0:21 - Introduction to Philosophy
1:20 - The Importance of Explicit Contracts
8:03 - Navigating Modern Relationships
9:31 - Understanding Social Media Dynamics
11:30 - Exploring Cultural References
13:42 - Relationships in Literature and Film
14:26 - The Nature of Legal Contracts
18:31 - The Impact of Social Taboos
23:02 - Observations on Modern Dating
32:23 - The Reality of Romantic Expectations
34:53 - The Intersection of Faith and Logic
46:27 - Current Events Discussion
50:00 - The Noble Savage Myth
52:07 - Demoralization and Guilt
53:53 - Historical Perspectives on Civilization
1:01:51 - Education and Gender Dynamics
1:06:56 - Reflections on War and Politics
1:10:28 - Closing Thoughts and Future Shows
In this episode, I delve into the importance of defining explicit agreements in relationships, particularly in light of the conflicts that can arise when implicit contracts are left unspoken. I draw from a recent philosophical discussion I had about the dynamics of marriage, where misunderstandings can escalate due to unacknowledged rules of engagement. I emphasize that to navigate disagreements successfully, partners must have conscious conversations about their expectations and the behaviors that will guide their interactions. By making the implicit explicit, we can foster a healthier, more stable environment for resolving conflicts.
Throughout the discussion, I illustrate my points with various relationship scenarios, such as a partner reacting negatively when upset and how that behavior can lead to emotional manipulation if left unchecked. I propose that drawing clear boundaries and rules can lead to better communication and reduce anxiety within relationships. Just as we need to define terms in any philosophical debate, I argue that the same applies to personal relationships—without clarity and mutual understanding, partners may find themselves trapped in cycles of frustration and miscommunication.
Moving beyond personal relationships, I touch on broader societal implications regarding the negotiation of implicit contracts in various contexts. For instance, I compare the chaotic nature of unregulated systems, like tyrannies where laws are vague, to relationships that lack defined boundaries. By providing a framework for acceptable behaviors, individuals can hold one another accountable and create a more harmonious existence. I also draw parallels with everyday interactions, such as contracts in a restaurant, where transparency about prices is essential for trust and satisfaction.
As I open the conversation to questions, I consider a listener's inquiry about modern dating challenges and societal expectations surrounding family creation. My insights reflect on how socio-economic factors and individual anxieties can influence decisions around partnerships and childbearing, particularly for women in today’s workforce. I emphasize the importance of honesty and the need to approach romantic relationships with a clear understanding of one's desires and boundaries, especially concerning long-term commitments like marriage and family.
Towards the end of our discussion, I broaden the themes to societal constructs, exploring the potential pitfalls of modern media narratives that skew perceptions of relationships and expectations. Drawing from examples in pop culture, I critique how films and societal ideals can shape unrealistic standards and foster a generation of individuals with heightened expectations that do not always align with reality.
This conversation serves as a reminder of the value in establishing clarity and accountability—not only in our relationships but in all aspects of our lives. By consciously addressing unspoken agreements, we can navigate the complexities of human interactions more effectively, fostering healthier relationships built on understanding and mutual respect. Tune in for more insights as we continue this philosophical exploration and engage with your thoughts and questions.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Happy Easter to you, Stefan Molyneux, from Freedomain, here to discuss whatever is on your mind, philosophically speaking, and giving you notes, updates, thoughts, and insights.
[0:21] So I had a conversation with someone the other day. This is like just straight up philosophy stuff. So I had a conversation with someone the other day about a marriage, and they were having a lot of conflict. And one of the things that I mentioned or wanted to raise to his sort of thoughts and attention was the idea that you cannot negotiate implicit contracts. You cannot negotiate implicit contracts. So if you have, let's say, consistent disagreements with a friend or a spouse or something like that, then you need to take, the rules of engagement, the rules of the conflict, you need to take those and make them explicit so that you can get some kind of agreement on how to navigate disagreements and disputes.
[1:21] Disputes. So if you're in a relationship where, let's say, the woman, when she's upset, she storms around a little, slams drawers, and so on, and that makes you kind of nervous, and then you end up appeasing and so on. Well, I think, I mean, sort of my advice in general is to have the rules in relationships as explicit and conscious as possible. That goes like 99% of the way towards resolving, or at least having clarity about how the issues can be resolved. You know, we always say in philosophy that defining your terms is really important, right? You really can't have a debate without defining your terms clearly. Otherwise, you end up just manipulating language and sophistry and so on. And really, it's the same thing in relationships. When you have conflicts, what you want to do is you want to take the rules that you want to have followed and make them explicit. Now, you can negotiate about the rules, of course, right? But without a conscious conversation about the rules in a relationship, right?
[2:34] You're just bouncing off and reacting emotionally, and usually historically, to things. So I really wanted to give you that piece of advice that, in general, in the relationships that I have that have worked the best in my life, the rules tend to be very explicit and very sort of well understood. I mean, it's funny because when you think of tyrannies in a political sense.
[2:59] There is an old aynrand argument that tyranny is not harsh laws tyranny really is no laws no rules you're not really sure what's legal you're not really sure what's not and it's often up to the whim of the prosecutor or the court or the state as to who or what gets pursued so the real tyranny is when you refuse to define the rules in relationships. Like, obviously, sensible rules like no raising your voice, no intimidation. Generally, unless you need a specific cool-off time, it's usually a good idea not to avoid each other, but to rather engage. Because there's kind of a passive aggression in avoiding someone. You know, it's sort of saying, you're too angry for me to deal with, you're too irrational for me to deal with, so I'm going to have to just go somewhere else instead.
[4:00] But if you can engage and have conversations in a way that brings the rules that you want to have followed up to the surface where they can be negotiated, then you are really laying a framework of definitions within the relationship that allow you to know whether you are, succeeding in the relationship or not. So this is one of the things that I would say. If you look at your relationships, you look at the ones that are working the least well. If you look at the relationships that are working the least well, almost certainly the relationships that are working the least well are the ones that have the fewest explicit definitions and contracts, if that makes sense. So try and float them up to the surface, try and negotiate them. And then, of course, after you negotiate your contracts with each other, then you have recourse. It's one thing to negotiate the contract. It's quite another thing.
[5:00] To hold someone to that, right? So once you get agreement, right? And you can't have really successful relationships without an agreement on rules. I mean, imagine if you had a cell phone contract with someone and that cell phone contract, they could just charge you whatever they wanted. It didn't really matter. I remember, oh gosh, what was it? Modern family. I think they went to Australia and one of the guys was like, I'm afraid to turn on my cell phone because I don't know what the data charges will be. And so obviously people were quite nervous about data charges in foreign countries. So what they did, of course, is now they have these sort of international roaming agreements where you pay a certain amount of money to access your data from overseas and you know what that is ahead of time rather than just like crossing your fingers and seeing what kind of outrageous number you're going to get. So in general, it's funny because economically we kind of understand this, right? You probably wouldn't order food from a restaurant where there was no price on the menu. Unless you're royalty, I suppose. But you wouldn't do that because you wouldn't know what the contract was. You wouldn't know what you were paying for what you were ordering.
[6:19] So things need to be defined ahead of time so that you know what kind of decision you're making. And then people need to stick to it, right? So float your implicit contracts to explicit contracts, define your terms, agree on those terms, and then hold each other to those terms. I mean, if you said you went to a restaurant and you ordered a burger that was like, gosh, I don't know what a burger is at. They're 15 bucks, right? 15 bucks for a burger. It's like a sit down place. And you kept the burger and fries, it's $14.95 or whatever. And then the bill comes and it's like $24. And you would call the waitress over or the waiter over and you'd say, hey man, the menu says $14.95, now it's $24. Oh, sorry. Right. So then you have to hold people to those standards after the contracts are defined. So I hope that makes some sense. It's a really, really important thing in life. What are the contracts? What is acceptable versus unacceptable behavior? And are people willing to agree to and commit to the definitions of good behavior and the avoidance of bad behavior? and can they be called on it afterwards? Like there's really no point having contracts if you can't be called on it afterwards. There's no point printing the price of food on a menu.
[7:43] If people can just ignore it afterwards and charge whatever they want. So I just wanted to mention that. And let's get to your questions and comments. As you see fit, as you like, please do not forget freedomain.com slash donate. Really would appreciate that.
[8:03] Somebody says, I agree with you that men should do their best to reproduce. How do we do that with modern women? They are so toxic. Hmm.
[8:18] So there's a couple of thoughts I have about that. And I say this with all the humility of a guy who's not been in the dating market for a quarter century. So, is this a real life? Is this just fantasy? What you see online is a very skewed and biased sample of humanity. You know the doom scrolling. Like if you're subscribed to the right or I guess the wrong kinds of feeds, you can just, oh God, oh God, it's bad, it's bad, it's terrible, it's terrible, right? So the women who are online are generally not representative, right? It's a very skewed sample because especially if they're chronically, I say this myself, right? Especially if they're chronically online. If a woman is chronically online, then she is a particular type of personality, probably quite attention-seeking. Again, I'm aware, but I'm doing it for philosophy, not for ego.
[9:25] So, modern women have, I say they're on the spectrum, it's a bell curve, right?
[9:31] There are some people who are more extreme on either end, more conservative, more liberal, more modest, more exhibitionistic, more introverted, more extroverted, and try not to substitute real-world empirical explorations and examinations, try not to substitute a very filtered online experience for what's going on in the real world.
[10:01] So somebody says, like, when social media has vague community guidelines. Yeah, that's a big issue. That's a big issue. So when social media has, well, you're not allowed to do this, you're allowed to do that, but there's no specific rules that you know ahead of time whether you are going to pass or fail, whether you are going to do what's within the guidelines or not what's within the guidelines. And then, like, all you can do is just appeal and cross your fingers for the most part, right? And I don't think I've ever seen, you know, like in your inbox, right, then you get this, updated terms of service, and it's never, we've made things more clear, and now you'll know ahead of time whether or not, you'll now know ahead of time whether or not you're in compliance with the requirements or the standards. You'll just know that doesn't happen, does not happen at all. It always gets to be more vague, good afternoon park thank you for dropping my happy easter to all freedomain.com slash donate would appreciate that boma god says not dealing with issues because the other person is throwing a tantrum and backing down you just reinforce the behavior, my worst relationships are the people i know i can't rely on.
[11:30] Well, let's see. Why would you have relationships with people you can't rely on? I'm not sure. Have you seen The Taming of the Shrew with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor? I have not. I think the only one of theirs that I saw was a very boring, although like every young man or boy, I remember the milk bath scene from...
[11:56] Was it Cleopatra? And they did a, it's a completely terrifying play. Is it Edward Halby? Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He actually got the title, I think, in the bathroom. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He has, and I remember studying this in university, he wrote this play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with George and Martha. And of course George and Martha I assume named after George Washington and Martha Washington and it is a play about two absolutely codependent sociopaths.
[12:40] Who rake each other verbally over the coals it's a dinner party with a really corrupt older couple and a younger more innocent couple and it is just absolutely horrendous, absolutely horrendous it's it's on the lines of um uh don't look back in anger by john osborne just absolutely there was a kind of 50s 60s thing and it was kind of resurrected with adam driver and scarlett johansson recently which is just or i suppose vince vaughn and the breakup vince vaughn and jennifer aniston where you just see these relationships where people are just having the most brutal, destructive, exhausting, invasive, intrusive, lacerating kind of interactions. Ah, just horrendous. Just horrendous.
[13:42] So, and these, of course, are relationships where the contracts are not explicit. The rules of behavior, the rules of standards, they're not explicit, they're implicit, and therefore open to manipulation, right? I mean, I've always thought it would be a good rule in society. And tell me what you guys think. It would be a good rule, let's say in a legal system, it would be a good rule to say, if you didn't prosecute Bob for this crime, you can't prosecute Joe for this crime.
[14:26] I mean, I know that there are very complicated sentencing guidelines in most Western prison or court systems, but if you didn't prosecute Joe for this crime, you can't prosecute Bob for this crime. I think that would be a very, very important rule to have in a sort of rational and moral legal system, because the selective prosecution does seem to be quite a thing. Like, some people who lie to Congress seem to get into a whole world of hurt. Other people who lie to Congress, not so much. Not so much.
[15:05] All right. What do you call the phenomenon that people think extra Twitter trends accurately represent public opinion? Hmm. Well, it's not new to social media. It's just more divergent with social media. Because, of course, in the past, it was mainstream history, it was mainstream media as a whole, the news, and so on. I mean, in the Vietnam War, Walter Cronkite finally came out against the war, and that changed everyone's opinions of the war. Because they were like, I don't know, he was like the most trusted journalist in America or something like that. And that was, of course, the Vietnam War really was the last time you had independent journalism in a war. actually filming things, sending it back, and people could see the actual horrors of what were going on. And that changed people's perspective on the war to the point where I think after that the army was like, I think we're only going to have embedded reporters now. We're not going to have reporters out there shooting footage of whatever they want and then it getting on the news. But of course, in general, in general, the...
[16:14] Anti-war movement was driven by pro-communist sympathies and so on. So I think in general, there's always been this problem that, it's not a problem, I mean, it's just a fact, right? That a small number of well-connected and very powerful people tend to drive social discourse. And now there's a fragmentation, of course, of social discourse in that you can go to a variety of social medias, you can follow a variety of different people.
[16:46] And the phenomena that people think actually represents public opinion, I mean, really this goes all the way back to particular superstitions and the value of the king and so on. You have to navigate the falsehoods in your society, right? I mean, certainly those who ignored all of the taboos in our evolution didn't tend to do very well, to put it mildly. Like those who just said, I'm not going to ignore all of the taboos. I'm going to ignore all of the tripwires and so on. I'm just going to go speak my mind and so on. Well, I mean, I got a whole novel about this called Just Poor. You should get this at justpoornovel.com. It's free. It's a great, great book. And you should check that out. But, so, because we all have to navigate the landmines, tripwires, and taboos of society, if you can establish something as a taboo, and, I mean, we all know taboos in our society, it's easier to see them in other societies than so on. And like, you know, in China, it's pretty tough to criticize the Communist Party. There's other things you can't criticize really in the West very easily.
[18:10] So you have to build these taboos up pretty early on and pretty consistently. And they're incredibly profitable, right? Which is one of the reasons why the media is so interested these days in propaganda rather than sort of exploration of the human condition or pursuit of truth. Because it is building a set of you can't talk about, you must never discuss, like all of this kind of stuff.
[18:32] And once you can establish a topic as a taboo, then you get staggering amounts of profit from that. Because you can advance an agenda without pushback.
[18:51] All right, let's see here. Somebody writes, I went out with a girl last few. Oh, last week. Sorry, he rewrote it underneath. I went out with a girl last week, spent a few hours with her, and really liked her. She wanted to hug me, etc. This morning on Easter, she texted me, recently made the decision to step away from dating for a while, nothing to do with you, just personal reasons, sorry to have made plans with you only to cancel like this. We're supposed to see her tomorrow. Thoughts? She said she wanted kids. She had a small window, but works 24-7 in engineering. Hmm. That's a slice of her text. Not the full. Hmm.
[19:46] Let me see here. I'm going to try my... to inhabit another person's brain. I have to do this as a writer. I also do this in role-playing, of course, right, in the call-in shows. So why would she want to step away from that?
[20:08] So my guess is that she wants to maintain her career and avoid the responsibility of settling down, and getting married and having children. So in her career, I assume she's an older woman, since she's in her 30s, I assume, because you say she has a small window, right? So she's got a small window. If she decides to take that window, right? If she decides to take that window, then her whole life is going to change right her whole career trajectory is going to change, and she's going to move from an area that she feels hyper competent in right so right if she's an engineer then she's probably been working on you know things like you know whatever engineering stuff like taking apart and putting together clocks so she's probably been working on that since she was a little kid. Probably got Meccano sets and Lego sets and learned how to code and all of that kind of engineering stuff. Like my daughter had this, electrical set you sort of put together and flip gates on and off and stuff like that, right?
[21:27] Thank you, C2. So, she's probably, let's say she's 35 and And probably since she was five or six or seven, she's known she's been interested in that sort of engineering, physical side of things. So she's got 30 years in on that. She's got her education. She's got, you know, a decade plus of work experience. And she's very competent. She's very good at that. Now you, I assume, expressed your desire to have children, right? So you expressed your desire to have children, and then she has to look and say, okay, so if I continue going out with this guy.
[22:12] Then he wants kids, which means it's unfair if I don't want kids. I have a small window, which means I will have to move, excuse me, I will have to move from a sphere or an area. Where I'm highly competent and well-paid, well-rewarded, high status, my own office, whatever she's got, right? Team lead, project lead, whatever. Excuse me. So she's going to have to move from highly compensated, high status, high confidence, high confidence situation to what? To dating, engaged, marriage, hopefully that sequence, pregnant, mother.
[23:03] And I assume you said, or she may have got this impression, or maybe you said it more explicitly, that you'd want her to stay home with the kids, maybe some homeschooling and stuff, whatever it is, right? But sometimes you may get that instinct, or maybe you said that. So then that would imply maybe giving up her career, right she'd give up her career she gives up her income and then as i assume a fairly fiercely independent woman who's been raised on you know don't trust a man don't need a man right don't, then i imagine she would then say i'm then gonna i'm then gonna move from independence to dependence i'm gonna have to learn how to trust someone that that person i.e. You will be there and provide for kids and my security and all of that kind of stuff right.
[24:10] So, my guess is that she saw that fork in the road, consciously or unconsciously, explicitly or implicitly, she saw that fork in the road, and she decided against it. She decided to stick with the familiar. Moving from a situation of competence to incompetence is very tough for a lot of people. You have to have a lot of confidence to move from high-status, high-competence environment to low-status, low-competence environment. This is why a lot of people kind of get locked into a career or locked into a friend group or something like that, because trying to get to a different place is really, really challenging for people. So I would imagine it had something to do with that. You know, if you guys are talking about having kids and she's in her 30s and so on, then you're provoking a very big decision machinery in her mind, if that makes sense.
[25:25] Any thoughts about the recent historic all-female astronaut mission? You know, somebody can strap me to the back of a horse. It doesn't make me Genghis Khan.
[25:42] All right.
[25:51] All right. Oh, sorry. There's a conversation about this woman, but I'm not sure who's saying what.
[26:06] All right. Somebody says, I remember how Jerry Maguire started. He and his then girlfriend, very superficial, and she was clear that the relationship is based on physical and social standing. She was very cold and offered no loving support. She said, we agreed that we would always be brutally honest with each other. Tom Cruise. Actually, I think it was you who added the brutal part. It's been a long time since I've seen that movie, but I do remember it opened well. But. What's her name, Squinty McSquinty, the actress. It's a good actress, actually. But that movie was an absolute, complete and total simp slash cuck fest. Just a simp cuck fest.
[27:05] Um my neighbor has two rabbits so you've got a super cute uh kid with the kid with the spiky hair super cute kid who's her daughter who's i'm sorry who's her son and daughter who's her son, Renee Zellweger, thank you and Tom Cruise is a super good looking, super charismatic high flying, optimistic money machine, And he's thrilled to raise another man's child, and he's thrilled to get involved with a single mom. And, you know, she's just so fantastic at relationships that he's really the one at fault, right? You completely, right, he's really the one at fault. And the reason why show me the money works is basically that's what a lot of the single moms, you know, by virtue of necessity, kind of need to do. Show me the money, show me the money.
[28:04] So it was a brutal movie as far as that goes and i mean renee zellweger plays these kinds of characters right these uh mid single moms or mid women and it is of course the dream and you know everybody everybody has this i guess fantasy when you're younger you know that, if you're just sort of an average attractive person then but somehow just as an average attractive person, all of these amazing supermodels or, you know, for women, it's like these uber-jacked stud muffins just fall all over you and fight over you and all that kind of stuff.
[28:46] And that is a very, very tempting big fantasy for people. It's pushed in order to destabilize the family, right? To raise people's expectations about who they can actually marry is a fantastic way to destabilize the family, to end up with a lot of single moms, dependent on the state, and so on. You just raise people's expectations. I mean, if you can genuinely convince people that they deserve $3,000 an hour, no matter what, then they'll turn their nose up at regular jobs, regular employment, you know, 20 bucks an hour, 50 bucks an hour, whatever it's going to be. Because if you raise people's expectations, then anything that manifests below that, which is going to be just about everything, is viewed as deficient. And, of course, you can see this in the sort of famous studies off dating apps where like 80% of men are considered to be unattractive, whereas for the men, the bell curve is actually kind of simple, kind of even in terms of women's attractiveness. But for the women, everything is shoved over to the left of unattractive, and there are basically no attractive guys. And...
[30:05] So these movies were, and this was Bridget Jones's diary too, right? Bridget Jones's diary, I think the last one I saw, oh gosh, it was Hugh Grant and Colin Firth both dying and fighting and would do anything, move heaven and earth, to get together with Renee Zellweger. And, I mean, I thought the original movies were kind of funny, but it's a it's a really rough it's a really rough metric to keep pushing on people right, which is you know this is what you deserve right you do you deserve the world you deserve like what is it there's a i remember this from again a pretty bad movie that i don't remember very well that i saw many years ago called bull durham uh susan sarandon and kevin costner, and i like wet sloppy kisses the last three days stuff like that and if i remember the the line right, Susan Sarandon plays a wee bit of a harlot a wee bit of a harlot and there's something about, let me just see here I want to make sure I get this because it's been decades, since I saw it.
[31:34] Yes, here we go. Oh, quote. So Annie is fitting Millie in her wedding dress. Annie says, Do you think I deserve to wear white? Do you think I deserve to wear white? Because she's not a virgin, right? I assume, right? And I think...
[32:01] Um, I think the Susan Sarandon character says, honey, we all deserve to wear white. And I remember when I first saw that, it was one of these little, little goosebumps that I got, which is, you know, wow, there's a tiny smidge of philosophy in this here movie.
[32:23] We always, we all deserve to wear white. Um that's a kind of a bit of a female thing like everyone gets a trophy it doesn't matter if you're because the white white wedding was supposed to be either billy idols cocaine reference if that's what it was but it's supposed to be if you're a virgin you can wear white.
[32:50] So when she says we all deserve to wear white everyone gets a trophy nobody should be judged and that's how it goes. And so the Bridget Jones stuff, it's, you know, I mean, the Bridget Jones original, was, you know, well-written and funny and so on, but it's all about what gets pushed and why. What gets pushed and why. And nothing friendly to family really gets pushed outside of more specifically Christian media circles. It's really tragic. I mean, even though, even though in Bridget Jones' diary, the before is pretty clear. Sorry, I shouldn't say the before, but before she ends up, you know, getting her happy ending. You know, she's just home alone. I think she's got a cat. She's got wine. You know, it's just bad all around. It's just bad, sad, depressing. And she has, you know, the friends who, single women keep women single, right? The friends who talk her out of good relationships or anything like that.
[34:00] All right um oh about regarding this date the small window thing was more her talking about the fact that she really wants kids and acknowledging a woman's time is different yeah but the fact that you're talking about that on the first date is interesting right, Muscles looking meaty today, Stef. Well, I did have a workout before the show. Somebody says, hi, Stef. It's been a great experience moving around recently. Got away from a trash planet neighborhood. Now I'm surrounded by mountains and red dirt, et cetera, and don't know how to make a living here. Oh, was that something you thought of before you went to where you are? I'm not sure. I did see your comment on creativity. creativity, freedomain.com slash donate.
[34:53] I have not seen the movie Ninochka. Ninochka.
[35:03] We'd have to discuss and didn't get far enough to discuss, oh, the woman having the engineer, woman having kids. I feel like I bring a lot to the table with earning potential too. Yes, but a woman only views your earning potential as reliable as her trust of you. Right, I mean, so you having a high earning potential could be a bait and switch. In other words, you know, there's a lot of media out there too, sort of sleeping with the enemy stuff or the burning bed was some Farrah Forza movie. But where the guy seems perfect he seems absolutely wonderful this is um it ends with us too jason baldoni and blake lively look at that i apparently have woken up my celebrity naming matrix it's been dormant below these many moons but it is oh this guy's perfect he's good looking he's he's wealthy and then he turns into a you know controlling brutal vicious a-hole.
[36:09] I mean, it's funny because I remember reading a book, gosh, entirely inappropriate book for me to read. Oh, I think we had just moved to Canada, so I was like 11 or 12. And if anybody ever remembers the name of this, you could message me, a host at freedom main.com, H-O-S-T, host at freedom main.com. There was a book, and it was about a guy, a woman, she married this guy who turned out to be a real sociopath and cruel and mean and controlling. And that this is endless you know like the guy who seems great and then he just kind of chips away at your independence and all that right and you know like the the strawberries in the cane mutiny and in this book i think the only thing i really remember and i remember this because i lived on an apartment floor where there was a corridor and you'd go down to the end to dump your garbage into the trash chute. And I remember, I can't remember why he was doing this, but I remember that the character in the book, he took the garbage and walked all the way down the corridor, put the garbage in the chute and walked all the way back, and he was completely naked. And this was a kind of red flag, a warning flag about how crazy he was.
[37:30] All right. I wonder how much the divorce rate would go down if the West went back to arranged marriages. I don't think it would help at the moment. I'm not saying that it would be a good thing to do. Obviously, it would not be a moral thing to do. But the problem, of course, with arranged marriages is that you kind of need a culture that has maintained the skill set of arranging marriages. And the West has not done that. Right? The West has not done that. If you sort of arrange marriages, look at sort of maybe sort of India, Pakistan, there's an entire industry. And, you know, women are trained, and I guess men maybe, I think, is mostly female. But the women are trained on what is a compatible marriage and what works and all that kind of stuff. and, I mean who are you going to go to for an arranged marriage in the West, even if we were to accept which I don't, that this would be a moral thing or at least not immoral, which it would be but who would you go, are you going to go to the boomers for arranged marriages? Gen X millennials who, who has the skill to figure out compatibility and get people together in that context I would argue not many.
[38:58] Let's see here.
[39:08] Uh, somebody says, I'm fed up with filling out applications and getting told I need to jump through X hoops and nothing happens. Haven't applied to any work here because it's embarrassing. Yeah, isn't it? I mean, it's one of these lies where they say, well, you know, we need a lot of skilled immigrants and it's like, but there's like a hundred applications for every like one tech job sometimes. Right. Um, you know, I'll sort of tell you, it's a little story about myself. It was fairly, fairly influential for me at the time. So as you probably know, I co-founded and grew a software company back in the 90s. And it was environmental and health and safety software. And it did pretty well. Did pretty well.
[39:49] And I remember after I left that, for reasons that aren't particularly important right now, I remember after I left that, I spent about a year and a half writing novels. I wrote my novel, The God of Atheists. I wrote my novel, Almost, which you can freedomain.com slash books. You should check them out. They're great, great books, in my humble opinion. Anyway, so I ended up, while I took one of Canada's premier writing courses, I got a great writing tutor or teacher. I got an agent, and I got amazing reviews, particularly of The God of Atheists. It was amazingly well-reviewed by sample reviewers, and I kind of thought I was on my way. But I needed some income because I spent a bunch of money traveling for the books and all that stuff. Well, I didn't travel. I traveled later for just poor. Anyway, so...
[40:48] I remember going back on, gosh, what was it? Monster? Is that still running? I don't think so.
[41:02] Is it still running? It must be. Yes. Okay, so yeah. I think it was monster.com. Could have been something else. But I remember having, I put my resume together. And, you know, if I do say so myself, it was a pretty impressive resume. I mean, I was chief technical officer. I did a lot of sales. I did marketing. I wrote presentations. I did installations, you know, and I had dealt with, I won't really get into the names because it doesn't really matter, but almost every company or organization that I had worked with was well-known, like Fortune 500 stuff. and so on. And I had great relationships. I managed like 30 people. I had great relationships with customers. So obviously not some big old powerful business genius, but I thought it was a fairly impressive resume. I wrote RFPs, request for proposals, did sales presentations, helped negotiate, navigate, and close deals, and wrote the core software code for the entire our organization. And so it was, I thought, you know, I thought a pretty impressive resume.
[42:21] And yet, and yet, and yet, I don't know if you've had this experience, because I thought, you know, I started out as a maintenance programmer in COBOL and ended up as a chief technical officer dealing with Fortune 500 companies. I thought it's pretty good. Honestly, legit, I thought it's pretty good. And I thought that there would be headhunters. I thought there would be people who wanted to, you know, that there might be some bids. I might have my pick because I had really put my, at my time in and develop my skills. And it was all verifiable and all that kind of stuff. I had great references. And yet, and yet, there was almost nothing.
[43:09] It was wild to me. It was wild to me. I mean, I did end up getting work and it was fine. It was a good job. But I really had to go and pursue it and work contacts and all that kind of stuff. But just having all of that experience and skill and, you know, verifiable, measurable goodies. All right. Oh, so this is back to the date. The girl is 23 and I'm 24. Okay. So if she's 23 and she's an engineer, I'm not sure why you're having conversations about fertility windows. But again, I'm not a dating guy. So, I mean, if it's any consolation, it's not, you're not alone. I mean, everybody says, well, geez, you know, we're short all of these workers. We've got to import all these workers. But if you're short of workers, then the people who are already in the country should be getting massive amounts of demand for their skills and job, right?
[44:22] All right. All right. Let's see here. Yeah, Monster.com. Apparently, they're still running. Yeah. Knowledge is knowing tomatoes are fruit. Wisdom is knowing they don't go in fruits out. It's true. Somebody writes, recently you gave advice that it is best in a marriage for the children if both people are religious or non-religious. While I understand that it may be confusing for children to be presented with two different explanations of the world, I think that in many ways a combined logical and religious worldview could be synergistic. If the atheist partner is willing to be open-minded about going to church and allowing the children to choose faith, is atheism a deal-breaker?
[45:39] You know, it's really tough to write these kinds of prescriptions for relationships as a whole, so I would just say that, I mean, certainly there's a, you can bring a lot of reasoning into Christianity. You can bring a lot of reasoning into Christianity, and you can bring a lot of anti-rationality into atheism, right? Because atheists tend to be more on the left, right? So far more tyrannical than any theology could be. So you need more than just those two categories to determine the metaphysical and I would say in particular epistemological or the study of knowledge. You need a lot more than just those two categories to know how sensible the ideas are in that, if that makes sense.
[46:28] So sam altman has said that playing saying please and thank you to chat gpt is wasting millions of dollars in computing power i thought that was interesting obviously happy to take questions or comments i'm just gonna scoot over to a couple of my notes and please don't forget freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show south korea apparently says it will not fight President Trump's tariffs?
[47:08] All right, let's see what to do. I have 138 billion dollar Charles Schwab CEO confirms it will launch Bitcoin and crypto spot trading. They have 37 million customers. Massive. That's from the Bitcoin historian. This came out yesterday. Yeah, that's a big deal. It's a big deal. Rational Wiki wrote, years ago I read about this university professor, Christy Turner, who was the leading expert on a tribe in the American Southwest. And he discovered that the Anasazi tribe, which had been adopted by new-agey hippie leftists as a sort of symbol of spiritual nobility and peacefulness, had in fact been vicious warmongers who ate their enemies. When he published his research, he received death threats from the new-agey hippie leftists.
[48:08] And just in the past three years, several new lines of evidence have emerged of mass ritualistic child sacrifice in pre-Columbian peoples. But the myth of peaceful indigenous tribes and civilizations persists in American culture because this is what the media and schools reinforce. Right. That is very true.
[48:29] The professor conducted extensive research on cannibalism and violence, in the prehistoric American Southwest and their findings particularly concerning the Anasazi and their interactions with possibly Toltec invaders sparked significant controversy and debate. The Turners proposed that cannibalism in the region evident through the examination of remains found in kivas and other sites might have been a form of social control or terror used by an elite class within the Chaco civilization. The evidence for cannibalism include the discovery of human bones that showed signs of having been cooked and eaten, alongside tools or traces of human blood, and human myoglobin found in cuprolites, indicating human flesh had been consumed.
[49:13] It's around AD 1150. Turner's hypothesis further suggests that the practice of cannibalism might have begun with the rise of the Chaco civilization around AD 900, peaking at the time of its collapse around AD 1150, and was possibly influenced by the Toltecs, who were thought of the to have used such practices for control and to instill terror. I mean, there's a reason why Cortes and his conquistadors were able to take down an entire civilization, though while they outnumbered, it's because, I mean, in part it's technology, and of course in part of it it's because the local tribes just hated the brutality of the Aztecs in particular. So why do you think this noble savage myth is pushed?
[50:00] I have a theory why do you think let me up here why do you think that the noble savage myth is pushed so hard.
[50:24] My guess, oh, you watched Apocalypto recently. That's a Mel Gibson movie, right? That author is not correct about Toltex. Well, it's ChatGPT, so take it for what it's worth. So, because it's something to project ideals onto, perhaps? Hmm, yeah, but there's a real compulsion to push this stuff as a whole.
[50:49] I mean, I don't know for sure, but my guest, because I talked about this way back in the day, gosh, 2018 in Australia. So I talked about this. One of the things that's really important to demoralize a country is to, you make the people feel corrupt, immoral, or evil. You put them in an impossible situation, right? So you say, well, there were all of these wonderful, loving, peaceful, at one with nature and noble savages here, and y'all just came and blew them away with your evil industrial bang sticks, right? And so what happens then is you feel guilty. You feel bad. You feel like your civilization is like an ugly, satanic mill stain on the former Richard Scarry beautiful world of peaceful interactions and so on, right?
[51:48] And you're not going to give it up and go home, so you just stay and feel bad, right? I think by portraying the people that you displaced as noble savages, it gives you the original sin of success, right? If that makes sense. And so it's easy to demoralize, if that makes sense.
[52:08] It's easy to demoralize people as a whole.
[52:29] All right what do we got here, yeah i think to demoralize the west as a whole yeah for sure.
[52:51] So to make people feel guilty for experiencing higher living standards, yeah i think yeah the idea um So, of course, the noble-savage stuff is pretty common. You even have it in Christianity with the Garden of Eden. So the noble-savage stuff is pretty common, but it really became popular under Rousseau. Before, it was like the Hobbesian view, or Hobbes, there's this sort of competing views, is that the Hobbesian view, nature, red and tooth and claw, Like it's just nature, in a state of nature, life is nasty, brutish, violent, and short. And so we've sort of banded together for the protection of the state so that we can have some kind of more civilized life. And this is compared to the Rousseauian view, which is more that there was these noble savages and, you know, man is born free, but everywhere he's in chains.
[53:53] There was noble savages that were kind of captured by the evil capitalists and statists and so on and turned into dead slaves and all of that.
[54:14] Yeah, I would normally have done this if I was doing more current events thing. The Florida State University shooter's biological mom kidnapped him, fled to Norway amid bitter custody battle years before Deadly Rampage. And a bunch of court documents that there was an absolutely brutal divorce, kidnapping, international yoinking, and stuff like that. It became a bit too repetitive to keep doing those shows. Somebody says, there's a really good video essay series on the Conquistadors by DJ Peach Cobbler. I wasn't sure you were going to say that. It's equal parts hilarious entertainment and harrowing historical record. I appreciate that.
[55:05] Stef, honest question. Since you've opened yourself to religion, are you now at all curious about astrology or numerology, etc.? No. I'm of the... I'm like the mom, you know, her son texts her, what time was I born? And the mom's like, stay away from her. Because, ah, thank you for the subscription. I appreciate that. Donations, welcome at freedomain.com slash donate. No, the idea that our natures are determined by giant suns hundreds of light years away is not credible. And I've mentioned it before, of course, I'll just touch on it briefly here, but I do accept that, particularly in climates where there's a high degree of variability between summer and winter, like temperatures, that when you're born in the year could have some effect on your personality. So if you're born in the fall, in a cold climate, then what happens is your first experiences of the world are all indoors. Whereas if you're born in the spring, you'll be out a lot more.
[56:26] So i can certainly see that in again sort of high variability temperature cultures that when you're born in the year it's going to have a big big effect i'm still trying to lose 10 pounds i think i'm mostly done i haven't checked in a while but i think i'm mostly done so i think i'm I'm good, but thank you, if that was a concerned question.
[57:01] Yeah it'll be interesting to see i watched this uh compilation of doctors admitting that their medical training on vaccines consisted primarily of memorizing the vaccine schedule and regurgitating the safe and effective narrative without question, and boy that's gonna i won't keep hopping on it but it is really going to be something to see what happens hopefully before September, but I assume by September they'll have some kind of preliminary answers, about the cause of the immense rise in autism, particularly in America. All right.
[57:52] Let's see if you have any other last questions or comments. What do you think about the Alberta separation movement? Rebel News is pushing it very hard. I don't have any particular thoughts about it. Certainly the redistribution aspect of the equalization payments generally flows away from alberta it used to be it used to be alberta bc and ontario with the net contributors, and now not so much to put it mildly and i think is it just alberta who's left now or something like that but uh it's it's rough uh so i can understand that they want to keep more of their own money, but I don't think it's a particularly viable option.
[58:45] Nice to see you my friend the thing about mass tragedies is that most people overlook the impact of bad childhoods on these things we can sit there and say it's evil and that somebody made these decisions and these experiences don't excuse an evil decision like that my disappointment is that people don't see things like that and think oh my god i need to raise my kids better yes that's a that's a very good point that's a very good point i mean that's certainly where i go to first? Where I go to first is what kind of childhood? Now, I'm not a determinist, obviously. The fact that somebody has a bad childhood does not make them into a bad person, but it does seem like people who make bad decisions or evil decisions in this way, like this shooter, do in general seem to have these very bad childhoods. So, somebody says, could be born in March. Though in Manitoba, that can still be very cold. But I do appreciate being outdoors. The idea of being stuck in an office is kind of torture to me. Well, I mean, unless you're Swedish, is it the Swedes who just take their babies and just put them in a little ice thing? So, I think that you're not taken right out, right? So March, April, May, June, yeah, you'd be out, you know, you'd be out sitting in the backyard in sort of June with your, some sort of parasol over you so you don't get too, things don't get too bright.
[1:00:13] So you wouldn't be straight out into the cold in March, but I would imagine in the summer, right? You'd be out a lot more. You going there first is why your perspective is so valuable. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much.
[1:00:29] All right, let's see if we have any last comments, questions. Yeah, there is a, I don't know. It feels like we were having these conversations like 15 years ago, but there are these conversations going on at the moment about all the boys being, they're kind of being left behind and so on, and the girls are getting ahead and the girls are doing well and so on. But I mean.
[1:01:19] The female teachers mentor the girls, and they tend to dismiss the boys. They get annoyed by the boys. They often will recommend drugging the boys for boring schools. So the teachers generally, you know, eradicating male teachers from young boys' lives, particularly when there's so many fatherless children out there, eradicating teachers from young boys' lives is very essential to sort of demoralizing a country.
[1:01:52] And, I mean, they've done these studies where once you take off, once you take away the ability for the teachers to know whether it's a boy or a girl who submitted work, the boys tend to get marked up and the girls tend to get marked down. There's a real sexism in marking for a lot of teachers, female teachers in particular, because, you know, they, girl power, get ahead, you know, all that kind of stuff, so.
[1:02:28] The idea of the noble savage, says someone, is like a form of survivorship bias to ease the guilt of Westerners. I'm not sure it holds the same weight without ascribing to blank slate theory. I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure that I understand. Bill Mega writes, speaking of raising kids, my niece just got married to a mom, both in the church. Happy day for this proud uncle. Congratulations. Congratulations to everyone involved. Uh have you listened to the douglas murray versus dave smith debate if so what do you think and what do you think about credentialism, yeah so i did a show 59 17 i had to do with that Um Um Um Um Um Um.
[1:03:18] Um i mean i suppose i mean people can say well you have to have gone there right to to have you know you have to have gone to ukraine to have an opinion about the war whatever it is right, but i mean i'm not sure that people just get to go to ukraine aren't they part of a sort of junket where they're sort of led around and they're told things, it's not exactly objective, right? It's not like you're out there doing raw research with your own eyeballs. You're kind of in a protected environment where you're shown particular things. I think Douglas Murray did say that Ukraine was going to win the war. It hasn't happened. I think Douglas Murray felt that the overthrow of Gaddafi, which opened up a lot of mass migration to Europe, that that was a good thing. And was he, I think he was four, let me just check here. I think he was for it.
[1:04:40] I should just go straight to Grok. Actually, why do I waste my time? I will go straight to Grok. I am foolishly typing into a search engine. Oh, of madness. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Yes. Douglas Murray supported the Iraq war. In his 2006 book, Neoconservatism, Why We Need It, he argued in favor of the 2003 invasion. Okay. So, that's not ideal. That's not ideal. So, I mean, if you get pretty significant things kind of wrong, right, if you thought that Ukraine was going to win the war years ago, and it hasn't, that seems important. That seems a little bit more important than whether Dave Smith went to Ukraine or Israel or wherever, right?
[1:05:59] All right. I just look at predictive power. I just look at predictive power. How well have people's predictions held up over time? that seems important, and you know i mean people get things wrong of course right but, have they i mean it's pretty hard to call i did a whole show on this i was actually interviewed on television back in the day by happy martin about this uh iraq a decade of hell it's worth It's worth having a look at, fdrpodcast.com. You can just type in the search window, Iraq. Iraq, a decade of hell.
[1:06:56] And it's pretty hard to make a case that the Iraq war was a good idea. Pretty hard to make the case that the destruction of Libya was a good idea now that there are $400-a-head open-air slave markets in Libya. So I don't know if people circle back and say what they got wrong, Yeah, the show is 2371, Iraq, a decade of hell. It's rough, man. That research is rough. Somebody said, I thought you were already relatively skinny. I was surprised when you said you wanted to lose more weight. Yeah, it's not like I have, I mean, I don't have any particular gut or anything like that. But just for me, as I sort of age, I'd like to stay a little lighter because it's less pressure on the joints and less pressure on the heart and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah.
[1:08:10] It's wild to me how so many of the western powers i mean shouldn't be but it is it's wild to me how so many of the western powers uh just ended up throwing their entire weight in, in ukraine like they were just part of a war i mean they were supplying you know if you're supplying weapons, you're kind of part of the war, right? It's wild. Alright, let's see here.
[1:09:03] Let's see if you had any other last questions or comments. Hello, Astros. Somebody says, I just started trying to quit sugar again. Not that I consider myself particularly bad, but it doesn't take much to go overboard. How has your abstinence from sugar been going? Not too bad, not too bad. I'll still have an occasional weakness for, if my wife comes home with them, like some almonds in dark chocolate or whatever it is. So um and it's pretty good uh my daughter has convinced me and i think she's right right that that fruit is not fruit is there's sugar in fruit but it's fine for you and so i will if i get feel like the urge for something sweet i'll have a little bit of um plain yogurt some blueberries raspberries strawberries a little bit of granola maybe a drizzle of honey and that hits the spot I think it's pretty good. It's pretty good as a whole. Somebody says, I was going to travel to New Jersey this weekend, and I see an entire interstate highway is closed due to sinkholes, but there's money to send to Ukraine. Yeah, I mean, bitter, bitter laugh is bitter. Yeah, bitter laugh is bitter.
[1:10:22] Oh, you canceled it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, guys, I really appreciate your time today.
[1:10:28] Thank you so much for dropping by freedom.com slash donate to help out the show massively, deeply and humbly and gratefully, gratefully, gratefully appreciated. And I will talk to you guys soon. I've got some good shows coming out over the next little while. And maybe I'll do a little reading of how the new book is coming along. And I'd love to get your thoughts and feedback on that. And thank you for everybody who said that they enjoyed what I had already written. So lots of love from up here, my friend. Take care. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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