0:00 - Introduction
22:53 - Dinner Guests
29:47 - The Nature of Memory
36:57 - Marriage and Illness
51:00 - Social Contracts Post-COVID
54:13 - Reflections on Parenting and Legacy
In this episode, I dive into the heated realm of social and political discourse, addressing the intense emotional responses that often accompany discussions around urgent events, such as natural disasters. Using a recent hurricane in Florida as a backdrop, I analyze the political dynamics at play, particularly focusing on the refusal of politicians to engage with one another during crises. This scenario serves as a microcosm for examining how personal disappointments and frustrations can fuel extreme reactions towards politics, revealing how easily non-political matters can become polarizing.
Shifting gears, I reflect on the peculiar realities of modern capitalism, exploring demographics in various industries, especially those dominated by women. The immense success of individuals like beauty mogul Huda Kattan raises questions about the societal values we place on aesthetics versus practicality. The juxtaposition of thriving businesses in beauty against the demanding, often mundane realities faced by traditional industries highlights a bizarre disconnect that seems to permeate contemporary life.
Continuing the conversation, I delve into the complexities surrounding gender dynamics in social interactions, especially regarding public approaches by men to women. I dissect the confusing signals sent by women about their preferences, exploring the resulting paradox where men feel both pressured to act while simultaneously being warned against potential harassment. This conundrum encapsulates the frustrating reality many men face and exposes the deeper societal tensions and misunderstandings surrounding gender relations.
Further along, I navigate challenges faced by young women today, particularly those dealing with the aftermath of divorce and the struggle for financial stability. Drawing upon personal experiences, I critically assess the choices made and their impacts on life outcomes. This exploration leads to a broader commentary on societal expectations, responsibilities, and the often harsh consequences of personal decisions, particularly within the context of family.
As I take a reflective turn towards childhood and the development of autonomy, I emphasize the critical role of unstructured play in fostering resilience and creativity among children. I argue against the increasing trend of over-scheduling and parental control, positing that a childhood rich in independent exploration yields individuals better equipped to face life's challenges.
Finally, I touch on the collapse of social contracts, particularly in the wake of crises like COVID-19, where communal trust eroded, leading to increased intolerance and aggression toward one another. As I conclude, I reiterate the importance of empathy and understanding in navigating complex social landscapes, while advocating for a nuanced approach to the memories and narratives that shape our identities. This episode invites listeners to consider the interplay of personal choice, societal pressures, and the evolving nature of human connections in an increasingly fractured world.
[0:00] Yo, yo, everybody, hope you're doing well. It's Stefan Molyneux, from Freedomain.
[0:07] So here's some interesting things I found on social media that I thought would be fun for you or instructive for you to look at. So this is a wild thing. Maybe it's a little bit more women than men, but people get so insanely invested in politics and narrative that they're almost completely beyond reason. So forget about the political content. Just look at the intensity of what this woman in Florida is talking about with regards to the upcoming, I guess, imminent hurricane. This is not political unless you make it political. This weather is not political. It's weather. It's not political unless you make it political. Rhonda Santus is refusing to take calls from the White House. And Kamala Harris. Now, you see that intensity. I don't know how people get so intense about politics. I mean, obviously you can say, well, what kind of system is it where if you don't take a phone call, you don't get disaster relief? Like that's just kind of crazy, right? But that intensity, look at this. And she, how much of disappointment does she have with regards to men in her life or like this intensity? I don't know if you've met people like this. We'll look at an abortion one later, but look at this intensity. Is it politically motivated? We are in the middle of a fucking disaster. And then, you know, it's going to come to this. And he won't take calls from the White House.
[1:37] What's up, Floridians? When you think you aren't getting the disaster relief that you need in a few days, I just want you to remember who did it. Yeah, I don't know. Again, maybe somebody can help me understand this, but I don't know how people get this invested that weather is not political. I mean, DeSantis has done pretty well with regards to disaster relief, and it's not like Kamala Harris did much for the Appalachians recently. But yeah, this level of intensity. city. You can't reach it with reason. You can't reach it with reason, with evidence, with facts, with data. And this is, of course, very, very common these days. I think I saved this for my daughter. All right. And I'm going to do the virtues on a different show.
[2:22] So this is interesting. And this goes to the question of which industries are female dominated that aren't to do with sex her beauty, right? So, you know, a very pretty woman and so on. And I mean, I guess nice. Won it. And my sister came to creating a business. I did not want to do it. You know, we had to block. So, nice cleavage and just, you know, pretty girl and pretty woman and all of that. And of course, she's worked hard on all of that. But this is, the economy just makes no sense to me. This aspect of the economy makes less than no sense to me. So, in 2008, Huda Kattan was an unemployed beauty blogger. Should have been making a board game. In 2017, she built a billion-dollar beauty brand by selling fake eyelashes.
[3:10] Like, holy crap. Fake eyelashes. This is how you make a billion-dollar beauty brand. Oh, my God. Oh, my gosh. And here the men are out just foolishly creating sewage systems, delivering electricity, keeping generators running, repairing roofs and so on, when we should make a fortune by selling fake eyelashes. I can't i can't i can't even with the modern world it is just too bizarre for words for me all right um somebody says uh.
[3:55] There's a guy i follow that teaches other guys social skills basic empathy stuff etc and he made this point last night something like guys heard some women say approaching me in public is harassment and took it 100% literally, but that wasn't the intent. It's a very, very interesting thing to say.
[4:14] Don't approach, don't approach me in public, right? That's what the women are saying. I find it creepy and weird that men approach me in public. And of course, it's true that men say, well, okay, that's, and this is a big thing. Now men don't approach women in public because they've heard this a zillion times. Don't approach me in public. It's weird Weird and creepy. And so men are like, okay, well, we won't approach women in public. And then women get upset. Man it is a tough thing though this is not like autism or anything like this is a really tough thing for men to to get to understand to process that what does it mean, what does it mean if a woman says approach me in public is harassment and and then a woman says There's, well, I'm upset that men don't approach me in public. So for the male brain, this makes no sense at all. For most male brains, right? This doesn't make any sense at all because it's a no-win situation. It's a no-win situation. So if women as a whole say, it's creepy when men approach me in public, and then men say, well, I don't want to be creepy, so I won't approach women in public. And then women say, well, I'm upset that men don't approach me in public.
[5:33] Well, you can't win. Because if you approach a woman in public, she can complain that you're creepy. And of course, approaching women in public now, since they could be secretly recording, they could be recording on their phone audio for some reason, they could suddenly flip on the camera and then, you know, you're a creep. And so it's like the gym problem, right? Although the gym problem, usually you can see some kind of camera, but people's sort of public recording thing, the public shaming thing is way, way, way more than it used to be, of course, right? rant. So what are we supposed to do as men? Approaching women in public is creepy. Okay, I won't approach women in public. Aw, how come no men are approaching me? So you can't win because if you approach the woman in public, you might be humiliated, you know, which is not the end of the world, but she also might record you, might be uploaded, right? Like, I mean, you just might be in the background of her audio recording or video of recording. And of course, if you say, well, women don't really mean that, then you're saying that no means yes. Don't do this. Well, I'm going to discount that because women are fine if you do it.
[6:43] How are you supposed to win? You can't win. You can't win except by ignoring women's general stated preferences. Now, of course, when some women say, I don't want to be approached in public, you then have to break it down as a non-general principle. You have to unblob the women, right? So some women don't like being approached in public. Other women, if you approach them in a friendly and positive manner or whatever, then they don't mind being, or they may even, and, in fact, enjoy being approached in public. And so what I would do if I was still single is I would not accept that some women don't like being approached in public and universalize that at all. I mean, I met a number of my girlfriends by just chatting with women in public and so on, and some women weren't particularly open to being chatted with in public. Which is fine. You just wish them a good day and move on with your life. But men are looking for rules. Don't approach women in public. Well, that's just some women under some circumstances, depending on how you look or what your charisma is or whatever it is, right? So, yeah.
[8:02] So just because some women don't like to be approached in public and that's been sort of pumped and almost everything that is floated to the top of media India is manipulative, propagandistic, destructive, civilizational, ending lies. I'm not kidding about this. Almost everything that flows to the top, or women are saying this, or men are saying this, or this is this belief, it's almost all calculated consciously or unconsciously to wreck and destroy everybody's lives as a whole. So some women, of course, say, don't approach me in public. And, you know, the corrupt genes, in a sense, are always fighting with the virtuous genes, right? Which is not to say that corruption and virtue are genetic, but the tendency or predilection. I mean, every character trait has some genetic basis, right? So the bad people are constantly fighting with the good people. And so the empathy personalities are constantly fighting with the cold-hearted sociopathic personalities. So when a message is floated up which says.
[9:22] Women are saying don't approach me in public, what that's doing, what that is, is the cruel personality structures warring against the empathetic personality structures. Because if you say, women don't like this, then sensitive and empathetic men will respect that and therefore not approach women in public, which opens the field up to the cold-hearted and the cruel to approach women in public, because they don't care what the women want, they only care what they themselves, right? The cold, cruel men, they only care what they themselves. So it clears the field. It has nothing to do with what women want and don't want as a whole because there is no such thing as what women want and don't want as a whole. There is only reproductive strategies in this post-Christian godless hellscape, of endless mammalian bullshit manipulation. It's all we are. All we are. It's all the media is doing. It's floating various exploitive strategies. That's all they'll do. So when you get as a media talking point.
[10:36] That, oh, women don't want men to approach them at work or in a park or in a coffee shop. I don't talk to women. Well, that is a war from the heartless personalities to the empathetic personalities. Well, women don't want this. Oh, well, I don't want to impose upon women. I want to be sensitive to their needs. I want to think about what they want. I want to not embarrass them or humiliate them. Okay, good. So I won't talk. Okay. But the cold-hearted men, they don't care about that. So it's all just floating up.
[11:09] All just floated up as a part of a war as a whole. I don't believe none of it.
[11:15] Canadians are struggling. I live in Canada, and I'm about a month away from being homeless. I'm living in my car. I'm a single parent. I'm responsible for putting a roof over not only my head, but my daughter's head. and no matter how hard I've tried, I have gotten up every single day and immediately started looking for apartments. So that's interesting. I mean, she's got nice makeup on, nice hair product on, nicely painted room. I assume this is not her daughter's room because it looks like a picture of Marilyn Monroe doing her best logo of the Rolling Stones impression. And she's got this nice lighting along her ceiling. So, I mean, I've lived very close to the bone when it comes to income, right? As you know, I've been paying my own bills since I was 15 years old. And I had a room in a house for $275 a month. And I biked everywhere because I couldn't even afford much bus fare. And I lived on giant vats of pasta and sauce and ramen noodles. And right, so I've lived pretty close to the bone. But then I grew up really poor. So it wasn't a big problem. I don't know if people, and I'm not saying it's not tough out there. Of course it is. I'm not saying that. But what I don't, I guess what I have a certain amount of impatience with is, so you're a young woman, you had a kid, and you got divorced.
[12:42] You're a young woman, you had a kid, and you got divorced.
[12:49] Well, if the guy wasn't violent, right, if he didn't beat you and or your daughter up, I think she's got a daughter, if he didn't beat you up and he wasn't like you know tearing you apart emotionally with vicious torrents of verbal abuse right of course if he was violent and abusive, then you shouldn't have dated got engaged got married had a kid i'm not sure if it of course it occurred in that order it's all a exploding kittens card shuffle these days but But if he was violent and abusive, then, of course, you should not have dated, engaged, married, and childed with him. And then you got divorced, which is very expensive. It's very expensive in terms of time, stress, money, energy, and so on, right? So if he was abusive, then you unfortunately had a child with a violent and abusive man, which is your choice, right? If he wasn't abusive and you got divorced as, I mean, the number one, I mean, women initiate most divorces and the number one cause of the divorce is dissatisfaction.
[14:07] Just dissatisfied okay so if you're dissatisfied then all you've done is shifted your dissatisfaction so if the man wasn't i don't know fulfilling all of your emotional needs or whatever it is didn't make you feel special and treasured and wanted like whatever it is that is a sort of disney and bullshit princess fantasy that a lot of women have going on in their heads. Then all that's happened is you've said, well, okay, I'm dissatisfied with my marriage, so I'm going to divorce this guy, and now I'm dissatisfied with my income because you had a family income. Two can live as cheaply as one. You had a family income, right? Let's say your family income was $100,000 a year. I'm just using this for even numbers. I'm sure it's not that high for such young people. But let's say your family income was $100,000.
[15:03] And your expenses were $75,000. Okay, but now you split up. So now you have two incomes of $50,000, and you have expenses that are probably $110,000 because you need two places to live, right? You need two internet accesses. Maybe you need another car and lots of extra expenses. You need double the hydro, like all this kind of stuff. So your expenses have gone way up. You spent a bunch of money on the divorce, and so you're broke.
[15:48] So if people say, well, I was dissatisfied with my marriage, so I got divorced, and now I'm broke, and I'm dissatisfied with my income, I view them as unbelievably selfish. Unbelievably selfish.
[16:03] Because it's like, well, I was not super happy with my husband, so I divorced him. And now I'm super unhappy with my income. I don't have enough money.
[16:20] So you have shifted the dissatisfaction from just you to you and your husband and your daughter and your landlord and all of the people that you need to pay bills. You've just shifted it. That's all. It's all that's happened is you shifted dissatisfaction and extended and expanded it. And your daughter now has to live with financial stress and the the stress of divorce and the stress of separated parents. Whereas before you only had to live with some dissatisfaction because the guy wasn't fulfilling all of your emotional needs. Anyway. Consistently every day. And I have found nothing that will accept us. My credit stinks, not because I've been late on rent. No, I've paid my rent on time consistently for years, but that doesn't matter because I had to prioritize paying rent over paying my other debts that I had incurred going through a divorce in 2020. See, there it is. So you You went through a divorce in 2020, I guess around COVID time. So you went through a divorce, and that blew your finances out of the water. And again, if the man was violent, verbally, physically, emotionally abusive, well, that's terrible, and therefore you shouldn't have had a kid with him, right?
[17:33] So she can't afford paying all her bills.
[17:38] Because of choices that she made. So because I prioritized paying rent, my credit score took a hit, went down significantly. Now I have bad credit. And there is an entire list of places that I do not qualify for because of that. Right. So you didn't pay your bills and now people don't want to rent to you, which makes absolute, complete, and total perfect sense. And that's because of rent control and how hard it is. So in Canada, it's virtually impossible to kick people out in the winter. So people don't want to rent to you because there are all these rules that say, well, if you don't pay your bills, if you don't pay your rent, you can't be kicked out. Okay, I get that. So, my good friend, you are going to have to take a room in a house with your daughter. You say, oh my gosh, that's really, man, that's going back. It's like, yes, it's going back. Yes, it's going back because that's what happens when you choose to get divorced. forced. And a lot of people, you know, again, because sorry, I forgot this to make finish this point earlier, because I grew up poor.
[18:45] For me, every increase in income is a net positive, yay, right? And there have been times where I've had higher income, times where I've had lower income. It varies a smidge when you're controversial. But the basic fact is that a lot of people who come from middle to upper middle class households, when their real sense of money comes in, when their parents are in their 40s and their 50s, in peak earning times for men in particular, 45 to 55, right? I missed by that much. Peak earning, right? So a lot of these kids, I don't know about this woman, it doesn't quite look like it, but whatever, right? So a lot of these young people come out of households where their parents are wealthy and then they feel like they are broke because they're just starting out. So they weren't around when their parents were broke, they're only around really thinking about money and consuming when their parents are pretty wealthy because their parents are in their 40s and 50s, which is peak earning. Right? And so they feel like they're compromising by moving out of a house into a room. I mean, I spent a whole year living in one room with another guy, two of us in the same room. And I didn't find that, I mean, I didn't particularly like it, although I'm actually still friends with the guy, I feel like 35 years later, but it wasn't my, and I didn't even know who I was moving in with. I just needed a place, and this was the only place I could remotely afford.
[20:15] So, yes, when you move out from a four-bedroom house with a pool and a Lexus into a room, you're not broke. You're just starting out like your parents started out. So, anyway. Not to mention, apartments are going for like $1,800 to over $2,000 per month. I don't know what I'm going to do. Yes, and I would imagine that as most young Canadian women, she voted for the left, and that's why the rent is so high.
[20:49] I'm terrified. I've never felt so defeated and stressed in my life. I don't know what I'm going to do. The state of our housing here in Canada is unsustainable and fucking unacceptable.
[21:04] Yes, well, you're going to have to change your mind. If you want to change circumstances in society, you have to change your mind about everything rather than just complain. All right. so let's see here a primary cause of the rise of mental disorders is a decline over decades and opportunities for children and teens to play roam and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults so it is one of the great glories of my childhood was the fabulous anarchy of roaming around broke in particular and not having any adults to supervise We had to invent all of our own games. We had to invent all our own rules. We had to invent all our own enforcement. But of course, the powers that be don't want kids roaming around solving their own problems because if you have, as the vast bulk of your childhood, solving problems without a centralized authority, you might grow up to question the value of a centralized authority, right? Well, we didn't need an umpire and a centralized authority to play all the games we played as a kid.
[22:17] So why do we need centralized authority? All right. This is for my show later. Hot people are perceived as funnier on camera than in audio, but unattractive people are less funny when seen. Supports a theoretical view of laughter as an evolved interest indicator.
[22:36] When people say they're attracted to humor, they may have causality backwards, right? So if someone is attractive, they're perceived as funnier, but people who aren't seen are perceived as funnier when it's just audio. That's interesting, right?
[22:53] This, I'm just going to let this play. This is beautiful.
[23:01] If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would you choose? Carly Minogue. Oh, Marilyn Monroe. Oh, God, I wouldn't have a clue. I know, it's right up. Paul Hogan. Kim Kardashian. No, no, no. I'd like to have dinner with Justin Bieber. What? He's not coming to my house. No, I'd have Bob Hawke. Dave Hughes. Barry Humphries. Jimi Hendrix. People who have made a difference in the world, maybe Nelson Mandela at the dinner table.
[23:28] I don't know what he's going to say. I'm scared. Kids. If you could have dinner with anyone in the world, who would you choose? Probably our whole family. Like a whole extended family. Mum and dad. Mum and dad. Does it have to be a celebrity? Could it be family? We love it. We talk about how school is. We ask mum and dad how a bad day was. Family. Yeah, mum and dad. Family. Who would you always like to have dinner with? They just want to be with us while they're eating food, which is pretty cool. They see us above everything. I'm going to get a bit of a message in it for me.
[24:08] So yes, yes, yes. And in particular, you know, from the ages of about three or four to maybe 12 or 13, roughly in the sort of what's called the latency period, that's when you can have in some ways the most goofy fun. Well, in many ways, the most goofy fun with your kids. Before that, it's a lot of sort of maintenance and sleeplessness, but sort of two or three to... Maybe 12 or 13, is the time for the goofiest play fun, right? Where you just make up games and stories and so on. My daughter and I, originally it was kiddie games, then it became dragon games, baby dragon games, and so on. We used to play this game called Smorg's Treasure, in which I would pretend we'd gather up a bunch of fake jewelry and beads and stuff like that, and I'd be curled around it on the bed, and she would have to come and try and pick it out without me waking up, quote, waking up and chasing her and so on. Just really enjoyable, crazy, goofy, have fun. Just really, really enjoy that time period. It's a fantastic aspect of parenting.
[25:13] So this I thought was interesting, complex and deep. What you have to remember, this is Reddit, what you have to remember about the past is that it literally doesn't exist. It exists only in your mind, your memories. No more real than a daydream is. Well, that's not quite true. That's not quite true. He says, what you also have to remember is that your memories are most likely not as accurate as you think they are. They are colored by your emotions and how you were feeling and colored by your memory itself. Your mind exaggerates some things and totally forgets other things. Yes, it does that for sure, but not randomly. If you go for a daily walk through the park and then one day there's a bear, you're going to remember that day, but not just random or accidental, but because remembering that day is pretty essential to your survival.
[26:04] So it's not totally random. random your memories are designed to keep you safe and to have you not repeat dangerous situations or to have you pursue positive situations right so it's not random it's not just like shuffling the deck right so he says someone else who experienced the same thing as you most likely remembers it much differently well that's true of course because if you were abused as a child your abuser is going to claim to remember it differently. So that's sort of a given. It's sort of like if there's a criminal, he's going to claim that he didn't do it, right? That his memory of the past is very different from yours and so on, right? So again, it's not totally random, but it is really important to remember some of the subjectivity of memory. Memories are not accurate and cannot be trusted. We gain our sense of self from our memories. So memories are They're not accurate and cannot be trusted. Again, I don't think that's true. It's not true. Could you not have any eyewitness? Now, again, I know eyewitness testimony in trials and so on has some significant limitations and so on, but...
[27:19] It's not the case that the memories are not accurate and cannot be trusted. I don't think that's true. That's kind of a gaslighting. So it's one of these things that's a bell curve. It's an Aristotelian mean. You don't want to entirely discount your memories, but you also don't want to treat them as objective documentary-style photographs or videos viewed by an impassive observer. I get all of that. But you want something in the middle. Don't discount your memories. Memories don't take them as pure gospel. We gain a sense of self from our memories. We decide who we are because of our memories. Yes, but memories are also not wildly inaccurate, right? I mean, when the last person dies who was in World War II, does that mean that World War II can be wished away? Nope. And some memories, if you sort of think about complex PTSD, some memories are inscribed not just in our minds and in our nervous systems and our bodies, but actually in our DNA because we can pass trauma along to kids simply based on how traumatized we were. So some of it can be passed along genetically. So that's not just like a dream at night, right? So you don't want to look at your memories like a dream at night, but again, you don't want to look at them as pure gospel.
[28:43] We write a story about our life and tell ourselves that story to form our sense of self. Not true. When you're a kid, you don't write the story of your life. Now, there's memories, and then there's judgments, right? So if you have a memory, if you have continuous memories of your parents not spending any time with you and not showing any interest in you, I would assume that those memories are accurate and then what happens is that's not the hard part the hard part because memories are in the past but judgments are about the future and in particular morals are about the future, so what happens is if your parents, ignored you when you were a child you have clear memories of that now the problem is not fundamentally that your parents ignored you. The problem in terms of your future is the morals or the lessons or the self that you get out of being ignored.
[29:47] So if your parents ignore you and you say, as I think rationally you should, my parents were cold withholding and or emotionally deficient and or whatever, whatever, and therefore they did not interact with me, but that has no bearing on my foundational worth.
[30:09] The problem is when you say, my parents ignored me because I'm worthless. Ah, it's the because I'm worthless. It's the conclusions from the memories that are malleable. The memories, of course, they're not photographs. They're somewhat malleable.
[30:25] But if my mother would scream as occasionally she did, she would scream, I hate you or whatever, mostly because she was, like I can say, oh my gosh, I'm hateworthy. You know, whatever, right? Well, no, I basically got instinctively then later on that she was just frustrated because she'd be dating some guy and then things wouldn't work out. And she told herself, as a lot of single mothers do, she told herself the story that the reason things didn't work out with the guy is because of her kids, right? My brother and me. So she didn't hate us. Of course, we were pretty good kids. But she hated that the relationship didn't work out. She couldn't take responsibility for it herself or wouldn't. And so she had to come up with a scapegoat as to why the relationship didn't work out. And then it's like, oh, it's my kids, right? Now, even if it were true, we're still the result of her choice. And so we're still not to blame. So I never really got the sense that I was hateful or that I should be hated or anything like that.
[31:48] But that's... So remembering my mother screaming, I hate you, that's a fact. I know that for sure. But it's a conclusion, right? So the memories don't drive the conclusions. So it's because the past doesn't exist anymore more on what you remember happening probably didn't happen the way you remember it at all. Not true. You can rewrite it. Rewrite the story you tell about yourself to yourself. Rewrite your personal story. Rewrite your past and you can rewrite yourself. Right. So it's the conclusions about yourself that you get from your circumstances that is the most malleable. And that's, you know, a lot of times when I'm engaged in call-in shows with people, I'm challenging the narrative they they have about their history. So memory is not the essential. It's the morality that matters.
[32:35] Uh, so this is interesting and I won't play all of this, but this is from Heidi Moore. I've been witness to three generations of women with chronic illnesses being abandoned by their husbands. A lot of times they leave, not right away. They'll stay about for about six months after the diagnosis and play the hero while everyone's still watching. Everyone's praising them for being brave and selfless. And then once the actual work begins, once it becomes unglamorous and hard, they dip out and they do it in a way that leaves them feeling blameless, right? They pick fights. They start building resentment. resentment they start manufacturing conflict they start gaslighting essentially these men will do the things men do if they want out of a relationship but they don't want to feel like the bad guy, either that or they kill their wife slowly through neglect this is a systemic issue this is a patriarchy issue so this is interesting and i you know i obviously the last thing people want to do is think of their beloved spouse getting ill and so on right uh and marriage is is definitely Certainly, it can be tough under certain circumstances. My wife and I have always gotten along famously and fabulously, but of course, I got cancer years ago, and so there have been some things where there have been challenges, and life is just going to throw those kind of curveballs at you that is inevitable in many ways. I mean, the only way you can avoid any curveballs in life is never playing the game, and then you just get the curveball called massive regret. Right.
[34:01] So this is interesting because marriage is a very complex thing in many ways because it is both the practical pair bonding requirement for raising children and a romantic ideal of love. And these two things are tensions within the concept of marriage. And it's interesting because one flows from the other. So the best way to have a sustainable marriage is to experience a deep and passionate romantic love. That's sort of pair bonding, right? I don't know how many, I don't think that many people in the modern world get to really feel this deep, passionate, intense love because there's not really enough objective virtue going on. But if we look at marriage as practical pair bonding for the raising of children, then if your wife is, let's say she's 30 and she gets chronically ill, Well, men have been programmed, this is not to take away free will, but I'm just talking about the instincts. Men have been programmed to procreate, right?
[35:08] Men have been programmed to procreate. In other words, we can look at the evolution of humanity, and let's just take a most challenging evolutionary situation. So let's say that there's a man, and before his wife has children she gets ill and therefore can't have kids for whatever reason right and then he is altruistic and kind and sensitive and thoughtful and devoted and attached to the point where he nurses her for the next 50 years.
[35:45] Than he's 75 or 70 or whatever, right? Well, the genes that would be intertwined with that kind of behavior would die with him. Whereas the man who put in the requisite amount of time to not be perceived as a total cat or pursued this kind of strategy would have a believable story to tell a new bride and therefore the genes for this, would reproduce, right? The genes for this kind of behavior would reproduce. And these are just brutal facts. Again, I'm not taking away free will, but it's really important to understand that which doesn't reproduce doesn't last, right? Genetically speaking, evolutionarily speaking, that which doesn't reproduce doesn't last.
[36:33] So if women are saying, well, men end up leaving women with chronic illnesses, well, that's also partly for the benefit of the children. Remember, marriage is there to create stable pair bonds for the healthy and productive raising of children, right? That's what it's for.
[36:57] So even if, like you have a woman who's got some chronic horrible ailment, for which, you know, again, we have massive sympathy and understand all of that. But if you have a woman who has a chronic ailment to the point where she can sort of barely get out of bed and is really, you know, wrecked in terms of energy and so on. Okay, so let's say she's capable of having sex. You have sex, she gets pregnant, and then, first of all, the childbirth might kill her in a weakened state, and then you end up with either a dead baby or a baby with no mother. Or, alternatively, what happens is, she has the kid, whatever illness or ailment she has might pass through her breast milk or even through the umbilical cord, which again is very bad. But let's say that the child is born relatively healthy, but the mother is debilitated.
[38:00] Through illness, well, what happens then? What happens? What happens? Then you have a child, or maybe even more than one child, you have a child that cannot be cared for by a disabled mother. I mean, I write about this in my novel, Almost, with Ruth and Quentin, and Tom, and Reginert.
[38:30] So you then have a child with a functionally disabled mother. Now, think of the amount of labor that was required, particularly in our evolution without labor-saving devices. The family couldn't survive without two productive adults because somebody's got to keep the place clean, somebody's got to do the laundry, somebody's got to do the gathering, and somebody's got to take care of the kids. If the man's doing that, he can't be out planting crops or hunting or whatever. So if he stays with her I understand that that's beneficial for her and it may be beneficial to him in terms of pair bonding and love and devotion, but if he stays with her his bloodline dies off.
[39:15] And what that means is that men who would have some predilection to stay with women like this their bloodlines did not survive, Their bloodlines did not survive And that's not the result of men being cold, mean, and cruel Right? That's not that That's just the basic root biological fact, That if men are cats who abandon disabled women Well, you can do the moralizing thing, right? Oh, women are so much nicer sister, and so on. But of course, women cheat about the same. This is kind of cheating, maybe. But women cheat at about the same rate as men. So the first question, I think, for intelligent people is to say, okay, well, is there an evolutionary advantage to this kind of behavior?
[40:11] That's the first intelligent question. If there is evolutionary advantage to this type of behavior, yeah. Then you can blame Mother Nature, you can blame the harsh conditions of evolution, you can blame God, you can blame whatever, but blaming men is pointless and pathetic. And this sort of lack of sympathy for evolutionary pressures and how it's guided both male and female behavior, it's just this finger-wagging moralizing I just find to be embarrassing and stupid. All right. James Earl Jones was only 43 when he took on Shakespeare's King Lear in 1974 and, I didn't I don't know I mean I like James Earl Jones as a whole.
[41:03] I've sped this stuff up a little bit just so you know Here, nature, here, dear goddess here, suspend thy purpose about its intent to make this creature fruitful into her womb, convey sterility, dry up in her the organs of increase, and from her... See, I find his acting here to be kind of whiny. I mean, this is a king who has been endowed with godlike authority since the day of his birth, and he seems like a frustrated younger sibling. Delegate body, never spring a babe to honor her. If she... To honor her. It's no, no, no. He must team, create her a child of spleen that may live and be a thought this nature promised to. This is interesting because thinking in terms of the black community, the family structure as a whole, if we go back a tiny bit, look at the coldness of that actress, right? So this is Lear torching Cordelia. and she is scorning and into like so i think this is uh the the, slightly emasculated son of a single mother complaining and weak i don't think it's the right interpretation wrinkles in a brow of youth with taken tears that channels in her cheeks turn all her mother's pains and benefits the laughter and shouldn't be raising his eyebrows sorry to be but.
[42:25] That she may feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child. Away, away. See, now he shouldn't be storming out. That's an act of weakness. He should be towering over her. She should be sobbing, right? Because if she's not, the pathos is that Cordelia, of course, is the one, unlike Garnerall and Regan, Cordelia is the one who genuinely cares about her father. And so the fact that she's cold and indifferent to his speech is entirely the wrong reading. And I think comes more out of the single mother and frustrated son that's a little bit more prevalent in the black community. But to me, this is an entire misreading of the clear intent of the play. The pathos is that he's raging against the only child who really loves him. But if she's cold, harsh, and indifferent, she's playing it sort of the proud black woman stereotype. And he's playing sort of the whiny, storming out teenage boy stereotype. Entirely the wrong reading. All right.
[43:22] It. Yes, yes, yes. I talked about this months ago. Actually, I talked about this years ago with regards to COVID. And Mike Cernovich wrote, when East Germany fell, there was a museum opened on all the spying and tips. It was friends and family, even spouses who reported people to the Stasi. Your anti-Trump friends will send you two gulags. This isn't a guess. It's happened. They're all the same. I think that's a bit harsh, but nonetheless, it is really, really important to, and we saw this, of course, under COVID. How many frustrated, thwarted, petty, vengeful, vicious, nasty little bullies came crawling out of the woodwork when it came to reporting, he's got an extra car in his driveway. He's not social distancing. I mean, they all seem to gravitate towards, what is the sort of cliche that they gravitate towards the homeowners, HOAs, homeowners associations and so on.
[44:13] But yes, be careful. Be careful. Be careful. As political power increases, be careful of those who will side with the state even at your own expense. And don't think that family is a protection. Historically, it has not been at all. All right. Let's see here. Percentage of women responding yes to sexually aggressive behavior. You can pause, of course, and all of this. You overestimated partner's desire, 71%. You attempted to arouse partner, 85.7%. That's fine. You threatened to end the relationship without sex, 31.6%. You said things you did not mean, 43%. You're pressured with verbal arguments. You question partner sexuality. So a third of women, apparently, this is an older one, right? But a third of women say that they have basically hinted that a man is gay if he doesn't want to have sex. You flirted to make someone else jealous, almost half. Anyway, this sort of goes on and on. It is by threatening to use physical force, sexual aggressive. That's 27.8% by using physical force, like one out of five women in this run.
[45:31] So uh that is uh when he was a minor and you were not 29.3 percent yeah yeah engaging in strategies that would traditionally be defined as coercive if applied to male relationships lying threatening to end a relationship verbal pressure to have sex from 26 to 36 percent of women reported strategies traditionally defined as abusive these strategies are using your positions of power or authority I've certainly had that, women who offered to advance my career in various areas if I slept with them. Never did, of course. But I knew my Bible. Getting him drunk or drugged or taking advantage of a man while he was in a compromising position. Approximately 20% of the women reported using physical force, 27% the threat of physical force, and 9% a weapon to obtain sexual contact with a male partner. So that's not ideal to put it mildly, right? So that is wild because one purpose of this study was to document the range of college women's sexual aggression it is important to note that between 26 and 43% of all women respondents reported uh.
[46:47] Oh, I'm sorry if that's gone somewhere else. But yes, it is. And this is from some time ago, and I don't think that women have become less aggressive as a whole. This is Andrew Wilson who wrote, I have realized that after talking to hundreds upon hundreds of women that any illusions I had that they were in any way benevolent or the less predatory sex is completely delusional. And, I mean, he, of course, is talking to a fairly self-selected group of people. But, I mean, I'm aware that the call-in shows are a self-selecting group of people, a lot of whom are highly intelligent and with particular challenges in their life. It is not a representative sample of humanity as a whole. And it's important, of course, you know, it's like the doctor saying, oh, my gosh, everyone has some physical ailment. Everyone appears to be sick. And it's like, well, but you're the doctor. It's generally how they'll count. So I think that's important. Oops.
[47:45] Now it's lost my spot right that's all right we'll go down pick it up really quickly, uh this i thought was interesting somebody wrote zoe harkam dropped the car off for a service the garage owner had a zero tolerance abuse towards abuse of staff notice i asked him about it and he shared multiple examples of nasty incidents he said it's got much worse since covet it reminded to be when we arrived in Cyprus, the taxi rank women said it might be a bit of a wait. We said, no problem. She said, you have no idea if the abuse I get when I say that. It's got much worse than COVID. Why? People more stressed, less tolerant, more expectant, that they can get others to do what they want. Yeah, I've noticed this too. I had to go and talk to my cell phone provider the other day, and there was a big sign on the door. And I tried to open the door. In the middle of the business day, the door was locked.
[48:39] So I had to ring the bell, and I saw a note on the door which said, you know, because of the rising prevalence of theft, you have to be, they have to manually unlock the door from inside. And then there were these big signs of verbal abuse and so on, right? Will not be tolerated, and I've seen this in doctor's offices and dentist's offices and other places, and I certainly didn't remember seeing that when I was younger. So, yeah, I mean, there, of course, is some cultural clashes based on immigration. There is, but there's a general sense post-COVID that the social contract has been largely wrecked. So the social contract has been largely wrecked. So the vaccinated were told that the unvaccinated are selfish and want them to die and delusional and listening to conspiracy theories and so on, right? So that's what the vaccinated were told.
[49:42] And the unvaccinated believe that the vaccinated were just sheep lining up to get jabbed because the TV told them to and they got a free donut in a parking lot. And the amount of tension and hostility, right? So ideology kind of bubbles. It's like this old Marxist statement, you know, there are decades when nothing happens, and then there are weeks when decades happen. So ideology kind of bubbles in the underground. It's like termites in your house, right? Nothing really happens until the whole damn thing collapses. You don't really notice anything, and then suddenly half the house collapses.
[50:25] Kind of ideologies like that so the left and the right you know sort of agree to disagree and you just kind of avoid the topics and so on but when it comes to something as immediate as say the cover jabs or compliance or social distancing or people who believe that a small piece of plexiglass will protect you from the cashier who's just been touching all of your food and so on when people realize that the termites of ideology have undermined the social contract. It takes one large thing to set that all off.
[51:00] And that large thing was COVID. I mean, another one of the topics is high levels of immigration or taxes or the debt or whatever it is, right? And so people can ignore ideology in the same way they can ignore like toxic ideology they can ignore that in the way that they can ignore uh termites uh eating away at the foundations of the house or whatever it is but then right at some point uh it uh it only takes i mean each individual termite is like oh my gosh we're never going to take this house down eventually uh they do so i think social contractors and this funny thing too because and i've mentioned this before you know for decades i was saying we should privatize health care should privatize education and of course i was told well these things are human rights absolutely necessary.
[51:57] We can't possibly live without these things and how dare you right how dare you even suggest that people go five minutes without these services and then um well they were mostly shut down for like a year or two. And, yeah.
[52:14] That's bizarre. People just accepted that. So yeah, I think social contracts mostly toast. Something I'm going to watch later, something I'm going to do later.
[52:23] And let's see here. Most men get zero attention from women in their 20s. In their 30s, they start to be able to date and stuff. Women who hit that age expect men to settle down. Men just want to experience what women experienced when they were in their prime. It's a bit unfair to tell a man who suffered for 15 to 20 years that he has to cuck to marriage life the moment he becomes desirable. Considerable hence a plummeting birth rate and it's a brilliant statement it's a brilliant statement now this was not my experience and again i don't want to make this all about me but i think it's a brilliant statement because it reveals something to me that i did not experience my prime dating years were like 15 to 30 and And I was in high demand and, you know, I was a good-looking young man. And, you know, by 30, I, you know, lost most of my hair and so on. And, you know, for some guys that looks okay. I think for me it's okay. But, you know, generally it's not as desirable as a full head of hair and so on, right? So I had a pretty cool 15 years of dating around. And then, of course, I had office jobs and gained a bit of weight. And, you know, I've lost it since, but you know, it was, I was not at peak, peak, peak sexiness at that time after sort of in my thirties. But I think for a lot of men, it's different.
[53:47] So for a lot of them, when they're younger, they're not that attractive. The women are looking for the chads and all of that. And they really can't get many, if any, dates. But then when they get into their late 30s and they are making some good coin and maybe they've looked smacked a little bit and they've glowed up a little bit. Look at me using all the modern lingo. And then they're in high demand.
[54:13] And then they want to play the field. he meant for the streets right so they want to play the feet and i can really understand that, it really makes sense to me and it is just one of these tragic uh mismatches that it's really hard to, do much about at the moment this person's parents passed and they didn't want any of their antics right so they even really need sound for this but so this is really interesting and of course this brings back a bit of a sore spot for me and that my mother beat the hell out of me because I, left a white ring on one of her little dressers or coffee tables or side tables. I think it was a dresser. So look at all of this, right? All of this work. They went to antique stores, right? They went to antique stores and then they sanded things down and then they got just the right stain and they got it all preserved. And now where's it going, right? Where's all this work, this focus, this effort, this energy, this attention, where's it all going?
[55:15] It's going into the landfill. Look at that. It probably took them months to restore. Look at that beautiful lacquer on that table. It's antique. It took them months to find, thousands of dollars to buy, to restore, and then it goes into the Pac-Man crunchy crunch of history.
[55:36] Isn't that wild? Look at that. Beautiful piece. Nobody wants it. Nobody's going to use it. Nobody wants to transport it. It's endable. I mean, it's really sad, right? This is what happens to your life when you're dead. All right. I think we'll stop here because it's been a fairly lengthy chat. But I really do thank you for your time and attention. Freedomain.com. To help out the show. Thank you for your support. Lots of love. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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