0:04 - Introduction and Current Events
6:20 - Health and Nutrition Discussion
8:05 - Exploring Anger and Hope
11:50 - The Nature of Anger
21:34 - The Illusion of Keys and Locks
37:46 - Literature and Hope
42:31 - The Pain of Acceptance
50:02 - The Cost of Hope
53:06 - The Cycle of Abuse and Hope
59:58 - Reflections on Relationships and Reality
1:04:53 - The Power of Hope and Its Illusions
1:08:13 - Questioning Hope in Relationships
This episode dives deep into the complexities of human emotions and societal dynamics, as I tackle the controversial topic of government welfare programs and their implications on personal health choices. We explore the alarming statistic that nearly a quarter of Coca-Cola's revenue comes from government assistance, leading to a discussion on the ethical considerations surrounding nutrition and welfare. I express my disdain for fizzy beverages, describing them as "the devil’s brew" lacking in any nutritional value and contributing to broader health issues. The conversation transitions into how the normalization of junk food in welfare programs reflects not just personal failures, but systemic issues that impact public health.
As we navigate through this discussion, I emphasize the underlying links between personal choices, moral responsibility, and societal consequences. The dialogue steers toward the notion of “choice” in the welfare system; is it truly a matter of freedom, or does it reflect a misguided approach to public health? I challenge listeners to consider whether such choices should be funded with tax dollars, raising questions about responsibility and the long-term impacts on communities.
I then explore the emotional landscape of human relationships—focusing on the paradox of anger as a form of hope. A listener's experience with long-standing familial anger serves as a launching point to discuss how unresolved issues can cloud current relationships and perpetuate cycles of dysfunction. I argue that anger often stems from a desire for change in others, illustrating that when one fails to confront their issues, they may lapse into self-destructive cycles.
The conversation deepens as I recount the futility many experience when trying to “unlock” the emotions of those who are emotionally unavailable. The metaphor of keys and locks becomes intertwined with our exploration of empathy and connection, leading to critical reflections on the nature of human relationships. I suggest that pursuing flawed connections often leads to frustration and unmet expectations, which can subsequently reinforce hurtful patterns.
My examination of cultural narratives—like those portrayed in movies—highlights the dangers of romanticizing emotional breakthroughs as simple solutions to complex psychological issues. I critique the portrayal of emotional transformations as depicted in the media, arguing that such narratives can lead to disillusionment for those grappling with real-life heartaches.
The episode culminates in a profound realization: the notion that the pursuit of hope can entrap individuals in a cycle of delusion, directing them toward a painful, unrewarding path. I challenge listeners to reassess their relationships and the places they invest their hope, pushing for an acknowledgment of reality rather than the avoidance of painful truths.
As we open the floor to listener questions, I encourage further exploration into these challenging dynamics, emphasizing the importance of confronting uncomfortable realities. The conversation is rich, filled with philosophical insights and emotional reflections, intended to inspire meaningful change in how we relate to one another and engage with societal structures.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
[0:05] I hope you're doing well on this fine, glorious, beautiful morning, March 23rd, 2025.
[0:23] And I should go with your questions. Yes, I should go with your questions. I certainly do. I don't have the hats for sales. I'm afraid. Stef, did you see all the influences on X that sold out to the junk food industry for $1,000? Well, I don't know. I've heard about that, right? So the surprise, I suppose, that people are having is that supplemental nutritional assistance programs or SNAP programs allow, people to buy apparently a lot of pop, soda, bubbly, whatever you want to call it, soft drinks, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and things like that. And if I read the statistic right, and I think I did, about 25% of Coca-Cola's income comes from government welfare money being spent on pop. Bah!
[1:14] Unbelievably wretched. It has, I mean, pop is the devil's brew. It's Satan bull sweat. It has no nutritional value. Tons of sugar. And is just terrible all around. And I, I mean, it was forever, 15 years ago that I swore off Pop. I will maybe once a month have a Diet Coke, but that's about it. But I don't think that the, I don't think it's quite that way. I don't think they cut you a check and tell you what to say like an ad. I think that there's just a donation and a suggestion. And if you're part of a think tank, the donation probably is to the think tank itself. And then the suggestion is, you know, well, maybe you could help us out with this messaging issue or something like that. And, you know, people just, you don't have to order every salmon to swim in a particular direction, right? You just have to give them a general goal and a swift current and they'll all just kind of line up that way.
[2:12] But you'd be deeply shocked, I think, at how cheap people are to buy. You'd just be shocked. Nobody, once or twice people approached me in the past with offers of this, that, and the other. And some of it was a lot, a lot of money. But I just, I wish I could say I was some big virtuous guy. Oh, the temptation was immense, but I resisted. It's like, no, no. So I just was never interested in that. I'd much rather, of course, forge my own path, go my own way, all of that kind of stuff. And I just was never, I just didn't. And people stopped, right? And people stopped. Like there were a couple of times I was offered quite a bit of money, but money has influence, right? He who pays the piper calls the tune, as the old saying.
[3:12] Goes. So I was just never particularly interested. But the idea that buying health-destroying food, or I mean, it's quote food. I mean, at least half of what's available to people in America could barely be qualified as food. It's just a generic tax cattle, livestock slop. It's barely food. I mean, the longer the ingredients, usually the worst it is for you.
[3:44] So the idea that it's a big freedom of choice issue to have people on government benefits be able to buy health-destroying food. You know, pop is bad for your body. It's bad for your teeth. It's bad for just about everything you can conceive of. And so the idea that it's just a big freedom issue. People got to be free to buy what they want. It's like, well, not with other people's money. I mean, this isn't like a paycheck, right? Welfare is not a paycheck. Welfare is coerced money from others. So the idea that, well, you should give people lots of choice. Okay, great. How about we give, if choice is so important to you, right? Then how about we give people the choice of whether to pay for the endless tsunami of single motherhood. Can we give people a choice? If choice matters, right? I think that the choice of whether or not you fund single motherhood from here to the end of civilization, which is rapidly approaching in part because of the funding of single motherhood. So if choice is so important to you, then clearly and deeply and honestly, you must not focus on the choice of.
[4:56] Whether you buy this body, tooth, and brain rot called soda, you would say, can I choose who I support, right? Can I get a choice on my charity? That's where the choice is. But once you've crossed that Rubicon and said, well, no, no, no, you have to be forced to pay for whoever makes egregious mistakes, then the taxpayer decides. Of course, because the taxpayer also has to pay for the health bills of poor people who consume a lot of that pop, right? That slop, right?
[5:37] And the lack of sleep, the impulse control issues and all of that that comes with bad food addictions. Your kid's got to pay for it in school with bullying and all of that. And then you've got to pay for the health issues and then you've got to pay for a dental repair and all of that. And so, yeah, it's pretty terrible. And the fact that there would be, what was it, more conservative influencers who would be taking money and promoting free choice in the sphere of welfare is beyond confusing to me.
[6:20] All right.
[6:26] Sugar is a drug. You realize that when you get off sugar and your palate shifts, it's crazy. Yeah. Would more green grocers in places of convenience stores slash bodegas help wean people off junk if the healthy stuff was fresh, cheap, and convenient for urban living? Micro apartment mini kitchens we're buying from supermarkets are not available. No. No. No. No. I mean, it's an IQ issue as a whole. So you can't just fix that. With making stuff available. You just can't. You just can't.
[7:06] So, I mean, this is like 30 years ago. A friend of mine who was more advanced in this stuff than I was at the time, was, you know, we were in a convenience store looking for a snack, and, of course, I was fingering all of the brightly colored, vacuum-packed slop from hell that passes as snacks on the racks of the convenience stores, and he just bought an apple. No, no, he bought a banana. Yeah, he bought a banana for 30 cents, and he's like, this is way cheaper than chips and way better for you. I'm like, ah, illuminate, illuminate. Just pick up an apple, pick up a banana, and you're pretty fine. Yeah, we should pay for nutrition. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Good morning, Tom. So, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. All right. So, if you have questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, please type them in the chat.
[8:06] But I wanted to talk to you about something as a whole.
[8:13] And you can let me know what you think. I was talking with someone the other day. He was really angry at his mother, although he hadn't seen his mother for years. And his anger was clouding his current relationships. So we talked about the anger.
[8:40] And what I tried to get across to him, I think I did, but what I tried to get across to him was that anger is hope. Anger is a form of hope. So if you really get angry at someone, you hope that your anger or some circumstance will have them suffer to the point where they then change. One of the things that happens to people without a conscience is they lose all their bearing. They lose any and all discomfort that might have them correct their course. And hedonism is basically when you lose your conscience. And because you lose your moral happiness, you must then go for mere flesh happiness, sex, food, drink, victory, dominance, are climbing a hierarchy. Like when you lose your conscience, you turn to the flesh, lizard brain, and body hedonism. And so we have a hope that people will suffer to the point, like bad people, corrupt people, will suffer to the point where they become good again.
[10:02] And so anger and the desire for revenge, the desire to see people suffer, is with the goal of those people, you know, bouncing, hitting bottom, and changing their course, and realizing, that the way they live is bad, or wrong, or destructive, and then they'll turn the corner. They'll bounce, turn the corner, and so on, right? And of course, we know this with addicts, right? If you hit bottom, and so on, wake up with a, what was it, a dead hooker or a live boy in some grungy hotel room, and then, you know, you'll change.
[10:38] So, if we're angry at people, it's because we hope to some degree that our anger or some circumstance will inflict suffering on those people, and then they will change. But the great thing about getting older, I don't get to pull pretty privileges much anymore, but I do get to pull experience privilege, XP privilege. I have leveled up in terms of experience and I've seen the arc of people's lives, right? I mean, I'm going to be 59 this year, so I've seen the arc of people's lives. I know how this story turns out for just about everyone. I've seen people from the age of 11 until, you know, the sort of late 50s. I've seen the choices that they've made. I've seen the full map of people's lives. I've seen the older generation who are dying or on death's door. I have seen what the long shadows cast by early choices look like and where they lead to. And it is highly instructive because bad choices are so destructive.
[11:51] I feel like I'm about to start rapping this morning.
[11:58] So, anger at people is mingled with hope.
[12:09] And have you ever had someone that you haven't talked to for years and you still debate them in your head? I certainly have. I mean, I absolutely have. Whether that's my experience or a general experience is up to your confirmation, but I definitely have. So the way that, and of course, when we argue with people, we're hoping that we can find a key solution.
[12:35] That opens a lock. And we're like the guy who really wants to access a treasure that's on the other side of a door that's in a giant wall that he can't get through. And the door has a lock, and we have 500 keys and a big old apartment building superintendent ring. And you try all the keys, you jiggle, and you've done this before, right? If you've ever had those locks, which except you've got a couple of locks, they accept more than one key, and it jams a little, you've got to jiggle, but you don't want to break it off, and you don't want to make it worse. So you delicately try your keys, and you go through laboriously and patiently. You go over your 500 keys, right? You try this, you jiggle it, you move it a little, you twist it, you blow on it for whatever reason, and you get increasingly frustrated. Well, I made the next one, the next one, right? And then when you've gone through your 500 keys, you say, oh, wait, did I, I must've missed one. I must have, right?
[13:40] So then you start again and you try. And again, it's delicate because you don't want to break the key. You don't want to screw up the locks. You jiggle, move, jiggle, jiggle, twist, move, jiggle. And I've had, I actually, when I worked in a hardware store in my teens, I used to make a lot of keys. So I know like if you make them right, they work well, but if you make them badly, and we've all had those locks, you've got to jiggle a little, move it around a little, and then it opens, right? So you try again, and then you're pretty sure you've got all the five, and now you're really frustrated, because the treasure's on the other side, and you're getting angry, you're frustrated, like what the hell, right? And you can't leave, because you might get in, and there's a treasure on the other side. So you try again, and you try again, and twist, and then you sleep on it, and you try again. At some point, though, you realize one of three things about the treasure that's on the other side you realize one of three things either you realize there really isn't a treasure on the other side and maybe you just gaslight yourself and say that so you can leave and go do something else, or you recognize you just don't have the key you just don't have the key now maybe then you'll go and try and get another key but trying to get another key for a random lock is right? Pretty bad. Pretty, pretty bad strategy. Or you realize that the lock is fake.
[15:07] Right? Maybe you, uh, you pry the door handle a little away from the door and you realize there's nothing connected to anything. And this is after you've exhausted all the possibilities. But if you just keep trying keys Maybe you go and get more keys And so on Then you're just incredibly frustrated And stuck and trapped You know, Groundhog Day style You're stuck and trapped And confined into trying And it's maddening It's maddening, Because you have hope.
[15:50] Now, it's a foundational argument or idea, but we cannot get the truth from liars. We just, we cannot get the truth from liars. And trying to get the truth from a liar is like trying to open a lock. You've got a bunch of keys. You've got a bunch of rhetorical tricks, right? So we make this mistake, and Lord knows I have in the past. We try to debate with someone who has no capacity to comprehend another person's point of view. They lack empathy. They lack curiosity. They lack the ability to inhabit another person's perspective. So all they're doing is fighting themselves to win against you. They are fighting, not themselves, they are fighting to win against you. And this, of course, is like 98% of debates online or in person. Now, again, debating people who can't change their mind is more for the audience if it's a public debate. And I haven't had private debates with people who don't change their mind in decades. But in the public square, sometimes it's just to change other people's minds.
[17:09] Debating people without empathy is pointless. They're not going to change. And they're just there to sow doubt within you in the intransigence of their position. To not have self-doubt is to have no free will. And people who don't doubt themselves don't have functional free will. They have theoretical free will, but they don't have functional free will. Functional free will is when you have the capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards. Could I do better? What is the standard by which I can be disproven? What is the standard by which I'll know certainty? If you pray to some sky-straddling hobgoblin for truth about the universe you don't have free will to understand the universe if you apply science you might but you certainly have that capacity.
[18:06] So we hang around people and we're stuck in this try the key, try the key, try the key situation, jiggle it a little, wait for a different temperature, blow on it, rub it under your armpit, look for shavings, and so on. Just keep trying the key, keep trying the key, keep trying the key. We can lose years of our life, decades of our life, and some people lose their entire lives. Through this process. It's horrible. It's horrible. There's a way I can get in. There's a way I can get in. There's a way I can get to the treasure. I can get to the treasure. Now, of course, for most of us, if we had bad parents, trying the keys is conversation, and the treasure on the other side of the a giant metal door is love. If I find the right combination, of words.
[19:09] If I find the right key, I can open the door and get love. And you hope for that, as I hoped for that. And the media and movies, stories, and so on, they want you to waste your life trying keys.
[19:39] Jiggle, try, change, jiggle, try, change, jiggle, try, change. They want you to waste your life, because then you're fighting your own delusions, fueled on by your own hope, rather than questioning and philosophically opposing the powers that be. So one sort of key example of this is the movie Good Will Hunting. So in Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon plays a guy, Will. And Will is cold and violent and superior and trapped. But then Robin Williams talks about the abuse that Will suffered as a child. Will, he gets the key. He gets the key, opens the door. Will's heart opens. He cries. And then he's great. afterwards. He's relaxed, he's chatty, he's happy, he can go, like he punches, he's a violent guy, like he punches the wall next to a mini driver's head or the door or something, like he's a violent, volatile, dangerous guy. But then he has the key, it's very dramatic, right? The key opens, and he cries and he's all better.
[20:59] And this is after Robin Williams, as the therapist, has tried a whole lot of keys.
[21:11] And you see this all over the place. In movies, that there's somebody who is emotionally unavailable, something big happens, they learn, they understand, they grow, they have a breakthrough, and then their heart is open and there's not even a lock on the door. People can just come through.
[21:34] So you're programmed to keep trying keys and to fight a useless fight and to argue with the intransigent until death do you part from your own potential and ambitions, in the modern world for sure nothing in art is accidental everything is for power, Everything is related to power.
[22:12] And the Matt Damon character, Will, is transformed from an astute analyzer of political power Well, he's got this whole speech about, like, why would he work for the military industrial complex and betray his fellow class denizens into a simp who just drives across the country to go and see some girl that he previously terrified and was kind of abusive to.
[22:47] Because Matt Damon, the character in Good Will Hunting, is a pathological liar. He just lies. He goes through the list of his brothers. She's a little skeptical. He goes through the list again. He lies about his past, his history, his future, his potential. And it's terrible. But if he cries, everything will be fine. It's the same thing in Steel Magnolias. The woman, her kid dies. Sally Field has this big cry. Everybody laughs, and everyone's better. It's this idea that everything's just kind of backed up or blocked up, and the tears, you know, like a poke at the eustachian tube. Tears just, they flow, and everyone's better. And the door swings open. If you just find that key, damn. You just find the key.
[23:50] Just find the key, and people do this all the time under performing groups in the world as a whole people have been well we'll just try these keys right and someone did it earlier like no disrespect because we're all tempted by it but someone did it earlier and say well if we just put fresh food in front of poor people then they wouldn't eat crap anymore, it's like we had a demo right how do you open the key right but see some treasure is guarded and some people, put locks on to pretend there's a treasure, with regard to my own mother's heart it was a desert, i worked at the lock, And what I got while working the lock for many years, and in three very specific conversations, what I got was that her heart was locked, not for me, but for her.
[25:06] She held the key, and she was never going to use it. She was never going to open her heart. And, you know, for reasons of tragedy, history, brutality, and choice. I mean, she was born pre-war Germany. It was a bad scene all around. She was seven when the Russians came in and raped everything, including locks, I think. So, terrible, absolutely horrifying tragedies, and the world was burning to the ground when my mother was a child. It was very sad. very tragic, very horrible. And there were choices that come out of that too. But my mother's heart, I think, was effectively burned to ash through the most brutal war in history and the aftermath of that. There was desert and ash on the other side. And she put locks on her heart so that she could avoid the ash within herself. And that made it look valuable. But because she did not want to confront the ways in which she was hollowed and burned out by war, circumstance, brutality, and choice, she had locks everywhere.
[26:34] And there was no love to be had in that situation. Even if I had found a way to open the door, she would have resisted like crazy, because she did not want to see the desert that she had become. And in particular, when people have done significant wrong, the door welds to the frame. Especially when they've done it against children, the door welds to the frame. It becomes the wall. There is no separate door anymore. They cannot open that. The moment people pass beyond restitution apology restitution the moment they pass beyond that in other words when they do wrongs that cannot be undone so we all do wrongs but we can undo them if we note them quickly and make our apologies but once you've passed beyond, what you can fix the door to your heart welds close, and there is nothing on the other side.
[27:34] By desert bones and horror. And then people fight like crazy to keep that door closed. And even if you open it a little bit, and I've done this with people, my people who've done great wrong, I've managed to pry their heart open a little, and they get a glimpse of that, and then what do they do? They get a glimpse of that, those bones, that ash, that desert, that horror. What do they do? They slam it shut.
[28:20] They slam it shut because they can't see the horror that they've become. So you are trying to open a door to an inferno that will overwhelm you with the stench and the smoke of the bodies.
[28:42] You think you're trying to open a door to a secret garden, to a paradise, to a hug, and to unlock the good parent within, the loving mother. But when you open that door just to crack and you see the howling horror beyond the door, it slams. And then the doorframe merges to the wall as never to be opened again. Most people they cannot stand they cannot stand to look at the horrors they've done the emptiness the programming the recoil the reaction the lack of virtue or free will or love or affection or connection or loyalty they cannot stand it, I mean we all know this post-COVID COVID is a world paroxysm of revelation on how people handled the wrongs that they've done.
[29:52] People, hundreds of millions of people around the world took medical advice from a guy who just had a presidential pardon back to 2014. How many people who did great and egregious wrong over the COVID era are even admitting fault, are taking responsibility? And all these people who do egregious, horrible, horrifying wrongs. Won't admit fault, won't even have the conversation, that door is locked, merged, gone. Because people don't want to look in the mirror and instead of seeing a decent person, they see a totalitarian, automating, clusterfuck of infinite compliance and betrayal. People lined up for pats on the head from the overlords while kicking and beating and stepping over the faces of the people who said, this is not right.
[31:14] And I think billions of people's hearts have been welded permanently shut, and swollen. There's no reckoning there's no going back there's no undoing, there's no self-confrontation there's no honesty and these are the same people, when their kid does something wrong like say their kid knocks over a lamp and then says i didn't knock over that lamp they said no no no you got to take responsibility i'm not it's not that i'll be mad i'll only be mad if you lie to me i'm not just take responsibility i know you did it. I know you did it. Just take responsibility. Just take responsibility. Don't do all of this pathetic lying and obscuring. Just take responsibility. You failed the test, not me. You took money out of my purse. Just admit it. Just admit that you did wrong. That's what they lecture their children. And then when they have cheered and bade and voted for people to lose their rights.
[32:23] Well, that door is sealed. That door is sealed. They cannot look in the mirror and see the true reflection of who they aren't. People have some degree of success seeing who they are. What they really can't see is who they aren't, which is virtuous, moral, honest. And they can't see the hypocrisy of saying to their children, You need to take responsibility for your choices and decisions. But I'm not going to talk about any of the egregious wrongs I did over the COVID era. Just lie. Just lie.
[33:11] So the anger keeps you bound to the dysfunctional people because you think you have a key, you think it's a real lock, and you think there's a treasure on the other side of the door. Now, are you ready for a goose bump? One of the most evil domains in all of human myth and literature is in Lord of the Rings.
[33:41] And I'll pair that with a contemporary of Tolkien's, C.S. Lewis, who had the entrance to Narnia in the back of a closet. So a closet has doors, the doors sometimes are locked or have a lock, but in the back, you think it's a blank wall, but it's a door. That's the fantasy that you go through and get paradise on the other side. But doors as the analogy for empathy. Are your doors open to others or are they closed? Are you narcissistic, selfish, solipsistic, blind to the emotional reality of others, huddled and hoarding your own greed at the expense of everyone else? An exploiter. The door is the analogy for infinite selfishness, self-regard. I am the only person that matters. You exist only to serve me. As is the genius of Tolkien, unconscious, though I'm sure it is. What is the name of Sauron's kingdom?
[35:06] What is the name of Sauron's kingdom?
[35:14] Is there an entranceway to paradise through a place where there's no door, like the back of the closet in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Mordor. Yeah, Mordor. And this is how they pronounce it, not Mordor, but Mordor. Mordors, there's Mordors. And if you look at doors, they feature very prominently in Lord of the Rings, right? There's the round door, the Hobbit, right? Where.
[35:51] Gandalf knocks, and that's how the entrance begins. Even though Gandalf has spells, could open the door easily. Gandalf knocks, and Bilbo and then Frodo open voluntarily. Yes, and you're right, speak friend and enter. So there's a door into Moria, which they cannot figure out how to open. Speak friend and enter. And what happens in Moria? The door is locked, the door is barred.
[36:26] The heart is closed. The heart is cold. Speak, friend, and enter. They go in. And inside is hell. Inside the mountain is hell. You follow? It's dead. There are bodies. It is the scene of a great crime. They are attacked, hunted. And a denizen of the underworld emerges and destroys the most powerful among them. Gandalf. The Balrog emerges. And they must flee a collapsing set of structures. And barely make it out alive. Speak friend and enter puts you into the heart of a narcissist where you will if you're lucky escape barely with your life and your sanity intact.
[37:32] Yes, they dug too greedily and too deep. See, the dwarves were looking for treasure in the depths.
[37:46] The dwarves were looking for treasure in the depths, and all they got was a demon.
[38:02] And the only way, at Helm's Deep, that the war was won, was that the dishonorable soldiers, the ghost soldiers that Aragorn goes to get, fulfilled their vow and righted the wrong, in their former betrayal of his ancestors, I think. And of course i talked about this with dr duke pastor that the ring in lord of the rings is sophistry, and everybody wants to use the power of sophistry or the state sophistry which serves violence is the state and the intellectuals. And, of course, Tolkien was an anarchist of the philosophical kind. Minus Tirith, sorry, that was Minus Tirith. Thank you. So, the ring must be destroyed. And.
[39:17] And the ring is greed for the unearned. Aragorn has no magic, but earns his prestige. Hope is a psyop. Have hope. Have hope. Now, the last thing I'll say here, and I'm happy to take your questions, the last thing I'll say here is that why do we have hope? Why do we stay at the door? Why do we try the keys? Why do we feel the edges? Why do we wait and hope and scratch and beg and cry and lie in a fetal position and get up and try another lock and then break one off and have to find a way to pull it out and then try another key and, why do we why do we do all of that why why do we stay thinking we have a key, that opens a real lock that leads to a real treasure.
[40:37] Somebody says, I confess, I never read Tolkien or watched the movies. Yes, when we're talking about self-absorption, let's make it about you. And the demos keep flying. So why do we stay and tinker and try and jiggle? And waste years, decades, maybe even a lifetime on the tripartite unholy belief that we have a key to a valid lock that opens to a real treasure. Why?
[41:29] The real hope is not that we get love. The real hope is that we can avoid the suffering of loss. If you have a cold-hearted parent or parents, and you keep jiggling the locks, and you keep trying the combo, and you keep angry and frustrated and hoping and begging, pleading and raging, it's because the pain of walking away, of recognizing the keys are to nothing. The lock does not exist. The door does not exist. It's only painted. and there's no treasure on the other side. That we are trying to break into hell, on the hope that heaven is on the other side of that war.
[42:31] It's because recognizing that the Kiesner illusion, the door doesn't exist, there's no treasure on the other side, is very painful. And to me, all mental dysfunction is based on the avoidance of legitimate suffering. To walk away, from the door. Well, I mean, in Lord of the Rings, why do they want to go through Moria? Because it's very dangerous to go over the mountains. Now, that's partly, of course, because you want the drama of the bull rug chase.
[43:27] We want to avoid the brutal suffering of giving up hope. But if we're addicted to hope, we have no function of free will. Because all we're doing is trying the locks, trying the keys. If I approach it from this angle, if I try saying this word, then I can get the person to cry, to open up, and then their hearts will be available to me and I will experience love, and I will be healed. But you understand that if somebody has only hell on the other side of the door, they desperately need you to keep trying the locks. They need you to believe that there's heaven in there. The only thing they have to offer you is an illusion of love. In a fiery, acidic, empty, ashen heart. They'll never let you through that door, ever. They might whisper through the keyhole of the paradise on the other side, but they'll never let you open that door, because inside there are devils and bulrogs and death.
[44:52] It will not happen, it will not happen and accepting that, is very tough it feels like dying because of course in the past if we had accepted, the coldness of our cold hearted parents if that's what we had it would have meant a kind of death Thank you.
[45:21] Faith is belief in the opposition of reason. And faith is F-A-I-T-H, feel as if there's hope. Feel as if there's hope. F-A-I-T-H, faith. And a demonic song from George Michael. Well, I guess it would be nice if I could touch a body. And I guess not everybody has a body like yours.
[45:55] His faith is the flesh, belief in the satisfaction of the flesh, belief that the satisfaction of the flesh is the happiness that can be attained to give up on virtue and focus on consumption. It does not work.
[46:21] It's a drug. It gives you an initial high followed by a catastrophic low. Virtue gives you an initial low followed by an increasing high over time. It is against hope that I have come to preach today, the door, the key, the lock, is the devil, is hell. See, you think you open the door and you see heaven, and I'm arguing it's in fact hell, but the real hell is trying the locks. Because the devil doesn't care if you're not in pain. And this is why the devil keeps infecting you with hope for the impossible. Hope for the impossible. Boy, if we get government right this time, oh, it's going to be fantastic. Hope for the impossible. Hope that violence can produce virtue. Hope that begging for truth will produce truths from pathological liars.
[47:33] Hope that your needs will summon empathy from cold-hearted people. Hope that if people see how much you suffer, they will care when in fact, in general, they lick their lips and enjoy it.
[47:55] Hope is hell. Because good people who have escaped the door, the key, the locks, the delusions, don't want to go back. And as long as you're sitting there trying locks in the hope of heaven while building up around yourself a paralysis of hell, they don't want to go there. They don't want to go back. They don't want to go back. Which means that you are alone. You're not exploiting people, which at least would give you some wretched company. You are isolated in hope for the impossible. In the mad belief that cold, cruel, vicious, sometimes, and sadistic often people can love you. If only they could. If only they could love me. which would break the law of philosophy, morality, reality, and love completely.
[49:09] It's like the kids running around flapping their arms saying, I wish I could fly. But to fly would defy gravity. to defy gravity would have the earth spin into the absolute zero coldness of interstellar space and everybody would die. If you could get your wish, the world would end. And if you could get your wish that cold-hearted people would be able to love you, the human mind, virtue, philosophy, reason reality itself would break. If you have harmed children for years and have not apologized, you cannot love. All you can do is hide from yourself, hide from others, pretend to have value, and manipulate. That's all you can do.
[50:03] Nothing more, nothing less.
[50:10] Three and a half years ago or so, my father died. I had not spoken to him. 25 years, maybe? I think I picked up the phone once or twice when he called, but had nothing to say to me. Would never address the issues that I'd brought up with him, ever. I left. Jiggling fantasy keys into non-existent locks into walls that have but hell on the other side I left that that's Plato's cave I left that and inhabit the beauty and sunlight and high, clear aired reaches of virtue and love and connection that I have and inhabit and try to bring to the world as a whole.
[51:18] People who are avoiding their own crimes and after a certain amount of crimes, you can only avoid yourself. You cannot ever be honest with yourself and certainly therefore not with others. But people who have committed enough crimes lose their free will because all they can do is be defensive and manipulative and avoidant. They cannot connect with you because connecting with themselves would be hell itself.
[51:58] And the okay one more thing to say the last thing that I'll say perhaps the last is that people do wrong to children because they believe that dangling the bait of hope will keep those children around forever and ever amen and in general they're right, if hope is removed then child abuse becomes, almost infinitely unprofitable. Why do people abuse children? Because it works and because they continue to get resources from those children for the rest of their lives with this dangling of hope. Obey me the right way and I'll love you. Do the right thing and I'll love you. Connect with me the right way and I'll love you. Get angry at me is fine because anger represents hope of change. Want me to suffer? That's fine.
[52:55] But hope and its attendant resource provision is the reason why child abuse remains emotionally and materially profitable for the abusers.
[53:06] So every time you act on hope and try to unlock the hearts of cold-hearted people, said locks, said keys, said hearts don't really exist, you are rewarding people for abusing children, as have I. Again, I say this with all humility. But hanging around trying locks is a reward to those who hurt you, and that's why the world gets worse, alright let's get to your questions thank you for, your indulgence, All right.
[54:08] Incredibly frustrating to try and find the right key. Sure. Absolutely. That makes sense, Stef. If I can identify with anger being hope, that clouds my vision at times.
[54:41] Been following your work for a while now, big brain in that cranium of yours, Steve. Just like we cannot have love without hate. Yeah, people who tell you never to get angry, never to hate, are trying to provoke an autoimmune disorder for your moral defense systems.
[55:14] So, if you realize that it is pointless to remain angry, but decide to remove that person from your life, does it technically mean that you are still angry? Well, but a lot of people will remove someone from their life in the hopes of punishing them so hard that they change, and that is not going to work. You know, like the woman who storms out and hopes that the man will chase her, and hopes that her storming out will be enough for him to change or appease or surrender or something or agree with her about something, right? So it's a tactic. It's a move. It's a move. So you run away from the door in the hopes that the person will open it and follow you. And that way the door will be opened by you leaving, not by you staying and jiggling.
[56:11] When you accept that there's nothing on the other side but ash, bodies, sand, and horror, then you walk away. Is wanting to people suffer through anger a virtuous position? Look at anger as an emotional experience as someone when I can't reason with someone. is anger the justification for inflicting the suffering? Well, in part, your anger would be wanting someone to suffer so that they can change and grow. But if people suffer because they've done wrong and refuse through vanity to admit fault, then the suffering is the punishment that they deserve. And most people who suffer don't identify the cause. In fact, they steadfastly can't identify the cause. They misidentify the cause. So my mother who suffers blames the doctors, blames the healthcare system, blames the insurance companies, blames whoever, right? But she can't identify the source of her suffering, which is her own immorality.
[57:32] The only thing more frustrating than those who can't think is dealing with those who refuse to think. Nope, says someone. The evolutionary reason for anger is to defend you, keep you safe. Rage, on the other hand, is counterproductive. Learn to listen to your anger and also to avoid rage. You always have the ability to make a choice. But without definitions, anger is to keep you safe. Rage is for when you have to fight, like physically, usually. So try to avoid situations where you have to physically fight. A chilling thought, says Chris, to spend one's life key searching. True. Somebody says, my biggest stressor is trying to know the actual perfect choice between different options, only to know that the only way to know that would be to know the future. Like which of two or three bus stops to use. That depends on which bus shows up first or shows up at all. But I don't understand, what is the perfect choice? I don't know what that means. You use principles, you use principles. You treat people the best you can when you first meet them, after that you treat them as they treat you. Now, we have no choice with that as children, we have choice with that as an adult. So I don't know what perfect choice means, but we act on principle.
[59:00] The scene on the park bench with Williams and Matt Damon is poignant. I wept while watching it. Can't recall if this is the same scene. Great movie. No, that's an earlier scene in Good Will Hunting. And the scene is where Robin Williams is telling Matt Damon about how he's seen people die. He's seen horrors. His friends have bled out in war and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And this gains his respect and so on. Right. Which of course is to say that you cannot have credibility through integrity you can only have credibility by being a paid death merchant of the state and it's really sad.
[59:45] Someone says sounds like those skill arcade games where you have to get the key and the rod through the hole to drop the prize but knowing you spend more time Oh, you spend more time trying to win than it was ever worth.
[59:58] The prize is not worth having. Unethical narcissist approval is no prize worth having. Yeah. Yeah, because the narcissist will only approve your subjugation. So the approval of the narcissist is the final click on the chains that bind you to him or her. Well, and I was, I remember when I was younger, being at a fun fair with my daughter, and there was a guy carrying around some giant banana that he'd won in one of these games. And I remember saying to her, well, that's going to sit in the basement for a couple of years, gather dust, and then get thrown out. Like he threw probably 50 bucks to get some useless banana that is going to sit around and get tossed.
[1:00:44] Somebody says, you're describing my exact conditioning from my childhood. Learning to surrender to the reality that there is, in fact, no combination of words that ultimately leads to connection with the wrong people is one of the most liberating lightbulb realizations. It's still not easy to know when exactly to stop. I just go with instinct now. Yeah. This is so much more intellectual than what I'm used to on live streams on TikTok. I would say not intellectual, but really emotional. My father rejected says someone my attempts to communicate with him in life, at least of anything regarding my needs or opinions on anything deep personal and important yeah but it wasn't a rejection of you, see when you exploit people you have to dehumanize them if they become human to you then all of your exploitation arises in your mind and takes you down most people in the world, are wrangling demons that want to take them down. This is why they're jumpy. This is why they're compliant. This is why they're defensive. This is why they have strange moods and rages. They are in a battle with the infinite demons of their violated conscience. So it's not that your father rejected you. It's that you couldn't become real to him because then his own cruelty would become real to him, which his ego could not handle.
[1:02:09] Somebody says, my parents' hearts and souls are like a crypt, where ambition, passion, and an enjoyment for living go to die. It's a symbolism I used to see in my dreams, in recurring dreams, shortly before starting therapy. Well, I'm sorry to be annoying, but your parents' hearts and souls are not like a crypt. Because people don't hang around a crypt hoping to resurrect those dusty parchment souls a thousand years dead. Right a crypt you go maybe you pay your respects and then you move on but people aren't trying to open it and bring the people back to life and it's not like a crypt at all a crypt is where we know the people are dead hope is when we think they can come back to life there's an old dnd joke, about how necromancers they're just healers with a different time frame right because, necromancers heal the dead and of course proper healers heal people before they die right, boomers wanted to lock down their grandchildren because they were scared. Well, yeah, but that was entirely predictable. Boomers have sold off their grandchildren for absolutely appalling benefits in the short run. Thank you for your tips, by the way. You can see it on the app or freedomain.com. slash donate.
[1:03:36] The amount of unrecognized child abuse over the COVID hoax tells us all a lot. Yeah, of course, because, I mean, people weren't even particularly concerned with the fact that lockdowns meant that people being abused by the children being abused by their parents had no escape, even school, like they could not escape, right? Nobody cared. Nobody care.
[1:04:11] When Aragorn enters the ghost city, he says, The way is shut. It was made by those who were dead, and the dead keep it. The way is shut. And Aragorn, of course, the ghost fighters, is the idea that those who've done wrong will suffer enough that they will fulfill their virtues. They will reverse their betrayals. Hope, says someone, is a powerless position. It's passive. Perhaps it's because they don't have the willpower to create relationships with good people, because they themselves don't have the treasure also.
[1:04:53] Hope is a powerless position, as is trying locks. It could be argued the idea of hope is actually more self-owning than having no hope, i.e. Hope exercises control over your circumstances versus victim of circumstances. That's beautiful, Jared. The door to their hearts is like eyes on butterfly wings meant to cause discernment to cease. Oh, nice. Stef is right. If you see hell is on the other side, then you immediately just get away from the person instead of just wasting your time trying to reach paradise. Yeah.
[1:05:36] Just think of the story of Pandora's box, a box with all the evils of the world, even hope. Yeah.
[1:05:49] Ah, yes, says someone. Do what I say. Don't think, don't ask questions, just obey, and don't bother me. And with what you want, in return, you won't be punished for trying to get my mother or, quote, mother to be a loving parent. 49 years. And stopped counting for it to happen. I was going to ask if they want you to join them in hell but their reasoning doesn't matter the reality is the lock doesn't exist they want you to keep wanting them and they have nothing positive to offer you so all they have you all they have to offer you is the delusion right, it's like makeup right beauty comes from within.
[1:06:35] So they're saying, well, we can make you beautiful. It's like, nope. No, they can't. I've been following some people who are trying to change church for the better, but they are picking at locks too. The church just excommunicates them, and even then they still pick from the outside. Well, of course, we saw this under COVID, right? Which was the doctors who tried raising questions or objections, or, you know, me or whatever, just completely, right? Despawned, unspawned. That was elucidating. I'll be pondering that for a while. Thanks, Stef. Well, so this is what you need to do in your relationships. I strongly recommend this, which is to say, without hope, what have I got?
[1:07:30] Without hope, what do I have? If I take away hope from this relationship, what do I have? That's a scorcher of a question. It's like a firestorm. It looks like destruction, but it keeps the forest healthy in the long run. Without hope, what do I have? If you've got a bad girlfriend or a bad boyfriend, and you just hope they're going to get better, hope they'll listen, hope they'll do what you want, hope they'll do the right thing, without hope... Without hope, what do you have?
[1:08:14] I mean, it's the same with politics. Without hope, what do you have?
[1:08:22] Somebody says, Stef, why do they call you cold when you stop trying keys? I assume it's simply manipulation to have you keep trying and hoping. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Great line. An narcissist's approval is a prize not worth having. Oh, it's worse than not worth having. A narcissist's approval is a stamp of submission. If Stalin likes you, you are in his mental gulag already. Somebody says, my father while alive did get very angry with me when talking about mom. I said like mother like daughter. I knew her parents growing up. Dad's parents died when I was minus one and plus one respectively. Grandma and grandpa were not a warm couple-slash-household. Only found out later, grandpa was unfaithful. I can see now that maybe he married mom, 33. Sorry, I don't quite follow all of that.
[1:09:20] Can you provide an example of justified anger in one that leads to virtuous suffering to the other? I'm very curious on this topic because I get pushed back on the anger issue from my Christian colleagues. Well, I mean, if somebody does something that's cold or unfeeling or selfish, which, you know, happens, I think, to all of us, you try reasoning with them. And if they don't listen, you get angry. And if your anger startles them into self-reflection, like if your anger is rare, and then you get angry, right? Somebody who's angry is rare, when they get angry, it means a lot. Somebody who's yelling all the time, boy, who cries wolf? Like, there's nothing there.
[1:10:07] So if you are scarce and scant with your anger, then when you do get angry, people will listen because you're serious about something and it matters. And you care about enough with them to get angry at their bad behavior, which is to say you want to free them from a delusion, and anger is the strength you need to pull the devil of self-delusion off their neck, right?
[1:10:34] Do you think it's a good idea to ban swearing in front of children, or is that too strict? Yes, I think certainly children should not be exposed to swearing until they get much older. There are no creams or potions to hide an ugly, cracked, fallen, rotting soul. I'm sorry to be annoying again, but let me just look at Megan Fox. That really is the heart of my question. Can one human person... A, cause virtue of suffering onto another human person, B. Is suffering just a natural consequence, not an active pursuit by person A? Well, sure, yeah. I mean, I don't wake up in the morning hoping I'm going to get along with my wife or hoping I'm going to have a good relationship with my daughter. I don't have hope for those things. They are. And I make sure that I mean, I don't wake up in the morning hoping that I have some muscles I work out.
[1:11:46] But if my wife were ever to get angry with me about something, I would take it enormously seriously. In the same way that once every year or two, I'll get angry about something with friends or family, and it really sticks and it really matters. And usually I'm right, not always, but usually I'm right. Why, if Stalin likes you, are you already in the mental gulag? Because those people only like those who submit. Yeah, yeah. Because it means you care about Stalin's approval. Now, you may care about Stalin's approval because you don't want to die. Or you could be killed by him or thrown in a gulag, which would be often genetic death.
[1:12:35] All right. Let's see here. I think we're going to go to... Yeah, I think we're going to go do a little bit of time, donor only. And I can take more questions there. So if you want to join that, fdrurl.com slash locals, fdrurl.com slash locals, you can join there. And let's see here, how do we do this? I'm so sorry, I should, of course, have remembered this. There we go. So it's going to go to locals, supporters only, and I'll take your sort of even spicier questions. So we'll go there.
[1:13:24] So the stream will be for Locust supporters only in 25 seconds. Somebody says, the point was, Dad got angry at my saying the phrase, like mother, like daughter. I'm not even sure what my exact point was. But yes, that truth was deeper than I knew as a kid. They died around 2005. Okay. Yes, I'm afraid so. But come on, it's a couple of bucks a month. You can join. And, you know, it does help philosophy. And that seems like a pretty, pretty good thing. So I'll see you on the other side. Thanks. All right so we're over here let's go in here, all righty.
[1:14:14] Will free demand provide loan payments for the people in rumble to sign up for dogles yeah this idea of going into multi-week payments for doordash is it's pretty wild man It's pretty wild. All right, so this is donor only. And I am, I was hoping he could have just stayed here, says someone from Rumble. That's kind of funny, right? Like I talk about hope is something that paralyzes you. And rather than go and sign up for a couple of bucks a month, he just hopes that I'll stay there. Isn't that funny, right? You get the demo. You get the demo right away. Thank you.
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