say I quit and I get I don't know six months of unemployment insurance.
Stefan:
[32:56] Then what? Or a year or whatever, right? At some point they tap out, right?
And so then given that the narrative was, and is it now, do people, what is it, the uptake is like 5% for the latest rounds of vaccines?
So wasn't it the case though that everyone said, well, you're going to have to get boosted every six months or I think it got down to like you lost efficacy after four months and you boosted again.
And I think some people are up to like six plus boosters, but wasn't sort of the idea that COVID was just going to be like even more important than the flu shot.
And it's just going to, it's going to, it's going to last forever.
So it would be short-term thinking to say, well, I'll quit my job so that I don't have to take the jab, but all jobs forever will require the jab.
So if I don't take the jab, I can't do my profession.
As far as I understand it, and, you know, it's all a little hazy back then because it's kind of a lot of chaos going on.
But I do remember the narrative saying, well, you're just going to have to keep getting your boosters. It's going to be like your fuchsia. Every year you get your booster, blah, blah, blah, right?
And I think that people would not make the... Like, it wouldn't be rational from a purely resource standpoint to say, I'll take some unemployment insurance, but never be able to work in my profession again.
Stefan:
[34:21] You know it's it's hard for people to change professions i'm sorry to say something i mean i've done it a bunch of times but i'm the exception that proves the rule and even for me it was a it was a challenge but it's hard to change professions like if you're a nurse and you know that's what you've trained for that's what your income is that's your expertise is that's your social circle that's your work circle that's your relationship with your patients and so on and say well you can't be a nurse you know that's really tough for people i mean the thing that you love the most not not being able to do it again for the rest of your life and losing all of that investment and having to retrain in something that's non-jab friendly in your 40s or 50s, I mean, that's brutal for people.
Not everyone is as adaptable as us cameleos, right? Most people are not that way inclined.
They like train tracks. They're not like dune buggies or whatever.
So I hear what you're saying. That would be a short-term solution, but I think the perception was that the jab was going to be a permanent requirement.
And again, I think there are still a couple of colleges requiring it, but I think most of these things have fallen away. Is that right?
Caller:
[35:29] For the most part, yeah. At least that I'm aware of.
Stefan:
[35:31] Right.
Caller:
[35:34] Although I wouldn't be surprised if it was still required. I'd always like to talk to something, so maybe not the best source. us, but it did, they made it the case that you still need a COVID vaccine to do it.
I know if you want to come to America on a green card, you need a COVID vaccine.
So I guess in a lot of ways it did stick around for certain folks, but.
Stefan:
[35:53] Unless you're going through the southern border, in which case.
Caller:
[35:56] Right.
Stefan:
[35:58] Apparently you can have typhoid and whatever, typhus. Sorry, did somebody else want to mention something in there?
Caller:
[36:06] No, I was just going to say, it's more voluntary now. So you can take it if you want. But it's still there. Well, it's not banned.
Stefan:
[36:14] Obviously, right? I mean, it's not banned.
Caller:
[36:16] Oh, yeah.
Stefan:
[36:16] Right.
Caller:
[36:17] So I think during the next pandemic, they'll take it and spring it back up.
But it's always an option, basically.
Stefan:
[36:24] Right, right. I mean, the next pandemic will be somewhat of a challenge because people will have some skepticism, right, based on everything that played out.
So now with regards to the people who insult you, so with regards to the people who call you a conspiracy theorist or roll their eyes or say that you are lacking in cognitive awareness, right?
So this is the ant and the grasshopper question, which I sort of wrote about in my novel, The Future.
And the ant and the grasshopper, I won't sort of repeat what's in the novel, but are they lazy or vicious?
Are they lazy or abusive, right? So if the ant's storing up nuts for the winter and the grasshopper, I don't think either grasshoppers or ants eat nuts, nuts but if if if the ant is storing up food for the winter and the grasshopper is just blazing back on the hay bale playing guitar and uh crooning van morrison then it's one thing right but if the grasshopper is spreading vicious rumors and calling the ant paranoid and unstable and dangerous and you know get a gibdy platformed and and or contributing to that that's another matter entirely.
That's another matter entirely. So to me, once somebody insults me.
Stefan:
[37:51] They are off the list of my considerations.
That doesn't mean I hate them. I mean, you know, you can't spend, I mean, I can't spend the rest of my life hating everybody who has a bad word to say about me because I don't see that gives them way too much power over me. But they're off the list of my considerations.
Stefan:
[38:11] And so I don't want to hurt them.
Stefan:
[38:16] I don't want to harm them back. I don't, but they're off the list of my considerations.
Considerations so if somebody who encouraged the loss of rights among the unvaccinated if somebody gets hurt from the vaccine they're off the list of my considerations for me and i think that there's a reasonable case to be made it's a personal decision to some degree i think there's a reasonable case to be made i'm not they're outside my sphere of consideration like i mean mean we we have this all the time right sphere of consideration i mean i don't know how many thousand people die every minute in the world right but i don't go to a thousand funerals every minute right there's this you know over the course of this conversation you know probably 500 people have died in india or something and they're outside the sphere of my considerations you know in some abstract sense am i sorry they died i mean i guess at some very abstract level sure but But, I mean, I think we have to be honest, because this universal altruism is really deadly.
Stefan:
[39:24] So, yeah, they're outside. Like, if, you know, there's probably hundreds of thousands of kids who are sick with some fell disease, and their parents are having a terrible time, and so on, right?
Now, I care less about anonymous strangers' kids having big diseases than I do for my own child having a big disease. and they care more about their own child than they care about me.
And that's natural. We care about what is closest to us the most.
Stefan:
[39:54] And pretending otherwise is virtue signaling.
Right? That's virtue. I mean, this is like, you've seen this thing, I think it was in Sweden, and they've done it a couple of other places, where the people are like, refugees welcome.
And they say, oh, well, you know, we can bring this refugee to your house.
Oh, no, no, I don't have the room. Oh, I'm going to be traveling.
Oh, I'm just a roommate. So, this abstract virtue without personal investment is a real pathology, and it is the foundational pathology, I think, of the modern world, is this idea that we care equally for everyone no matter what, which very quickly is manipulated into out-group preference and in-group hostility, which is really tragic and pretty terrible. So...
So, when people attack me, insult me, they're outside my sphere of consideration.
So, for me, in general, it means I don't want bad things to happen to them, but I don't particularly care if bad things happen to them.
I don't hate them.
I don't think about them. I don't particularly care for them.
They're outside my sphere of consideration.
Stefan:
[41:10] Consideration, which is, you know, obviously you guys are donors, which I hugely appreciate.
And that's why this is a donor only call. We can, I think, speak a little bit more frankly, and I massively appreciate you guys supporting the show. So we'll do it this way.
So I think the sphere of consideration thing is very important in the world.
And I will scan for people's sphere of consideration. and if it is claimed to be universal or wider than can possibly be accommodated by the human heart.
I care equally for the Inuit on the ice flows as I do for the child in my arms.
It's like, no, you don't.
No, like, that's crazy. That's not how we evolved. It's not how anyone can live.
Right? Because otherwise, your emotions would be torn apart, right?
Because there are, I don't know, 800 babies born an hour and 1,000 people who die an hour.
And are you going to be like, yay, the baby! Oh, God, the person died. Oh, it's another baby!
Your emotions would be torn to shreds, and you couldn't encompass it, and it would be kind of weird, right?
Imagine trying to show up to every...
Stefan:
[42:26] Honeymoon to celebrate with the couple, or imagine trying to show up at every wedding. It's called a wedding crasher, right? You're not invited.
People don't want you there.
And you're just kind of crashing and taking resources. Or every baby shower, you show up and are incredibly enthusiastic.
It's like, that would be weird, right? Like, you don't know these people.
Stefan:
[42:44] So for me, the sort of sphere of consideration is really important to delineate.
Don't just have an instinct, like have a delineation.
What is your sphere of consideration?
And anybody who who says to me, well, I don't, I care about as much as a stranger in Taiwan dying as my own father dying.
That person is to me, morally deranged. Like I wouldn't even know how to process that from a reality standpoint.
I don't think it's true, which is the best possible scenario, the virtue signaling.
But when people say, I care as much for utter strangers as I do for my own friends and family, assuming, you know, friends and family are virtuous, of us i care as much for other strangers then what's really chilling is they're actually telling the truth which is not that they care massively for external strangers but they don't care really at all for their own family because to them it's equal like there's just blobs of bipeds around right and some of those blobs of bipeds are far away and some of those blobs of blobs of.
Stefan:
[43:49] Bipeds are closer but they don't feel anything for either it's sort of like if you're standing If you ever stand in the woods and you notice there's like a little road of ants marching somewhere, well, you wouldn't say, I care much more for the ants at my feet than for the ones 10 feet away in the undergrowth.
Well, you don't really care for either that much, right? You may be slightly more cautious about the ones at your feet because maybe they'll bite you, the fire ants or something, but...
Stefan:
[44:16] It means that humanity is an undifferentiated blob where you don't have any bonds or attachments, no preferences.
Everybody's equally, you know, like sheep in the distance.
Do you care about the sheep that's 10 foot closer to you when the sheep are a mile away than one that's 10 foot further away? No.
But you're equally indifferent to them. And that's pretty chilling.
So that's the sort of pathological, universally claimed sphere of consideration is a marker to me of, you know, complete coldness and sociopathy and everybody's an ant and I, you know, I don't connect to anyone.
So everyone's equal to me because they're equally unimportant to me.
So that sphere of consideration thing I think is important. So when people attack or insult me, not if they're wrong, because we can't have a sphere of consideration called you can't be wrong, because that's unjust, and then that sphere of consideration would include ourselves.
So people can be wrong all they want. They can make mistakes and so on.
If they reject reality they become less important to me because if they reject reality and i'm part of reality i can't affect them and i i was saying this to a caller i did like two long fairly brutal call-in shows yesterday may have overextended myself a tiny bit but he was a guy who was complaining about being an omega you know in the sort of vox days got this whole hierarchy of.
Stefan:
[45:39] Sexual desirability and power coincidentally i think with him at the top that's quite common but uh he said he was an omega and after a long conversation we i was sort of giving him the the thought that it's pretty important for everyone i think maybe a little bit more so for men don't expend your resources in things that you can't affect right the old that old simpsons is still old man yells at clouds right it's funny because the old man can't affect the clouds and so on So, you want to keep your efforts and energies focused on that which you can affect.
And people who don't listen to reality, and who don't listen to reason.
Stefan:
[46:21] I won't interact with them. Remember earlier I said somebody who says like these three things we were talking about with regards to the vax.
And if somebody rejects the timeframe of the vax, that you can't see the manufacturer and that the trial data is not released.
If somebody rejects those facts, I won't talk to them because I don't want to yell at a cloud.
Out right i mean it would be it would be a mark of ill health mentally for me to talk to somebody who rejects reality because i'm part of reality they can just reject me at a whim and why on earth would i want to have a conversation with someone who can just wave what i say out of existence because of their own emotional preferences so if somebody rejects reality, they're not completely outside my sphere of consideration but they're nowhere near the center they're like right on the fringes which means if they do come to they haven't insulted at me, right?
But if they do come to me and they say, oh, you know, I've really been thinking about what you said.
And I did look some of it up. And, you know, you actually did make some points.
And I guess I just reacted.
Sorry about that. Like, tell me more. And I promise I'll listen better.
And, you know, we'll look things up together if I doubt. So they're not totally outside my sphere of consideration, because while highly unlikely, there is a possibility of reform.
I mean, they've wasted my time a little bit, but usually not because they're pretty upfront with rejecting So they don't actually waste my time that much.
I waste my time if I continue in a conversation with someone who rejects reality.
But if somebody's like attacked or insulted me, yeah, they're gone.
Stefan:
[47:46] They're gone. gone now again if they decide to come back and apologize you know i did the conversation with the fellow who'd been a bit of an anti-free domain or anti-stef troll and if it had if he had said i want a private conversation not to be recorded not to be broadcast i would have said no, i would have said no now i did think it was helpful as a public sort of service to have this kind of conversation with someone and i had some curiosity but i wouldn't have done it if it It was a private call.
I I've got things to do. Like everybody who wants my time is competing with me doing great philosophy.
You know, like I just did a really great couple of Q and A's, uh, this morning when I was out for my morning constitutional.
And so everyone who wants my time is competing with great philosophy that I can do either on my own or call and show show like this.
So yeah, somebody who's insulted me, uh, uh.
Stefan:
[48:43] Right? They've hardened their position against me, and the odds of coming back from insulting someone are so close to zero that, you know, I might as well try and fund the show by playing the lottery, right?
So, the sphere of influence for me is the cost-benefit analysis.
Now, if I can't gain any benefit, I won't expend any cost.
So, people who reject reality, I can't gain any benefit, unless it's for the show, in which case I can demonstrate people who can't process reality, It's sort of my debates from Flat Earther and so on.
But if there's no benefit to me, then there's no cost I will expend.
And if there's no cost-benefit, then they're not part of my sphere of consideration.
My sphere of consideration is where cost-benefit analyses can apply.
But if people make mistakes, sure, I mean, we all do.
But they do have to own their mistakes and they do have to be responsible and have integrity. with regards to their mistakes.
And if they've criticized me publicly, then they also have to apologize publicly, which also was part of that prior conversation.
Stefan:
[49:54] But the sphere of consideration, I think, is really, really important.
It's good to have a mental map of that.
It's good to have a mental map of that. And you don't just want a biological one, although that may matter, but your sphere of consideration is really, really important.
Because what people will do is they will say, well, don't you care about the poor innocent children in X, Y, or Z location, right?
Some war or some terrible thing.
Don't you care about the poor innocent children in X, Y, or Z location?
Now, if I'm fundamentally honest, I would say, not hugely. potentially, oh, but there's suffering, and it's like, yeah, there is suffering in the world, of course, and for me to have any kind of productive life, I have to not stare at that suffering.
Like, you could literally stare at, I don't know, the surgery channel, or if there was a constant death channel of everybody expiring, you could stare at that all day and care about every one of them, but you'd never get anything done, and you'd probably end up killing yourself.
Stefan:
[51:05] And, you know, having been the victim of, not totally the victim, but a sort of public digital lynching, so to speak, and deplatforming, then for me, you know, when people say, well, do you care about X, Y, or Z person?
It's like, well, did they come to my defense during deplatforming or general attacks?
And right, so they don't particularly care about me.
So why didn't, did you go to them and talk to them and say, well, this prominent philosopher is being deplatformed. Do you care about, right? Right.
Stefan:
[51:36] So, but yeah, be really, really careful because this is sort of what goes on.
People get these emotional attachments to the abstract things, which is just a lie.
It's just a lie. It's just virtue signaling or, again, signaling that they're equally contemptuous of all human beings and don't care about anyone more than anybody else. But, you know, this is constantly, coming along where people are saying to you, well, surely you care about X, Y, and Z.
And if you say, not particularly, And I'm just being honest, right?
There are people starving to death in the world, and during the course of my day, I mean, obviously I'd like there to be a free market, I'd like there to be better private property protections, I'd like there to be less and less political power in the world, but am I tortured by the fact that people are starving to death and dying of cancer and so on? I'm not.
And nobody who's honest says that they are.
I mean, if it's someone you care about, obviously, someone close to you, then that's very important and very sad and tragic, and you expend massive amounts of resources, but it's kind of like this weird thing where they say, do you care about X, Y, and Z, terrible thing happening in the world?
And I'm like, no, not really.
Oh, you're just uncaring. You don't care about the children.
Like, you're cold. older. And that's just abuse.
Stefan:
[53:03] That's just abuse. I mean, again, I mean, I've been obviously pretty viciously lied about over the course of my career, and people haven't rushed to my defense.
And I'm, you know, I'm relatively okay with that.
I'm relatively okay with that. I mean, maybe there's a couple of people I thought kind of owed it to honor and integrity to do that, but I'm not tortured by the fact that it didn't happen.
So I accept that people aren't up all night caring about me and my future and my career and my income and my prominence and whatever danger I might be in, right?
You say, ah, yes, but we're not just talking about deplatforming, we're talking about violence.
It's like, okay, well, what was the reaction to most people when I was threatened with bomb and death threats for giving speaking tours? They didn't care.
Or a lot of people cheered it on, right? So if people didn't care about the violence that was threatened against me.
Stefan:
[53:56] And I'm not blaming them for that. Like, I'm not blaming some guy in Malaysia.
He's tortured that I'm getting bomb and death threats or whatever, right? I mean, it's terrible.
And I'm not blaming him for that. He's got his fish to catch.
He's got his good family to take care of. He's got his taxes to pay.
I'm not even a background character in the story of his life, right? right? I said this to my daughter the other day.
I'm sure you've had this thought. You pass someone by, and they're having an intense phone call.
I was working with my daughter the other day. We passed some guy by, and he was saying, I guess we've got to get more lawyers involved.
He was just really tense and kind of red-faced. Now, we're just passing by. He comes and goes.
But this is probably a central drama of his life that is going to take years and obviously be kind of tough for him and so on.
Stefan:
[54:53] But do i you know if this was my brother or my father i mean you know if we were close then then i would be very involved in whatever was going on but he's just a guy who passes by i don't don't you care about that guy with whatever difficulties are going through it's like i don't really i don't really any any more than i would expect him to be up all night and and and tortured by the fact that I got, you know, repeatedly violently threatened and deplatformed, I wouldn't expect him to, you know, he's got his own life to live, he's got his own thing to deal with.
And this kind of universalism is really wild.
It's, I get the lure, you know, like we've had a lot of.
Stefan:
[55:34] I am involved with all mankind, and, you know, this universalism that comes out of Christianity, this universalism is a really, both a very potent part of Western culture and a very deadly part, of western culture i mean it is really the ultimate double-edged sword so yeah with regards to you know people who wanted my rights taken away and and so on uh well if they come to bad ends i don't celebrate i don't mourn i just okay and and it's just not part of my sphere of considerations and i would you know strongly suggest to try and map out these fear of considerations and see who's in and who's not, and then really try to stick with it unless other information comes along.
Sorry, bit of a ramble tangent, but I hope that makes sense with regards to what we were talking about.
Caller:
[56:25] It does actually. It follows on to another point here. So we've got two categories.
The first category is one that are hostile to where you think that insults you. And the other category.
Stefan:
[56:34] Sorry, somebody's knocking on a desk or something. I'm having trouble hearing.
Caller:
[56:38] Oh, sorry about that.
Stefan:
[56:39] Was that you knocking on a desk while you're talking?
Caller:
[56:42] Yeah, I'm putting my fingers on that. Never mind. So we've got two categories, right?
The first category is the people that insult you. And the second category is people that, I wouldn't say have no free will, but they reject reality.
Is that correct? Do I have that?
Stefan:
[56:58] Now, sorry, I'm not sure what categories we're talking about because we started with COVID and the jab and so on, for which there are other categories.
So I'm not sure which categorization we're working on here. I just want to make sure I know where you're coming from.
Caller:
[57:10] Of course. We're talking specifically about the, I guess, the sympathy that you feel for the two kinds of people.
You brought up the people that insult you during the COVID and stuff like that, and the people that you feel sympathetic towards who are just, who, you know, they're, I don't know how to describe them.
Stefan:
[57:33] No, okay, so there's a couple of categories we've talked about.
So, I mean, we could just touch on them very briefly. One category is the people who gleefully got on the fascism train and bullied and attacked and cheered on the stripping of rights from others.
They're completely outside my sphere of consideration. There are the people who felt it was a really, really good thing to do, and maybe insulted others, but didn't demand that they, you know, I mean, there were lots of people on the left who said, you know, forced injections.
Stefan:
[58:12] Like concentration camps, taking children away. I mean, so maybe they weren't that far.
They thought it was a good idea. Yeah, it should be encouraged, but they weren't in favor of coercive measures.
There were the people who did it and they were neutral about it.
There were people who did it while they disagreed with it, but they needed an income.
There were people who, you know, did it while really hating it, but felt they had no other choice.
I mean, think of, so here's an example, right? So a man who's paying child support, right?
You know that if a man fails to pay child support, he goes to prison, right?
It's the only debtor's prison left in the world, right? So a man who has an income that he needs to pay child support, and if he doesn't take the jab he can't work at his job or maybe in his industry for a while because everybody needs the jab and that seemed to be going on for a lot longer than it ended up going on although it was a couple of years in some places it's quite a long time.
So he's facing prison if he doesn't take the jab because he can't pay his child support.
And, you know, maybe he gets some unemployment, but, you know, how is he going to stay out of prison, right?
Now, I am not going to fault somebody for obeying threats of prison.
I mean, right? I mean, I think that's kind of a general thing.
So I'm not going to blame him.
Caller:
[59:42] That's where your sympathies lie. It's in the... I guess that example was was really abstract, but it's only...
Stefan:
[59:48] No, no, that's a very real, no, that's a very real example. A man who can't pay his child support can be hauled off to prison at a moment's notice.
And then he can't pay child support, and the time he spends in prison can be quite lengthy.
Caller:
[1:00:01] Of course, there'd be responsibility for his marriage, and he didn't have to save money, and the job he picked, and all that stuff. Right.
But you'd still be sympathetic because of the coercion from the government.
So as long as, because I'm trying to create a distinction between the people that's, not the people that are bad, who insult you or stuff like that, or one of the, but people that are reject reality.
Okay, you bring up, here's some studies about, oh, sorry. Here's the facts about the pharmaceutical companies having liability protection.
And they say, oh, I don't care, or blah, blah, blah. They dismiss it.
They completely reject reality.
And then they end up in this situation. But those people, I want to.
Stefan:
[1:00:44] Oh, no, but sorry. Sorry, once they reject reality, they're outside my sphere of consideration because I have no power over them. I have no authority over them.
Caller:
[1:00:51] Okay, okay, okay.
Stefan:
[1:00:52] And by power over them, obviously I don't make a choice of power.
It's just that, you know, if you want to drive to Vegas and I tell you the way to go and you drive in the opposite direction, clearly I have no power over you because you're rejecting reality.
I mean, your GPS has authority over you. It tells you where to drive, right? But you respect the authority, so you do what it says, right? Right.
So if people who reject reality, I'm not going to interact with them because I'm not going to pretend that I have influence over somebody who can reject reality because I'm part of reality.
They can just reject me at a whim. I have no authority.
Reason has no authority. My words have no weight. I have no credibility.
Why would I want to be in a relationship, quote, relationship where I don't even exist?
So, yeah, I don't interact with those people.
Caller:
[1:01:30] Would it would it be accurate to say that these kind of reality rejecting crazy beliefs are equivalent to nihilism.
Stefan:
[1:01:39] Nihilism is a positive belief that there are no values this is just a reactive rejection of anything that's even remotely uncomfortable so this is not even doesn't even have the pretend intellectual coherence of nihilism a nihilism is there are no no beliefs, there are no truths, and anyone who does believe these things should be strenuously argued against, and these beliefs should be dismantled.
Whereas most people are just, I don't like how this makes me feel, so I'm just going to reject it and then make up a reason for it.
That's how most people operate, right?
I feel bad, it gives me anxiety, it gives me fear, and the consequences of accepting this belief are negative to me, socially or professionally or whatever.
So they have an instinct, right? They have an instinct.
This is going to be negative for me. I'm going to wave it away.
And I'm going to cover up the emotionalism, the hedonism of it by pretending there's a reason.
So that's and that's not nihilism. That's just I don't I mean, that's just emotionalism or reactionism or I don't know.
I don't even know if it isn't. But that's just how most people are operating. I mean, for me.
Caller:
[1:02:49] I meant as far as its impact and its effect on everybody else.
So can I finish my point? And I'll because I'm I'm I'm almost done.
I want to connect this. OK, so we have those people that are rejecting reality.
Reality now during the pandemic there were plenty of videos or plenty of i remember i was watching this youtube channel of doctors who were against who who left their professions who were against vaccine they gathered together they had press conference telling shops how people about these liability protections and and the the the lack of testing blah blah blah so there's a lot of information that's with the internet so when it comes to responsibility of those people let's say say, the single father who is now, who rejected reality or is responsible for rejecting reality in all intents and purposes, is now in a bad situation.
I'm going to bring this back to the original question, actually, but would you say that this person now is now in that category of person that you have no affinity towards or no power over?
Stefan:
[1:03:54] Sorry, I'm still trying to figure out the categorizations rather than the specifics.
Are you saying, because the man who takes the jab because he's got to pay child support may be enthusiastic about taking the jab, right?
He may also fall in the category of, I want to take away the rights to travel for people who don't take the jab and, you know, I'm going to call them crazy anti-science people and support their deplatforming and so on, right?
So for me, there are people who really disagreed with the mandates, but went ahead for reasons of practicality.
I have more sympathy for those than people who enthusiastically demanded the stripping of rights from others.
Caller:
[1:04:35] Well, I'm trying to take those the best case scenario. scenario, and I'm trying to argue that the people, even in the best case scenario, have the responsibility of knowing, of saving money and knowing that the vaccine was coming and things like this were being rolled out.
It was being talked about a lot, like years even before it was actually rolled out in a lot of channels.
So I'm trying to put the responsibility from that on those people.
Stefan:
[1:05:05] Sorry, I know, I still don't follow. Are you trying to say what's the best-case scenario for us having sympathy for somebody who took the bags?
Caller:
[1:05:12] No, no. I'm trying to argue that there are no – okay, so the four categories you brought to the –, So, four categories. You have the people that insult you, the people that...
Stefan:
[1:05:26] Okay, hang on. Sorry, sorry. We're kind of going a bit in circles here.
What is it that you're trying to achieve?
Because you're very intense about this, which I respect and I welcome, but what is it that we're trying to achieve in this part of the conversation?
What are you trying to get to?
Is it something personal, which doesn't mean bad? I'm just curious.
Caller:
[1:05:39] Is no i'm just trying to say that there are no people like this the sympathy you feel for the people that are in quote unquote a bad situation have responsibility for not understanding the situation that they would have been in is what i'm trying to say does that make sense.
Stefan:
[1:05:57] Well yeah i mean so what you're saying is that in particular the internet means that nobody's like everybody's responsible for avoiding easily accessible information.
Caller:
[1:06:06] Yes thank you yeah.
Stefan:
[1:06:08] No i I mean, I've made that case for years. So yeah, I'm fully behind you on that.
Caller:
[1:06:13] Okay, so wouldn't that change your sympathetic feelings? Do you, or no?
Stefan:
[1:06:21] I'm trying to sort of figure out what we're disagreeing on.
So I said that people who know the truth didn't want to take the vax, but take it for reasons of economics and not wanting to give up on their entire career and start their lives over again, which is kind of tough in particular.
Like if you have kids and you give up your career you're most likely going to have to move, right because let's say you're a nurse you make $80,000 a year, and you quit to not take the vax then you probably can't afford the house in the neighborhood that you're in and you're going to have to move right and you're going to have to move to a much worse place in a worse neighborhood and your kids are going to have to go to a worse and possibly more dangerous school does that make sense.
Caller:
[1:07:06] It does yeah.
Stefan:
[1:07:07] Right And so I think we can have some sympathy to people who don't want to uproot their children, take them to a worse, more dangerous neighborhood, put them in a worse, possibly more dangerous school, and take them away from all their friends, and so on.
I think we can have some sympathy for that decision-making process.
They accept that it's not necessarily what they want to do, but, you know, I mean, it's a funny thing about the West, right, that neighborhoods and schools are intertwined.
And you can't send a kid to a school outside your neighborhood.
So, you know, for American parents and other parents as well, there's this constant jockeying to try and get a home in a good neighborhood so your kids can go to a good, safe school.
Stefan:
[1:07:55] And it's, it's, it's a really under appreciated thing, not by you.
I mean, but it's underappreciated as a whole. Like this is what drives housing prices so much.
It's not even so much that people want to live in McMansions.
They just want to be in decent neighborhoods with safe, safe schools. Right.
And so it's, it's a lot to uproot your kids, to leave your neighbors, leave your neighborhood and go to a, uh, maybe a worse neighborhood, a tougher neighborhood and live in smaller smaller accommodations with sirens and drunken neighbors and, you know, people smoking weed through the walls or whatever.
I mean, that's, that's a lot. That's a lot.
That's a lot. And I mean, I'm, I'm willing to, you know, lose, lose most of my income in order to, to pursue the truth, but that's not the thing for most people. And that's kind of the job, right? Right.
So, so I'm just saying that there are people who are making practical choices who disagree with the mandates and disagree with the mandates that they're subjected to.
Stefan:
[1:09:01] But the negative consequences, and then, and then they tend to swallow the propaganda.
So if you say, well, you know, I don't really want to take this.
I certainly don't want it to be mandated, but the consequences of not taking it as so extreme that I guess I'll, I'll go get reassured by the mainstream media and do quote the right thing or whatever.
I'm just saying I have some sympathy for these. Now, I'll tell you, the boundary for me is, would I want to be friends with this person?
Would I want them in my life? That to me is my bounds of consideration.
So we can talk about these abstract things, which is fine.
And I think it's important to have these categories. But to me, the whole purpose of these categories is to delineate the people I care about.
Stefan:
[1:09:44] To delineate the people I care about. I mean, I think, have you ever had this thought?
You see some, well, I was at a park not too long ago with my daughter, and there was a woman sleeping on the ground.
And I mean, you weren't obviously supposed to sleep there. She was a woman sleeping on the ground.
And she, you know, looked like she was having a pretty bad life.
Now, did I have sympathy? Yeah, absolutely.
But my question is, is the sympathy actionable? In other words, would I invite this woman.
Stefan:
[1:10:14] To, I don't know, come and stay with me or put her up someplace and try to get her life back on track and invest a lot of time, effort, and energy into fixing her life?
And the answer to that is no, I wouldn't. Now, I do give to charity, and if charities want to do that and they do a good job of it, I think that's great, but I personally, right?
So we talk about these abstract things. So if I met a guy at a party and he took the jab and he was like, yeah, I thought people should have been thrown in prison for not taking the jab, obviously I wouldn't be friends with that person, right?
I wouldn't. I mean, that's, to me, that's crazy. That's really malevolent, right?
Now, if I met someone at a party, and he was like, oh, man, I couldn't stand it. I hated the jab.
I didn't want to take it. But, you know, I had to pay my child support.
And I invested in a meme coin.
Whatever, I lost all my money. Oh, so, so if, if he, um, you know, and, and, you know, yeah, he married the wrong woman, but again, that's not a mistake that should land you in jail. Lord knows.
I think of, of all of us, I can't, I don't think there's a man or woman here who's only forever dated the perfect person.
Right. And now I, I also have the humility for me of it and maybe different for you, but I was real close to getting married to the wrong person.
Stefan:
[1:11:28] And, um, it was really, I mean, it was a chance comment. plus a lot of self-work and philosophy that got me out of that.
So, but without that chance comment, I might have had a whole different kind of life, right? I could be divorced, I could be, um.
Stefan:
[1:11:42] Um an alienated father i could be any number of things you know i it's not totally there but for the grace of god go i but you know there's a certain amount of narrow bullets whizzing by in life that so if this guy had said yeah i really don't want to take the jab and you know but i i mean otherwise i'd have gone to jail for non-payment of child support and blah blah blah blah and you know we you can't know what you don't know obviously right this is oh that's it right so so hang on let me just finish and then i'll shut up so so he would have said look i i don't know He's a pilot, right? Whatever.
I think pilots are the jab, right? So he's a pilot, and he's like, well, the mandates were in, and everybody was saying they were going to last forever.
Stefan:
[1:12:21] So was I going to go be a janitor, a waiter? Like, I can't afford that. I can't afford that.
I've got to pay child support, you know, and so on, right?
And then if I move to a bad neighborhood, my wife's going to take me to court and try and get sole custody because she's going to say, it's a bad neighborhood, it's dangerous, look at the crime stats, or whatever, right?
So he's like, and what would be the point?
Like, I'd have to retrain and every field seemed to need these jabs.
So what am I going to just be a guy who lives in the woods? Like, that's not a thing I can do.
Right. And I agree with that. I mean, I accept that. I don't live in the woods.
So I'm not going to say that somebody else has to.
So with someone like that, I would say, okay, let's say he wanted to be a friend.
Right. Let's say I had room in my, some friend had moved to Malaysia or something.
Right. I had room in my friend rotation.
I don't have infinite room in my friend rotation. rotation but let's say i had room now i wouldn't sit there necessarily and say well he took the jab so i can't be friends with him right because i could understand that kind of thinking and i can appreciate where he's coming from and and so on and i'm not going to be like well you have to pay forever for mistakes you made in the past because i made mistakes in the past i don't expect myself to pay forever so i'm just saying there are situations in which we can look i think with some sympathy uh now nobody was going to know well you know a lot of these mandates are going to just hold out man a lot of these mandates are going to be gone in a year or two well nobody knew knew that at all and nobody knew all right come on like guys let's let's be frank right nobody knew.
Stefan:
[1:13:45] How far this stuff was going to go did we i'm talking 2021 and so on right.
Stefan:
[1:13:53] Did we know how far this was going to go i mean things in history often go pretty far pretty fast right did we know whether the pressure was going to just collapse whether whether it was going to let up or was it going to get worse, right?
I mean, the scenario that some people had, which I could understand is, well, the vaccinated start getting sick, and then they blame it on the unvaccinated, and there's mass hysteria.
This can all turn very ugly very quickly. We know this from history, right?
So we didn't know how it was going to play out. Now, in hindsight, we can say, oh, yes, well, it turns out that the mandates have mostly gone and people don't really talk about it. It's like it never happened.
Well, there was no guarantee of that back in the day.
So I can have some sympathy. Now, if there's no possibility somebody is going to move into my circle of friends, then they're not in my circle of consideration.
Like not even in an abstract way.
So that's the way that I kind of view things. If I would move someone into my life, let's say I have room in my friend rotation.
If I'm going to move someone into my life, they're part of my sphere of consideration.
If I would never in a million years move someone into my life, they're not part of my sphere of consideration. So if that makes sense.
Caller:
[1:15:11] Yeah, it does. Actually, I know what happened, actually. I conflated sympathy with responsibility.
So when you said you had sympathy for someone, I was making the jump to say that they weren't responsible for, I guess, the situation that they ended up in.
Stefan:
[1:15:30] Oh, I see. Okay. Now, that's fine. Let's say that you blame everybody and hold them fully accountable and reject them because they ended up in a bad situation.
And I know that sounds like an extreme thing, but let's just say that that's a principle. Okay.
You've made decisions that have put you in a bad situation. Is that right? I have. Of course.
Yeah, okay. So what's your relationship to you having made bad decisions that put you in a bad situation, that have you compromised in some way that's important?
Caller:
[1:16:00] Well, I'm responsible for the situation.
Stefan:
[1:16:04] Do you forgive yourself?
Caller:
[1:16:08] I think after I get out of the situation, I can, but maybe not while you're in it.
Stefan:
[1:16:15] I mean, can you get out of the bad situation without some self-acceptance?
Caller:
[1:16:22] I think so.
Stefan:
[1:16:25] Yeah, it's an abstract question. Maybe that's true or not.
But okay, so under what circumstances do you forgive yourself for bad things you've done?
As I think it's fair to say we've all done.
I certainly have, right? So how do you forgive yourself and have a good relationship with yourself if you've done bad things?
Because that principle, because of UPB, right? That principle will be what you should hold for others, right?
You can't say, I forgive myself for everything and hold everyone else accountable.
You can't say, I forgive everyone else and hold myself 100% accountable.
This is a universal principle. Like your relationship with yourself and your own bad judgment and immoral actions.
Your relationship to that is your relationship to other people's bad choices and immoral actions.
Because that's universalism, right? So how do you get out of the hole of having done wrong?
Caller:
[1:17:18] Wrong well i would talk to them or uh restitution so i'd apologize i have restitution and just have conversation conversation like that.
Stefan:
[1:17:26] But there are times where it's not possible right so if if there's a guy who slept around with a lot of girls when he was younger because he was untuted or whatever right just following his hedonism i mean it's not like he can call up everyone he ever slept with and make restitution he may not even know their last names or whatever right i don't But no, whatever, right?
So there are times, I think this is probably true for all of us, where restitution is not possible.
Caller:
[1:17:58] That's a good question. Let me think, let me think.
I have no idea.
Stefan:
[1:18:05] Well, you can make restitution to the universe where you can't make restitution to individuals. So if this guy were, you know, whenever he comes across a young guy who's, you know, whoring around, he can say, listen, man, this is a bad idea.
Maybe he can make a couple of videos or write a blog post or, you know, just try and spread the ideas that this is bad for men, bad for women, bad for society as a whole, right?
So he can make restitution to the universe or to the world in a sense where he can't make restitution anywhere.
Stefan:
[1:18:35] To individuals and i think that's i mean i think you have to do something you can't just wave a magic wand and and forgive yourself without acknowledgement and restitution but the restitution can be personal in terms of talking to others it can be something that's be something in the world i think and if people have acknowledged and made restitution as best as they can i think they've got to be forgiven otherwise every mistake and some of those mistakes we make inadvertently and some of those we make kind of knowing that it's wrong but not having any, access to abstract principles.
Stefan:
[1:19:11] And so we can't you know when we do bad things we can't just grind ourselves into dust forever because that's actually going to lead to the sin of despair and probably to more bad things it also prevents us from, being positive enough that other people are going to learn from our lessons yeah so if you've done bad things as we all have I think I mean I certainly have, then you try to make restitution as as much as possible and at whatever level you can and then you move on there has to be uh there has to be there has to be a way to get out of holes you dig in otherwise you just keep digging and vanish from the world and take all the moral lessons with you right so we gotta we gotta return from hell and tell people don't go to hell right hell is bad so uh so i think we do have to have a path back for ourselves when we do things that are not just wrong, but also bad.
And we have to have a path back for others.
And the path, I think, has to be somewhat universal, which is why society is in a bad place, because there was a lot of wrongs done over COVID, man. There was a lot of wrongs done.
And not just by the pro-vaxxers.
The anti-vaxxers did a lot of bad things, some of them. They did a lot of wrongs.
Right? I mean, you had people, and I remember this very clearly, they're saying, oh, everybody who takes the vaccine is going to be dead.
Caller:
[1:20:33] I should have read that quote.
Stefan:
[1:20:34] Yeah. And there were people online. I'm not going to name names, but you can find them.
There were people online who scared the living crap out of people with imminent death and were totally wrong.
Now, maybe, just maybe, they have come on and made massive amounts of apologies and tearful, I'm sorry, I terrified everyone, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? But I don't think so.
So the anti-vaxxers and the pro-vaxxers did some seriously nasty and malevolent stuff, some of them.
Stefan:
[1:21:08] And everybody's like, I can't believe the pro-vaxxers did all these bad, I mean, how many times are the hysteria and malevolence and fear-mongering and terrifying people of the anti-vax community, how have apologies been demanded from them?
Is there a reckoning? Has the anti-vax community said, we really said some terrifying stuff that made people think they were going to die or that loved ones were going to die?
I mean, if you believe some of these people and you had family members who'd taken the vax, you were building graves in their mind for two years.
You were saying your goodbyes. Maybe if you had taken the vax and then you discovered and believed these people, you lived your life entirely differently because you thought you were going to get sick and die within two years, that's horrible that's terrible.
Stefan:
[1:22:09] And I don't think there's any reckoning from that side either, unless I missed something.
I don't think there's been a big convulsion in the movement saying, my God, we really terrified people. We really got things totally wrong.
Not everyone who took the vax died. In fact, the injury rate seems to be quite low.
I mean, it seems to be somewhat batch dependent or whatever, right? But we were wrong. Is there a reckoning?
Are there apologies? Is there restitution? I don't think so.
Again, maybe. I'm not obviously big in that community, so I don't know.
But it doesn't seem to me that that's the case.
And I view that as just as bad as the people who say to people, oh, the global warming is going to cause the death of the Earth within two years.
Or mass half-extinction casualty events, right?
I mean, if, like, the majority of people took the vax, and if people genuinely believed, oh, everyone who takes the vaccine is dead in two years, that's civilizational ending.
Like the imminent death by global warming stuff, right? And of course, you know, the people say, oh, I can't believe these people would terrify imminent death by global warming, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, how about imminent death by vaccine deaths, right?
Where's the reckoning? That was terrible. That was absolutely terrible.
The people who promulgated and spread that stuff, they have a lot to answer for in their conscience, in morality.
Stefan:
[1:23:38] But i um i i don't see that i don't see that happening there just seems to be this general blur of nothing happened move on i'm sorry that's just this something that it just it just really fundamentally bothers me that the reckoning on the the provac side is not happening and and so on right but the dissident anti-vacc side i don't think the reckoning is happening there either and it should.
Sorry, that's the end. Just so you know, that's the end.
Caller:
[1:24:12] That's the end. Sorry, that was all for me. I think I have a better understanding.
I'll stop talking, take it up everyone's time. But never really, you know.
Stefan:
[1:24:20] Taking up people's time, that's what this call is for. But you may want to see to others. That's totally fine.
I've got another few minutes here before I have to head out.
But if there's anybody else, I appreciate it. It's a great topic, and I really do appreciate you guys bringing this up.
And if there's another couple of minutes, if anybody else has another question or comment, I'm certainly happy to hear.
Caller:
[1:24:41] Well for me it's the other way around i quit the police because i wouldn't want to uh i didn't want to do the lockdown and now i'm stuck stacking pallets.
Stefan:
[1:24:49] And now so you're stuck doing what.
Caller:
[1:24:55] Menial labor i'm stuck stacking pallets.
Stefan:
[1:24:57] Oh gosh yeah i'm sorry about that man that's that's very tough uh that's very tough and you know i mean i think that your uh your honor and and your Your dedication to your virtues is very powerful.
But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of price to pay.
And I don't know if this affected your kids and family, but for you, but it's a heavy price to pay.
Caller:
[1:25:27] Well, basically, money-wise, we're doing okay, but we had postponed marriage and starting a family.
And of course it's also the emotions of feeling like a failure because you had a quit a job and you can explain to people the morals they're not going to care they just see oh you quit well uh most people are, For the oppression of the non-vaccinated, that's saying it a bit strong, but most people are pro-force, pro-coercion, so they're not going to care.
If virtue were easy, everyone would do it.
Stefan:
[1:26:22] Well i i agree with you that a lot of people don't particularly mind getting the fruits of of violence but they don't usually like seeing it right so people are pro-violence to some degree they're pro the fruits of violence but they don't like most people don't like the violence being being shown they don't like to see it which is why the sort of overwhelming force for causing mass compliance it's a hiding the violence right so people don't like looking at that most people don't like looking at the reality of the violence that the system has.
And so they try to find ways to sort of cover it up and avoid it and so on.
And I sort of hold on to that as a positive.
Please don't take it away from me. Maybe I'm wrong, but I mean, there are a few sadists who enjoy the violence, but for the most part, people don't like.
Stefan:
[1:27:12] And if people like violence, then everybody would have signed up for all the
Stefan:
[1:27:15] various wars around the world, but they don't do that.
They like putting flags in the bios, but not actually doing the violence and uh and so on so but yeah i i certainly think that you know the overwhelming force that the state and political power represents allows for violence to be covered up because of mass compliance but uh but yeah i think most people don't like seeing what was this line and it's funny because i always get back to this like um i always get back to this uh the scene from monty python come see the violence inherent in the system help help i'm being repressed It's kind of a joke, but the sort of violence inherent in the system is pretty key.
You know, most slaves didn't bolt and run and fight. They just complied.
But that didn't mean that slavery wasn't violent and so on and so on.
Stefan:
[1:28:02] All right. Any of the last comments or questions? And by the way, thank you so much for dropping by. And of course, for your support.
And let me know. I mean, do you find these not quite so mainstream topics or do you find these sort of more private star chats?
Do you find them helpful? You can just tell me in the chat and so on.
Do you find them helpful or useful? useful.
Um, I don't know if there's a good time to do a regular schedule.
My schedule tends to fly around a little bit cause I sort of make plans and, uh, you know, sometimes I get cancellations, people have stuff comes up for call-in shows.
So sometimes I get sort of things that open up or whatever.
I don't know if we can do a regular chat thing. I'll obviously try and give, um, uh, I'll obviously try and give as much warning as possible, but.
Stefan:
[1:28:44] All right. It's great. Great for feeling heard. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that.
And you know, i do love to hear what you guys are are thinking about and what's on your mind and and all of that so and you know i think we do have you know i think what's really important with this kind of stuff is society is just going through this massive blank out and retaining your sense of realities, kind of tricky at times didn't you feel that like it's like it's like covet and the lockdowns and the stripping of rights it's like that never happened it's it's to me it's completely wild It's wild.
It's like everyone pretends they were just in a coma for four years or something.
It's like none of this ever happened.
And nobody's processing the corruption, the lies, the propaganda.
The propaganda on the pro and anti-vax side, again, I don't want to be fair about that, but it's wild.
And so trying to keep that sense of reality when other people are just working like crazy to dismiss it, it's pretty wild.
Stefan:
[1:29:42] All right well thanks everyone so much for your time today um i guess this is for donors so if you do want to support freedom.com donate i would really really appreciate that really do appreciate your time today and your support for making this all possible and we will talk wednesday night lots of love bye.
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