Stefan Molyneux opens the show with a discussion of taxation and wealth redistribution. He notes that the wealthy already shoulder a substantial share of the tax burden and contrasts this with the impulse to make others pay for the consequences of poor decisions.
He draws an analogy between the coercive redistribution of a man’s resources and the forced redistribution of a woman’s sexual value. Historically, he explains, men provided protection and resources while women’s value in the sexual marketplace was linked to youth and fertility. Forcing men to surrender their resources, he argues, registers to them as a form of enslavement, and he extends the same logic to welfare programs, taxation, and government spending in general.
The conversation turns to women, children, and social obligations. Stefan points out that women evolved to take an interest in other people’s children because communities once depended on mutual childcare. Men, by contrast, tend to experience compelled support for children who are not their own as a direct violation of their reproductive interests and lineage. He also addresses parental alienation, observing that men generally want their values passed on to their own children.
A caller asks whether this perspective is consistent with efforts to raise birth rates. The exchange that follows covers maternity leave, childcare arrangements, labor-market incentives, and the question of whether government should compensate women for the economic costs of having children. Stefan maintains that using the law to enforce redistribution is an act of violence and cannot be justified on practical grounds alone.
Later the discussion moves into history, touching on slavery, serfdom, property rights, and the Russian Revolution. Stefan and the caller consider whether social and economic progress rests more on moral principles or on practical results, and whether the abolition of slavery and serfdom contributed to later industrial development.
Toward the end a caller inquires about Stefan’s own experience with therapy and emotional growth. Stefan describes how therapy brought the end of several relationships and stirred up considerable inner conflict, yet it also moved him toward greater honesty and consistency. When the caller mentions his own difficulty approaching women, Stefan suggests that fear, self-hatred, dissociation, and passivity are what stand in the way, and that these issues cannot be resolved through introspection by itself.
0:00:00 - Welcome to Sunday Morning Live
0:11:16 - Male Value and Desire
0:22:46 - Taxes as Enslavement
0:39:52 - Women’s Empathy and Men’s Rage
0:46:24 - Birth Rates Debate
0:58:01 - Maternity Pay and Coercion
1:04:14 - Slavery, Morality, and History
1:14:14 - Property Rights and Productivity
1:19:08 - Moral Absolutes and Outcomes
1:20:33 - Revolution and Property Rights
1:25:00 - Soviet Plot Exposed
1:32:17 - Violence and Voluntary Aid
1:34:25 - Therapy and Lost Relationships
1:44:51 - The Chaos of Healing
1:49:29 - Troubleshooting Personal Growth
1:55:21 - Why He Avoids Women
2:02:34 - Fear, Delay, and Regret
2:17:12 - Action Over Introspection
2:22:24 - Truth Requires Others
[0:00:00] All right, all right, good morning everybody. Hope you're doing well, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain. Welcome to my long sleep.
[0:00:08] Deep voice, deep, deep throat, deep voice, deep wisdom. Jack Handy's deep thoughts coming your way. I am, of course, thrilled and happy, overjoyed, delirious, perhaps one could say, to take your calls, questions, issues, comments, challenges, problems. While we wait for that, I'm going to make a shocking case. Electrified luggage, that's right. Shocking case. And this might seem like hyperbole satire, like pouties. It might seem like all of that, but it's not. It's a very real thing that I want to talk about this morning it's going to shock the females for sure, okay, well we get that, that's alright they are strong, confident, independent modern women they will more than survive, this will be enlightening.
[0:01:21] I would not necessarily make this case to women unattended but it is an important case to make.
[0:01:29] So some Indian fellow in America wrote some essay. I'll perhaps look into it in more detail. But the essay was basically about, taxing the wealth of billionaires, taxing the wealthy. First, of course, we all know that the wealthy are massively taxed as it stands. The idea that the wealthy don't pay any taxes is not true. The top 1% pay, or the top, you know, few percentage points pay 30, 40, 50% of the taxes, depending on how you scale it. And the bottom half pay a few, if any, taxes at all. I mean, of course, I'm indirectly through rent, pays for property taxes and so on. But yes, it's just another one of these. Someone else can pay for your bad decisions. Someone else can pay for your laziness. Someone else can pay for your inattention. Someone else can pay for you preferring to garner useless skills like I'm good at memes and I play video games, rather than learning how to read, write, program, articulate, argue, debate, you name it. Math, math, it's good training for rationality.
[0:02:46] So here's the case. Let me make the case. And if you have pushback and, you know, it's funny. As I was talking about the other day the first person who thinks I'm crazy is always me. It's always me. I'm like so I have this idea of these ideas and I'm like, could this, could this be true? No that seems crazy. And so if it's any consolation doesn't like if I overcome that hurdle it doesn't mean I'm not crazy I'm just telling you that the first person that I think as crazy as me. So just wanted to mention that. So without further ado, here's the case.
[0:03:29] Redistributing the contents of a man's wallet is like redistributing access to a woman's sexual organs. Yeah, does that sound crazy? Oh, a little. Of course, I'll accept that. Sounds a little crazy, a little satirical. But let's step through the case and see if it can hold.
[0:03:51] What is the primary value that a man brings to the having and raising of children? Other than, of course, his sperm, the necessary ingredient. What value does the man bring? Through our evolution, necessarily talking about now with this crazy welfare state and father displacement, liquid masculinity dissolving fiat currency, I'm talking about from an evolutionary standpoint.
[0:04:21] What was the primary value that a man brought to the having and raising of children? Well, we know that. We know that. We know that because we're here. The primary value a man brings to the having and raising of children is access resources. Right? You've got a wife, you're in some medieval farm or Stone Age tribe and so on, and your wife, no birth control, your wife is pregnant, breastfeeding, or has babies and toddlers for most of her life up until a menopause, right? That's the deal. and she can do some stuff of course, but she can't do that much compared like she can't hunt right you can't hunt with babies at your breast because they cry scare away the game you can't hunt, while you're in the third trimester of pregnancy and it's probably kind of unwise to do it earlier, even menstruation could have an effect in the blood scent you've got toddlers, you can't be wandering around trying to sneak up on game with your toddlers clawing at your calf muscles saying, are we there yet? I gotta pee!
[0:05:41] Sorry my wife and I went into town yesterday so this uh these phrases are hauntingly familiar to her, As she reminds me, we have heated seats. It's probably unwise to do it in the car. So the females were mostly pregnant, breastfeeding, babies and toddlers, babies and toddlers, babies and toddlers, grandbabies and grandtoddlers, and so on. So it was the men who provided the vast majority of protection and provision, protection from wild animals, protection from other men, other tribes, or even other bad men within the community. I'm always reminded of this story from the Inuit, and I can't remember the name, but they had this name for a sociopath, right? It was the kind of man who fakes an injury so he doesn't have to go hunting and then turns around and tries to sleep with your wives, and and they would just, put him on an ice floe or take him out and have him have a hunting accident, but they would remove him from the tribe.
[0:06:49] Now, we know that for a married man, about 90% of his income, if he's married and has kids, goes to his wife and kids. That's why we have this exercise, strength, concentration, why men have 10% to 15% larger brain masses, which doesn't translate into 10% to 15% more intelligent, but larger brain masses. It's why men do spatial reasoning and women do colors better women have to do colors better because they need to know whether the meat is healthy or unhealthy they also need to know if a child has changed color and might be ill to segregate that child from the other children, and so on now it's like the infinite pastel of Duluth paint colors you can get in a hardware store.
[0:07:34] So men do all of this great stuff, protection and provision. A man who cannot protect or provide is not valuable to women. A man who cannot protect or provide is not valuable to women. Women have been shown these pictures of increasingly muscular arms, and they always choose the more or the most muscular. I mean, as the dangers have become existential, men have turned to exercise culture, to muscle culture, to gym culture. In the 70s is when the effects of the welfare state really hit. And it was in the 70s that men turned to massive exercise culture. Mac Tarr Murphy's biceps in the Blues Brothers struck me. That's quite impressive. and it's the Schwarzenegger pumping iron and Sylvester Stallone and and others that really became big over that, decade because men sensed danger with the welfare state and so when men sense danger they turn to exercise and exercise makes them more masculine increases testosterone makes them more desirable so, a man's fundamental sexual market value so sexual market value isn't like for hookups one night stands where you've got the morning after pill, you've got 18 different forms of birth control for women. you've got treatments for a wide variety of venereal diseases or sexually transmitted diseases and so on.
[0:09:14] Sexual market value is marriage market. Well, maybe we could say marriage market. Maybe that's a better way to put it. But, you know, a lot of people are shacking up without marriage these days. So it gets a little bit more complicated. But I'm just going to say sexual market value in terms of who women chose to have sex with throughout the course of our evolution. like what we're programmed for throughout the course of our evolution.
[0:09:41] Now, what is male attractive qualities a proxy for? What is it a proxy for? And again, we turn to Christian Grey in the most popular fiction book of all time, Fifty Shades of Grey, as a template. It's not obviously the absolute, but as a template. And in Fifty Shades of Grey, he's cold, aggressive, competent, hyper-violent because he beats up a guy and obviously twisted and tormented and tortured and so on and very muscular and and so on, jamie dornan what is he known as the body or something like that is very very fine physique very well-crafted physique good for him so, what are women choosing and what is male's attractiveness a proxy for, well of course handsome is a sign of good genes.
[0:10:34] Cute and funny, cute means, you know, handsome. Although handsome used to mean more masculine and cute now means more that he looks like some sort of semi-petty Japanese or Korean boy band, hairless wonder. Seems a little creepy, frankly. But Tol Dock and handsome, he's arrogant, he's got property, he's cold, he's haughty, he's superior, he dominates, you know, all of that sort of stuff. That gets women's juices flowing like the re-collapse of the Red Sea after Moses, and company passed through.
[0:11:17] So, competent, efficient, no glasses, because you need a guy with good eyesight so he can be a good hunter. Eyesight, of course, was absolutely key for the survival of the species, not just in terms of hunting, but farming as well. And so, you want a man who's strong, lean, robust. At a time when manual labor was low status, muscles were considered bad and being slender, like sort of Humphrey Bogart, armless. He was actually, and he was quite the upper bourgeoisie guy, by the way. He was not the working class guy at all, but that sort of very slender, you know, tall, slender, no muscles because it was lower class to have muscles because muscles meant that you were doing manual labor. Now muscles mean that you have time to go to the gym and can afford a gym membership and have the willpower to do it because muscles don't come to high-status men through their jobs because high-status men have jobs involving desks, phones, computers, and cabs, airplanes, private planes, or whatever. So now muscles have become high-status and also because women are sensing danger, and their right to do so. They have great instincts that way. Upcoming danger, incoming danger. I mean, evolutionarily speaking, when you see a bunch of foreigners in your environment and that spells danger, right?
[0:12:44] So, it is men's excess resources, and by excess, I mean more than a man needs just for himself. What men need just for themselves is very little.
[0:12:57] It was very little. We got a mattress on the floor. We got maybe a big screen TV, a gaming console, a computer, and what else? Maybe some window coverings. Ah, you know, it's just easy to wear an eye patch if you're sleeping. Who knows, right? Who knows? So excess resources is what we bring to the table. And all of the signs of male attractiveness are to do with the ability to have excess resources. And women, of course, want to choose a guy who's kind of psychoaggressive and dominant in the outside world and kind of nice and sweet and loving on the inside world. And I mean, it's a bit of a fantasy, right? It's a bit of a fantasy. I mean, it's not impossible. I mean, I guess you can have the Sidney Sweeney big boobs and relatively slender body or whatever it is. I mean, it happens. It's just very rare, right? Big boobs, big boobs means big ass as the, that's a pretty funny monologue that, I can't remember her name, the anti-Trump actress does in some old movie. Rosie O'Donnell.
[0:14:17] The woman wants the man who's very aggressive in the outside world, more affectionate on the inside within the family and has the ability to switch between these two on a dime, which is a little. I mean, it's like it's like the guy who wants the woman who's totally psycho in bed, but, you know, sweet sundressed trad in in public. And I'm not saying it's impossible but it's these kinds of tendencies for most of the population go to the opposite of that.
[0:14:51] A man who's really cold and aggressive and calculating and dominant out in the world is probably not going to be a cuddly pussycat at home and a woman who's, crazy psycho in bed is probably not going to be a apple-cheeked trad conservative woman out in the world it's not impossible but unlikely, so a man is going to go and get excess resources and therefore the man has to have empathy for his children but and his wife but but have hostility towards his competition and for the most part, I shouldn't say sorry it's a combination so out in a hunting party you have to have empathy for your wife and children to go and hunt and take on the danger of hunting you have to have a hunting party, but if you're the dominant, if you're the alpha you have to keep everyone who wants to be the alpha, if you're the best at being the alpha you have to keep everyone else in line and you have to reward them when they obey and punish them when they disobey.
[0:15:57] Example, the king gives you land if you obey, which is how my ancestors got the land in Ireland, and he has to kill or imprison or excommunicate not excommunicate, banish you if you disobey get a medal on the chest or a steady dose of leadicillin to the forehead in war so the man, has to coldly and aggressively and sometimes violently gather excess resources and bring them home to his wife and children. This is the Carmela Soprano thing where she doesn't particularly care to look into how Tony Soprano, the mobster boss, gets his money because she's comfortable. She's happy. Now, the more resources a man can provide, the higher quality woman he can get. The quality of your resources is usually directly proportional to the quality of women you can get. This goes back to that old song, beautifully sung by Sam Cooke, Your Daddy's Rich and Your Mama's Good-Looking. Your Daddy's Rich. The governor of the state marries the beauty pageant winner for the state. He can look like a Turkish turnip. She has to look like a Venus flower goddess.
[0:17:19] A man's excess resources are his sexual market value. Now, women, of course, when, if they had the choice, as some did, to choose who to lay with when they were younger and who to get married to, I mean, they would have to figure out the arc of the man's future trajectory, based upon their perception of his skills, his potential, right? I mean, a man has to guess a woman's potential fertility, and a woman has to guess a man's potential earnings. And so beauty markets for women have to do with fertility, good hip-to-waist ratio, even features lustrous hair, good facial flushing, and so on, right? So a woman's beauty is tied to signals of fertility and a man's attractiveness is tied to signals of his future ability to gather resources.
[0:18:18] Because usually you know if kids are pairing off at sort of 16 17 18 you couldn't necessarily tell how, in the long run how good a resource provider the boy man was going to be. Although I guess if you grew up in the neighborhood and he's already good at hunting, squirrels or rabbits or something like that, then, or he's got a family who are good at farming and he's been farming since he was like, you know, eight, seven or eight years old, you could have some decent sense of it. And this is why, you know, the defooing stuff is so radical for people because women were also marrying into a family because they needed the support of extended family to help raise all the kids and so on, right?
[0:19:00] But foundationally, the woman is saying, will he have enough resources to provide for me if I give him children? And her family was heavily involved in this decision as well, because, of course, as we know, if the woman laid with the man and gave him a bunch of kids, and he turned out to be a wastrel, a drunk, a womanizer, a lazy guy gambler, then there wasn't money for the kids, and then the woman would have to move back in with her parents and this would be very shameful and it would be obviously very negative so that would, be strongly disincentivized right so, a man's sexual market value are his excess or is his excess resources, the money that he has now is there a top to this like again biologically psychologically, evolutionarily, is there a top to this?
[0:20:00] Well, no. There's not a top to this. Because the king can pretty much have as many children as he wants. And Genghis Khan, I wrote this on X not too long ago, like nobody cares about all this genocide, imperialism stuff. Genghis Khan killed like 10% of the world's population, impregnated countless, women, his horde and so on violently. And he's on the Mongolian currency. There's statues of him everywhere. They love the guy. They even named an airport after him. Nobody cares. Nobody's nagging them. They just hate white people. I get it. So there's no top. Genghis Khan's genes say, whoa, whoa, Gengi, I think, I think we're good. I think we've topped up. Nope, he just kept doing it. He just kept doing it. There's no top. Evolutionarily speaking, a man doesn't have too many resources. Now, you can say, of course, ah, yes, but if the man gathers too many resources, then the other men have diminished reproductive opportunities, and therefore they'll fight to overthrow him and so on. Yeah, well, yeah, well, not really. I mean, of course it happens, but all you do is, if you've got a whole bunch of excess resources, you hire your army, your police force, your thugs, and they keep all the other men in line. You just enslave everyone.
[0:21:28] That's how it works. That's how it works. I mean, there are probably a few people, even in the modern world, who say, I don't really want to join the police force. The government seems kind of tyrannical, but not enough to make a difference.
[0:21:43] So that's the reality a man can't have too many resources and even if we say well you know he's an old guy you know he's probably not going to impregnate that many more women and so on okay but his resources then go to his offspring, and his offspring then have additional resources because if you have a lot of resources as a male then your sons are going to have access to a lot of resources which means they can choose higher quality women, and I'm not talking moral qualities I mean that's nice but in terms of just biology, And his sons can choose higher quality women and their sons. And so it kind of goes on, right? Until Meghan Markle. So a man's excess resources is his sexual market value. A woman's sexual market value is youth, beauty, fertility, and sexual organ. Organs? Let's say organ. I don't know. Do we count the fallopian tubes and the ovaries as two? Is a menage a mille cent quatre vent dix.
[0:22:46] So a woman's sexual market value is sexual access. A man's sexual market value is his excess resources. So when you take a man's resources and give them to women by force and give them to other men by force, that is the psychological, lizard brain, emotional evolutionary equivalent of forcing women to provide sexual access to others you say oh no no that's different, sex is much more personal of course I get that but but that's from a female perspective work is very personal to men, you know there's a fairly chilling tom cruise character in the film magnolia, where he's just yelling at someone what was it a friend of mine once characterized Tom Cruise as like rage against the breast. It seems a little fitting. I'm not sure exactly why, but, and Tom Cruise is just yelling at, I won't yell here because, you know, it's morning, but Tom Cruise is just kind of yelling at some guy, just do your job, you know, just do your job. And that's a really powerful moment, right? Do your job, do your job.
[0:24:01] Man's resources like it's personal for us. It's personal. A woman would rightly hate to be enslaved for access to her sexual market value. A man, as men, we hate being enslaved for access to our sexual market value. Do you see? You are taking that which is most valuable to us from an evolutionary standpoint. In other words, men who didn't care to hang on to their excess value faced massively reduced opportunities to reproduce. Imagine a woman, she was on the fence about a guy, and he says hey babe you'll never believe what happened today it's the wildest thing, I won 10 million dollars in the lottery I like I just I just found the ticket like on the ground I found the ticket on the ground go into the store hand it to the guy just as a joke I figure maybe I'll get a, couple of bucks buy a monster drink and the guy's like you just won $10 million dollars. It's crazy.
[0:25:21] Now, that's going to raise her interest to some degree, right? It may tip on the fence, right? She's like, oh, wow, $10 million. We can have a nice house. We can have vacations. We can, what is it, Sam? No, Kevin Samuels used to sort of say to women, would you like to travel for vacations nationally and internationally with your family? Just dangling all of this crazy stuff. And she's like, well, I mean, we're like, Our bloodline is set for generations. You've got $10 million. Man. We'll get three quarters of a million dollars, just living off interest. I just checked that math in my head. Yeah, 7.5% interest, $10 million. You got three quarters of a million dollars. You're just living off the interest.
[0:26:09] So that's going to tip her towards him, right? Now then he says, and you might not even believe this next part. The story just gets crazy, right? You might not even believe this next part. The next part is, I gave it all away. Like, you know how my mom died of ALS, so I just gave the entire $10 million to the ALS Foundation. Now, imagine the rollercoaster of like, I'm on the fence about this guy. Oh, he's got $10 million. Oh, it's gone. Because he didn't care about retaining his value. And we might say, oh, that's a really nice guy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But that's just men encouraging other men to give away their resources so that they're, you know. I mean, if there was two guys in competition for this woman's hand and one guy won $10 million, The other guy is going to say, oh, you should totally give it away because you love your mom and she died of ALS. You should give it to the ALS charity. And then he gives it away and then he's got a chance with the girl because he doesn't have much of a chance with the girl if his competitor just won $10 million. And part of the tax the wealthy stuff is men who can't compete wanting to sabotage other men. The intrasexual competition metrics, right? Mechanisms. Sort of very real phenomena.
[0:27:17] So to slave for another man's offspring is beyond horrendous to men. We revolt against it if it is imposed upon us as it is. It is a brutal humiliation ritual. To be enslaved, to pay for another man's children is horrendous for men. It is, in many ways, the psychological equivalent of grape, except we don't fantasize about it, as some women do. Of course, it's just a fantasy. Don't take it seriously. For a man to have his excess resources, which are designed and exist for his own bloodline, to have them ripped away from him by force and given to another man's children, is revolting and repulsive in a way I think is very tough for women to truly understand. Which is why I think what I'm saying is quite shocking to a lot of people maybe not to men I think men get it but it's really important right because women are supposed to be the empathetic sex, right?
[0:28:43] Women are supposed to be the empathetic sex. So I'm telling you ladies when men read about something like the department of government efficiency. Right, so there's this whole thing about you know Elon Musk exposed government fraud and waste for spending and he's cut back and now there's no rap on the billboards and south american countries are turning right and children are dying all over the world.
[0:29:10] Now from a female perspective I understand this oh, dear oh no children are dying we care about children and that's bad right because, women care about the children of, strangers or at least unrelated children dying women care about unrelated children dying because women have to create a communal safety net to catch the endless, death magnet impulses of children and keep them alive, right? So I watch your kids, you watch my kids, and it's not always within the bloodline, you know, within the village with like your neighbors, whatever it is. Like I'll watch your kids, you watch my kids, and we have to watch each other's kids. So you can't just care about your own kids because if you only care about your own kids and don't watch anybody else's kids, then nobody else is going to watch your kids and your kids have a lower chance of survival. So caring about other children, it's the same as caring about your children just to a slightly less degree, right? Because you need that cross-lattice propping up of children's dangerous habits, especially boys, right? And one of the reasons why we have evolved as a species that is pretty good at assessing risk when given the opportunity to do so is because, we were protected by this interwoven lattice work of female snatching back from danger habits.
[0:30:31] So for women, I understand it. Oh, these children are dying because of government cuts, and it could be children in Africa or wherever, right? But women are like, oh, that's bad. And again, I'm not mocking that it's a very real phenomenon because we didn't evolve knowing about children in Africa if we were in Europe or Canada or whatever, right?
[0:30:53] So children are dying in my environment or children are dying within my scope of knowledge is terrible for women because, if other people's children are dying because of inattention on the part of a woman, then her children are threatened. So she has to feel negative about the children of strangers dying because, again, she evolved with this cross-referential framework of protecting children. So you have to care about the children of people unrelated to you and you have to care about more. Let's just say you have to care about more than your own children if you want your own children to be protected because you need to protect other people's children. They need to protect your children because you're going to be in labor. You're going to be disabled. You're going to be whatever, right? So I get that. I get that for women.
[0:31:41] For men, though, it's a different story. For men, it's a different story. For men, if their resources are stripped from them and used to feed, clothe, and shelter the children of strangers, that's enslavement. That's repulsive. I can't express to women, the revulsion that happens in the heart of men when they have their resources stripped and taken from them and given to other bloodlines. I'll give you another example, the sort of famous one of the Turkish boy who drowned on the beach.
[0:32:28] And of course, the women are, and again, we understand this, right? Because this is how we evolved. If you evolved as a woman, if you evolved, as you did, right? In a relatively tight-knit, small community, maybe a couple hundred people max. If you saw a drowned child on a beach, you would be horrified. Because women are supposed to watch each other's children. So as a woman, your entire female evolutionary apparatus bursts into endless shards of volcanic horror, if you see a child drowned on a beach because it's partly your fault. It's partly your responsibility. Everybody has to watch everybody else's children, which is why women are sort of famously cautious and frightened. And, you know, this old joke that I was told as a kid, you know, one mom saying to the kid on the beach, if you if you climb those rocks and you break your legs, don't come running to me!
[0:33:26] So for a woman to see a drowned child on a beach, it horrifies her. Or, of course, to put it another way, as we usually do, women who didn't care about children expiring in the environment, well, their own children weren't protected because there was no reciprocal care and those children had a much lower chance of survival. Women, again, women generally were the matchmakers. So if you don't care about other people's kids, you get ostracized from the community, your kids don't survive. So the only women who survived in the long run, and just for shorthand, right, Just because we're all intelligent people here, when I say no chance of survival, I'm not talking about maybe a couple of generations or one or two generations. When I say no chance of survival, I mean in the long run. So you might stagger on for another generation or two, but it's not going to last in the long run. So the only genes that survive are the genes that are horrified if a child is wounded, injured, or dies in the environment, even if it's not your kid.
[0:34:24] For me, though, it's a different story. For men, it's a different story. Now, men do care if a child dies in the environment, for sure, but men will not give up their resources to save the children of strangers. Now, women want to. It's a hack, right? This is why the Garden of Eden story, the temptation and the empathy and so on, and the ambition of women, right? So, if men see a child who's dead who they have reason to believe would likely become a future liability on their own resources they're like, well, that's a shame.
[0:35:02] Existential horror that the women experience bursting into tears on TV, and we've got to help these people, right? And women have this lovely excessive empathy because men used to largely control the resources and could say no. You know, men say yes to women a lot of times because we love women, but we have to say no to women when excessive empathy, that's a Gadsad's, what is it, suicidal empathy, pathological altruism, right? So women can have like no ceiling on their empathy because the ceiling used to be men saying no to these excessive resources, right? So the old story I've talked about a million times before, you know, it's winter and your neighbors come banging on your door because they've got no food and the women want to take them all in. But the men who control the resources say, no, we can't, sorry. And it's painful for the men, but the men who just gave away all their resources, didn't survive. Those genes didn't survive. And the women who weren't excessively empathetic, those genes didn't survive. Men can have high sex drives because women used to say no a whole lot more because of the risk of pregnancy so men develop these crazy high sex drives because of that now we have the crazy high sex drives and women's willingness or ability or desire to say no not ability, willingness, and desire to say no has largely diminished so it's all playing out like some Freddie Mercury fecal matter gay brothel in the 80s.
[0:36:25] When men see this rampant fraud in Minnesota, these learing centers, right? L-E-R-A-I-N-G. They're supposed to be learning centers and so on. And they see all of this fraud getting uncovered and they see all of these people roaming around with their very expensive cars and their big houses and, you know, eight children. Men view that as a catastrophic violation of their capacity to survive. Existential threat. I know this term is kind of overused, but existential threat to the genes. Existential threat to the genes. If a man is enslaved to pay for another man's children, which is the welfare state and is a lot of fraud and so on, right? It has a lot to do with socialized medicine. Socialized medicine, like women and children, use the medical care system a whole lot more than men do. A whole lot more than men do. So socialized medicine, when there is government-funded taxed education, quote education and indoctrination, right? Then men are being taxed to pay for strangers to program the man's children to hate him. I mean, especially white males, right? Existential threat to genetic continuity. If that's how it's experienced, that's how we evolved.
[0:37:54] And rightly so, right? They say in divorce, right? It's really bad if the mom turns the kids against the husband or the husband turns the kids against the mom. I think that the former scenario is a little bit more likely. But it's really terrible. Parental alienation, right? Oh, your daddy's just a trash bag of impulses and drunkenness and lechery. And he broke up the family. He destroyed everything. He's greedy. Right? So that alienation is terrible. Because the alienation, we men wish to take our mindset and imprint it upon our children. That's how we evolved. That's how culture is transmitted. In general, historically, evolutionarily speaking, men created culture, women transmitted it. That's the way it worked. And none of this is prescriptive. It's only descriptive. It's not how it should work. It's just how it did work. It's just how it did work so if a man's resources are taken from him by force and given to people who train his children to hate him, that is repulsive to men in a way that is hard for women to understand.
[0:39:21] I guess I could say is that, you know, if a woman, ah, no, it's not. It's, you know, that I was going to say, well, I'll tell you sort of my, my thought process is here. We can bounce around a little bit pinball style, but I was going to say, well, but the way to explain it to women is to say, well, you know, you divorce a guy and he pours all his resources into training the children to hate you.
[0:39:45] But it's not the same. Because she chose that guy. She chose to marry, have kids, whatever, right? So it's not the same.
[0:39:53] So when a man's resources are taken from him and given to other men's children, we revolt against that from the very base of our spinal fluid to the very tips of our fingers. And I don't know that women get that. I don't know that women understand that. I mean, if a woman's reproductive abilities were coercively redistributed, to put it as in an abstract a way as possible, because it's an ugly subject, I get all of that. But if a woman's reproductive capacities were coercively redistributed in the Genghis Khan way, that would be repulsive and appalling and wrong and abhorrent. Absolutely. Absolutely.
[0:40:43] And we empathize with that for women. We do, as men. Do women empathize with men about the coercive redistribution of our reproductive value? For men to be conquered is for the bloodline to end.
[0:41:08] For women to be conquered or for a male-female society to be conquered, the men are generally killed or, I mean, some would be castrated, Some would be put into the army and not allowed to reproduce and so on, taken as slaves, not allowed to reproduce. So for a society to be conquered, the men, their bloodlines end. For the women, their bloodlines generally, again for the young women, will generally continue.
[0:41:37] Men have evolved with a stronger sense of honor and sacrifice for evolutionary reasons. That if your land is being invaded, if the orcs are coming, right, then as a man, it's incumbent upon you to fight to the death because if you lose, you die anyway. So you might as well go out in a blaze of glory, have honor, have standards higher than your own life because your own life is going to end or your genes are going to end or whatever, right? But for women, you know, and this is a sad fact of history, that for women, they have to be able to respond to the aggression in a way that allows their genes to survive, which means often mate with the conquerors. Again, we're not talking about what should be, we're just talking about what is. That the women who fought to the death, however noble we might say that, is for the women who fought to the death, their genes did not survive. For the women who found some way to reproduce with the invaders, well, their genes survived.
[0:42:44] Ugly facts of history, but this is how our emotions are wired. So when I say that redistributing, a man's excess resources is the emotional, not the moral, is the emotional equivalent, of redistributing coercively a woman's reproductive value, women have a very, very tough time wrapping their head around this. Is it a line from Emma or one of Jane Austen's novels where oh no, is it Little Women? Is it Little Women? Memories Alcott where the man says what are these women doing over there? And the other man says the depths of female mysteries are not for the man's mind to plumb or something like that something like that, and maybe there's things that you know, I've referred to women as delightfully incomprehensible which is true, but maybe there are certain mysteries we're not supposed to plumb, but I think in this case it's an important one for women to understand. When you talk about redistributing income, what you're talking about is turning men into slaves. And you are talking about the equivalent of redistributing female reproduction.
[0:43:59] And it's even worse in a way from a genetic standpoint, not from a moral standpoint, from a genetic standpoint, because a woman's reproductive abilities, at least half her genes get reproduced. If you strip a man of his excess resources and give it to a stranger's children, none of his genes reproduce in that manner. So genetically, it's even worse. Morally, it's not as bad, but genetically, it's even worse. Our work is very personal to us. We work hard for our family, our children, to a lesser degree, our extended family, or to an even lesser degree our community and not to strangers. If a man's resources are stripped from him and given to strangers, you're just enslaved. That invokes the same despair, rage, helplessness, frustration, existential horror as being enslaved. And of course it is a form of slavery. If a man is taxed at 50%, then he only gets to keep half his resources for his own family and half of his resources go to other people's families.
[0:45:11] Now, you could say, directly through the welfare state, through socialized medicine, even to old age pensions to a large degree, because women outlive men, to government, quote, education, but also, you know, 10, 15% of people work for the government. So their man's taxed, and his money goes to the paycheck of other people and their families and their children. This is horrendous for men. This is horrendous for men. And I get that, you know, there was this coin gathering little toy when I was a kid. You put the coin, it was a coffin, and you put a coin on the little pad and, the bony claw, the bony hand comes out and grabs the coin and drags it into the coffin. And I get that women who've messed up and had children with the wrong guy, I get that they just need resources, need resources, need resources. Well, they should go to their family to get those resources. They shouldn't come to strange men. And I think until women understand that stripping excess resources from men is the same as coercively redistributing female reproductive value, they just won't understand men and they won't understand what's coming.
[0:46:24] All right. We've got a question, caller, issue, challenge, confrontation. Aleksikov, you are on the air. Are you with me, brother? Do you disagree?
[0:46:36] Hello?
[0:46:37] Yes, go ahead.
[0:46:39] Yeah, I just wanted to ask in general, how is the message you're preaching? I mean, it's a very pro-male message, but how is that supposed to go hand in hand with improving birth rates if at the same time you're doing everything you can more or less to ensure women have a harder time taking the risk of having babies with, for example, someone that may end up divorcing or leaving and having to meet someone else to help them raise those kids.
[0:47:14] If you could just tell me a little bit more about what you mean. I'm not quite sure I follow. So if you could just, yeah, just be patient with me, explain a little bit more, make sure I fully understand.
[0:47:23] Yeah. So your message is definitely pro-male. I'm just saying, don't you think that in the end, like let's say what you're saying was implemented. No man had to raise kids that weren't his and so on. Don't you think that would condemn the low birth rates to becoming even more reduced?
[0:47:47] Well, there's a lot in what you said, and I really appreciate you bringing up that question. But let me ask you a question first. I'm sorry to be rude and answer a question with a question. But you said, what I said is pro-male. I try not to be pro-male, pro-female. I try to be pro-truth. Do you think, and I'm not asking for the final answer because, of course, maybe you just heard this for the first time. Do you think that what I'm saying is true?
[0:48:17] I think that many males see things the way you see them. I don't. I also think that most people would think your message is pro-male.
[0:48:27] Well, we can't mind-read people who aren't here. So when I say, is something true, I'm asking, is there reason and evidence that support the contention that the coercive redistribution of male resources has an analogy to the coercive redistribution of female value, reproductive value, sexual market value. So when I ask, is it true? My question isn't, is it pro-male? My question isn't, do people see it that way? Right, if I say two and two make four, it wouldn't make much sense to say, well, some people see it that way, but I don't. So that's my question, is, Is it true? Now, I get if you've heard the argument for the first time, you may not be in a position to say, oh, yes, I 100% agree with it.
[0:49:14] But is there decent reasoning and evidence behind the proposition that redistributing men's excess resources is analogous to redistributing women's sexual market value?
[0:49:29] I think it used to be true for a very long time. Not so much in a world where women increasingly have as much access to the labour market, dominate certain sectors in some countries. For example, you find more female doctors and lawyers. And, you know, it's also an era where childbearing and childrearing are something that is increasingly taken up, not by the mom themselves, but, you know, by hired labor or, you know, by a lab as well. So I agree it was like that for most of, you know, recorded human history. But I think you would concede that the lines have gotten blurred a lot in modern times.
[0:50:17] Sure, I mean there's no question that women are paying taxes, female doctors are paying a lot in taxes and so on. But there is also a coercive redistribution of jobs from men to women. So in America over the past, I think since COVID or something like that, 90% of the new jobs that are created are going to women. Do you think that is a result of the free market or government interference?
[0:50:43] It's a result of government interference, but I'll just show you, you know, a counter example. So, so you can see it goes both ways and each time a couple decide to have a baby, which I like to think of as a joint decision, the dad is more likely to be rewarded for that decision in the workplace, while the mom is more likely to be punished in terms of her prospects of getting promotion and so on. I think we can also agree on that.
[0:51:12] Sure. Okay. And again, we're just talking about the raw economic calculations. Why do you think that men tend to be more rewarded when there's a baby in a marriage and women tend to be less rewarded, economically speaking?
[0:51:29] I think that for men, it certainly signifies someone that can handle responsibility. I think that plays a role. And for women, meanwhile, it signals that they're more likely to not be able to make every work day because they take a sick day because the kid has to be taken care of, those types of things. They can do overtime and so on.
[0:51:55] Okay. And do you have kids yourself?
[0:51:58] Not yet. Looking to have some next couple of years.
[0:52:02] All right. So I'm going to pull annoying being a stay-at-home parent for close to 18 years now. So forgive me if this sounds a little pompous. I'm trying not to make it that way. So when a woman has a baby, you know that the recommended length of breastfeeding is 18 months, right?
[0:52:27] Yes, ideally.
[0:52:28] Okay. And so a woman – and breastfeeding isn't just taking mother's milk and putting it into the baby's belly. Breastfeeding is eye contact, caressing, skin-on-skin contact, all the stuff that builds healthy emotional connection, empathy, and so on. Because you want to look at the baby when the baby smiles, you smile, it gives you that foundational connection to other human beings that is the foundation of a high-trust, civilized society, and so on.
[0:52:56] So, men can't breastefeed. Women need to breastfeed for 18 months. And then most people want to have children within a couple of years of each other. Because if you have children with too wide an age distribution, what tends to happen, of course, is that those children end up consuming a lot more parental resources because they can't play with each other. So if you have kids, say, two years apart, they can spend a lot of their childhood playing with each other, which frees up the parents for other activities. If you have children, you know, seven years, eight years apart, well, you know, a 12-year-old doesn't really want to play with a four-year-old that much. I mean, there'll be some affection and so on, but so most people want to have kids relatively close in age. And so if you have a woman, she gets pregnant, then she probably can't work for the last month or two of her pregnancy, at least very well. And then she has a baby and then she should be breastfeeding. If she's not breastfeeding, then she's leaky, she's pumping in the corporate toilet or whatever she's doing, and it's emotionally very difficult for her to leave her baby, she's going to be kind of distracted, there's mommy brain, there's a bunch of things that, there's no criticism of women, it's just the way that biology is.
[0:54:13] And then for most managers, and again, we sort of understand these sorts of things, there's an instinct that says, okay, so she's had a baby, so if she has a baby, then there's going to be a problem, of course, if the baby is ill. You're right. You get the sick days multiplied with the baby's sick days, which are quite considerable. Children get ill quite a bit because, of course, their immune systems are just getting used to every germ and microbe and bacteria and virus known to man and so on. And that's how they develop their immune systems and all of that. So there's nothing particularly wrong with that. It's just the way things are. And also, the baby is going to be – I mean, maybe it's being taken care of by the grandparents or something. But the baby is going to be maybe in a daycare, which means that the child has to leave – sorry, that the employee has to leave at a certain time. They can't work late. And if you need the worker to travel to meet with a customer or make a sales call or something like that, they can't because they've got a baby. And so they can't do that. So it's not just because people are mean that a woman's economic value tends to go down when she gets pregnant. It's just simple, basic, biological, and factual and economic logistics, whereas, of course, a man who has a baby tends to get a lot more serious about his life.
[0:55:39] There have been a number of economic studies that show that a man's economic productivity, not what he's paid, but his actual output, his economic productivity increases significantly in his life. Number one, when he gets married, and number two, when he has his first child. Men tend to double down on productivity. They tend to not waste time. They tend to be much more concentrated and focused and productive. So a man's economic value tends to go up when he has a child. And just from a raw productivity standpoint, a woman's economic value tends to go down when she has a child. And it will continue to be down for, I mean, from economic terms forever. Because, you know, managers don't have usually 20-year plans or 10-year plans. They have like one, three, five-year plans, right? So if a woman has a kid and she breastfeeds for 18 months and then she starts trying to have another kid, she might have another kid in three to six months and then she's pregnant and then she's breastfeeding again. So that, you know, takes you to five years plus pretty quickly and pretty easily, which is not to say that women can't be economically productive when they are big with child or breastfeeding or things like that. Sure, they can. The question is, as much as a man who is free of all of those constraints, I think the answer is no.
[0:57:02] Yes. I mean, we're more or less in agreement when it comes to that, that men are in a position to become more productive or at least match the productivity they had before the baby. With women, it suffers way more. But just from a societal perspective, I think we can both agree that children are necessary. And so the question is, do you treat children from a societal perspective as a cost center, something that just brings in costs, which would then inevitably mean punishing women that have children financially? Or should we see it more as a revenue center, I suppose, that children, in fact, bring benefits like continuity, improvement to society. And so women should be rewarded for that sacrifice. I guess that's where I'm getting to.
[0:58:02] How do you propose rewarding women for having children?
[0:58:07] Well, some of those inevitable consequences, as you said, the fact that one cannot turn up to every meeting or do overtime or that one is passed over for a promotion, because obviously managers will want to promote the employee that's more available, that these things, these sorts of things can be, you know, the financial loss from these sorts of things can be lightened by, for example, offering more pay for maternal leave, as an example.
[0:58:45] Okay, and sorry, sorry to interrupt. So offering more pay for maternal leave. If companies want to do that, that's totally fine. I mean, it's a free market. It's a voluntary situation. If a company wants to pay a woman $100,000 for her maternity leave – I mean, I think you and I can agree that people can do whatever they want with their own resources. Is that what you mean? Or are you talking about a government program?
[0:59:13] I'm talking about a government program because I think no company, I mean, in general, we assume companies want to make money and spend as little money as possible. So very rarely will a company voluntarily give away money. But that's from a government perspective, a societal perspective. And I guess this is where we disagree that I think it's very important that there is in fact a redistribution of that income from men to women at least as far as the baby rearing and maternal process is concerned.
[0:59:49] Okay now if you were to propose this as a government policy and I were to say you should be thrown in jail for what you say would you think that would be just or unjust?
[1:00:01] Well, thrown in jail for the suggestion? Well, yeah, I would think that that's pretty unjust.
[1:00:07] Okay, so it's absolutely wrong for me to want you thrown in jail if you disagree with me, right?
[1:00:15] Yes.
[1:00:17] So why don't you extend the same courtesy to me? I disagree with you that the government should use force to redistribute income from men to women, but you want me thrown in jail for disagreeing with you because you want it to be a government program. And what that means, my friend, is that if I disagree with you, then I get thrown in jail. So why would you be shocked and horrified if I said you should be thrown in jail for disagreeing with me, but then you want me thrown in jail for disagreeing with you.
[1:00:46] You think- hey, if you think those resources should go to women, start a company, make it happen. Or make a bunch of money and give it to a bunch of women. Totally free. Totally fine. There's no violation of the non-aggression principle in that. You want to make it a government program, well, the guns come out, and if I disagree with you, if you get your way and it becomes a government program, if I disagree with you and act upon that disagreement, I get my ass thrown in jail.
[1:01:13] I don't think it has to be that way. I think, you know, you would still be able to protest against it. I mean, you are protesting against it right now, I suppose.
[1:01:23] Yeah, but protesting doesn't matter. What matters is the resources taken by force, and they are. So you want to use force against me. I disagree with you. I think that families should fund themselves and charities should fund families and all of that. I understand that there's bad things that happen to people and so they need help and I'm happy to give to charity and I do but you And I'm not going to skip past that, like that's not a real thing. When you say government program, you're talking about the initiation of force. People who don't want to pay for this government program you suggest, if they act upon that, well, they get thrown in jail. If they don't pay their taxes to support your government program or they don't obey it in some way, right?
[1:02:11] Do you at least agree that for a society to function, there does in fact have to be some forced redistribution? And yes, if necessary, if people don't comply, some punishment. Would you at least agree on that?
[1:02:27] God, no. No, violence is always wrong. Now, self-defense is a different matter. That's really reducing violence. But no, the initiation of violence, the initiation of force is wrong. You're asking, is some theft okay? Is some murder okay? Is some rape okay? Is some assault okay? Nope. It's a principle. It's a universal moral principle. Thou shalt not initiate the use of force. So no, I don't agree at all that for society to function, some people have to be given a monopoly on the initiation of force. I don't agree with that at all.
[1:03:04] I mean, you know, from a from a theoretical perspective, like I totally get where you're coming from, but just practically speaking, can you even imagine a state that has no implied threat of violence, first of all, and some forced redistribution of some sort, be it taxes, be it paying for the army, paying for protection?
[1:03:25] Sorry, what do you mean, can I imagine? I'm not sure what you mean.
[1:03:28] I mean, I'm just saying the sort of existence I'm assuming you envision or you would find ideal where, you know, you're not forced to do anything. I just don't know if such a state would be possible. Ultimately, somebody will take the law into their own hands, quote unquote.
[1:03:48] So are you asking me how a stateless society functions?
[1:03:52] No, no, no.
[1:03:53] I think you are. No, I think you are. I think you are. I think you're asking me, how does a society function in the absence of a coercive political state?
[1:04:03] Yes.
[1:04:04] It's a fine and a fair question, and I appreciate that. And, well, the answer is it doesn't matter because the initiation of the use of force is wrong.
[1:04:15] So I'm sure that you are against slavery, right?
[1:04:20] Yes.
[1:04:21] Right. Well, to some degree, because you still want to enslave people's income. But when the people were advocating to end slavery, right, the Quakers and the Christians in the 18th, 19th centuries led a whole big crusade to end slavery, which the British public was paying for up until about 2015. Is still paying off the debts of freeing the slaves. Now, when people said slavery is an abomination against God and an immoral evil that needs to be eradicated from the face of the earth and we need to free the slaves, was it required for them to show how society functions in the absence of slavery?
[1:05:02] No, not that I know of such a thing happening.
[1:05:07] Well, would you say to somebody who said slavery is an evil abomination that needs to be ended, would you say, well, but all societies have had slaves, and can you even imagine a society without slavery? And we need some slavery. Like, would that be your response? Or would you say – well, no. Would that be your response?
[1:05:26] I mean, would you say every society had slavery back in the day?
[1:05:28] I mean, almost all societies that we know of had slaves of one kind or another.
[1:05:34] Well, one could argue they still do.
[1:05:36] Okay, but I understand that. But in terms of like formal buying and selling human beings on the auction block, that is vastly diminished. Almost all societies had it. There are still, what, 15 million slaves left in the world, and there's still open-air slave markets in Libya and so on. You can buy some dude for like 400 bucks. But it's vastly diminished from in the past when, I mean, of course, as you know, the Ottomans ran on slavery. Ancient Greek and Roman societies ran on slavery. and, of course, the indigenous population of North America and Central and South America regularly took their conquered victims as slaves and so on. So, yeah, society ran to a large degree on slavery almost everywhere throughout almost all the human history. And then people said, well, slavery is wrong. And then because they ended slavery, we got the Industrial Revolution, we got modern capitalism and so on because labor-saving devices only make sense when you haven't paid for slaves, right? Because you don't want to diminish the value of slaves by investing in labor-saving devices. So was it incumbent upon the people who said we should end slavery because it's immoral to explain every facet of how society functions without slavery, or does it only really matter that slavery is immoral?
[1:06:59] I'm pretty sure. The way I asked that question back in the day, I'm pretty sure in a discussion about the topic, that would have come up. But just to, you know, summarize my argument, I think practicality always wins in the end, ultimately, however much with your eyes. And so your argument...
[1:07:19] Okay, okay. So sorry. So practicality wins at the end. It's just a statement, right? It's not an argument. So was slavery practical or impractical?
[1:07:30] It was practical for a long segment of human in history for the landowners and whoever was in charge.
[1:07:37] You said practicality wins in the end, right? So we're not just talking about the past. We're talking about present and future.
[1:07:43] Yeah.
[1:07:45] Look at the productivity of the economy in the world, was it higher 100 years after the end of slavery, or was it higher 100 years before the end of slavery?
[1:08:00] It was higher 100 years after the end of slavery, and it is precisely because there was an Industrial Revolution that slavery came to an end, not anymore.
[1:08:09] No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not true. That's not true. And I'm sorry, I got a graduate degree in history. I studied this. I've written entire books on this. So no, no, the Industrial Revolution did not cause the end of slavery because the end of slavery occurred in the countryside in land before it happened to the cities. So there was an enclosure movement in particular in England, but in other places as well, where the serfs, serfs were kind of like human livestock bought and sold with the land and so on. And the land owners exercised significant ownership over their land. They either bought out the serfs or sometimes they were kicked off the land.
[1:08:53] And serfdom was abolished in most places prior to the rise of an Industrial Revolution. And slavery was ended prior to the rise of the industrial Industrial Revolution. And we know this because, of course, the Industrial Revolution occurred in the north of America where there was no slavery before it occurred in the south of America where there was slavery. And after the end of slavery, the productivity of the south in America increased considerably because of investments in capital machinery and labor-saving devices and so on. So it was the end of serfdom and the end of slavery that was a prerequisite for the revolution because also when things became more efficient in the countryside a lot of workers were no longer needed and so they went to the cities which they formed the worker
[1:09:46] Pool from which capitalists could get their labor from like hiring people to work in factories and so on so in terms of practicality ending slavery ending serfdom was by far like almost infinitely the most practical thing that could be done. Again, if you disagree, it's certainly fine, but that's my argument.
[1:10:10] I mean, when you say ending serfdom at that particular time, I'm assuming you're not talking about, you know, Russia or anywhere in the Americas. You're talking specifically about the, about Great Britain or countries close to it. Am I right?
[1:10:27] Well, no, I mean, Russia did abolish serfdom in the 19th century as well.
[1:10:32] Yeah, but when does the Industrial Revolution start for you?
[1:10:37] Well, the Agricultural Revolution was required before the Industrial Revolution could occur, for two reasons. You needed a pool of labor in the cities, and number two, you needed a significant increase in agricultural productivity for there to even be an urban proletariat. Because, So, I mean, starting in the 13th, 14th, 15th centuries, there were significant improvements in agricultural productivity.
[1:11:07] And this is, in part, because there was no slavery in England or Ireland or most of sort of Northwest Europe and so on. And so you have to have increased productivity in the country before you can have an Industrial Revolution in the city. So everyone knows about the Industrial Revolution. People don't really think that much about the Agricultural Revolution that preceded this. And I've got a whole book about this called Just Poor, which you can get at freedomain.com slash books. But the Industrial Revolution, in terms of investments in capital machinery, having an urban proletariat, a labor force, and so on, was...
[1:11:43] I mean, the steam engine, the internal combustion engine that came later and so on, a lot of these things came about significantly after the revolution in agriculture. And so the Industrial Revolution came after diminishments in slavery and serfdom that occurred. And so the Industrial Revolution, you know, you can say sort of early, mid-19th century, but the Agricultural Revolution went back at least 100 years and arguably even further. But so, yeah, you had to end slavery and serfdom in order for agricultural productivity to increase. After agricultural productivity increased and you had the displacement of people from the land, you had an urban proletariat and you had the excess food that allows for the growth of cities. And then you had the formation of capital and investment in cities, which is what we call the Industrial Revolution, if that makes sense.
[1:12:43] I agree, for the most part, for Europe, particularly Western Europe. But I think as far as the question of abolishment is concerned, the focus should be, in fact, on the Western Hemisphere because that's where the bulk of the buying and selling was going on. And it is indeed there that what was about to become the world's biggest economy, or was already the world's biggest economy, if I'm not mistaken, the United States, had the one and only civil war it's ever had. And, you know, it was, of course, you may have a different opinion, but for me, ultimately, it came down to, or the deciding factor was that one of the parties was way more productive thanks to industrialization, and the other was way less productive due to the use of slaves. And that was, in fact, the deciding punch that abolished it once and for all.
[1:13:38] Well, I would agree with you that the North was more productive than the South, but that only furthers my argument, which is to say that the North that didn't have slavery was much more productive than the South that did, which is true. And so when you say – hang on. When you say that practicality wins in the long run, the end of slavery was not just a moral revolution but a revolution in terms of productivity and practicality. So if you're going to say practicality wins in the long run, I would say that the moral and the practical are one and the same.
[1:14:11] The moral and the practical are one and the same. That which is more universally and consistently moral is that which is also more practical and productive in the long run. So the spread of property rights in land was required before the spread of property rights in cities. I'll give you a very brief example of this. So if you've got 10 families who historically are serfs on the land, they can't buy and sell their own land because they're just like any more than a cow can buy and sell its own land.
[1:14:47] And so when people are no longer serfs, but they can buy and sell their own land, then if we think of the normal distribution curve or the Pareto distribution curve of competence, among these 10 families, there's going to be one family that is just fantastic at growing crops. They've got a green thumb. They work hard. They are really interested in studying agricultural methods, and they do all of this amazing stuff to produce a massive amount of crops. I don't know if you've ever known people that just have these weird skills that don't make any sense to me, but they're just amazing that way. And so when people can buy and sell land, then the land tends to accumulate under the control of those who are best able to maximize its productivity.
[1:15:36] And so, more money tends to accumulate to Elon Musk than someone who opens a restaurant that fails, right? Because the restaurant that fails, he's bad at maximizing productivity, whereas Elon Musk is fantastic at maximizing productivity.
[1:15:52] So when land begins to be subject to property rights, when people have the right to buy and sell land, then the guy who drinks is going to sell his land to the guy who works hard, because the guy who drinks is running out of money. He wants to drink, so he'll sell his land to the guy who works hard. And then the guy who works hard, instead of working 10 acres, is now working 20 acres. And because he's working 20 acres and can generate a lot of value, he then can start buying out other people. And then he ends up maybe with 80 acres. It's 10 people, 10 families. Each family has 10 acres. So he ends up with 80 acres. So instead of being really good at having productivity on 10 acres. He now is really good at having productivity on 80 acres, which gives eight times the productivity than he had before because of property rights and the end of serfdom and slavery.
[1:16:47] Slaves, of course, can't buy and sell their own land. Serfs have a very tough time buying and selling their own land. And so when you had universal property rights, the right to buy and sell on land, you started to get land accumulating to the most productive people, which then caused an explosion in the food supply. And it's almost impossible for us to imagine, of course, that the Dark Ages and most of human history was characterized by extreme scarcity and an absence of calories. When land began to be consolidated among the most productive, what happened was, food production rose 10 times, 15 times, in some places, 20 times more food. And that was the requirement. You couldn't have an Industrial Revolution without that.
[1:17:38] Now, the people who were really productive need fewer workers. They're not productive because they just hire more people. They're productive because they have better irrigation. They invest in winter crops like turnips. They invest in fertilizers. They're better at keeping the crows and rats and rabbits away from the crops. They invest in roads to bring things to market more efficiently. They're just, you know, productivity machines that some people just are for whatever reasons, IQ plus temperament plus whatever, right? Ambition. And so they actually need fewer workers to produce more crops.
[1:18:16] Like America has a massive crop production now. You know, 126 years ago, 70% of Americans were involved in farming. Now it's like 2%. And yet the food productivity is way higher because of all the automation. So if you say practicality wins in the long run, I agree with you. And practicality, how do we know what is practical? Well, the moral and the practical are one and the same. Now, we can apply ourselves to moral universals and moral standards, but we can't guess outcomes. Guessing outcomes is mysticism. Guessing outcomes, well, you don't know what's going to be the most practical course of action in the long run. Neither do I. Of course, if you and I had the ability to know the future, we'd be zillionaires because we would invest in everything that made a ton of money and all of that. So trying to guess outcomes is just a form of mysticism, and it's not an argument.
[1:19:08] And the last thing I'll say is that, and I've used this analogy before, but if you were to say to someone –
[1:19:16] Well, you wanna end slavery, but slaves are used to pick the food and the cotton. And so we're all going to starve and have no clothing. If you get rid of slaves, then food is going to become way too expensive and nobody's going to have any clothing. And then if someone were to say, no, no, no, see, here's what's going to happen, man. What's going to happen is after we end slavery, it's going to be the coolest thing, man. You're going to have giant mechanical robots that sweep all across the field, it's going to pick automatically, and they're going to run on crushed dinosaur juice. And you say, well, I don't know, whatever you're smoking, man, but it did turn out to be true. Nobody can guess the outcomes of consistently applying moral absolutes, but it doesn't matter. What we need to do is be good. And it is wrong to initiate the use of force. It is wrong to strip people of their rightfully earned property at the point of a gun. I don't care who does it. That's a moral universal. So when you say, practicality wins in the long run, I, um... I mean, I kind of agree with you. And the moral is the practical. So if you want the best practical outcomes, we need to have the most consistent virtues.
[1:20:33] Well, let me just follow you on the example where you say, you know, people that were more productive got to have more acres in land and they became even more productive and were able to buy the land of those that were less productive. We've seen this play out multiple of times in history. And I think ultimately it does lead to situations like 1917 or 1949. It ultimately leads to, however fair you might find it, it ultimately leads to rebellions, uprisings that unfortunately end violently and usually end with people's property being taken away. And so I guess what I'm trying to get to there is, yes, it might be fair or moral that say person that's productive has the most wealth but if it ultimately ends in violence and bloodshed that could have been avoided by redistribution was it a good idea was it practical to you know just be quote-unquote moral.
[1:21:40] Wait, so, let's just talk about 1917. So you're talking about the Russian revolution, the communist revolution in Russia?
[1:21:45] Yes, as an example.
[1:21:47] Okay, so do you think that came about organically because people were frustrated that some people were becoming wealthy?
[1:21:54] No, but I do think that a very big factor there was the perception among the vast majority of the populace that there was a them and there were others that... Were or had always been in charge of their destiny.
[1:22:15] Okay, so, sorry, you said that the problem with allowing people to become wealthy is other people become resentful and you get a communist revolution. That was my understanding of your thesis.
[1:22:26] Extreme wealth, I'll put it that way.
[1:22:28] Okay, fine, I don't care. Okay, that's fine. So some people become too wealthy and other people have a communist revolution. That's your argument?
[1:22:39] Yes, I'm saying people if they feel that others have gotten extremely wealthy and that they are in the same position. It's not fair, it's not normal, but it usually happens.
[1:22:55] Okay, so again, your argument is that the main factor in the communist revolution of 1917 was people's resentment of the wealthy.
[1:23:06] Resentment of a Tsar that they perceived was using them as cannon fodder in a war.
[1:23:13] Ah, there we go.
[1:23:14] Among many things.
[1:23:15] That's a different thing than what you just said.
[1:23:17] No, no, no. I'm saying, look.
[1:23:18] Yes, yeah, no, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
[1:23:20] Yeah.
[1:23:21] You can't switch on me like that. That's kind of rude.
[1:23:24] No, but let me just clarify what I mean exactly.
[1:23:28] But no, I'm fine with you clarifying, but you have to admit that you just kind of contradicted your thesis. Because your thesis was counter to mine. I say that the moral is the practical, and the extension of property rights leads to practical and beneficial economic outcomes. And you said, ah, no, but the extension of property rights leads to resentment from the underclasses and thus a communist revolution because people become too wealthy, right? Now you're saying, well, it's because the czar was using them as cannon fodder in a war. Now, those two things are completely opposite.
[1:24:03] The connection there is that in general, you would be more likely to avoid or you would have been more likely to avoid having to serve in the military if you were wealthier or you would have been more likely to resist it if you went poor in the first place.
[1:24:18] So the fact that the Russian government was using people as cannon fodder in a war is that a violation of the non-aggression principle, or of the non-aggression principle?
[1:24:37] Well, I'd say it's a violation. I'll concede that.
[1:24:40] Fantastic. Okay. So the major factors in the Russian Revolution were twofold. Number one, there had been a brutal bloody war that had killed millions of people.
[1:24:53] 1904.
[1:24:54] I'm sorry?
[1:24:55] You mean the one against Japan, 1904? Or sorry, you mean the First World War itself, yeah.
[1:25:00] First World War was a bit more significant and relevant than I think what we're talking about. So that's number one. Now, forcing peasants to march into battle armed with freaking scythes or sometimes weapons without any ammo was murderous in the extreme and worse than slavery. The draft in general is worse than slavery because with slavery, you're not facing imminent death every day. You're not facing the end of your bloodline and so on.The draft and in particular way that the Russian government instituted it in the First World War was murderous, horrendous, brutal, and evil in the extreme. So if I say the moral is the practical and you say, well, the Russian revolution came about because of the morals that you propose and then we point out that it's the exact opposite of the morals I propose, that's kind of important because no one should have the right to force somebody else at gunpoint to take up arms and so on, right? Number one.
[1:26:05] Number two, the communist revolution in Russia was in no way, shape, or form organic. It did not come from the masses in Russia. It came from the German government. And what happened was, again, I'll keep this brief. I've talked about it before.
[1:26:26] The American government, of course, entered in 1917 into the war, the First World War. Now, before that, everybody was kind of fighting to a standstill, but the governments didn't want to fight to a standstill because if they'd spent three years slaughtering the flower of Europe and then everybody went back and nothing had changed, there would be revolutions perhaps at home or certainly governments would be deposed hopefully through the democratic means or in some way or shape or form. So the Americans came into the war, and so the Germans said – the German government said, well, we can't fight a two-front war with the fresh blood of the Americans against us in the west. So on the eastern front, we need to take Russia out. So what they did was they sent a huge amount of money and arms and Lenin through Finland into Russia and then got him well-armed and got him well-trained and got him well-funded and deposed the Russian government with the goal of taking Russia out of the war. So this was not some organic peasant uprising. This was orchestrated by the German government as a response to the Americans coming into the First World War.
[1:27:39] So from the standpoint of morals, everything that preceded the Russian Revolution was a violation of property rights and a violation of the non-aggression principle. I mean, I don't need to go into detail. I'm sure we can all follow that themselves. But the war, the funding, the arming, and so on, All of that came out of violations of the non-aggression principle. So if you say, well, Stef, it's not practical to have good property rights because of the revolution in Russia in 1917, and then every single thing that preceded the revolution in Russia in 1917 were violations of property rights, I don't think you win the point.
[1:28:22] I mean, I suppose there my counter would be that although the Bolsheviks did end up winning, that wasn't always a given. And one reason why they were able to beat the Whites, for example, was that they were able to appeal to a wider cross-section of people who felt that under them, everybody would be equal. Could you at least consider?
[1:28:46] Well, I don't know. I mean, who knows what was in the mind of the average illiterate peasant in Russia in 1917? By definition, they didn't leave a record. Were they desperate to get out of the war? Absolutely.
[1:28:59] But they could not fight against the highly well-armed communists. It was only about 10,000 or so, right? So the average peasant couldn't fight against the average well-armed communist cadres. And so we don't know what they wanted. We don't know whether they preferred to live under the czar. We don't know whether they preferred to live under communism. And I mean, yeah, maybe the illiterate, uneducated peasants were told... what were they told? Well, this will end the war and your sons won't be thrown into the endless furnace of the gods of blood. Okay I mean I think they're happy with that, for sure. I mean the women and the grandfathers and all those who weren't fighting would be happy if their kids, you know, who were turning 15 or 16 and were going to get dragged off to a front where they were going to get sacrificed for no particular purpose? Yeah, they were happy with that. But it's only because there were massive, horrendous violations of the non-aggression principle in Russia as a whole that communism was even on the table, plus the German government violated non-aggression principle by funding and arming the communists with other people's money and weaponry by force. So yeah, I mean, the Russian revolution came about because of massive violations of the non-aggression principles. So when you say, well, Stef, we can't have property rights because that leads to a Russian revolution when the Russian revolution itself only occurred because of massive violations of property rights. And I'm sorry, this is just one thing I happen to know a lot about. So you're just not correct in this analysis.
[1:30:36] Violations of the non-aggression principle, I agree with your point on that. It's just they will always happen or they have always happened. Has there ever been a state where –
[1:30:46] No, I don't want to waste my audience's time with things like "stuff happens." Yes, listen, I will concede to you absolutely 100% the point that stuff happens. I will also concede to you that there are a lot of evils in the world that have been around for a long time. I will absolutely concede that to you. So what? I mean, if I'm working on a cure for cancer that's showing great promise, and you say, well, but cancer is everywhere in the world and has been for all time, what does that add to the conversation? So just saying, yeah, there are evils in the world. Yes, they've happened for a long time.
[1:31:26] And if I say, well, no, listen, I'm working on a cure for cancer, you say, well, but cancer is going to come back, and the cancer is a constant factor of human life. Now, I mean, that doesn't add anything to the discussion. If you have something of substance to add, I'm certainly happy to hear it, but just kind of sighing and saying stuff happens and some of it is negative is not an argument. The argument is, is respect to persons and property a moral good? Yes, it is. Respecting property rights, respecting the non-aggression principle is a moral good, and we should be pushing and working to expand that recognition of respect for persons and property as widely as possible. And you, unfortunately, are my enemy in this. You are my opponent in this because you want to expand the use of violence in this world.
[1:32:18] Let me put it this way. It's not something I would gladly suggest, but it's just me conceding that it is in fact a necessary tool and one that will inevitably have to be used in functioning societies.
[1:32:35] Using force in self-defense is a different matter, but you want to use violence to achieve your goals, and you want me thrown in jail for disagreeing with you. I think you can advocate and say, well, we should give more money to women on maternity leave. Okay, that's fine. If you want to set up a GoFundMe for people you know who are on maternity leave, if you want to generate some sort of fund or some sort of charity or something for women on maternity leave, go to it, man. Enjoy. Knock yourself out. Have fun. I hope that you can help people. But the moment that you say to me, Stef, you got to get your ass thrown in jail for disagreeing with me, you are a moral monster and kind of an enemy, in fact, a direct enemy. And I've certainly given my best in trying to help you with that. But you do not seem to want to listen to reason, so I am not going to entertain this conversation. I'm not going to pretend something's a debate when somebody comes armed.
[1:33:36] I notice when you're debating people who kind of have this I guess who are against UPB or against voluntarism, it kind of always devolves back...
[1:33:48] You're muted at the moment, I think you'll need to unmute.
[1:33:51] No I'm unmuted. Can you hear me?
[1:33:52] Yeah go for it
[1:33:54] Saying that uh it seems like when you're debating uh this isn't my question but I can go into the question if you want yeah I'll just do that. Can you hear me okay still?
[1:34:04] Yeah go for it
[1:34:05] Okay uh well my question was about um you were mentioning a couple days ago about the process you went through I think it was when you were going through therapy I'm not sure what age that was but you said you dropped about $20 grand on therapy over the course of two years, or one year?
[1:34:21] I think it was, yeah, close to two. It was early 30s.
[1:34:25] Okay. I had a few questions about the environment surrounding you during that time. I guess I have them written down here. What were the levels of privacy you had in your life while you were going through that process?
[1:34:40] I don't know what you mean by that.
[1:34:44] Explain um like were you it's they seem kind of so like silly questions but um like were you living in your own like in your own house that you're paying for uh did you have to like live around other people like did you have roommates like what was your level of like sort of personal privacy that you could get to in your life?
[1:35:06] I had roommates at the time.
[1:35:09] Okay um so I I guess the reason I'm asking this is I'm trying to figure out how to sort of get my own process like kickstarted. I'm trying to make sure that I have all my I's dotted and T's crossed in terms of the environment around me. And I'm just trying to get some more information about how did this, like what were the phases and stages of this process if that makes sense?
[1:35:38] Why do you want, I'm fine to answer, but why do you want to know? If I don't know why you want to know, it's hard to tailor an answer.
[1:35:44] Well, I'm trying to go through this same process. I've been working on it for a while with not a ton of success, but I'm assuming that there's something that I'm missing. And I just want to make sure. I was just curious about your experience going through this whole thing. What worked for you? What didn't? If there were like dips, dips and valleys, what's the term? Hills and valleys to your success during the whole process? Is this making sense at all or no?
[1:36:11] Not hugely. I will tell you that the price of therapy was every single one of my relationships.
[1:36:21] Well, that's kind of been my experience, too. Well, not necessarily just therapy, but the whole process of trying to exhume the stuff that's buried in my mind, trying to process emotions, if that makes sense.
[1:36:38] Well, okay, let me ask you this: Are you married? Do you have children? Do you have a long-term girlfriend? Are you close to your family of origin?
[1:36:47] No to the first two, and no, I'm not close to my family of origin.
[1:36:51] Okay, and in terms of friendships, are you willing, should it become necessary, are you willing to scrub everyone from your life? And I'm not saying this is necessary or inevitable. I'm just saying that that has been my experience, and it's been the experience of lots of people I've talked to over the years. So from the time that I went into therapy to the time shortly after therapy, I have nobody left from the before times. BT and AT, before therapy, after therapy, there's nobody in my life from my youth and my early adulthood, there's nobody in my life. Every single one of my relationships, business, romantic, familial, personal, every single one of my relationships fell away through the process of therapy. Now, again, I'm not saying that's inevitable or true for everyone, but I'm just saying that that was my experience.
[1:37:51] And the reasons for that, obviously, are that if people are happy with you and claim to love you or care about you, if people are happy with you in a state of unconsciousness, they are very unlikely to be happy with you when you become conscious. If people are happy with you or claim to be in a state of amorality, they will probably not be happy with you when you become moral. If people are happy with you in a state of self-dishonesty, then they're much less likely to be happy with you in a state of honesty. You can't ask people to like both you and, in many ways, the opposite of you when you change.
[1:38:33] It would be like marrying a woman because you love her, she's honest and forthright and direct and moral and so on, right? And then she becomes some sociopathic, pathologically lying criminal. You can't love her anymore because she's the opposite of what she was.
[1:38:50] And for me, the process of therapy was the process of bringing my values to life. The process that I bring to people in the call-in shows of saying, you really have to live your values while having sympathy for why people don't, is the process that I went through, not just in therapy, of course, but in a variety of things where my unconscious was just in full revolt against the hypocrisy of how I was living, which is to say I value reason and evidence and virtue, and I was surrounded by people who were opposed to those things. And, I mean, historical momentum and inertia, and, you know, I'm not like blaming myself for all of that, but it does seem pretty obvious in hindsight that people preferred me as a hypocrite. And when I made significant efforts with some reasonable degree of success. To stop being a hypocrite, well, I ran into big problems with my relationships. All of them, right? I mean, I went into therapy. I was engaged to a woman. I was going to get married. That all crumbled and left.
[1:39:57] My relationships in the business world, I'm in contact with nobody from the past. Family, nobody. Friends, not one. Friendships of 20 years plus just evaporated when I stopped lying to myself. Because, of course, they preferred me in a state, and it's all unconscious or whatever, they preferred me in a state of falsehood and hypocrisy. And when I changed from that to some reasonable levels of self-honesty, honesty, and consistency, and non-hypocrisy, integrity... well, it just turns out they didn't really like the opposite of what they liked, which is inevitable, right? I mean, how could you like a thing and its opposite? You can't. I mean, particularly when it comes to something like love, you can't love a person for particular characteristics and also love another person for the opposite of those characteristics. That would be kind of crazy, right?
[1:40:52] So therapy is the process of becoming, in many ways, the opposite of who you were And unless people are willing to come along in that journey, which is a hell of a journey, they don't come along. And for me, it was like, okay, well, I can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. I can't unsee what I've seen. I can't unknow what I know. I can't spend my whole life speaking English and then lose the ability to understand English. So I can't go backwards. I have to go forward. And I was hoping that people would come along with me. Of course, I encouraged my friends. Hey, man, therapy is really great. You should try it. And so on. And I was talking about the things that I was learning in therapy and really recommending it to people, you know, with all the humility of I should have done it earlier. I mean, I studied self-knowledge and all of that for my mid-teens, but I didn't really bring it to life. And so on. I was living in my head ivory tower theory, not practice. And I was recommending to people that they try it, that, or at least, you know, really try and learn these lessons and, and so on. And people didn't like me.
[1:41:54] They didn't like me... it's kind of wild, right? They didn't like me when I was myself. When I was actually living my values, when I was living with self-knowledge and integrity, they didn't like me when I was becoming a good person, an honest person with some good levels of integrity. They didn't like me. People in the business world didn't like me when I was more honest. My friends didn't like me when I was more honest. And because when you become honest and you have integrity, the standards of your relationships inevitably rise and people didn't want to come along. So I hope that helps a little.
[1:42:31] It does. It does. As to your point about like being willing to separate from anybody in your life who's not coming along to like not hamper your process. I've already I've already that ship has already sailed. I'm in it for the long haul. So
[1:42:44] Well, just to correct a little. It's not like being willing to. it's just it's going to happen. You know, if you get on a cruise and you leave the shore, you say, well you have to be willing to leave the shore. It's like, well, you're already on the cruise ship, the shore-- like, whether you're willing to or not, it's going to happen. And so it's not even really that much of a conscious choice. You just find that you have a commitment to honesty that you find really powerful. And then when you're honest with the people in your life they don't like you anymore. And so it's not even, for me, it wasn't even a willingness. It's just, okay, well, well, that's what happens. If I have a friend, I speak Japanese and he speaks, let's say, sorry, let's say that we both speak English. And then I say, I'm only going to speak Japanese now and no more English. Either he learns Japanese or the friendship ends because we just don't have anything to say to each other. If I'm speaking in Japanese, he doesn't speak Japanese. So... okay, so what's your other concern then?
[1:43:43] Oh, just to comment on what you just said there, because that was interesting. So you said when you started going through this process, you naturally, it wasn't like you were trying to hold on to these friendships. Well, maybe you were a little bit, but when, when these friendships didn't follow you along the path you were going, it wasn't like you were still magnetized to them. You still wanted to be their friend. Like you just naturally fell apart. Like if you like a certain food and suddenly you just find it disgusting. You're like, oh, I can't, I can't eat this anymore. I'm just gone.
[1:44:11] No, I wanted to keep the friendships. I wanted to. I wanted to keep the friendships. I really wanted to keep the relationships. I thought, well, geez, if they like me for who I am, when I become more myself, they'll like me even more. I thought this would help the friendships, strengthen the friendships. And the goals that I was pursuing would help other people as well, but it just didn't work out that way.
[1:44:34] Okay, so you did have to sort of break it off yourself. You did have to say, okay, I'm just not doing this anymore.
[1:44:39] No, it wasn't really a choice. It just became less and less enjoyable.
[1:44:43] Okay, yeah, that's what I meant. Okay, sorry for the miscommunication.
[1:44:47] No, these are complicated topics. Nothing to apologize for.
[1:44:51] Just the last part um to reiterate on what I was saying in the beginning um I'm really just curious about how this process feels like was it just a process of like logically getting through uh your life with your therapist uh or were there a lot of like emotional sort of explosions coming out of you like you talked about the time in morocco where you were in that back of that car I believe and uh you were just having these violent images like what were the frequency of these sort of emotional I don't want to say outbursts because it's not like a tantrum or something like these emotional explosions from inside your head?
[1:45:24] Oh, constant. I felt like I was losing my mind. I felt like, and of course, both of my parents suffer from extreme problems with mental illness. Both have been institutionalized and so on, right? So, in the process of truly becoming myself, becoming honest with myself, living with more external integrity, I felt, I mean, it was the greatest fear of my life. Because I had seen what happens directly in my family when people lose their minds. And I felt like I was losing my mind. And so it was appalling. And it was chaotic. It was emotionally violent. I had lucid dreams of immense power. I couldn't sleep. I had rolling waves of stress, happiness, tears, and I felt like I was losing my mind.
[1:46:28] It felt like I was throwing myself off a cliff, hoping to evolve wings somewhere on the way down. And there were times when I was like, well, is this what, I didn't think so, but is this what my parents did? Did they try to become more honest and more themselves and lost their minds? Is this a terrible path? But it didn't really matter because I just couldn't sleep. It didn't really matter. Like what I wanted to or didn't want to do. It was not that much of a voluntary process. I was happy, you know, just dumpty-dum, moving along, doing my business and being engaged and all of that and seeing friends. And it was fine. It wasn't bad. But my unconscious was in full revolt.
[1:47:13] And the level of, like in the Mecosystem, I had this character called Lord Gruel, who just had the most contempt for my lily-livered, weak-kneed approach to moral integrity. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Who cares? It's just virtue signaling. You're just yapping to yourself. You don't believe any of it. You don't live any of it. It's not real. It's just vanity. You like to think that you're smart and good, but you don't actually do it. I had all of these ferocious arguments with aspects of myself, the frustrated integrity that wasn't being given a voice or a scope or action.
[1:47:48] Yeah, it was a horrendous process. And I can see why people don't. I mean, the rewards are great. The rewards are great, but it was 16 months of wild and crazy chaos and fear that it was going to land in a bad place, for sure, as I'd seen in my family.
[1:48:20] What did your roommates think of you going through this process? Did they see any of this stuff themselves or did you just like talk to them off and on?
[1:48:26] Oh, no, I didn't talk to my roommates about this. I didn't talk to my roommates about this. I mean, so this is just a place I landed after I broke up with my fiance. So it was, there were not people I were close to and so on. I mean, fine people, you know, whatever, but no, I didn't talk about it with my roommates. No. I mean, you can't, I mean, I couldn't talk about this with anyone really. I mean, I tried, I tried, I tried, But this is why I journaled so heavily, because there was nobody. I mean, I could talk about it with my therapist, and even my therapist was sometimes a little plain catch-up and was kind of confused. So, yeah, it was a hell of a process. I mean, the rewards have been fantastic. I mean, definitely, I mean, that $20,000 was the best money I ever spent in my life. And it feels like you're going crazy when you're becoming sane, because what it does is it exposes the craziness of everyone around you and your own form of craziness in ignoring and conforming to it. So, yeah, it's a wild process.
[1:49:29] Okay. I guess I'm just trying to figure out why that process hasn't kick-started in me yet. I'm just trying to do a little bit of troubleshooting, but that was useful information.
[1:49:37] How long have you been doing the process?
[1:49:40] Well, I think it was about – I know you don't like people saying, like, you know, they've listened to the show a long time and I guess haven't made progress and I'm willing to say it's probably mostly on me but I probably about nine years ago is when I left I didn't start the process then but that's when I left my family about nine years ago and um I think I've been in and out of different therapies doing my best like journaling writing listening to tons of podcasts I'm trying to figure out why this process doesn't seem to be happening for me I I don't know. I'm just trying to troubleshoot.
[1:50:12] What is the process that you mean?
[1:50:16] Well, therapy, um...
[1:50:17] No, no, that's the activity. What is the process that you mean?
[1:50:22] Um, the, the process, I guess that it comes down to, well, I've listened to, there are a couple of other channels I listened to. Um, I know you used to talk a lot to, uh, Daniel Mackler. I don't know if, I don't know what's, uh, if you guys, uh, still like watch those content, but there was a lot of stuff he was talking about and you were talking about that sort of coincided about, um, getting rid of dissociative behaviors in your life, like drugs uh alcohol things like that um I guess getting like up on it he calls it an island of safety I think he has a video about this um that like creating a situation um emotionally financially in terms of safety in your life that can handle the uh the upheaval of these emotions inside of you and I've been trying to sort of build that that thing around me and uh well only recently because I've only kind of put it together that that's something that I probably need to do this. I don't know if this is answering what you are about the process.
[1:51:20] I remember talking to Daniel Mackler years ago. I think he hosted one of my shows. I think I met up with him. I think it was in New York or something like that. He just seemed very distant and standoffish, and I kind of needed allies at that time, so there was not any particular connection. So I haven't tracked any of his work in many, many, many years. Okay, so how old are you?
[1:51:38] I am 31, sir.
[1:51:39] 31, all right. And how do you know that your process is not relatively complete, because I assume you feel an incompletion, right?
[1:51:50] I think I would know that it's not complete because I still have, I guess I still have extremely intense dreams, which I wouldn't say is particularly causal to not have that. I'm sure you still have very powerful dreams, but maybe not to like the power you had when you were going through therapy. So I have that. I still have urges to dissociate. I still have like sort of ups and downs of emotions inside me and like sort of like rage that will come out of, or like intense anger about that's like directed towards things you know it shouldn't be directed towards and I'm able to catch that. So I still feel those are just a couple of the things, if that makes sense, that give me a clue as to that there's still work that needs to be done.
[1:52:33] Okay. So I'll just ask you some blunt questions. Don't answer anything you're not relatively comfortable with answering. The two dissociations from modern men are pornography and video games.
[1:52:46] Yeah, there's definitely, you're right, there was definitely, I'm able to, there is pornography. I've been able to sort of wean off of it and cut it down, but it still is something in my life and video games, definitely.
[1:52:56] Okay, so why are you pursuing these two activities that are dissociative? Which, I mean, it's fine that you're doing that. I don't think it's particularly productive, but it's obviously, you know, it's okay that you do that, But then why would you say, why is my process not complete? I mean, how many hours a week are you video gaming and using pornography?
[1:53:22] A week, I would say, maybe, 15 minutes and then video games, I think that's down to like probably about an hour a week.
[1:53:34] Yeah... okay, what was it, I forget the porn one, but but how much was your gaming at its peak over the last nine years?
[1:53:48] Probably... it's like, I probably need to think about this for a second.
[1:53:51] And none of this is critical. I'm not trying to hold your feet to the fire or anything like this. I'm just trying to figure out
[1:53:55] You can do that, that's fine. I think I need my feet to be held to the fire sometimes. A lot more than one hour a week previously. Probably if I had to average it out, probably about six hours a week.
[1:54:11] Okay. And do you have a full-time job?
[1:54:15] Yes, sir.
[1:54:16] So what do you do with your free time if you're not in a relationship, don't really have friends, and you're gaming only a couple of hours a week? What is it you do with your free time?
[1:54:27] Mostly uh I guess uh I guess the other thing is uh just doing errands uh working on my car because I rely on it for my job uh trying to fill I work a little bit more than full time because I'm trying to like save up that money to sort of build that that island of safety I talked about um trying to pay the car off um listening to a lot of I listen to you a lot I listen to a lot of podcasts. I sort of go on YouTube. I listen to like debates on things. But yeah, I think it was like two or so years ago, I went through sort of podcast one on FDR to podcast 2000. And I just, I did like sort of a deep dive trying to figure out those early conversations to figure out. Yeah, I'm not going to go into it, but just to answer your question, mainly things focused around I'm trying to figure out the internal state that I'm going through and trying to build something around that.
[1:55:21] Okay. And when did you have your last, if any, long-term romantic relationship?
[1:55:29] I've never had a long-term relationship. I'm trying to think the first time.
[1:55:35] Okay, let me ask. That's fine. So when did you last ask a woman out?
[1:55:44] Jeez, I was probably back in middle school, man. And I actually don't think I ever asked her out, so I would say never.
[1:55:49] Okay, and why don't you ask women out?
[1:55:58] Then before I found the whole FDR thing, I would be, I would probably say I was too scared. I was too scared of rejection.
[1:56:05] No, no, no, everyone's scared! Everyone's scared. It's like saying, well, why didn't you get a driver's license? Well, I was afraid of crashing. Well, everyone's afraid of crashing. That's not an answer. Everyone's scared.
[1:56:16] Okay. Okay. Well, I assumed they would not end up liking me, that something about my character was just too flawed, that it would never work, so there's no point in getting the heartache up about it.
[1:56:29] Okay, so you felt that you were flawed or bad or negative or wrong in some manner, and that occurred from middle school, which is, I guess, when people first start thinking about girls in that kind of way, all the way through to 31. You're 31, is that right?
[1:56:45] Yes, sir.
[1:56:46] So I suppose you still feel that you're a negative influence on women, so there's no point asking them out. Is that right? Yes.
[1:56:57] Well, there were two parts to my head. Sorry, I forgot to speak on the second one. Before I found FDR, it was that. But now it's basically like if I don't have these things healed within me, if I don't have these psychological problems figured out, I don't know if, like you said before, if you hadn't had therapy, you couldn't have attracted Christina?
[1:57:17] Yes, but if I'd never dated, I couldn't have attracted her either.
[1:57:21] Oh, okay.
[1:57:22] Because I wouldn't have any relationship experience.
[1:57:25] Okay.
[1:57:26] It's like saying, I mean, well, I had a bunch of bad jobs, and then I got educated and got a good job in my 30s. But if I'd never had any jobs, getting educated wouldn't give me the good job because I wouldn't have any work experience.
[1:57:38] That makes sense.
[1:57:40] Okay, so you still view yourself as negative or toxic or poisonous to women, which is why you refrain from inflicting yourself upon them. Is that right?
[1:57:50] True. I'm also a little, I guess I swing a little both ways, but that's beside the point.
[1:57:55] Oh, that could be men to, right?
[1:57:56] We can go... Yeah.
[1:57:59] And did you experience any sexual inappropriateness when you were a child?
[1:58:06] Probably... I suspect I have. I mean, I know you're going to ask, like, what does that mean? So I'll just go into, well, when I was very, very young, I was, I think when I was like probably around four or five or something, I was caught doing something with my sister. And I just remember being beaten for it. But I don't really remember. I don't remember where I saw. I don't want to go into too much detail. But like, I remember we were doing something that I think I had to have seen somewhere. A kid could not have just, a kid could not have just, yeah. I think I would probably say there was inappropriateness, not with like any adult or something. Or maybe it was with an adult if I would have seen it, but, yeah.
[1:58:53] Or you might have had early exposure to sexual material or something like that.
[1:58:57] Yeah.
[1:58:58] I'm sorry about that for sure. That's awful stuff. Okay, so you think that you're still negative to women. And, you know, I guess maybe men or whatever, just focus on women for the moment. So you think that you're negative and toxic towards women. Do you think that we are born that way do you think that we're born just disliking ourselves or thinking that we're negative and toxic or do you think that's something that's inflicted upon us?
[1:59:25] Oh no we're all definitely born, think, we're born with like an electricity in us. We're just we're like we're firebrands. Kind of like, kind of like Izzy, for example, and you're uh... like I've seen Izzy, I've heard Izzy when she was younger, just very full of life. They they don't hate themselves. They don't disrespect themselves. Kids don't, that's something you adapt to. Or it's something that is inflicted on you that you have to adapt to by adopting a personality...
[1:59:52] You see little kids, they're like, I'm a superhero. I'm the greatest. They have this whole Muhammad Ali thing going, which is fine. So we're born with positive regards for ourselves. And of course, that makes sense, right? Because genetically, if somebody was born with bottomless self-hatred, they would be much less likely to reproduce because who wants to be around that, right so you're born positive you're born enthusiastic and then you were told and it is as you point out rightly it becomes the price of your survival to repeat the mantra that you're bad and terrible and wrong and evil and clumsy and mistaken and foolish and whatever it is. Like... so you're filled with all this toxicity and you have to internalize it in order to survive, right?
[2:00:34] Correct.
[2:00:35] So why the fuck are you still doing it?
[2:00:39] Like, consciously?
[2:00:40] Don't dodge me! Don't gaslight me! Why are you still doing it?
[2:00:46] Why am I still doing it?
[2:00:47] Why are you still acting out the verbal abuse you received as a child that you were toxic, bad, and negative? Why are you still acting on the premise that that's true?
[2:00:59] In the form of my dissociative behavior, that would be me acting it out?
[2:01:02] You don't talk to girls!
[2:01:04] Oh, okay. I get it.
[2:01:05] Because you're toxic. In your mind, right? Now, you're not born that way. That's inflicted upon you. So why are you still acting on the basis of the verbal abuse you received as a child after working on yourself for almost a decade and being in your 30s?
[2:01:25] I think it's an accurate assessment of where I am. Not calling myself this, like not saying that I am bad, but that I have something inside me that I can't seem to fix. That I want to fix that I will fix one day. I will do it. Even if it kills me, I will do it. I will fix it somehow.
[2:01:42] What? What? We just said it's a verbal, it's the scars of verbal abuse. So people who hate you taught you to hate yourself. Is that fair to say?
[2:01:52] Yes.
[2:01:53] So why are you still obeying your enemies?
[2:01:57] It feels like there's something separate inside me that is obeying them that I can't control.
[2:02:02] Don't give me all of this psychobabble. Just give me the facts. Why are you still conforming to people who hate you?
[2:02:12] Fear?
[2:02:13] Don't ask me! You're the one who's in there! I don't know.
[2:02:17] That's the best answer I have. I'm not sure. It would be a fear of something.
[2:02:23] Okay. Why did you call me today and not over the last nine years?
[2:02:34] I was scared that you would basically tell me that nothing I was doing was going to work.
[2:02:43] No, no, that's why you wouldn't call me. Why did you call me, right? You've known me for almost a decade, right? So why, and I've taken call-in shows, call.fredomain.com, call.fredomain.com. People can set up call-in shows. They're totally free. And you've got time. And this is not a criticism. It's a genuine curious question. Why today?
[2:03:05] I just remembered I actually did call into a call-in show five years ago. But if you just want for today... I've been busting my ass for about two years working, trying to get myself into a place in my life where I can start to actually feel these emotions where it's not going to potentially...
[2:03:24] Stop about the emotions. I'm asking for the practicalities. You've done the emotional work for nine years. So whatever that has happened has not worked in terms of getting you out there in the world and talking to girls. Let me ask you this. Do you think it's going to be easier or harder to ask a woman out in four years when you're 35?
[2:03:45] Harder.
[2:03:46] So every day, you don't ask a woman out, it gets harder. Yes. So if every day it gets harder, when do you need to ask a woman out?
[2:03:57] Um, uh, today.
[2:04:00] Now! Now. So you may have overthrown some of the direct verbal abuse, but you are facing gene extinction. What I mean by that is, maybe you can overthrow some of the worst aspects of the verbal abuse to the point where you can get along with yourself reasonably well and chuck on with your life, but you understand the genes that drove the verbal abusers are viewing you as an enemy and trying to extinguish your genes. Okay. No, no, this is really important. So almost every aspect of personality has a genetic element. And so cruelty has a genetic element. This doesn't mean that people aren't morally responsible, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, you know, just because someone's tall doesn't mean they have to be a basketball player, right? So cruelty, coldness, hostility, domination, control, These all have genetic elements, and you don't have the same genes as your parents, obviously by definition, but some combination of your parents' cruelty has produced in you a non-cruel person.
[2:05:13] They want to do is they want the cruel genes, the cruelty genes want to reproduce. There are genes for cruelty and they want to reproduce. Now, the way that they reproduce is they try to turn you into a cruel person or somebody who feels he only deserves cruelty. And that way you're more likely to pair up with a cruel woman and give birth to more cruel genes. They're just using you to reproduce. Part of verbal abuse is conditioning you to want the kind of genetics that allow cruelty, coldness, domination, blah, blah, to reproduce. Does this sort of argument make sense to some degree?
[2:05:54] So far, yeah.
[2:05:57] You've achieved a draw, but not a victory. So you say, okay, fine. Fine. I'll stop attacking myself in this kind of way. But I'm not going to dislodge the genetic component, which is why you don't ask girls out. So they're saying, okay, fine, fine. If he's not going to reproduce our cruel genes, at least at least let's not have him reproduce kind genes. So if we can't make him an ally, we can at least have him not be an enemy. And you're going along with that. Because you are saying, Well, I'm not a terrible person in the way that they said, but they've still allowed internal castration. They have turned you into a eunuch. And this is standard strategic warfare, right? If you can't turn someone into an ally, then castrate them so at least they can't reproduce and give birth to enemies.
[2:07:03] Right.
[2:07:04] And of course every day that you continue down this path of not talking to women, of not asking women out. I'm talking about women because we're talking about reproduction here. It just makes it worse and worse, harder and harder.
[2:07:19] Well, my bones are getting brittle. When's the best time to go to the gym when your bones are getting brittle? As soon as humanly possible. Because if you wait five years, they're just going to be even weaker, and you're going to be more prone to injury, right? It's also hard to step out of yourself, and I say this for everyone, myself included, It's hard to step out of yourself and to say, how does someone from the outside view me? Now, right now, you are stepping out of yourself into your abusers, right? Because they had obviously toxic, negative, hostile views of you. And so they are... you are stepping outside of yourself into the hostility of your abusers, which would be like me stepping outside myself and viewing myself only from the mainstream media or Wikipedia's view of me, right?
[2:08:11] Terrible guy, bad guy, evil guy, right? Well, could I do my show? If I viewed myself from the perspective of those who abuse me? No. I couldn't do it at all. So the degree to which we agree with abusers is the degree to which we are castrated in life. And so if somebody is able to convince you that your touch is poison, then if you're a nice guy, you don't want to poison people, so you won't touch them. And I can't fix that in you because certainly by the time you're in your 30s, perception is reality. If you think you're worthless, you're right. If you think you're not worthless, you're right.
[2:08:53] Damn.
[2:08:53] But it's true. If you think you don't have anything to offer a woman, then you don't ask women out. Women don't find you attractive because you're shuffling a long slope-shouldered look, staring at the ground, whatever it is, right? So people will agree with your assessment of yourself when you're in your 30s for sure and maybe that's why my change happened in my 30s but people will agree with your assessment of yourself why because you're in your 30s you've been not a child for 13 plus years and you have intimate knowledge of yourself and you are clearly committed to your perception of yourself otherwise you would have changed it. And so if a woman comes along and you're like, you know, I don't have anything to offer women. I'm not going to talk to women. I'm just negative. I've got horrible things within me. What are women going to say? What do women say from the outside?
[2:09:47] Yeah, it's not exactly a chick magnet.
[2:09:47] Well, they'll just pass you over because they're like, well, I don't, I don't know you, but you know you. And if this is your assessment of yourself, either you're right, in which case I'm good to steer clear of you or you're wrong. You do have a lot to offer women, but you don't think you do. In which case there's some crazy battle to try and free you from the grip of all of this kind of stuff, which, you know, is kind of the job of a therapist or whatever, maybe, or a priest, perhaps, I don't know. But it's not something a woman in her 30s is going to get involved in because it's a multi-year effort that may or may not pay off. And she doesn't have the window if she wants to have kids, right?
[2:10:23] Right.
[2:10:25] So at this point, like if I thought I didn't have anything to offer the world, would I have a podcast? No, of course not. I wouldn't call into any podcast if I didn't think I had anything to offer the world. So if you think that you don't have anything to offer women, you're right. But that's not because of your parents, because you've been free of them for years. It's easier. It's less risky. But your balls are calling me, not any other part, because your balls want to make some babies, right?
[2:11:00] Well, I think my soul is calling you, too.
[2:11:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you've been working on your soul for almost a decade. But you're starting to get into the age... I mean, how youthful looking are you?
[2:11:11] Pretty youthful. So, I know you spoke before about the guy who still looked youthful at his older age, that can give you an erroneous reading of time passing.
[2:11:21] Okay, so you've still kept your hair, you're a reasonably slender weight, and you've got a baby face.
[2:11:25] Healthy, yeah, strong, stuff like that... oh, maybe not a baby face, but you know I look like I'm 25.
[2:11:31] Okay. Alright. Alright. So, if I had a friend who was a quality female and single and in her late 20s and I said, uh, what should I tell her so that she'll go on a date with you, what would you say?
[2:11:52] Okay. I'm gonna be blunt. Um, you, if you were to tell her the truth, it would be, you would, you would say a useful looking guy in his, who just entered his 30s, who deeply believes that he has something good to offer the world, but is held back by psychological issues that seem to be hampering half the operation.
[2:12:14] Great, okay, then the woman will say, okay, so he's got psychological issues that are holding him back. How long has he been aware of this and how long has he been working on them? And I said, oh, nine years. And then what would she say?
[2:12:27] Looks like he's not having too much success. I think I'll pass on him for now.
[2:12:32] No, not for now.
[2:12:35] Yeah.
[2:12:35] If you've been trying to play piano for nine years and you're no good at it, no one's going to ask you to join their band.
[2:12:42] Yeah they probably think there's something wrong with you too for continuing to play when you're not making any progress.
[2:12:45] Right. So you prefer at this point, right? We can't blame it all on your parents, right? So not in your 30s, right? So you prefer to avoid the anxiety and stress of rejection. And of course, every day, it's easier to avoid that stress and anxiety for sure. And you can keep doing that and you'll grow old alone and you'll die alone and you won't have family and you won't have friends and all of that, right? So, I mean, honestly, I mean, if that's what you want to do, it's not a moral violation. Nobody should be forced, of course, to have kids or raise kids or be married or anything like that, right? It's not a violation of the non-aggression principle to grow old and die alone. I'm just not sure why you'd want to do that because that's what you want to do because that's what you're preferring to do.
[2:13:35] Because you're not just doing the horrible thing, which is horrible. It's horrible to go up and talk to women. It's horrible to ask a woman out. Of course, I mean, we all know that, right? Just like it's horrible to start going to the gym. You feel incompetent. You feel weak because you are, right? You don't know the machines. And, you know, you look at all these buff guys and you're like got noodle arms. And, yeah, it's horrible to start going to the gym, blah, blah, blah. So what? It's horrible to start dieting. It's horrible to start learning guitar. Fingers bleed and it's uncomfortable. Okay, whatever, right? So, yeah, it's tough. It's tough. And particularly because you haven't done it before. And as a kid, in the past, early 20s, I get it, parents, blah, blah, blah. But you are stuck because you're not doing stuff, right? So you've heard me talk about, you know, obviously go talk to women and ask women out and don't leave it too late, and it just gets worse and harder as you delay, blah, blah. You've heard me say this a million times, right? Yeah. Okay, so you're just not doing it. So what's the purpose of all this introspection? Like what's the purpose of reading diet and exercise books? What is the purpose of that?
[2:14:42] To get into a healthier body.
[2:14:44] To change your behavior. You read a diet book that says stop eating three candy bars a day, you're supposed to stop eating three candy bars a day, right? You get an exercise book that says stretch and lift weights, then you're supposed to change your behavior from not stretching to stretching and not lifting weights to lifting weights, right? Yes. So, if I say, well, you've got to talk to women, and you say, I'm not going to do that, then you're just reading a diet book without changing your diet. You're just reading some exercise books without actually exercising. So, I'm not sure why there's confusion as to why you're stuck. Say, man, I've read all of these books on exercise and I'm still not strong. And I said, well, have you actually done any exercise? Well, no. It's like, I don't know. Help me understand the confusion here. Maybe I'm missing something.
[2:15:33] Well, I'm not particularly scared of talking to people. Like I can go up and talk to people.
[2:15:39] You said fear!
[2:15:39] Yes.
[2:15:40] I said, why don't you talk to girls? You said fear.
[2:15:46] Well, there were two parts to my answer back when I said fear. The first one was uh before I found Freedomain Radio, then it was like a deeply ingrained fear that I just wasn't worth anything. After that, that fear started to dissipate and go away and it mainly became a fear of, well, if I don't have these internal issues figured out, they're going to crop up in the relationship and ruin it anyway, so I have to get these ironed out now.
[2:16:07] Okay, so fear.
[2:16:09] Sure.
[2:16:10] No don't "sure" me! Don't go rubber bones on me!
[2:16:13] Okay. Sorry.
[2:16:14] You said, oh, I'm not I'm not afraid of talking to people. I didn't say people. Did I say people? You see, you're, you're bullshitting me. You're moving the goalposts. I said, why don't you talk to girls? Well, I'm not afraid of talking to people! Like I understand that! You're talking to me right now! I'm a person! I get that. And then you said, and I said, well it's fear, and you said, well it's not really fear, there's two parts. In the past I was frightened to talking to girls, but in the future I'm terrified of being a horrible person in the relationship, as if those two aren't just fear. So you're a little bit of a bullshit machine. And listen, we all have it, I'm not casting aspersions from some massive superior place. We all have this tendency to lie to ourselves. But you are lying, because you said it's fear. And you said, no no no, but in the past it was just fear of talking to girls, now it's fear that I'm going to be horrible to them in a relationship. It's like those are still under the umbrella of fear, right?
[2:17:10] You're right, you're right. I was wrong.
[2:17:12] So you are choosing to not talk to women out of fear. And then you say, why aren't I making progress? Because you're saying, well, I've spent nine years reading exercise books, but I'm afraid of doing something wrong at the gym. So I'm waiting until I really am 100% certain I'm never going to do anything wrong at the gym before I go to the gym. And then, okay, I think that's a kind of a ridiculous mindset, to be blunt. But then don't call up the guy who wrote the exercise manual saying, well, I don't know, it's so complicated. Why am I not getting stronger? It's like, because you're not going to the gym. Now, whatever reason you have for not going to the gym is less relevant than the fact that you're not going to the gym. You're not asking girls out. You're not trying to embark upon relationships or anything like that. Now, so why you're not doing that? Well, it's fear and it's habit and it's easier every day to not ask a girl than it is to ask a girl. Just like it's easier every day to not go to the gym or change your diet. It's easier. It's inertia. It's momentum. I get that.
[2:18:12] But I just, I want the audience... because when people call in and have been listening to the show for a long time and they say, I'm not making any progress, that's a credibility attack upon me. I take it personally. I really do, right? And then I need to say, well, have you actually done the things that are recommended? And if you say no, then it's like, okay, that's fine. But that's not the fault. It's not the fault of the exercise book that you don't go to the gym, right? If the exercise book says, here's what you need to do. You need to go to the gym. And here's what you need to do at the gym. Then if you don't go to the gym and then say to the guy who wrote the exercise book, I don't know, man, it's been nine years. I'm not getting any stronger, he's got to push back hard because you're attacking the credibility of his exercise book, now if it turns out that you just haven't been going to the gym because you're scared of making a mistake at the gym, well, that's that's a shame, and I sympathize with that.
[2:19:03] But when people... I don't, I don't have a problem with people who listen to philosophy without doing much about it. I don't. Because that was my life too. I listened to philosophy without doing much about it in my practical life for like 15 years. So I'm not, you know... but when people, well, I also didn't have a practical path for doing anything. There wasn't any philosophy book that said the kind of practical stuff that I talk about in the world, right?
[2:19:30] I mean, you read a lot of Plato, you read Plato's Republic, and you don't come out with a big vision about how to be more honest, direct, and virtuous in your own life, or anything like that. Or you read Nicomachean ethics from Aristotle, you don't get that. Ayn Rand maybe a little, but it's not very practical, because it's all romantic, hyper-realistic characters, or surrealistic characters in a way. So, because I talk about practical philosophy and actually making choices that affect things in your life in the world, then when people come and say, man, you know, nine years, I'm still stuck. It's like, then that is a challenge to me. I don't dislike people who don't act on philosophy because that's a great temptation. But I have a problem, just to be frank, this doesn't mean I'm right. I'm just saying I have a problem with people who call me up in a public discussion and say, basically, Stef, I've been listening to you for nine years and I'm stuck. And it's like, that's because you've only been listening. You haven't been doing. You got to go talk to girls. You got to start getting into relationships. Because what's the point of being virtuous and isolated?
[2:20:34] There's no point. It's like being a great guitarist only in your own basement. You never record anything. You never publish anything. You never write any songs. You never join a band. You never play anywhere. What is the point of being really great at guitar and only playing for yourself? The purpose of virtue is social. It is to go out there, to spread virtue in the world, to found a great family, to raise children well, to be an example in your community, because that is not making it about you. That's making it about others and the good of the world. See, what you've talked about for this time period, and again, it's not a big criticism, just pointing it out, but what you've talked about is I, me, me, I, me, me, I, me, me, I. I have these problems. I need to overcome this. I've been working on this. I have vivid dreams. I, I, I, I, I, right? Now, if that was my approach to philosophy, would you ever have any of my shows to listen to?
[2:21:30] No.
[2:21:31] No. So the fact is that I have focused on trying to do good using philosophy out in the world at, you know, some considerable risk and danger to myself, I might add. I didn't make it all about, well, I'm happy in my marriage and I'm raising my parent, my child, well, philosophy is working for me and just never talk about it with anyone and never try and spread it, never try and do good. You've made it all about you. You have lots of great principles that you won't share with a woman and you won't share with your children because you're not talking to women. Sorry, go ahead.
[2:22:07] Well, I was going to say like, you have made your show about other people, but the people who call in do naturally make it about because they're trying to figure out a problem inside themselves.
[2:22:20] I'm sorry, I'm not sure what your point is.
[2:22:25] That you have made this whole thing here about other people, and you are correct. But... would you say that you've made this about other people in order to make them make their lives about other people?
[2:22:44] Well, we're social animals, right?
[2:22:46] Correct.
[2:22:47] So the purpose in the call-in shows is to have people connect with others. Because that's the purpose of honesty. The purpose of honesty in the world is so that you can genuinely connect with others. The purpose of virtue is to get the bad people out of your life and get the good people into your life and to sway the undecided towards the path of virtue. Right, so the purpose of virtue is social. A man on a desert island can be good or evil. It has no effect on the world. So the purpose of the call-in shows is to break down the barriers that disconnect people from each other so that they can get along better with their wife, so they can get into a relationship, so they can get along better with their children, so they can have more honest people that they work with, all these kinds of things, right? The purpose of the calling shows is to hack through the undergrowth of isolation so that people can connect with others. Because I've always said truth is a social endeavor. We cannot achieve the truth on our own, any more than we can see both forwards and backwards at the same time. We can't do that.
[2:23:48] Truth, virtue are all collective endeavors. A man tells himself the truth on a desert island. A man lies to himself on a desert island, has no effect. Doesn't matter, he dies either way. Maybe he dies a little further, a little faster if he lies to himself. But yeah, so the purpose of the call in shows is to start making it all about the individual and to work to connect people to others. This is why I've always supported Freedomain communities. This is why I'm happy when people get married and have kids. And this is why I work so hard to try and keep families together, particularly if they're children involved, by having people communicate better, be more honest and direct with each other, stop being manipulative and so on, right?
[2:24:25] And you are isolated! Because, and again, I say this with no moral judgment or anything. It's just sort of a fact that you make stuff up. You lie, you misdirect, you stay stuff that's convenient for the moment, you get passive aggressive. And all of these are signs of solitude because you don't get called out on this by yourself, but you get called out on this by other people. In the same way, of course, in my life, if I'm lying to myself about something or I'm being foolish about something, my wife, and in particular my daughter will, because she's a teenager, and that's what they do, and it's good, will call me out on it. If I try to impose a moral judgment on someone else that I've been hypocritical about in the past, people tell me. And that's good. That keeps me honest. And we all drift from the truth ourselves. And we all need other people to stay focused on the truth. You cannot get to the truth on your own, because we all have the habit of lying to yourself. And evolutionarily, we had to survive. So you need people to get to the truth. You say, well, I can't get to the truth on my own. But once I get to the truth on my own, then I'll be fit for other people.
[2:25:28] You can't get to the truth on your own, any more than I could go through the whole process of authenticity without therapy, or I could ground myself in the truth without having people around me who tell me the truth and who I tell the truth to. So you're waiting, and you're like saying, well, the moment I can have a kid on my own, then I can go and have a family. It's like, but you can't have a kid on your own. You need a woman to have a kid. And you're like, well, when I get to the truth on my own, then I'll be fit for a relationship. But you can't get to the truth without a relationship. Most of my pursuit of truth has involved other people. I mean, I didn't invent philosophy on my own, obviously. I'm at the tail end of a 3,000-year process.
[2:26:11] It's like saying, once I invent my own language, I can talk to other people. No. Language is a social endeavor. I need to use words that you understand, that I understand. We need to have common definitions. Turns in speaking, we can't both speak at the same time. So you're waiting until you become perfect so that you can date. It's like, well, you can't become perfect without other people's perspectives. You can't be honest without other people's perspectives. And the evidence of this is this conversation where you made up a bunch of stuff to gaslight me and to fog and to passive aggressive. And again, we all do it, so it's not like the end of the world, but you need people who are going to call you on it. And as you said, hold your feet to the fire, keep you on the straight and narrow. That's a social endeavor, and you just can't get there alone.
[2:26:52] All right. Well, listen, I really, really appreciate everyone's time. I'm sorry. I have a call-in show coming, and I need some food, and it's been a nice, long, old show. So I really do appreciate, of course, everyone calling in. freedomain.com/donate to help out the show. You know, look at the width and breadth of these discussions. We can't get this anywhere else in the world. And it's all ad-free. And you can keep it ad-free. Well, it's going to stay ad-free even if I have to end up funding it with my own kidney sales. Freedomain.com/donate. Call.freedomain.com to book your call-in shows. You know, the summer opens up. People are out in the summer. They're on vacations. They're doing stuff. So if you want to get a call-in show, the summer is a good time to do it. Call.freedomain.com. Shop.freedomain.com for your merch. Lots of love, my friends. Talk to you soon. Bye.
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