0:09 - Introduction to the Show
5:53 - The Role of Reason in Relationships
10:13 - Understanding Family Dynamics
12:15 - Recommendations for Toxic Relationships
12:41 - The Impact of Modern Beliefs
15:44 - The Drama of Current Events
19:20 - The Nature of Human Drama
21:41 - The Complexity of Gender Dynamics
27:05 - The State of Healthcare in America
31:37 - The Problems with Insurance
34:42 - The Consequences of Obamacare
37:14 - The Psychology of Happiness
42:27 - The Relationship Between Health and Mind
47:11 - Addressing Chronic Illness
51:11 - The Challenges of Healthcare
57:39 - The Reality of Scams
1:01:23 - Bitcoin and Economic Insights
1:05:15 - The Cost of Healthcare
1:11:44 - The Secret to Happiness
1:16:37 - The Importance of Gratitude
1:24:12 - The Freedom to Change Your Life
1:31:44 - The Legacy of Ideas
1:35:32 - Closing Thoughts and Gratitude
In this episode of Friday Night Live, I dive into the complexities of human relationships and the philosophical foundations that govern our interactions. We engage deeply with the idea that shared values are essential for meaningful connections, especially within familial contexts. When a listener presents the dilemma of having parents in a failing marriage despite a shared religious background, it prompts a reflection on mysticism versus reason. I propose that true connection can only occur when individuals abide by universal principles rather than subjective interpretations of doctrine. The isolation stemming from mysticism, where one retreats into personal, unfounded beliefs, undermines genuine human interaction.
As we explore the dynamics of relationships further, we address the concept of sibling rivalry and the insidious role that abusive parenting plays in pitting children against each other. I emphasize that these negative familial dynamics serve as microcosms of broader societal manipulations, particularly through identity politics. This discussion seamlessly transitions into a critique of prevalent societal narratives, such as victimhood and entitlement woven into contemporary political discourse.
Taking a more personal turn, I field questions concerning the impact of one’s upbringing on adult identity and relationships. When a listener expresses frustration over past unresolved issues, we discuss the crucial yet often overlooked significance of understanding one’s history—not to dwell bitterly on the past, but to learn and grow beyond it. I share perspectives on how the perception of suffering can lead to self-indulgence, and how individuals can navigate their paths toward healing.
We then pivot to address the controversial discussion surrounding modern health care dynamics. By examining the systemic complexities of insurance, especially concerning pre-existing conditions, I analyze how certain policies inadvertently create chaos and inequity. I proficiently highlight how the American healthcare system, while often criticized, represents a significant achievement in terms of global medical advancements. Yet, I do not shy away from the harsh realities of its failures that lead to real human suffering, articulating a solution grounded in personal responsibility and rational discourse.
The episode evolves into a broader philosophical exploration of happiness, emphasizing that our emotional states are profoundly influenced by what we choose to compare them against. By sharing personal anecdotes and reflections on gratitude, I invite listeners to reevaluate their perspectives on adversity, wealth, and health. I argue that true contentment lies not in external circumstances but in the inner frame of reference we adopt. This key to happiness empowers us to rise above our challenges and appreciate the paradox of human existence.
Towards the end, I reflect on the transformative potential of community within my long-term endeavor of promoting rational discourse and philosophy. I express sincere gratitude for the support I've received, calling on others to find joy in mindful engagement with life’s complexities rather than succumbing to the noise of trivial drama that often plagues our society. This episode embodies a rich tapestry of thoughts, deepening our understanding of ourselves and the world around us while urging an expansive, rational approach to life’s myriad challenges.
Join me as we embark on this enlightening journey towards reason, reality, and the pursuit of genuine connection.
[0:00] Good evening, good evening. Welcome to your Friday Night Live 7 and Change on, oh God, what are we? Oh my God, it's Friday the 13th.
[0:09] Good thing we ain't never superstitious right inside the wall. All right. Looking marvelous? Why, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. All right. So let's get to your questions, issues, challenges, and problems. I have stuff to talk about, but I am thrilled to hear what's going on with you in ways that can scarcely be comprehended. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. And let's get this right. Somebody writes, both of my parents are members of the same Christian church, but they still have a shite marriage. If being members of the same church is not a shared value, then what is?
[0:53] Well, we can only meet in reason and reality, right? reason being a subset of reality. We can only meet, you know, the isolation of the mystics can scarcely be comprehended, which is why when I see people be violent, the first thing that I do is look for mysticism. It's not the only thing, and, you know, modern leftism is another form of mysticism, but mysticism is isolation. Our minds can only overlap, right, in universal shared principles. Like you can only play a tennis game if you're both in reality, right? If one of you is having some sort of psychotic fantasy and thinks that he's using a laser sword to beat back flaming pterodactyls, when then you're not going to have a very productive game of tennis. You can only play tennis in reality, wherein you share the physics, the gravity, the wind resistance, you know, that special curve that you can put on the ball that's really satisfying. So you can only play a game if you're both in the same reality. And the game called human contact, human connection, human intimacy, human visibility, that only exists in the realm of reality and reason. There is no capacity for humans to connect outside of reason and reality.
[2:19] Which is, I mean, I remember back when I was writing a book on relationships. People are like, well, what's philosophical about that? It's like, well, philosophy is the only way you can have relationships. You can't have relationships without philosophy. All you can have is dominance and subjugation, escalation, bullying, which is why wherever you see violence, therein do you see people mashing their heel boots into the prostrate, body of reason. Reason is murdered and people argue over the remnants. All human violence is based upon a refusal to reason. Because if you reason, then you let reality and rationality win the day. Like science, it's not supposed to be personal. It is supposed to be according to an objective methodology. So, if you have parents who are mystics Now, not all Christians are mystics Certainly not all mystics are Christian But there's a pretty big overlap between religion and mysticism Mysticism tends to be when you raise your own subjective interpretations above canonical text.
[3:38] Right so if you were to say something like well thou shalt not murder really refers to not upsetting people too much well that's mysticism right thou shalt not murder is one of the least ambiguous statements in the bible so if there's a lot of mysticism which is which is to do with the radical subjective or subjectivist reinterpretation of canonical doctrine then And your parents cannot contact each other. When we retreat within our minds and we make things up out of whole cloth and we follow the whims of our own internal processes rather than subject ourselves to the rational discipline of reason and evidence, the price you pay for self-indulgence mentally is isolation.
[4:27] Isolation. You know, I knew a woman many years ago who was a subjectivist. And at one point, she muttered, so lonely, so alone. Solipsism, which is to retreat within your own mind and having only yourself as the standard of truth. You know, my truth. You see, this is the thing, White privilege, privilege is like the N word for white people, but my truth, my truth, my truth means isolation because we can only connect in that which we share reality and reason. Trying to connect with people through mysticism is like trying to have a baby.
[5:22] Through sexual dreams or trying to create a friend group out of the people you meet in your dreams, mysticism is insanely isolating and i'm old enough now to have seen what happens over the course of people's lives who devolve into and fall into mysticism. And it is just horrible and brutal what happens to people who pursue mysticism.
[5:53] We meet in reason or not at all. We join together in reality or not at all. Can you imagine trying to build a rocket with someone who makes up his own physics it would just be immensely and incredibly frustrating right.
[6:18] Stef, do you have a favorite horror movie? Well, I suppose my therapist way back in the day pointed out the psychological value of the movie A Sixth Sense. And I always thought that was a very good movie. Nothing he's ever done ever since has really been any good. M. Night Shyamalan. But I thought The Sixth Sense was a very, very good movie. What would you say to someone who says that talking about your childhood is being negative and you can't change the past. Yeah, you know, it's a funny thing about how people think that talking about the past is founded upon the delusion that you can change the past. I personally discuss nothing with anyone who points out the blindingly obvious. I won't do it. The moment I hear something, well, you know, there's an exception to every general rule. Well, you can't change the past. well it's just important to move on and well you just have to forgive like the moment somebody says something that is just an absolute, bromide up the ass bottomless intergalactic cliche I'm just like peace out well it's important you see for a social system to provide the greatest happiness to the greatest number the greatest good is really important to pursue, democracy represents the will of the people who knows what the will of the people are they're all programmed by government schools.
[7:46] It's like saying AI represents the will of the chips. Nope, it's just programmed. So if somebody says you can't change the past, I'm out. I'm out. I wouldn't in a million years have an extended conversation with someone who said anything like that. It is, I view it, and this could be me being triggered. I'm totally open to that. But I view with deep, almost inchoate rage, people who point out, you can't change the past, you know. Really uh are you saying that there's no such thing as time travel and you you can't change the past wow that never occurred to me well you know if the government doesn't provide these services well there's just no way to provide these services so if you don't want the government to provide these services you don't want these services to be provided you have a very large brain it is so big i must flee it as it falls and spills open the brain worms of propaganda and thus to go into my belly button like a reverse matrix metal spider and infect me back. So I just wouldn't... Oh, you're being negative.
[8:59] Do I want to be honest? Do I want to be honest? So no, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Thanks for the show with the borderline listener from Germany, the way she defines her younger brother. I'm curious if I have a similar response to my elder sister. And in regards to my own self-loathing, I couldn't get my stepsister's attention, no matter what grace I have put forward and used to try to defend her from abusive boyfriends. Now she has three kids in another state and wouldn't even respond to my Facebook message like six years ago. A lot of siblings suck interdimensional Easter balls of tragedy.
[9:57] It is the job of abusive parents to turn the children against each other. In the same way, it's a job of abusive overlords to turn the population against each other through identity politics, right?
[10:13] You know, of course, I'm sure you know, that the Wall Street movement was having some success in pointing out fascism slash crony capitalism, and then the powers that be intentionally injected into the mix of outraged leftists and rightists intentionally injected into the mixed identity politics in order to kill the revolution. And it worked.
[10:34] So, people who are bad siblings have simply succumbed to the propaganda from the abusive parents to turn against each other. They've been lured, like, so the way it works is the abusive parents hammer down, usually on the elder sibling, hammer down on the elder sibling, and then basically the message, whether conscious or unconscious, is, okay, I'm going to hammer down on you like a ton of bricks, But you know what? There's that little kid over there, a little helpless kid. You see, he's looking up at you with shining eyes and he just wants to be your biggest and best buddy. And he just really cares. And he just really wants to be your friend. And he looks up to you and he wants your friends to be his friends and he's desperate for your approval. So we're going to grind the living shit out of you. We're going to grind you down. We're going to disassemble you and give you an ashen heap of sorrow, regret, and anger. And then the only way you can reassemble yourself is to pass on the curse. See, you, the elder sibling, see how you want to love your parents, you care about your parents, you want your parents to give you positive feedback and approval and laugh when you come into the room and jump up and be eager to spend time with you. So you know what you want from us as the parents? Hey man, spoiler, that's the same thing your little brother slash sister wants from you.
[11:54] So we'll screw you up by rejecting what you most want and then the only way you can feel at all better is to do the same thing to your younger sibling that we're doing to you. Lure you in, right? Lure you in. Get you to reproduce the behavior. That'll do it.
[12:10] Any book recommendations for people but neglectful slash toxic elder siblings?
[12:15] Yeah, my novel called Almost.
[12:22] Stef, since you brought up violence, I'm curious if you plan to expand your Truth About Sadism series. I've recently begun my journey of looking into the mirror and my own sadism. Props to you, by the way. I had no idea how difficult this would be. Oh, well, good for you. Good for you. When you remove God, most don't leave a void.
[12:41] They replace it with something uglier like feminism, climate change, identity politics, witchcraft, catastrophic scarcity mindset, or less uglier beliefs like astrology, transcendental meditation, or crystals, crystals, or crystal necht. So let me ask you this, let me ask you this. How many people, how many people over the course of your life have you known who are deeply, deeply into drama? These people, you know, you know they're deeply deeply into drama they just love their dramas and there are no little dramas there are only big dramas how many people have you known.
[13:35] How many people have you known who are really really into drama, everyone three to five every woman right yeah it is uh it is quite tragic I don't know if I'm getting comments from, no it's not a bad request this should be running yes it is yes it is here it is.
[14:08] Alright, somebody says recently stumbled on a podcast you did around 2005 about finding a good woman and you talked about a woman who used to nag and tell you you had to improve in different ways. It made me realize I had to end my relationship because my ex was that way too. But now I'm 35 and worried about how to find a good woman. I've now been single for six days. Thank you. Regardless, Stef, you've been the most inspiring person of my life. Listen, I really appreciate that. That is very kind. And I love you for saying that. And I'm very happy to have done that. And you win today an invitation to freedomain.com slash call. Call me. Yes. Give me a shout. Give me a shout. We'll do a call and show about it. because you're not alone in that and uh nagging will make you want to, die or something right so, let's see here i can count on my hand but that's still too many people so many several it's always the ones who say they aren't into drama that are really into drama right right.
[15:16] It was an incredible experience visiting Jared and his friends. First time drama wasn't present at all. I wish them the best. Right. So why do you think people are so into drama? Why do you think people are so into drama? What do you think it does for them? What do you think it does for them? Because it's everywhere. Trump is literally Hitler, right?
[15:44] Climate change is going to kill us all Y2K back in the day everything but the real stuff because it's funny how people, they are really into oh my god what's the temperature going to be in a hundred years, as opposed to well NATO is firing missiles into Russia now that would seem to me might affect the temperature in a hundred years because it turns the whole world into a volcano.
[16:25] But, I mean, people, I was listening to some older guy the other day. I decided not to intervene, but I was listening to some older guy. Oh, my God. An intelligent guy, a well-educated guy. And he was saying, well, you know, So there are these islands in the Pacific that are literally half underwater. And those indigenous people, they didn't have anything to do with the Industrial Revolution. They don't, you know, they don't do it. They don't even have machines, but they're literally like going underwater. Automatic, non-thinking regurgitation of bottomless propaganda. Again, an educated guy with multiple degrees.
[17:17] But apparently, you see, the way that water works is you have flat water, and then it can just rise around certain islands like this big, giant pimple, like this big, giant reverse moat of raised water, like these water walls could just form and then swamp islands. In other words, the water is this level, zero feet sea level, and then around just particular islands, the sea level can just rise. Don't you know? And it was one of these, you know, I normally will intervene in these kinds of things and say, wait, wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that the sea level is just rising around these islands? Anywhere else? Do you understand how water works? hey, next time you're in the bath, why don't you try this? Try creating a little mountain out of the water. Get a rubber ducky, put the rubber ducky in your bath, and then try and raise the water into little walls around it. Try having the, or put something in the water, right? A traffic cone, say, right? Get a traffic cone, take it to your bath, put it in, and then try and have the water level higher on the traffic cone than it is around the rim of the bathtub. How would that go like it honestly i don't know why people don't just i mean this isn't complicated.
[18:40] I could say to my daughter at the age of five, can you make a little, like, mountain? Like, you know how you make a mountain out of sand? See if you can make a mountain out of water. You know how you make a sandcastle at the beach? Try making a sandcastle with the water. And she would laugh at me, like, water doesn't work like that. But this guy, an elderly guy, very well educated, very intelligent, literally believes that water can just just go up around the islands and the rest of it's totally flat i'm sorry it'll be the laugh but it's like how do people uh how do people do that.
[19:20] How do people do that just no skepticism whatsoever all right so, what do people say here, um i've always noticed really trashy people are into drama almost like they have nothing better to do it distracts them the fight-or-flight chemicals are literally addicting cluster b personality disorders hides their lack of self drama allows murkiness so people don't see where they are in the hierarchy gives them purpose i agree schopenhauer says we'll give up anything except our suffering that's a deepity because they need to fill a hole out of their boredom They need to transform their glib, paper-like decadence into a virtuous hubris they can pay themselves, pat themselves on the back with, yeah? My friend represented Palau in the Model UN. They were supposed to be underwater by 2019. Yes, but only Palau. Only Palau. Oh, that's great. Oh, my gosh.
[20:20] Caring about the earth is generic enough to be safe, I think, is part of it. Yeah, tenure must be pretty sweet, yeah? Alex Epstein calls being worried about humans changing the environment, the delicate nurturer hypothesis. My speculation is that environmentalists are using the defense mechanism of transference to put their unresolved feelings about an emotionally reactive slash histrionic parent into the environment. Spilling a cup of water as a kid equals putting CO2 in the air. Oh, that's very interesting. That's so interesting.
[20:54] Yeah, so it reminds me of Obama. Everyone thought he was so charismatic. Well, Obama, of course, was airdropped in to make sure that America never became a post-racial society. I mean, for the younger folks among us, you don't really know or have never really experienced how close we were to looking beyond race in societies as a whole. And then Obama was put in to make sure that never happened. Well, we need to have an honest conversation about race. Oh, but not with science. Not with science. The science that leads only one island chain to be underwater in the Pacific. That's the good science. IQ, that's the bad science.
[21:41] Why do you think, what do you think about all the women fawning over Luigi Mangione, but not Daniel Penny? They seem to be cheering on evil as usual. Yeah. Well, let me tell you, man, chicks and doctors, chicks and doctors is almost a hole with no bottom. Women have this relationship with, historical women or hypochondriacs, so and so on, have this relationship with doctors that is so intense. It can only really be something to do with father substitute or something like that. There is something about that. that is just very sort of deep and powerful, And, uh, I mean, you can get short-term compliance by using force, but in the long-term force destroys everything, right? Like you can go and steal from a store and that's easier than having to earn a living. But if you steal from the stores too much, there's no more stores and everyone starves, right? Why do I got to live in a food desert? Because shoplifting, right?
[22:59] And listen, women are drawn to warriors. Women are drawn to violence. A lot of women are, right? I mean, and we can understand the evolutionary reasons for that. I'm not blaming women for that. But yeah, a lot of women are drawn to violence, right? I mean, you think of all the way back to Heathcliff or Odysseus or, of course, the Fifty Shades of Grey stuff. Women are really drawn to violent guys, a lot of women, right? And again we can all understand the evolutionary reasons for that but I'm pretty sure Luigi wasn't a doctor right I know he wasn't a doctor, right but he was railing against a lack of health care, no he was trying to make sure I mean the reason they're cheering him on is they want people to give them free health care, they want people to give them free healthcare right.
[24:03] Which is why they've been putting up all these wanted posters of other, excuse me executives in the healthcare industry they've been putting up these wanted posters right because they want people to give them free healthcare right, And if a guy is willing to shoot healthcare executives or a healthcare executive, then they're more likely to get free healthcare, right? Healthcare is really, really brutal. I mean, just in general, healthcare is really brutal. Oh, I mean, go look at, you know, crime junkies. Go look at Women in Crime, a podcast with these two criminologists. Go look at women's absolute addiction to true crime shit they love that stuff as a whole they love the true crime stuff, and i mean obviously it's it's very um it's very disturbed to love an actual murderer and there's not many women who do that but yeah true crime stuff women cannot get enough of it women often get a real deep visceral thrill out of being, at risk. At risk.
[25:28] And so the fantasy for men is a woman who's super hot but doesn't know it. Right? And the woman's fantasy is a guy who's got the capacity for extreme violence but is truly tenderhearted and kind at home. Sorry, these two things do not come together. No, healthcare is brutal, man. It's a brutal thing. Because, you know, I posted this on Locals, freedomend.locals.com. I would have a lot more sympathy about Americans' complaints about the price of healthcare, the cost of healthcare, if they weren't so fat and unhealthy. I have four burgers today and have moved off the couch. I'm now going to post it how unbelievably horrible it is that health care is so expensive. Not a shock. Now, of course, America does spend a lot on health care, but America is also a very wealthy country. I mean, in Ontario, Canada, did you know that people in Ontario, Canada, which is the richest province in Canada are poorer than the people in the poorest state in America, like Mississippi or whatever it is, right? So Americans do spend more on healthcare, but that's in part because.
[26:49] Americans are fat, and Americans are relatively wealthy. If you've not traveled, like Europe is terrible for wealth. I mean, you've probably seen this graphic of like the number of European corporations of a billion dollars or more that are relatively recent, and it's tiny compared to America.
[27:06] America is not only the R&D engine of the world with regards to healthcare, but America is the economic engine of the world. But healthcare is tough. Healthcare is tough because, you know, how many people, like, what is insurance for? I mean, sorry, I'll just keep this real basic and real quick, right? So what is insurance for? Insurance is for catastrophic things, right? You don't buy insurance for, oh, I stubbed my toe, or you don't buy insurance for, I need a health checkup. You buy insurance for the weird shit that's hard to predict, that just kind of comes out of nowhere and is ferociously expensive, right? Like, so, what if 13 years ago or whatever i got cancer and no particular history no particular lifestyle issues just got some bad luck just had some bad luck and it could be of course because my father let me quaff weed killer when i was a kid so that might have caught up with me right so.
[28:02] That you need insurance for that shit right because that stuff could just kind of come out of nowhere, but it's rare. So that's what you would have it for. Like car insurance is for when things go really bad in a car crash. Car insurance is not for I need an oil change, right? All the predictable stuff. If it's predictable, it's not the purview or purvey of insurance. Insurance is for the unpredictable, right? And insurance has to be when it hasn't happened yet. You can't call and say, oh, hey, my house is on fire. I really need some fire insurance for my house. It's not supposed to happen that way.
[28:38] So healthcare should be, mostly paid for private for the repetitive stuff you should get paid well for prevention right so if you go for an annual checkup if you get your blood work done and so on then you should be, uh you should be rewarded for that you would be rewarded for that if you maintained a healthy weight if you didn't smoke and you know the smoking stuff they'll i know for i remember i would got got tested for nicotine presence when i was getting insurance as part of selling my software company because i was so important to the software company that they wanted to make sure i wasn't going to drop dead from emphysema or something.
[29:18] So that's how insurance is supposed to work. Now, of course, as you know, the sort of very brief history is that, why is it that employers are paying for your healthcare? Well, employees pay for your healthcare because in the Second World War, the sort of fascistic FDR regime said to people, said to companies, you can't pay people more. You can't increase their salary. And so companies, instead of increasing people's salaries, they offered to pay their healthcare insurance instead, which was a big single item issue for a lot of people. And so this is why companies got into paying people's healthcare costs. And this, of course, was a problem because when you switch to jobs, you lost the benefit, right? So you know how insurance is supposed to work. I first got life insurance in my early 20s and i did not uh i haven't needed to pay for life insurance in forever and ever amen because it was all invested and paid for years ago so you're supposed to get life insurance when you're young you put a little bit of money in because your odds of dying young are very low and then by the time you get into your 40s and 50s it should basically be be free right so that's how and and you're supposed to have relatively low insurance when you're young and healthy as long as you stay healthy, right? You get the right blood work, you get the right lung capacity, you get the right regular heartbeat, you get the right BMI and all of that. So it's supposed to be relatively cheap. Now.
[30:47] And you're supposed to have price signals in that your insurance is going to go up if you get into dangerous territory, right?
[30:55] So what happened was because employers were paying people's health insurance and switching jobs meant you got reassessed at an older person, as an older person for more health insurance, right? You should have one relationship with a health insurer your whole life as best you can because you pay little when you're young and then you accumulate value. So it's not as expensive when you get older. So it gave employers a huge amount of power and control over their employees, right? Because if you got fired, then you lost your health insurance or you'd have to go to some new place and then they'd have to reassess you from the ground up and then you'd end up, they don't want to hire you if you've got health issues and so on.
[31:37] So it's just, you know, one government control leads to another government control leads to another government control. So then, of course, what happened was people would lose their health insurance, even when they had chronic issues, and then they would get to a new job, they'd apply for new health insurance, and the new insurer would say, well, no, you've got a chronic health issue, we don't want to insure you, because that's like calling up for fire insurance on your home when your home is currently burning down. It doesn't work that way at all, right? So because people could be denied for pre-existing conditions, one of the impetus is behind And Obamacare, which passed because there's a Somali vote in Al Franken's district. So...
[32:19] One of the reasons for Obamacare was to say to insurance companies, you can't deny people for pre-existing conditions, which a retarded squirrel could realize how that was going to play out. Well, you can't deny people for pre-existing conditions. So what's going to happen? Well, people are going to wait till they get sick and then they're going to apply for health insurance. Right? So then people waited till they got sick and then they applied for health insurance. insurance and so the rates went through the roof. Now, in order for insurance to work.
[32:53] Some not small number of non-sick people have to be paying into the system, right? In order for fire insurance to work, people whose houses aren't currently burning down have to be in the system. So when you said to people, you said to insurance companies, you can't deny people for pre-existing conditions, which comes out of the control that the employers have over the health insurance.
[33:21] Then people wait until they get sick and then they apply for health insurance, which means that the premiums go through the roof. Now, once the premiums go through the roof, young people who are required to fund the healthcare systems for older people with regards to insurance, young people pay more than they take out and they do that so that they value accumulates. They end up having it for free later, or at least heavily cheap. So if you can't get young and healthy people into the system because the premiums have gone so high because only people who are sick are applying for health insurance and young people drop out of the system, and then the whole system doesn't work. So then you have to have Obamacare in to force everyone to buy health insurance because people don't want it. But the moment that people are forced to buy health insurance, everybody with an obscure illness wants to tack on their own shibboleth and bugaboo into the healthcare system. So people who have, I don't know, people who need IVF treatments want it covered by insurance, even though young single people, males, single males, older people beyond childbearing years, they don't want any IVF. People who already have their kids, people who are fertile, they don't want IVF. But everyone wants to put their own little thing.
[34:25] On health insurance because they want everyone else to be forced to subsidize, what they want out of the health care system. And so you end up with more and more stuff being tacked on. And that means that, you know, what do you need? End of life hospice care gets tacked onto health insurance, which young people don't want, need, or care about.
[34:43] So, I mean, the whole point of Obamacare was to crash the system and then say, hey, look, we need socialism.
[34:54] AOC said a denial of an insurance claim is like an act of violence. Right. Right. Sure, it feels that way. It feels that way. Now, of course, if AOC feels that a denial of a healthcare a claim as an act of violence, then I guess, like women as a whole, she has two, count them, two choices. Number one, what you can do, AOC, is you can start an insurance company that never denies a claim. And that way, you won't be committing any acts of violence. Just start an insurance company, which never denies a claim, and you are set. Well, actually, that's quite a lot of work, though, isn't it? Yeah, sorry, that is quite a lot of work. That's no good. Oh, wait, hang on. You know what else you can do is bitch about it. Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's it. I could start my own insurance company and never deny a claim, or I can complain about it.
[36:16] Yeah. I guess she just ended up complaining about it. Like, it's all the people who were like, women are only paid 77 cents on the dollar. It's like, well, men work more. They work more difficult jobs. They work more challenging jobs. They work harder. They work in a more concentrated fashion. They're willing to give up their weekends. They work in more highly renumerative jobs, and they work with things rather than people, which is easier to replicate value. So what you could do if you think women are underpaid is just start an all-female engineering company. And given that women are paid 77 cents on the dollar, you could probably charge 10% less than everyone else while producing the same amount of value you'd take over the entire industry. So you could start a company that hires women. Or, or, go with me here, you could just bitch, moan, and complain about it everybody who bitches moans and complains about it knows that what they're saying is uh bullshit so.
[37:14] So, drama. So, we are built for drama. We are built for excitement. We are built for challenge. We are built for war. We are built for combat. We're built for, right, fighting. Now, we want to fight the good fight verbally, peacefully, reasonably, and so on. But we're built for combat. And either you do genuine good in the world or you pursue drama. Either way, you're going to get drama. Hey, I think it could be safe to say that I've had just a little smidge of drama in my own life when it comes to promoting virtue in the world, just a little smidge of drama in my own life. And I don't need drama in my life because I have the drama of pursuing virtue and opposing evil, right? I have that in life, right? I have that in life. So because I'm actually doing good in the world, that's my drama. That's my excitement. That's my drama. because I'm doing good in the world. But people who aren't doing good in the world still need the same level of drama. They just make up useless shit for that. They just make up useless shit for that. All right. Thank you for your tips, fredemain.com slash donate. Plus, you can tip on the Appy apps right here. Right here for the apps.
[38:43] So, you understand that for a lot of women, for Luigi Mancione, or whatever his name is, the fact that he goes out and ices a healthcare executive, what that means is that other healthcare executives are going to be leery about denying claims. So, women get healthcare because someone killed someone. That's how it works. So people can be like oh let's review our denial of claims process because bro just got gunned down with three bullets named after a don't deny claims health care book so women are now going to get additional health care because luigi gunned the guy down so for them it's like well if the hunter's gotta ice a deer for us to get food great and if uh bro's gotta ice an executive for us to get healthcare, well, life is more important than death, and he's our hero. He's our hero, right? That's how it works. Get shit for free, based on violence, right?
[39:52] Yeah, like at some point, at some point, people are going to figure out, it's going to be pretty rough, man, but at some point, at some point, people are going to figure out that you can't steal bitcoin and then the world is collectively going to lose its shit as soon as bitcoin starts to take its place at the center of our economic understanding people are going to be like i can't steal this shit all right yeah it's tough too because uh let me ask you this let me ask you this, Let me ask you this. Wait, I got distracted by Greg questions. I was disgusted when everyone was celebrating his death, but I guess I see that many other deaths happened at his direct hands as well.
[40:54] Hmm. It's like home insurance in the Caribbean. If chances of your home getting destroyed are high, each year your premiums will be sky high, for sure. Yeah. Thanks for the reminder. Donation sent on website. it. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. I saw a post where they compared the images of the CCTV to the mugshot. I think it showed the eyebrows were different. Well, I mean, I don't know, right? But don't forget that there's a lot of pixelization, a lot of pixelation that occurs with stuff. I don't know if you've ever done video coding, but you have to make educated guesses at pixelating things because otherwise you can't, I mean, you can't store massive amounts of detail because it's too much storage space so you have to compress the image which pixelizes of course you know that every time there's something like this going on there's a whole bunch of internet sleuths go out there and find inconsistencies and he's connected to nancy pelosi and what about this history i heard that he had a bad back surgery then i heard he had a good back surgery so um um so uh let me ask you this i remember now let me ask you this have you ever and tell me the number, it could be zero, maybe it's zero, probably zero. What is the number of.
[42:08] Hypochondriacs that you have known? In other words, people who have issues with health that nobody can figure out what the cause is. And could it be psychosomatic?
[42:27] Have you ever known someone who's got, a huge number of health issues fibromyalgia epstein-barr chronic fatigue syndrome, and again i'm not saying none of these things are real i'm just saying that There are things which seem to be names for a bunch of symptoms rather than actual, here's the cause of these things.
[43:04] Zero, honestly, one, my uncle's fiance is terrified of everything and will work herself up into a whole spiral of panic. My brother had fibromyalgia. Somebody says one. Yeah, it's tough, man. One, now that I'm thinking about it. Right, right. So.
[43:30] Healthcare is tough because of somatization. So somatization is when emotional problems manifest as physical symptoms. And.
[43:43] Something like migraines, maybe it has a biological cause, maybe it's to do with stress, and maybe it's to do with an old fight-or-flight mechanism that escalates to the point of having to lie in a dark room for hours with a cold compress on your head until you throw up and feel better, right? Chronic stress, cortisol and so on, wears away the immune system as far as I understand it. Obviously, I'm no doctor. This is just my foolish pseudo understanding of all of these things. Talk to your doctor if you have any medical questions. But chronic stress is pretty bad for your health. So how is a doctor supposed to help you with chronic stress? Right? Well, that may be more of a job for a life coach or a psychologist, probably not a psychiatrist in my humble opinion, but how is the doctor supposed to help you with chronic stress or anxiety, right? People can, I'm not saying they make themselves sick, but maybe they've got like enough past trauma that their amygdala fight and flight is always running. They constantly stressed, worried, panicked, and so on. and then they make a lot of mistakes because they're freaked out and panicked and then they lose their job and then they've got a lot of debt. So if people are in this kind of spiral of ill health leading to stress, leading to ill health, leading to stress, leading to ill health, how are you going to solve it?
[45:07] How are you going to solve it? There are people who bully and control others through endless physical complaints and ailments. I mean, they're called hysterical, a bit of an insult to women from the 19th century about hysteria to do with the womb. But, I mean, this is, whether you believe it or not, but this is the kind of stuff that Freud was talking about, where women had hysterical blindness, hysterical numbness, lots of different kinds of things going on. And that which is not caused by the body, but rather in the mind, generally has to be healed in the mind rather than the body, right?
[45:57] A woman says, oh God, that reminds me. My husband's parents used to lock him in the bathroom and turn the lights off when he was crying until he would stop. He now struggles to cry. Right. You know, does somebody have social anxiety disorder or are they just surrounded by assholes and tyrants, bullies and gaslighters, right? So do people overeat? Like as a woman, it's a woman obese, as is often the case in my humble opinion and experience. One of the reasons that women and sometimes men overeat is because they were repeatedly sexually abused as children. In other words, having an attractive figure or an attractive frame draws sexual predation. And they want to wreck their bodies so that they don't get preyed upon even more. Now, if a woman is overeating because she was sexually abused as a child and she associates physical attractiveness with bringing on endless midnight rape, well, what's a doctor supposed to do about that?
[47:11] What's a health insurance company supposed to do about that?
[47:19] Somebody says, my friend has always had health problems, but doctors can never find exactly what's wrong. Every couple of months, it's something new. Right now there's a battle right and there's a battle i can see both sides of it one battle is.
[47:34] Um that this person has something genuinely wrong with them genuinely physically wrong with them but the doctors can't find it in which case we have massive sympathy for him but on the other hand and this tends to be a little bit more female although not certainly not exclusively female, people get their way by being unwell oh you're giving me a headache oh you need no this is upsetting to me oh my stomach like you know when you're a kid come on we've all done this right i can't go to school today my tummy hurts right i mean i write about this in my novel called the present which you should get at freedomain.com books great book if i do say so myself but, we all did this as a kid that i will i will get my way by being unwell faking illness right faking illness. I remember when I was six in boarding school, I was trying to sleep and there were these kids who were making massive amounts of noise in the next dormitory, and I complained that I had an earache. They gave me a couple of drops. I think everybody knew I was nonsense, but I couldn't say, make these kids quiet down. Oh, these kids have given me an earache. And they put some drops in my ears and sent me back to bed.
[48:51] Oh, this woman says, simple carbs increase dopamine in the brain. So people can literally self-medicate trauma with sweets and associate food with pain. Absolution, yeah. Women get food addictions the way men get video game addictions. Yeah, or pornography addictions, right? For both parties, right? Get them checked for Lyme disease. I had a friend's mom who had it for 20 years undiagnosed. She had one issue pile on top of another until finally they found the root cause. Is that a bioweapon? Would not surprise me. Would not surprise me. So it's tough. You know, child abuse can lead to myriad amounts of health problems. And how are doctors supposed to fix that? And there are people who fake illnesses to get their way.
[49:42] They pretend to be ill to get their way. I mean, obviously this is a TV show, but there was a TV show called Sanford and Son when I was a kid, where an old comedian, Red Fox, whenever he didn't get his way, he'd pretend to have a heart attack. So there is a battle, and of course there's also fraud. There are, of course, people who are drug addicts who go into the emergency room complaining of extreme pain so they can get their opiates. Oh man it's killing me you got to give me something man and they're really committed they'll be there for hours right because they want to get their opiates because they're addicts so there's a battle between the real and the fake, and it's not easy it is not easy to solve that stuff.
[50:39] Uh, somebody, somebody, oh yeah, you're saying this, I really appreciate your additions tonight to Dennis, uh, as always, but it's great stuff.
[50:48] Not to mention how abysmal the psych field is in terms of reproducibility. It's the lowest reproducibility out of all the sciences. So nothing is able to be proved or denied effectively. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I was talking about this years ago, but I mean, thank you for bringing it up. It's a, it's a really good point. It's a really good point. So it's not, I mean, healthcare is not easy.
[51:12] My mother had a doctor who told her, now the way she talked about it, you know, she was like, I'm genuinely sick. And he said, it's all in your head, baby. You know, she's just venomous, just like that. And I think, I think what he probably said was, I can't find anything physically wrong with you. Have you tried or have you thought of talking to a therapist or a counselor, right? And, oof, oof, right? I mean, right? I mean, she hated him for like 20 years. Hated him. I constantly bring it up. Couldn't let it go, right? Oof. So, I mean, I'm not saying my mom was faking stuff. I don't know. Obviously, you can't tell. That's the whole problem. You can't tell. There's no big truth bar that says whether they're telling the truth or not. So healthcare is really complicated because there are some fakers and scammers. Because there are fakers and scammers, it's complicated and difficult.
[52:14] And people will fake illness and pain. Oh, they'll fake pain, right? We all know like the, what is it? The whiplash, injuries that don't really show up, like soft tissue damage. You can't really test for it too well. oh you know oh like i i knew a guy when i was younger who was facing what eight hundred thousand dollars or something like that from a guy who was suing him because oh he was in a fender bender oh my neck right so there are people who fake stuff for money there are people who fake stuff for drugs there are people who fake stuff to get their way and there are people who fake stuff to get attention there are people who fake stuff to get concern and care right there's the munchausens and then there's the Munchausen's by proxy, right?
[52:59] So, there are very disturbed people who fake pain and fake, I would say, you know, fake illness. I don't know. I mean, obviously, if you have a tumor, you have a tumor. You can see it on a scan, or a hernia, you can see it, whatever, in an ultrasound. So, but yeah, there are people who fake. And you tell me what the magic answer is. Well, of course, the magic answer to that is Peaceful Parenting. PeacefulParenting.com. I hope you will share the book. And so, it's not easy. it's not easy. If you approve every claim, then you go bankrupt, right? It's a fine line. Let me ask you this. Have you ever been in a business where you're responsible for detecting or figuring out scams or scammers? Have you ever been in that situation where you are responsible for figuring out who might be scamming, have you ever been like if you work retail right if you've ever worked retail especially at the cash register cash the cash patel register if you've ever worked retail and you've worked at the cash register, have you ever had people who say, I want to return this and they don't have a receipt?
[54:26] Right?
[54:31] Have you ever worked in a place where people would try and scam, people would try and steal, and it's your responsibility to figure out who's doing what? Have you ever worked in a, I mean, I worked in restaurants, of course, where people would finish three quarters of their meal and then say that they weren't satisfied.
[54:49] When, if you've ever worked cash back in the day, cash register back in the day when it was cash, not cards all the time, then somebody would give you a 10 for a $5 purchase. You give them $5 back and they'd say, no, no, no, I gave you a 20. I gave you a 20. You owe me 15. Right? Because they're trying to get paid $10 for buying something that costs $5. It's really sad. The sort of low-trust society that's sort of evolving where you just... Like I went to a froyo place where it used to be that you just grabbed the cups and you went and you got your froyo and I'm I like a little bit of froyo and I don't put any sugar really on it but I'll have some uh some peanuts and some fruit and so on right and it's so good it's so good for me anyway anyway so I used to go to this place and for years it was like yeah you just grab your cup you can you know here's some samples if a sample if you want to try some samples here's some little cups you can and now it's like you're only allowed two samples we have to get them for you and if you want more samples it's 70 cents each and you can't get your own tubs anymore.
[56:15] We have to get them for you, what kind of retarded world are we living in now where people can't even be trusted to not rip off a fro-yo place you know someone's little dream restaurant and all of this right, just terrible at some restaurants you need to scan your cup to get soda yeah, yeah, scammer scammer scammer scammer scammer scammer i mean it's an absolute curse and plague on society because we all pay for them we all have to pay for all of the additional security and requirements and expenses and shrinkage right which is where stuff goes missing and you don't know where it went it's terrible and it happens in the healthcare industry as well so and of course everyone will say and everyone has their story where well i i i i have a legitimate and they wouldn't accept blah blah blah and i don't know if people are telling the truth i don't know if it's legitimate why because a lot of scammers i wish there weren't i wish there weren't of course and the best way to not have scammers is to have peaceful parenting. A lot of scammers.
[57:39] Terrible. Somebody says, when I used to wait tables, a couple came in and said, I'm allergic to nuts. What pasta do you recommend? They later asked for a manager and claimed they told me they were allergic to dairy. I got chewed out. Six months later, they showed up to my second job. I immediately told the manager and he took the table. They tried and the same thing on him. They paid full price that night. Yeah. Most of these problems go away at five-star restaurants. Well, but that's another tax, right? It's another tax that you have to go to spend more money for a house, for underground parking, for five-star restaurants to go to more expensive cruises and vacations just to get away from the scammers and the... Anyway, we all know, right? We all know where the rainbow goes. They say it's a pot of gold. So yeah, very sad. But yes, scamming is a very real thing. Yes, but UHC's denial rate should have been closer to industry average or their own rate a few years ago. How do you know? How do you know? I don't know. Please try and stay away from simplistic analyses, right?
[58:57] So, I mean, you understand that some of the best surgeons have the worst rates of survival of their patients, right? You understand that, right? And I'm sure you know why. Why is it that some of the best surgeons have the worst survival rates of their patients? Triple, four times. Why is it the best surgeons, you look at that surgeon and say, well, he's bad because his patients are dying all the time. So why do the best surgeons have the worst survival rates? There was a lawsuit about this some years ago because, yeah, they get the people on death's door. The best surgeons get the most difficult cases, so they have the highest rate of death a lot of times, right?
[59:41] I mean, who strikes out more, people in professional baseball or people in t-ball, right? Five-year-olds in t-ball strike out less than people. Well, that must mean they're better baseball players, right? So it's very tough. I didn't think things were bad in my area, but the tool aisle at my local Walmart now has security cases around several of the aisles, yeah. So a lot of times there's a combination of drug legalization with a continuance of the welfare estate, right? So I'm fine for drug legalization, but you can't have a welfare state too, right? The welfare state means that people don't have a break on their addiction, right? So one of the reasons that I only drank for a couple of weekends when I was in my teens was because I had to work. I had to work. If you don't have to work, man, you can just wake and bake, wake and bake.
[1:00:42] All right. So, so according to Thomas Farah Farah Thomas Falafel and the Gray Mouser, BlackRock officially recommends a 2% allocation to Bitcoin. The world has $900 trillion in assets, And 2% of that implies a Bitcoin market cap of $18 trillion, which is $900,000 US per coin. Not bad. I like this meme, how to hide a gun from socialists. You put it in the book, Basic Economics.
[1:01:24] Nice.
[1:01:33] So, Bitcoin for Freedom reported as of yesterday, 15,400 Bitcoin were taken off exchanges today, 2.3 million are left. It just keeps going. It will create a supply shock very soon. Candace Owens is doing some very interesting work these days. Did you see? Okay, it's a bit of a guilty pleasure, the whatever podcast.
[1:02:03] But a 4 foot 10 woman just tried to use her best Krav Maga moves against a man in the whatever studio she ended up looking like a facehucker from the alien movies only her delusions were destroyed she's okay, so this woman this is this huge guy and this little tiny 4 foot 10 woman was like I know Krav Maga and she tried to take him down he just stood up and she looked like his little spider monkey backpack and just kind of, Picked her off and this woman wrote, I thought this is interesting. She wrote, early on in my relationship with my very tall guy, we had an ongoing debate about whether or not I would win in a fight against him, provided I was armed with pool sticks.
[1:02:44] I may have seen one too many movies, but I genuinely believed that a pool cue would give me the edge needed to overcome a nine inch, 75 plus pound difference in addition to the gender strength gap. After months of debating this back and forth, one night at a bar, he finally had enough. threw me a pool cue and told me to swing it at him as hard as I could. After some convincing, I did it. I swung as hard as my tipsy self could, and he effortlessly caught the pool stick and pulled it from my hands, leaving me unarmed and defenseless and completely ending that debate. Most women are delusional about our physical capabilities relative to men. Thanks, Marvel. Yeah, I really dislike this, uh, oh, you can take on a man. It's like, you can get beaten up. Like, it's just really bad. It's really, really bad. And it gets a lot of people injured. this sort of vanity it's really really bad.
[1:03:36] Mark Zuckerberg's meta just donated a million dollars. This is from Dom Luker. Mark Zuckerberg's meta just donated a million dollars to Trump's inaugural fund. He fought to ban and censor Trump last election, says Dom. This solidifies Zuckerberg's new views and gives Americans a glimpse of where he and his company is heading in the coming years. He's such an oily little Cylon. on. Anyway, the wind blows. All right, Thomas Farrar again says, independent advisors control $8 trillion in assets, and surveys show 77% of them want to add Bitcoin to their portfolios, aiming for an average allocation of 2% to 3%. Do the math, it's 150 billion inflows coming into these ETFs. In 2024, we had 35 billion. Next year, 100 billion plus.
[1:04:27] Oh yeah you ever see that creepy video of justin trudeau talking about his brother's death it's even creepier mom not good not good, so tell me what you think of this so this guy wrote, my wife has cancer it took five months to wipe out 20 years of life savings and that was with insurance the experience has turned me into a hateful bitter person we did everything we were told we went to college got degrees avoided credit card debt spent wisely saved a nice chunk of money in savings accounts and retirement accounts and minded our own business the usa healthcare system took all of our savings and retirement and forced us to refinance our house so that we lost 15 years of equity.
[1:05:16] This is a country I'm supposed to be proud of. I hate the system and anyone that defends it. Have you heard these kinds of speeches from people? It's just something that you've heard. Yeah.
[1:05:36] Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider can beat up highly trained men. Yeah, it's really sad. Even with regards to guns and so on, men have faster draws, quicker control, more control over it. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean... This can be very tough, of course, and you can look, I'm not talking about this guy's issue in particular, because who knows, right? But it's really important in life, this is a big, giant key to happiness, and let me know ahead of time, if this is going to make you happy, if what I'm about to say over the next few minutes is going to make you happier in life forever, is it worth a donation? Right? If what I'm about to say over the next few minutes is going to make you happier in life as a whole for the rest of your life, is it worth a donation?
[1:06:48] I think it is, but I leave it to your discretion. All right. So, here goes. Here is Stéphane Molyneux's key to happiness. Would you say I'm a pretty happy guy? Somebody said, hey, it's nice to see how positive you are. Stef, coming in tonight, right? It's hot in the studio. I've got these lights that I can check for broken bones here, right? So, here's how to be happy in life. It's not that complicated. It's not that serious, right? Here's how to be happy in life. So, every now and then I'll check the price of Bitcoin. Now, let's say Bitcoin is $100,000, right? Now, if I sit there and I say, I bet Bitcoin's gone to $105,000 or $110,000, and it turns out it's gone to $98,000, I'm like, ooh, that's bad because I'm comparing what could be to the best possible scenario, right? That it's gone up like 7% or 10% or something like that, right? Whereas if I say, I bet it's gone down to 95, 97, then if it's 99, I'm happy.
[1:08:10] Happiness is what you compare your state to. Happiness is not independent of your evaluation of other possibilities, right? So, this guy whose wife got cancer and they lost their savings over five months, this meant she had a really aggressive cancer, I assume, that required a lot of time, money, attention, drugs to fix that cost a lot of money. Now, if you compare... Your wife getting cancer and you losing your life savings. If you compare that to your wife not getting sick and you not having to spend on that, you'll be fucking miserable. You will be miserable because you're comparing an ideal situation to a bad situation. Now, you can do that and you will be unhappy. On the other hand, you can say, thank God we had the savings to keep my wife alive.
[1:09:26] Thank God we had the savings to keep my wife alive. So 20 years of life savings. So let's say they started working at 25, so they're 45, right? Now, women will live to 85. Let's just say men and women, it's not the same, but let's just say roughly it's the same to 85. So 20 years of life savings, right? So let's say that was $100,000, right? So for the mere spend of $100,000, you get 40 more years with your beloved wife, right? That's costing you, what, $2,500 a year. Do you see where I'm going for this? $2,500 a year, you get another 40 years with your wife, right? In other words, for a mere $6.84 a day, you get to spend time with your beloved wife and the mother of your children. Six bucks and change a day, you get to keep your wife in your life. Do you see the difference?
[1:10:46] Do you see the difference? This is so foundationally important.
[1:10:59] Happiness is what you compare things to. Happiness is not innately bound into the thing itself. I got sick. I made an absolute ferocious and renewed commitment, to being as healthy as humanly possible so that my sickness would give me extra years of life. It is not what happens to you in general. It is what you compare it to. Now, people in general are miserable because they are comparing, their situation to an ideal.
[1:11:45] They compare every day to the best possible day thus they are unhappy if you compare every day to the worst possible day you're happy if you compare every day to the best possible day you're unhappy.
[1:12:06] Does this make sense? This is so important. And this is a willpower thing. Happiness can be willed. Happiness can be willed. And it is willed in the comparison. I love getting older. I'm pushing 60 years old. I love getting older. Now if i compare how i am at the age of 58 to the energy and vitality i had when i was 18 i'd feel, weak and old because relative to how i was when i was 18 when i could run 30 miles i am weak and old relative to 18 i'm weak and old.
[1:12:58] Do you see what i'm saying So what do I compare myself to? Well, I compare myself to being dead. Getting older is glorious because the alternative is dead. And every day above ground is better than a day or an eternity underground. Around. Happiness is in what you compare things to. It is not in the things themselves. Happiness, in other words, is a delta, right? Happiness is a delta between what is and what you compare it to. If what is is neutral and you compare it to something better, it feels negative. If what's happening is neutral and you compare it to what's worse, it feels better and you feel happier.
[1:13:57] Come on, babies. Freedomain.com slash donate. You know it's gold. You know it's gold. If you compare the girl you're attracted to the weird genetic freaks of ultimate beauty, I don't know, the Sandra Bullocks in her prime, the Angelina Jolie's, the Kelly Rowland. Isn't that what, Beyonce's a nine, someone's a 10. Oh, Beyonce's a nine, Kelly Rowland's a nine, be honest at 10, right? That's the holy trinity of the late Kevin Samuels show. If you compare your body to Matthew McConaughey in his prime, you will feel, flabby and unattractive. If you compare your body.
[1:14:54] To Ned Beattie, you'll feel strong and healthy. Now, this is not to say that there are not objective states. Of course, there are objective states, and you should have ideals. But so much of happiness is in what we compare things to and not the things themselves. So, a surefire recipe for unhappiness is to think, life should go well. Life should be easy-ish. I shouldn't have any problems, right? That is how to be unhappy no matter what happens, except for that one day when everything goes perfectly. I can think of maybe seven weeks over the course of my life when everything's gone perfectly. There's always some problem, right? There's always some negative. There's always something. Oh, well, donations are down. Oh, well, you know, visitors are down. Oh, but this is up, right?
[1:16:06] If your baseline comparison is perfection, everything that happens to you will be flawed and negative. If everything that happens in your life is compared to a state of perfection, then you are miserable forever and ever. Amen.
[1:16:38] If you find yourself unhappy, ask yourself, what am I comparing my life to? Again, this is not to say that there aren't better and worse states, but there are some things beyond your control.
[1:17:03] So when i had i had an ankylose tooth a couple of years ago i had to have it taken out right, now what and this was from when i was a kid the teeth never separated from the bone so eventually it just became impossible i fought this like pocket of like eight or nine millimeters for like a couple of years and then the tooth just kind of gave up the ghost now what i can do is I can say, well, the standard is perfect teeth, right? The standard is perfect teeth. Anything that is a deviation from perfect teeth is a disaster, right? Perfectly valid hypothesis, right? Or the way that I approach it is, well, I have an ankylosed tooth. I am very happy that I can get it removed. Pain-free. And I am. I love modern dentistry. I really do. Modern dentistry is absolutely beautiful. If you have to go in for an operation, you can say, perfect health is the ideal. This is a deviation. It's really bad. Or you can say, I'm really glad that I have modern medicine and in particular anesthetic so that I don't have to go through agony.
[1:18:25] When I get operated on you know that old story of the novelist Charles Dickens was going to become a doctor he saw a bowel operation on a kid and he's like well I can't do that I absolutely cannot do that that's horrible that's horrible that's horrible.
[1:18:47] Thank goodness I have painkillers. Thank goodness I have modern medicine. Thank goodness I have modern dentistry, right? You ever known anyone who's had a hernia? Guy I know. Had a hernia repair. He could have had to live with that, as most people do, for the rest of your life. If you had a shitty childhood, sympathies, if you had a shitty childhood with shitty parents, shitty schools shitty family shitty friends shitty neighborhood then you can say oh my gosh that was so terrible and it was i get that i'm not trying to say you can magical thinking your way into thinking that which is good is not good and that which is not good is good but what i am saying is you can thank life the universe and your lucky freaking stars every day every day that you're not still there. You know, most people, almost everyone throughout human history, could not change or fix their bad childhood. Oh, you just had three hernias repaired, two inguinal and a belly. So, I'm sorry about that. That's rough, man. So, you know, you know, you know.
[1:20:15] If you think that the standard is perfection, you'll be miserable when you don't reach it. If you think that the standard is negative, because for most of human history, it was, you have a bad childhood, you couldn't escape, right? You think of, I talked about this with regards to the Aborigines when I did my tour of Australia six years ago with Lauren Southern. I talked about how the Aborigines in Australia had the same lives.
[1:20:50] For 40,000 years. You grew up in a bad childhood. You were in a small tribe. You had a bad childhood. You had a bad adulthood. You inflicted bad childhood on your kids, and it just went on and on and on. 40% infanticide in some tribes. It just went on and on. So for most of human history, you could never escape a shitty family. Never. No independence, no travel, no options, no wealth no escape I mean imagine you're a serf in a tiny village right this is what I write about in my novel Just Four it's a great book you should read it freedomain.com slash books, you couldn't get out, you couldn't get out and it was Groundhog Day from Hell copy paste in the shitty volcanic keyboard of endlessly cycled history you couldn't get out. Now, I had a shitty childhood.
[1:21:50] I swear to God, I'm not kidding about this. Every day, I'm like, isn't it great? I didn't have to do that forever. Isn't that great that I got out? Isn't it great that I didn't have to keep on that way? Rather than saying, it's so terrible I had a shitty childhood which it was and that's it you can say thank god I'm out thank god I live at a time where I can get out, and stay out I was surrounded by, fairly ass-burger-y kind of people not ass-burgers just people whose burgers are made of meat, when I was a kid, Surrounded by mostly jerks and assholes when I was a kid. Number who remain? Zero. Zero, zero, zero. There are none left. I'm out. I'm gone. I am as an eagle in the eastern sky. Turning in the wind out across the evening. Shifting on the wing. If I had the wings of an eagle, there'd be no holding me. I'd be free, sailing free. One day soon, I'm gonna run like the wind. One day soon. I loved that song when I was a kid. Just get out. Get out.
[1:23:19] And if you would tell me you want to hold me down before the glow of morning, I'll be gone without a sound. Or that, uh, as early morning yesterday, it was up before the dawn. Well i really have enjoyed my stay but i must be moving on just gone out early morning and it's funny you know because i got a lot of shit back in the day for this defu stuff right, and i remember listening to this kid on the uh listening to the song on the radio, wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins, she's leaving home after living alone for so many years.
[1:24:12] You don't have to stay. In the ash and shit heap you were born into, you can get the fuck out and not look back. For the first time in human history, you can change your universe. You can change your physics. You can change your entire tribe. Swap it out. Nobody in history had that choice. Nobody. The poor stuck. The middle class controlled. The wealthy trapped.
[1:24:46] She said the problem is all inside your head, she said to me. I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free. There must be 50 ways to leave your lover. Just slip out the back, Jack. Make a new plan, Stan. Don't need to be coy, right? Just listen to me. Just hop on the bus, Gus. you don't need to discuss much just drop off the keely and let yourself free yeah you can get out you can get out, so rather than saying I had a shitty childhood and that defines the rest of my life say I had a shitty childhood and for the first time in human history, I can swap out the gene pool and find virtuous people, to be around for the first time in human history. Do not take this for granted. Do not fucking take this for granted, people. Do not take this for granted.
[1:25:55] It is a gift that gods themselves cannot deliver. It is something you must take for yourself. But in order to take it for yourself, you have to compare where you are with where you could be. You know there's this chilling image hell is seeing the person you could have been and it's a woman doing this you know fingers tattoos snarling face and then next to her is a picture for her smiling holding a baby.
[1:26:29] Nothing is better than the freedom nothing's better than the freedom yeah it's a great old colin james song let the lord take a man from his family, to face such and living all you need so yeah just sorry i let that i faffed that one up i couldn't remember the lyrics so you can get out you can get out you can despawn and you can respawn in a whole different universe you can dial up and down your physics you can change the color of the sky. You can turn the clouds into candy floss and then into showers of gold.
[1:27:15] You can get operated on with anesthetic. You can work from home in your underpants. You can pick and choose your social circle from a near infinite array of digitally enabled buddies. I mean, there's a number of communities that sprouted up from this very show. Not this one, but this show as a whole, where people have gotten married, had kids, gotten great friendships, all kinds of beautiful stuff. I'm sure it's a coincidence that bitcoin has gone up during the course of this show ah it's just a coincidence, so this guy my wife has cancer it took five months to wipe out 20 years of life savings and that was with insurance right and what would have happened, a hundred years ago she'd be dead you'd be broke and she'd be dead rather than saying i'm so grateful that I only have to pay $6 a day to spend the next 40 years with my beloved wife. Thank you, doctors. You say, I'm now poorer than I was before, and that's the only factor that matters.
[1:28:28] Because if you didn't have to pay for your wife's cancer, there wouldn't be a fucking cure. There wouldn't be a cure. You know that most of the world Well, it lives off the R&D done in the American semi-free market healthcare system, right? You know that that's what most of the world does. They just parasite off what the Americans are doing, right? So rather than being thankful for a cure, bro is pissed off that there's a cost. Rather than being thankful that there's a cure, bro is pissed off that there's a cost. Ouch. Ouch. A lot of misery and anger, maybe even some depression, is fundamentally about a lack of gratitude.
[1:29:18] It is about a lack of gratitude. Yeah, thank you for posting that picture. That's it. That's the one. It's about a lack of gratitude. What have I got to be grateful for? Bro, if you live in the modern world, you have everything to be grateful for because these are the kind of opportunities, that have never before existed in human history. Listen, I mean, I'll probably get a bit emotional about this, but I'll be straight up about where this comes from, right? So this show has been tough at times. I'm not going to lie, right? I'm not going to put on all of this false front. For the most part, it's been great, but there's been times where it's not been fun at all.
[1:30:01] But do you know how unbelievably grateful I am that I've been able to carve my thoughts into the mindscape of the planet for eternity because, the odds are certainly without the internet without your support which is why I'm so incredibly grateful for what you do for philosophy and for me for us for the future.
[1:30:25] That I could have passed through like a meteor passes, a hundred miles above your house while you're sleeping gone don't hear it didn't even know it was there I could have just shot through the world, leaving almost nothing in my wake. Certainly not. Thousands and thousands and thousands of great, powerful and deep presentations, conversations, documentaries, solo shows, questions and answers, live streams and so on. What an incredible gift it is to me that this technology exists that allows me to take the contents of my brain and unpack it on the stage of the world forever and ever. Are men, and it doesn't really matter how many people are listening and watching in the here and now that I can't tell you how grateful I am that you're here. I really can't tell you how grateful I am that you're here. But I was this close. I was this close to vanishing. Like a sperm whale fart 3,000 feet down. Well, I guess even that would leave some bubbles eventually. But I was this close to vanishing without a trace. If I had been born one generation earlier, Maybe I could have fought my way into academia, unlikely, but I mean, you can't, as a white male, you can't even really get published in the publishing industry anymore. I didn't really understand that when I was trying to get my novels published.
[1:31:44] Oh, there's such great novels. Why can't they get published?
[1:31:54] I mean, how many people came and went before me as smarter, more eloquent, more powerful, more insightful? How many people came and went before? This technology allowed it to be shared and dispersed. As long as my bits are carved into someone's hard drive, I'll never die, fundamentally. Think of all of the amazing writers who stored their works in the Library of Alexandria, which fell into disuse, decay, and disrepair even before it was burned down. There are Tibetan scrolls, thousands and thousands of which have yet to be translated. Think of all of the people who wrote so many things down that have vanished. I get a permanent hieroglyphic set of constellations in the night sky of humanity's mental landscape forever and ever. Amen. God help the scholars in the future. I'm so sorry. I'm so verbose.
[1:33:05] Damn, I was so close. to coming and going like a bird flying through a womb did you see that? gone, Man, this is sure stirring up some ghosts for me. I think I'll go down to Madame X and let her read my mind.
[1:33:29] So, there is so much to be grateful for, to simply stand here in this room.
[1:33:39] And speak my heart, mind, thoughts, and soul, to a world that has been waiting for these, communications for thousands of years and thousands of as good if not better people have come and gone like leaves over a waterfall in the middle of nowhere like a tree falling in a forest that nobody ever sees or will see because it gets buried by the sludge before human footfalls come by you know one of the reasons why the fossil record is so incomplete is that we have almost nothing, right? If all the people in North America died, according to the fossil record and the number of people and the number of bones we don't get, you'd get one thigh bone out of everyone in North America. Now think of all the animals that came and went and left nothing but their progeny behind. But we have thought, which is different from the genetic copy-paste, the blind photocopier of biological reproduction. We have thought. And so when things are difficult, as occasionally they are, I do remember that I have such a deep and humble gratitude at the technology and you, the audience members, that has allowed me to have these conversations for like 20 years almost.
[1:35:01] When I was this close to coming and going, muttering only to a few people at parties being gone, dead, buried, and forgotten without the enormous contents of my mind being splayed out like a pinned set of butterflies for all humanity to regard and engage with from here to eternity for never, ever. Amen.
[1:35:30] And that is to be grateful for.
[1:35:32] Now, what i can do is i can say well but compared to i don't know you know jordan peterson is wearing his justice coat of many colors and he's strolling around oxford what what i compare myself to that or Stephen Crowder was offered 25 million dollars and candace owens might be getting her own talk show and i can compare myself to that absolutely and i can say oh that's bad it's i made mistakes or i can compare myself to all the people who never had a voice who i feel that i do speak for I feel that I do speak for all of the people who never had a voice. And again, it is with deep humility and gratitude that I thank you for being here for this conversation.
[1:36:20] Thank you, Stef, truly for everything you have done and continue to do. Thank you. I appreciate that. Stef says, Denise, you are the most influential person I've ever had in my life. I'm so grateful for you staying. Thank you. Thank you, Stef. I absolutely love your commitment to rationality. Thank you. I will donate on FreedomAina after the show. I'm so grateful for you being here. Right. And I appreciate that. Thank you. I compare where I am to where everybody else was not. Do you see what I'm saying? I compare where I am to where everyone else was not. And if the price of holding fast to what I know to be true is relative obscurity in the here and now, while genuine prominence in the future, it is a price. I have absolutely no hesitation saying, oh, I could be more popular. I could have colored within the lines and all of that. Well, but I had to lie as a kid. I don't have to lie as an adult, and that's how I remind myself constantly that my childhood is in fact over, that I do not have to tell any more lies out of fear of people in authority.
[1:37:28] All right any other law about any see the eloquence just completely left me there i expended i'm spent man just spent spent like a copper coin at a child's toy store in the past.
[1:37:45] All right any other any other last thoughts comments issues questions problems if you're listening to this later of course freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show you can go to fdrurail.com slash locals to join the community for free give it a try for free you'll get some amazing stuff there are well over 100 shows in the premium section and you get some absolutely you get early access to shows before everyone else and uh thank you denisa denisa i'm sorry if i get that wrong i'm thinking danica patrick you will outlift them all you are to me and will go down as the best philosopher i truly mean the staff thank you i thank you i appreciate that And I slavishly serve philosophy, and if there's things that I've done that have helped move it forward, which I truly believe I have, I am very grateful for having the inspiration and the social support and the financial support to be able to do it. I really do appreciate that. And I just want to think of people in the future enjoying philosophy more and finding it more relevant and powerful. I don't want them to think of me because I'll be dead and gone, but I do want them to think of philosophy, and that's always been my goal. It's not an ego-based thing. It is a really for the betterment of humanity thing. And I'm so grateful to all the people who came before, who finally assembled enough technology and arguments to give me this kind of platform. And I owe them everything. And I hope to pay it forward. Thank you everyone so much for a wonderful evening. Lots of love from up here, my friends. I really do appreciate your time, care, and attention. FreeDomain.com slash donate.
[1:39:13] To help out, don't forget to check out my novels.
[1:39:16] They're really good. and they are free at freedomain.com slash books. Take care, my friends. Bye.
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