0:04 - Welcome to the Church of the Mind
3:06 - The Inner Monologue Mystery
6:29 - The Art of Empathy
11:27 - Developing Inner Voices
17:17 - The Complexity of Human Nature
24:30 - Navigating Inner Dialogue
32:10 - Compassion and Responsibility
35:57 - Understanding Weaponized Empathy
41:59 - Engaging with the Audience
46:31 - The Impact of Beliefs
53:54 - Embracing Rationality
1:02:01 - The Cost of Philosophy
1:06:00 - Insights on Relationships
In this episode, we delve into a thought-provoking discussion on the nature of inner dialogue and its impact on individual experience. I share insights on the prevalence of inner monologues and how between 30% to 70% of individuals operate without this internal dialogue, relying instead on images and sensations. This revelation sparks conversations about the implications for understanding empathy and communication, as well as the role of inner voices in processing thoughts and emotions.
We explore the complexities of human conflict, emphasizing the importance of empathy in understanding opposing viewpoints. I encourage listeners to describe the perspectives of others, fostering a richer dialogue that goes beyond mere disagreement. Throughout the episode, I dissect the disparities in political empathy, particularly how those on opposite sides of the spectrum struggle to articulate each other's positions—leading to stagnation in communication and understanding.
The conversation naturally shifts to the development of inner dialogue in children, where I advocate for parents to ask questions rather than provide direct answers. This method nurtures curiosity and critical thinking, allowing children to cultivate their inner voices actively. We discuss the significance of reading fiction and how these narratives deepen our ability to empathize with diverse perspectives.
My musings also touch upon the phenomenon of “weaponized empathy,” where emotional manipulation can cloud rational discourse, particularly in the context of social issues and personal relationships. We examine how societal expectations shape our responses to vulnerability and how these dynamics can prevent genuine connections.
I recount personal anecdotes, including my own experience of reading challenging literary works at a young age, as a way to encourage reflection on the formative role literature plays in our ability to empathize and understand complex human behaviors. The episode culminates in an exploration of the societal pressures surrounding compassion and the responsibility we bear in navigating our interpersonal relationships.
Ultimately, we leave listeners with the idea that fostering a thoughtful inner dialogue not only enhances self-awareness but also enriches our interactions with others. Join us for an engaging discussion that challenges assumptions and invites deeper contemplation on the nature of thought, empathy, and understanding in our lives.
[0:00] Hello, hello, everybody.
[0:05] Yo, how you doing, my friends? Good afternoon to those not in Eastern Standard. Good morning to those who are. Welcome to our Sunday morning Church of the Mind. We are talking about philosophy today. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Thank you so much for dropping by. It is a great pleasure. Hello and welcome. To all of the lovely folks I've been engaging with on X, it is a great pleasure to chat with you.
[0:39] And I look forward to your questions and comments. Very humbly and gratefully appreciated. It is great to chat with you. And thank you for the great conversations that have been going on. And let me just get to your comments here. Questions, challenges, issues, whatever you dislike. About what I say, whatever you want to criticize about what I say, I am literally beyond thrilled to be corrected. And I'm just going to write here, post questions here. Hello, Bayo, nice to see you. Reply, and does it do a live chat? I feel like it did. Feel like it did but i don't know if it still does anyway that is neither here nor there if you are over on the locals platform i can start to take calls if you like, and i'm just going to put out the text here if you want to do, Uh, calls, uh, you can do that. We can talk there.
[2:03] Uh, uh, uh, call. And there we go. I'm afraid that, uh, my producer is not here today. He is selfishly doing something else. Just kidding. It's fine. Uh, are you still mad at me? Stef says another two cents. So this is somebody who drops by the live stream and doesn't admit faults and just kind of escalates and it's aggressive um honestly i i don't think about you i'm not mad at you i don't have any grudges i just don't want to talk that's all it's just um yeah it's just uh i don't i don't it's like how you're so mad at me it's funny because people who are um annoying, i always think that they're having more of an impact on others than they are, and i think that's kind of a sad thing um.
[3:06] It doesn't really uh it doesn't really impact uh if i find something let's say i go to a restaurant right and the restaurant serves me a bad meal right and then you know three weeks later the restaurant owner calls me and says are you still mad at me it's like no i'm i'm not mad at you i just didn't have a good meal so i'm not coming back it's really all it comes down to it's not it's not that it's literally not that complicated that's by my daughter's phrase dad go back on twitter it's literally not that complicated it's literally not that deep and then she makes irrefutable arguments that I end up having to be a slave to. Brian Ferry's a slave to love. I'm slave to thought. Slave to thought. That's all I have. So anyway, I hope you're having a great day. If you have questions, comments, of course, as I was saying, it's not literally not that serious. You're overthinking it. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? No, you can't. You can't imagine that somebody could say to me, Stef, you're overthinking it.
[4:15] Impossible. I am highly offended. It so i guess i let rip a couple of bangers on uh on x which i'll sort of mention here and i'm happy to talk about those topics and comments as well ah i suppose there was a big one but the big one which i did last night it's funny because you know right before going to sleep i whip off a couple of tweets and those are the ones that seem to cook and i wrote it is essential to remember that between a third and a half of people have no inner monologue or dialogue. They don't debate with themselves. They have no inner conversations. They exist in the blur of images and sensations and feelings, and they are all around you. And of course, I was talking about this maybe three or four years ago on the show. It was a surprise to me. I've had time to integrate it. It is a surprise, of course, to others, which I, you know, of course, sympathize with. And people are like, they're shocked at the numbers right oh god how could it be and i wrote i'm actually being generous this is from another article which cited a bunch of studies if you're wondering which experience is more common research shows that most people don't have an inner monologue only 30 to 50 percent of people have inner monologues which means up to 70 percent of people don't have a talkative brain and people are quite shocked.
[5:44] People you know you should you should create an account on x and follow me um it's uh it's it's good it's spicy i'm enjoying it and i'm getting great feedback and all of this lovely stuff so i hope that you will.
[5:58] Will follow me on x it feels very important and James if you could look up how I access the comments on the feed I just see a feed um you know what let's promote it yeah I just have a feed.
[6:16] Um but I don't um I just see comments under the feed I don't see live chats within the feed I don't know why I think I saw it once before tips to figure out if someone has an inner voice as a great question. It's a great question.
[6:30] And I was having a conversation about that just this morning. Not that there was anyone else in the room, of course. So how to figure out if somebody has an inner voice. Well, this is true of conflict in general. If you find yourself getting stuck in a conflict, then the best thing to do is to ask the person to describe your point of view, not to agree with it, just to describe it. Can you describe my point of view? It is a mark, of course, of empathy and to some degree of intelligence to be able to entertain a perspective you do not agree with. Can you play the devil's advocate? When I was vice president of the debating club, because they needed a president who was full of vice i was vice president of the debating club in university traveled all over canada debating.
[7:27] And in debating you don't know which side you're going to get so they have bert be it resolve that in debate and you didn't know which side you were going to get so you had to be able to argue both sides if you are an actor you have to be able to empathize with the character who's not your own and convincingly speak words that you don't necessarily agree with or may in fact be um they might may be quite difficult or unpleasant for you to to accept it's one of the reasons why modern movies in particular and tv so boring because writers can't create a convincing villain now they're all afraid right i mean i think they lack that capacity as a whole but they're also all afraid if you create too convincing a villain then you're going to be accused of sympathizing with the villain and making him too charismatic and making people become extremists yeah like communism is not extremism but so if you're in a conflict, ask people to describe your perspective because you're trying to get something across to them you don't honestly know sometimes if they're capable of listening of understanding of appreciating.
[8:42] Your perspective, right? You don't know. Oh, there's the chat. There's the chat. Ah, I see the chat. Uh-huh. I just had to do something completely different than what I was doing for reasons that I don't quite understand. So I will get your chat comments here. Chats here, please. But, yeah, so get someone to describe your perspective, right? And uh one of the things that of course people the partisans right the partisans were commenting and saying oh but it's only people on the left who really have empathy and it's like no.
[9:25] Like absolutely not and this is actually quite well known but not by everyone of course because the left controls the media but if you go to people on the left and you ask them to describe, the positions of people on the right, generally, all they can do is insult, right? So people on the right often have some skepticism about mass immigration. You go to people on the left, they say, well, what is their issue? What is the issues of the people on the right with mass immigration? And they'll just say, a xenophobic racist, you know, all they can, they can't actually process why someone would have a different opinion or an opposing opinion. Everyone who has an opposing opinion is just evil. And they just, so there's no negotiation that's possible. You cannot negotiate with people who can't even describe your position. All you can do is fold like a cheap shirt, right? Whereas if you go to people who are conservatives and you say, can you describe the liberal position? They have to do a pretty good job of it. I mean, they don't agree with it.
[10:27] But they do a pretty good job of it and so that is uh just as so and i think it has something to do with um of course people on the right tend to be um quite religious and and you pray and praying is uh working with an inner voice so to speak i mean if you believe it's god then it's god but in if you don't then you're working with an inner voice and do unto others as you would have them do unto you that sort of basic empathy stuff uh it means that you have to figure out what other people would like and what you would like and work and negotiate with that.
[10:59] So yeah, I think that the best way to figure out if somebody has an inner voice, well, you can just ask them, right? But they may have trouble articulating it because if you don't have an inner voice, you can work really well with math. The numbers are not language exactly. You can work really well with objects, which is why it's not necessarily associated with IQ because you get super smart engineers. They don't have an inner voice in the way that a lot of people do, but they work brilliantly with numbers and objects and so on, right?
[11:27] So I try to avoid the prejudice of, well, if I have an inner voice, clearly I'm smarter. But I think it has something to do with empathy. And the people who don't have an inner voice, you can see them being sort of triggered and reactive and hostile and sarcastic on the thread. Maybe it has something to do with empathy. I think it does, but it's not an IQ thing. And of course, they're just, you know, people are saying, well, they're like animals. No, they're not like animals. They're just a different kind of person. They're just a different kind of person and it's important to know you know that you know a third to half the people you meet now probably not in your social circle probably not in your family circle because.
[12:01] This uh inner dialogue stuff starts developing around the age of two or three i assume there's environmental factors there are probably strong genetic components but it is just the way that it is and one of the things that i was talking about as well was i was saying that an inner voice, I think, often develops out of resource conservation, the need for resource conservation. So if you have a really cold, long winter, you need to stock up a whole bunch of food ahead of time or your family, you and your family are going to starve to death.
[12:32] So you need to have a voice which says, oh, are you sure? Are you absolutely sure you have enough food? Are you sure you have enough food? And it's going to nag at you until you have absolute certain evidence that you have enough, food and then you you can relax right but you can't relax so i i think it comes from are you sure are you sure uh whereas it's different in other other locations so i think it comes out of that could be any other number of things but i think that's a pretty strong component so uh what are there other ways? So as somebody who enjoys reading fiction, is probably certainly the reading of fiction is pretty important to the development of empathy. I mean, annoyingly precocious kid that I was, I was plowing through. Crime and Punishment at the Age of 12 and Crime and Punishment and Dostoevsky as a whole, but Crime and Punishment is the absolute pinnacle of a lot of empathetic writing.
[13:34] And he really delved into the mind of an ideologically captured murderer, which was something that he strongly opposed. But it is a great way, you know, there's an old saying that reading a novel is a chance of trying on another life for size.
[13:49] Novels are looking deeply into the thought not just of the author if you have a third person omniscient authorship style like he did she did because and the author can dip into people's thoughts they can go anywhere they can be absolutely certain about the inner states of minds of people which we really can't be just in the mortal realm so not only are you delving into the writer's thoughts but the writer if they're a good writer will be delving into the thoughts and motivations of the characters i'm currently writing uh a i just yesterday i was writing a chapter in my new novel about postpartum depression and i was asking people on x women in particular of course right to give me sort of their thoughts and experiences of it because i want to try and capture it accurately the causes and the motivations and the expressions and the process of postpartum depression so a really good writer will reveal his or her thoughts to you as well as the thoughts of the characters and that gets you good practice in going into the mind of others so if somebody reads fiction if they lack certainty right i mean people who don't have inner debates often have a kind of unearned certainty i mentioned this on twitter i refer to them as the period people and the period people refers to well it's just this way period period.
[15:13] Or it's simple. It's just this, right? You know, I posted about like, why is it that people treat family members badly and strangers? Well, like I talked about how my mother would.
[15:25] Be mean to me and then really nice to the waiter at the restaurant or she'd be screaming at me or yelling at me and then the door would someone knock on the door and she you know sugar wouldn't melt on her tongue so and people were like oh come on it's simple it's just there right it's like, period people oversimplifying people i think they lack an inner dialogue because the moment i'm tempted to say that something is just simple my inner dialogue says really, Really? Can it just be simple?
[16:00] Or people who think that, like, they would talk about people who are like this, you know, cruel to family members, but nice to outsiders, transitory, like people passing by, right? Because it makes no sense, right? I mean, it makes no sense. Like, why would you be nicer to a waiter than your own son? Who's going to take care of you in your old age? Not the waiter. The waiter won't even remember you exist in 10 minutes, right? But why would you be oh if you could repost the stream like i really would i really would appreciate that thank you but yeah why would you um why would you be nicer to people you're never going to see again than the people you actually share a life with like it doesn't make any any sense it's like uh absolutely ensuring that a swimming pool in dubai is perfectly clean and then peeing and pooping in your own pool in order to swim like it just it so the the causality is interesting and people would say well it's simple it's just this that and the other to get it wrong they'd say well it's just human nature it's like well then why doesn't everyone do it i don't do that i'm not nicer to strangers than i am to family members i mean i try to be nice just about everyone but i'm not that way so it doesn't explain that or people would say well that's narcissistic personality disorder it's like okay but putting a label on something, doesn't explain it.
[17:18] I mean, if you see something, let's say you're an astronaut, you go to some other world and you see some life form, you don't know what it is, right? I don't know. What the hell is that life form? It's like, we will name it Jabberwocky. It's a Jabberwocky. It's like, but you haven't told me what it is. You've just given it a label. It doesn't answer anything to put a label on something. Well, it's just narcissistic personality disorder, which tells me what? It has a label, not what it is, what it is. Oh, nicely slippery girls. All right. All right. So let's get to your questions. Let's get to your questions. I asked this in reply to your post, your ex post. Is there a way to foster the inner dialogue in young children, or is it just something you're born with?
[18:05] Well, inner dialogues come to some degree from doubt, and they can't be calmed in a state of danger. Like a lot of people were posting, oh, my God, my inner dialogue is driving me crazy. My analog just doesn't stop. It's driving me. But that's because probably, in my opinion, obviously, that it's because you're in a state of danger, right? So I think we've all had this situation. Wait, did you hear that? You wake up in the middle of the night and you think you hear a thump downstairs or maybe even the sound of breaking glass. I like the sound of breaking glass. And if you don't believe me, why did you ask? I hope he gets his hearing back, Huey Lewis. Anyway, so you wake up, wait, what? I once lived in a new house, and it was settling. Like every other night, I was living in a pirate ship.
[19:02] And I'd wake up, and I'd be like, did I hear something? What was that? What the hell was it? And, you know, you get this for men. I'm sure it's true for women as well. But for me, it's just as a sort of provider protector guy. What do I have to do? Well, I have to get up and check the house. Now if i check the house and there's nothing and no one there and you don't want to go all right bradbury and check the attic but you know it's not a game of hide and go seek with an axe murderer at least you hope so once you've checked the house and you can go back to sleep but if you hear, like sound of breaking glass a big thump downstairs uh maybe maybe your wife went up for a midnight snack and dropped a bowl or something right but assuming she's there beside you and there's nobody else in the house you got to go check it out you can't just go by oh it's i'm sure it's nothing and go back to sleep you can't do that because your inner voice is like you don't know that there's nobody here but we sure heard something maybe it was a dream maybe something just fell off the counter maybe but uh you got to check it out and you can't go back to sleep so your inner voice won't leave you alone until you establish a state of security so to me again it's just my particular personal amateur advice, but I would say that if your inner voice is.
[20:21] Really insistent and aggressive and so on, like Brian Wilson style, then you probably are in a state of danger in some manner. And maybe it could be perceived danger, but I generally don't think that perceived danger is where you start. You work to eliminate all possible real dangers out there, and the psychological dangers can be the worst of all.
[20:45] So with kids, if you want them to foster in a dialogue don't just feed them answers ask them questions yeah well why is the sky blue well your instant instinct as a parent or maybe this is more of a dad thing is to say well it's blue because of the wavelength and this is just the distance from the wavelength of the sun hitting the atmosphere to hit the ground blah blah blah blah and it's like i don't know why do you think gets blue and and you stimulate the child's questions and i think that's how you provoke and in a dialogue if you're just feeding answers whatever you feed answers to becomes passive and you want your children to have active minds so don't just feed them answers right i think you should share more well why is sharing more good well that people will like you and it's reciprocal altruism and wouldn't you want people to share with you just give them these answers it's like, why do you why do you think sharing is good i mean if you pretend you don't know you stimulate your children's thinking and you can get great value out of it i mean i'm back on x because my daughter made a great case rather than me just saying well the reason i'm not on x is, x y and z period right so so yeah i mean don't don't just give answers to your kids um ask them questions. And you might be really surprised, right?
[22:13] All right. If someone can't turn their inner monologue off, would that make them borderline schizophrenic? I mean, again, I don't have any capacity to diagnose anyone with any mental ailments. I'm just a philosophy guy on the internet. But I think that schizophrenia is a little bit more than just hearing voices. I think it's hallucinations and dissociation and unreality and all that kind of stuff as well. But no, And in a monologue, it's not someone's yelling and you're like the late singer-songwriter from the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson. I talked about this a couple of weeks ago when he died. I read his autobiography, and he literally had voices in his ear, like telling him he was a piece of crap and he should die and they were coming to kill him. And he had a very abusive father, and I assume it was internalized, but he literally hallucinated. Having it in a dialogue is just, ooh, shouldn't I, shouldn't I, back and forth. And it's not just voices, and it's not audible voices. If you really want to figure this out, slow down the process of reading and figure out how do you read? It's a pretty wild thing to do. So when you listen to an audio book, that's different from you reading a book silently, right? And how does it work? Well, the words form in your mind, but not like someone speaking. The words just form in your mind. It's a fascinating thing to slow down your reading and see what the heck's going on in your mind. So inner dialogues are not two people arguing in your ears, like there's two people on either side of you arguing, I guess one person on either side, or more, if you want.
[23:38] Um or as a friend of mine when we were teenagers we were joking around and he said um, it was uh in resumes oh yeah yeah uh what was it um uh hobbies he says what's the point of hobbies right what's the point of putting down your hobbies in a resume and he said what am I gonna say hobbies schizophrenia please also see attached resumes I thought that was hear me I am resurrecting a joke from over 40 years ago that nobody would ever remember otherwise but i just always remembered i thought it was very funny i had some very i wrote about these uh types of people in my novel the god of atheists very funny but a little bit over cynical and sometimes nihilistic so uh in terms of turning the inner monologue off if you're in a situation of peace and relaxation and surrounded by love and positivity then i think it's pretty easy to do turn it off, just think of your O-face, right?
[24:30] You're not having a debate with yourself when you're having an orgasm, so a sufficient level of happiness diminishes the inner voices, inner voices, and they also turn more playful and creative when you're in a safe situation. There's really nothing better than.
[24:49] A safety in the world which is why those who want to keep you weak constantly endanger you like politicians and so on right all right let me get to your questions uh.
[25:05] Explain self-monologue language is language for social interaction self-monologue language, i mean i hate to say it's tough to well it's just this period right it is tough to explain so for me i don't think just in terms of language i think in emotions i have a feel when something is wrong my wife is fantastic this way too so i have a feeling like you ever have this thing like somebody gives you an argument and it seems compelling but you feel that it's wrong like i had a conversation which is available for donors at freedom.locals.com i had a conversation with a woman who was an only fans worker and she was monetized she had monetized her biological physical attributes and i said well it's not going to be particularly satisfying because you didn't earn it and then somebody wrote to me and it was an annoyingly good argument when i said well Stef you just happen to have a big brain and you have commoditized like by going out on the internet you ask for donations freedomain.com slash donate i'd really appreciate that but you've monetized Stef, you just happen to be born with this big brain, right? IQ is like 80% genetic by our late teens. So you just happen to be born with this big brain, and you're just monetizing it too.
[26:21] What's the difference? Big brain, big boob. What's the difference, right?
[26:27] And you know that that argument is wrong. You feel that it's wrong, but feeling it's wrong isn't enough. That's just the start of the journey. So I get a sense of like, well, that's kind of compelling. I can certainly see the surface logic, but it feels wrong. Now, again, just because it feels wrong doesn't mean that it is wrong, but that to me is an incentive to dig in and figure out why it's wrong. I mean, we all know rape, theft, assault, and murder, they're wrong. They're just wrong. This is an old Aristotelian argument. Aristotle said, look, if you've got a moral system that can be used to prove that murder is good, I really don't care what your logic is. You've gone wrong somewhere. And so, you know, rape, theft, assault, and murder, the four big horsemen of the evil apocalypse, we know that they're wrong.
[27:13] But why? But why? Why are they wrong? And it can't be God, because that's an argument from authority, at least not philosophically, theologically, sure, but not philosophically. So, you know, close to 20 years ago, I sat down and I said, I'm not going to get back out from this table until I figured out why rape, theft, assault, and murder are wrong. And you can see the results, of course, essentialphilosophy.com, the last third, and the full book is Universally Preferable Behavior, a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, which you should absolutely read. or listen to.
[27:44] So there's instincts, there's emotions, there's a sort of famous example of the physicist who came up with the structure of the carbon atom had a dream about a snake eating its own tail, woke up and then, you know, puzzled through it. So that's all part of thinking, having debates. Yes, but yes, but I debate probably at least once a week, I debate with myself, how much empathy I should have for the unthinking. It's a huge issue for me. uh i won't bore you with my machinations that way but i have a debate like well they don't think so we should have compassion yeah but they're responsible for not thinking yeah but there's a lot of propaganda yeah but there's the internet yeah but you know all of their social arrangements will probably be dissolved by them learning how to think yeah but they value everyone values those who go their own way and have integrity like honestly i am like a one of these newton machines or the pendulums that never end i go back and forth with how much responsibility do i give, to people who don't think and the reason that's important for me, and i think it's important as a whole the reason why that's important to me is.
[28:58] Bad times are coming for the un- I mean, bad times are coming for most people, but bad times are definitely coming for the unthinking. And when bad times come for the unthinking, sorry, let me restart, reboot that sentence. When bad times come for the unthinking, the first thing they do is turn to moral, emotional manipulation. I'm a victim. Bad things happen. It's not my fault. I need help. Who's going to feed my kids? So I need to know how open or closed my heart needs to be in order to survive this is an old anglo-saxon instinct well i've stored up enough food for the winter and i told you bro you need to store up enough food for the winter the guy two two farms over right and he doesn't, and he comes to my door in mid-january it's cold as a witch's tit out there, ice puddles on the ground the cows are, shooting out iced milk from their udders and we're all freezing.
[30:08] And he comes over and he's like yo Stef I'm I got my my kids are starving like I've put this off as long as possible I've been out hunting every day look at my you can count my ribs like a like a xylophone bro i mean i'm begging you i mean i i really did try and i listened to what you said i really did try my my kids are my kids are dying by you know and they get emotional and they're like and they're like compassion and neighborliness and i i'd do it for you and i'd look out for you and we got to stick together and blah blah blah blah but i'm gonna feed my kids not yours bro.
[30:49] And if he tries to break into the house to get the food that I've stored up for the winter for my family and extended family, I might have to put him down. The bad things are coming for the unthinking. I mean, in their personal life, it's going to happen anyway, because the unthinking stagger from one disaster to another while constantly blaming others. The bad times are coming for the unthinking. The government's going to run out of money. I mean, mathematically, that which cannot continue will not continue. The government's going to run out of money. Bad times are coming for the unthinking. And they're just going to cry and scream and threaten and manipulate and beg and plead and bully and appeal to emotion and reason and appeal to virtue and morality. And they're just going to try absolutely everything. And I debate with myself how much compassion should I have for the unthinking. Well, if it's not their fault, they don't think we should have endless compassion. But I don't know the degree to which it is people's thoughts. So there's an example just for me of a debate that I have. And I guess like a lot of young people these days, I go both ways. So, all right.
[32:11] All right. So let's see here. Is high neuroticism downstream from an inner monologue gone awry. So inner monologues are there to protect you from non immediate dangers, right? If you're walking in the woods, and you start getting chased by a bear. You don't have much of an inner monologue, you just have straight up fight or flight, right?
[32:35] But in terms of storing up enough food for the winter, well, that's a non-obvious danger. In other words, by the time you're out of food, it's too late to get more, right? So if you run out of food in January or February, and you're not going to be able to get any food until the spring, it's too late.
[32:59] So inner monologues, or what you call neuroticism, is there to keep you from non-obvious dangers, right? There's this old story, probably true, could not, might not be true, but there's this old story, which is a guy says to his girlfriend, she wants to go to a party in a really sketchy part of town, right? And the guy says to her, don't go, man, this is a bad, bad idea. Do not go. Do not. It's not a safe place to be. And she's like, no, no, no, my friend's going with me. I'm going to be fine. It's really cool. They have a great DJ. I'm going to this bad party in someone's house in a sketchy part of town. And you can't tell me otherwise. You're just so controlling and insecure, right? And the guy's like, hey, you can go. You can go. But if you go, if you go, I'm breaking up with you. Because if you won't listen to things that I know as a man, you need to do in order to Stay safe. If you take these kinds of risks without listening to me, that's fine. You can do these kinds of risks, but I'm not going to be your boyfriend. Right. And she went and she was assaulted and she calls him at three in the morning. And he's like, yeah, we're broken up.
[34:16] And, of course, everyone's like, you can't break up with her now. She just got assaulted. And he's like, but I have. How much empathy do we have for people who don't listen? So he was able to project his mind forward into a party and say, this is a bad idea. This is dangerous, right? In the same way, you've got to project your mind forward to non-obvious dangers. Non-obvious dangers, right? And this is the difference between people who care about the national debt and unfunded liabilities and people who don't. The national debt and unfunded liabilities are a non-obvious, like debt as a whole is a non-obvious danger. It's a drug. Gives you fun stuff in the here and now at the cost of a lot of stuff later.
[35:01] So inner dialogues are there to alert you to non-obvious dangers. So uh now um if you if you don't let or encourage really if you don't let or encourage the, inner voices to keep you safe then they will not shut up in general right okay now let's see here, Bum bum, bum bum. I have I knew a godmother who was a psych nurse absolutely dreadful personal life oh don't get me started on nurses I think that's the highest cheating profession.
[35:58] All right my dad was exactly like that oh nicer to strangers than his own family didn't speak with him the last 15 years of his life he pretended that we still did oh yeah that's very sad, that's very sad i'm glad this is recorded yeah me too me too, uh god bless your daughter well thank you i really really appreciate that Thank you. Can you fight RFH live on pay-per-view? Oh, is that the feminist? I don't do head blows. I have to protect the brain. Not the face. It's my living. All right. Let's see here. Somebody says, I found giving it to God helps temper overactive in a monologue. Once I'm at the end of control of a situation, gratitude is a form of ova, perhaps. maybe my OVACE is generally grateful. All right. My internal monologue gets stuck in a loop sometimes. I will repeatedly tell myself this isn't right until I decide what I need to do about it. Yeah, in general, I find repetitive internal voices. I mean, I call it the MECO system, which is that I'm not like an individual. I'm a collection of my thoughts, other people's thoughts, especially when you're sort of a public person debating ideas with the world.
[37:23] But I am composed of a lot of the people that I've met, a lot of people that I've read. I've got my inner Socrates. I've got my inner mother. I've got my inner father, which is more about absence and the judgment of absence because I grew up without a father. But I have, it's called the mycosystem. I'm not just I, like one monolithic I. There's a lot of people at the table and there should be. Because we have a lot of different perspectives, right? It's better to be a gardener in wartime. No, it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in wartime. So we have a lot of different aspects, right? We speak in different ways to different people. We have a professional face. We have a personal face. We have a friend face and so on, right? We have jokiness and seriousness and goofiness and sorrow and all of that. So we have a lot of different aspects. And all of those different aspects of our personality need to combine to keep us safe and bring us to the truth.
[38:17] All right um how do people maintain christian values or even upb without being prey to weaponized empathy so weaponized empathy is when people demand that you feel for them and thus give them resources and if you don't you're a cold-hearted selfish unempathetic person so the reason we do that is not out of empathy but out of fear so the reason that we give to the poor, and I don't mean voluntarily, I mean through the welfare state, through coerced redistribution. The reason we do that is because if we don't, at this point anyway, maybe you could argue in the 60s or 70s, but now the reason we keep giving to the poor is that the poor will riot if we don't. So it's just easier for politicians to keep giving to the poor because they'll riot if we don't uh hey remember the whole peace dividend the military industrial complex works the same way if we have genuine peace then we don't pay the warmongers and the warmongers want to keep provoking and promoting war so that they keep getting paid so we weaponized empathy is.
[39:30] You know, if there's some relative you don't particularly like and they demand that you come over for their birthday or whatever, and you don't really want to go, you say, oh, well, I'll be nice and I'll go. It's like, well, no, the reason you don't want to go is because, or the reason why you go is because you don't want that person to start being mean to you or spreading lies about you or accusing you of being cold-hearted and unempathetic and attacking you, attacking you.
[39:59] So most charity is a bribe to keep people from abusing you not all but most charity is a bribe to keep people from abusing you so it's not weaponized empathy it's a payoff, to prevent an attack like you know if you have a a little shop in sicily and the, the gum bar comes by and says it's a nice little shop you got here be real shame if something happened to it you know there's been a lot of fires in the neighborhood lately but don't worry we can make sure that fire doesn't happen to you if you just pay us a thousand bucks a month it's nothing it's less than your fire insurance right so whatever right so you don't give the goomba the money because you you want to make sure his kids get get his braces you you so you give the money so that your shop doesn't get burnt down and we are generous quote generous a lot of times because we don't want our relationships, our reputations to get burned down. We don't want the unpleasant process of somebody yelling at us or calling us a bad person. And so we fundamentally pay the money so we don't see the ugliness in those around us. I'm not talking all generosity and so on, but we pay so that they continue to pretend to be nice so we don't see what they're really like. Because if we see what they're really like, we might have some difficult decisions to make, right?
[41:26] All right. Let me get that. Let me get that. Live with Stef is the best. Thank you, Stef. Thank you, Hanu. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Son of Sam heard voices from the neighbor's dog. Oh, that's rough. Oh, dear. Let's see here.
[41:59] All right let me get to comments over here on locals and x.
[42:11] All right.
[42:15] Another two cents yeah i mean you can keep posting i'm not going to read any of your stuff. It's all just so girly. All right.
[42:26] Yeah, I know. I've also posted like one in 20 people you meet has no conscience. They can just do whatever they want and never feel bad about it. And it's important to be aware of that. All right. Sopanta, nice to see you. Hey, Stef, I've seen a lot of men push back on the idea of being vulnerable around women and how women are just emotional, hysterical, and incapable of being logical or level-headed. They kind of be blah, blah, blah. Well, this is, oh, my gosh. Permission to rant. Oh, I've been back on Twitter, what, less than two weeks? 12 days, something like that. Oh, I forgot, because I've been around you lovely, wonderful, warm, rational people. And, of course, there's a lot of lovely, warm, rational people out there on the Twitter spaces. But let me tell you. People always forget to add, that I know. Drives me crazy. Men won't commit. No, the men that you know won't commit. Women are irrational. No, no, no. The women that you know are irrational.
[43:49] It's a bit maddening that people are so untrained and unaware of basic epistemology or the study of knowledge that they think that their personal experience, translates to the universal. Well, no one I know speaks Japanese, therefore Japanese doesn't exist. It's like, oh my gosh. Women exploit men for resources. Like, no, no. The women you know, but there's a whole lot of layers in this world. And the fact that you choose to live in a sewer doesn't mean the whole world stinks of shit.
[44:41] You can change your layers. You can change your class. You can change your companionship. You can change the moral quality of the people who are around you. But in order to have people with higher standards around you, you have to have higher standards for yourself.
[44:59] If you choose, and I say this with sympathy, because we're born in the underworld, and some people are born in the above world, the upper world. So if you're born in the underworld, like in the world of people who just project and blame and attack and have trashy opinions and trash, make trashy decisions and and so on if you're born there like i have a lot of sympathy if it's any consolation i was born there too oh my heavenly word above you do not have to stay there, oh men just cheat no no no the men you date cheat the men you choose to have sex with cheat.
[45:48] Not men and the reason i keep pushing back on this of course is because if women think well men just cheat they just ghost you they just use you for sex it's like no the men you choose to have sex with that's the filter what you choose who you choose to let into your body into your heart and into your life not everyone but if you think it's everyone you can't escape so the people who want to exploit you for sex, ladies, will always tell you that there's a patriarchy and men just exploit women so that you never raise your standards, and get out and get away from them.
[46:32] People are trapped far more by their beliefs than their circumstances, as adults, as children. So, Sepanto goes on to say, we're critiquing somebody else or some other group. These men genuinely think women are like children. Okay, let's say, of course, there are men like children, there are women like children. Women are like children. No, the women you know are like children, not women as a whole. Yeah you are a hardcore 12 year old staff crime and punishment at 12 is insane yeah it was a friend of mine friend later died it was a friend of mine single mother dated a baker up north he's the guy who taught me about x day fresh so what i said well what do you do with the old loaves of bread oh if nobody buys them we just put them out and say one day fresh because day old right well what if it's two days that's two day fresh what if it's three days it's three day fresh i don't know i remember that but i do so he just in in a strange twist or quirk of fate this guy who ran a bakery in northern ontario almost 50 years ago had a copy of crime and punishment i picked it up and i read it.
[47:58] Uh somebody obamega says i started reading about astronomy and dinosaurs in single digits by 12 i was reading greek mythology relative relativity and quantum mechanics popular science books by my teens star trek foundation universe by asimov mid to late teens i discovered douglas adams i could never get into asimov and my god if you ever want to read something absolutely horrifyingly appalling thank you for your tip david i appreciate that freedom main.com slash donate to help out the show or you can tip on locals or on rumble i really do appreciate that i never got into uh isaac asimov and boy if you read about his son and the relationship of the prosecutor to the russia collusion conspiracy host it's absolutely amazing, i shared the spanish edition of peaceful parenting with two parents of newborns, thank you very much thank you very much, uh i have been asked oh that's another two cents never mind okay um who would handle isolation better a person with inner voices or person without inner voices i don't know i mean we don't handle isolation well at all we're social animals right so i'm sure you know but, human beings when ostracized and attacked the same brain patterns like light up as if they're being directly tortured, right? Because we can't survive alone.
[49:21] Boom, boom.
[49:28] Should non-thinkers be allowed to vote? How about a free society where the only thing you vote for is your dollars and your sperm?
[49:44] All right. That was, did I get everything wrong? That was Kekule, who came up with the structure of the benzene molecule, which is cyclic, a ring structure. Did I get that completely wrong? OK, I appreciate that. If you're wrong, then, sorry, if I'm wrong, not if you're wrong, if I'm wrong, I appreciate the correction. Thank you very much.
[50:09] All right i'm glad to see him on rumble i haven't really followed staff since his youtube ban you know that's why they banned you right they banned you because you wouldn't follow me so you're really more responsible for my banning than that right it wouldn't happen otherwise if if if banning resulted in a sort of streisand effect where i got more followers because people were like well that's outrageous he's a good guy telling the truth i'm gonna follow him to new platforms right uh thank you tyreek for the tip well uh you're the reason why i got banned i mean I'd just be blunt with you. Everyone who didn't follow me to a new platform is exactly why I got banned, because it works. And you're the ones who make it work. And I'm not mad. I'm just sort of pointing out a basic fact that you're the reason. So they know, right? So they started with Andrew Anglin, a couple other people, right? So they say, oh, people don't follow. Okay, well, banning works. So I'll just ban people. We'll just ban people we don't like or who interfere with our exercise of power or our corrupt goals. And everyone who didn't follow me to a new website, you're the reason I got banned. Again, I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying that this is the causality, right? And I just say that because every moral decision you make affects the universe. Every moral decision you make or avoid affects the universe. All right.
[51:31] What do you think is the cause for the delay between feeling something someone has said feels wrong and understanding why it was wrong. Oh, because we feel that our rulers and our masters are just like us, but shrouded in lies. We feel that. Like the king is just a guy. You see the king trip down the stairs. He's just a guy. But if you say that, you probably get killed. So suppressing... Things that feel wrong is a basic survival mechanism. I'm not doing politics. I'm not doing the politics. Are dental hygienists the same as nurses? I don't think so. I don't think so.
[52:24] All right. Let me just scroll down here. Thank you, of course, for these great questions. Yeah, it wasn't like I was banished to a high mountain that you had to pull locks through the Arctic in order to train to climb. I was literally one website over. No, tis a bridge too far. To get philosophy, I must go one website over. I mean, it's impossible. Jesus got nailed to a cross. Socrates was forced to drink hemlock. Galileo was tortured. But I can't go one website over in pursuit of the truth. I mean, honestly, again, it was fine for me because I got to really focus on art and philosophy, core philosophy, and get off politics. So I don't have any resentment towards it. I had a great couple of years, five years. I had a great five years being de-platformed. Plus, of course, I got to spend more time with my daughter, which was great. And so, no, it was great. But just so you know, if you didn't follow me to a new platform, that's why I got de-platformed. You are personally responsible for that process. I'm not saying just you but right. All right. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Let's see here.
[53:54] Rational women are in obvious places just gotta not be a melon head about it well the other thing too is that rational women are also looking for rational men and not finding them right and of course people universalize the corruption of those around them and call it human nature, so that they don't have to differentiate the people around them into bad people right nobody cause a human being short because they're not 20 feet tall right so you just have to, in order to stay in a corrupt situation and not confront evildoers or escape them you just have to define human nature as somehow corrupt or foolish like female nature or male nature and then you don't have to change anything right.
[54:38] Thanks i have a daughter too that means a lot to me i'm glad to help are all categories intellectually lazy no no some categories are great you know good and evil true and falsehood right and wrong accurate inaccurate valid invalid these categories are very good but, a lot of them are justifications for avoiding the confrontation of corruption and i'm not blaming people for that i mean the fact that we can escape evildoers is ridiculously new in human history right we couldn't we couldn't do it before you're stuck in some tribe in the middle of nowhere i've I've got a whole novel about this called Just Poor, about a genius girl born into a, or adopted into a remote and fairly mindless farming community in the 18th century in England.
[55:26] And most times we couldn't get away, couldn't get away. So we just normalized what was around us so we wouldn't go mad. So I understand why people do that, but we can do it now, right?
[55:41] What do you think of the elon takeover of x magnificent fantastic the man is a hero an absolute hero what is the best way to teach babies to read um i don't know obviously the best way what i did with my daughter when she was very young is i hooked up a computer to the television and i had a keyboard and i taught her the phonetic alphabet right so.
[56:04] You know a b c d e is not super helpful when you're teaching kids how to read what you want to teach them is a, b, k, f, g, h, or m, n, right? You want to teach them how the letters sound in words, right? So if you teach the kid C-A-T, it's hard to assemble that into cat, right? But if you teach the kid k, a, t, right? The letter C stands for k, not the letter C, right? And the letter A is a, and the letter T is a. So if you say k, a, t, right? And then when she sees C-A-T, she can say cat, right? As opposed to if you just say C-A-T, they have to translate that into co-actor, which is not hugely helpful in my humble opinion. So I would say that I put the letters up on the screen and asked her to sound out the letters. And she learned, I mean, she had a bit of upset about it. I'm going to be honest with you, right? Because it's frustrating. And I would say that That was the way that I did it. I don't know if it's the right way for every kid, but it worked very well for me. I mean, she ended up writing entire movies. All right. Ba-boom, ba-boom.
[57:18] I was born into the underworld, says Carrie. All my exes were basically the same man. I finally healed and chose a great man. That is wonderful. Congratulations. Congratulations. I appreciate that.
[57:33] Uh since i have you here what do you think is the most important truth about the modern world that people are afraid to acknowledge oh the effects of child abuse on on the world as a whole for sure for sure i just upvoted this video thank you i appreciate that, All right.
[57:57] I mean, yeah, so I mean, they're talking about donations here. I mean, obviously, if you're new, enjoy, absorb. At some point, it just becomes a basic integrity issue. I mean, everything costs money. What I do costs money. And I mean, look at the set I built, right? Anyway, so everything I do costs money. And of course, the 20 years of philosophy, which were very expensive to me, both financially, time-wise and sometimes professionally the 20 years of philosophy i did before the public 20 years i've been doing for the last 20 years was expensive and at some point you need to do the honorable thing and return value for value if what i do provides value to you and i'm asking you for a return of value then you should return value for value honestly just think of how nice it is to not have commercials i mean when i'm talking about like a deep issue with someone crying about their childhood or we're talking about some really important moral or philosophical issue or you know i had a pretty ferocious debate about abortion with a feminist which is available for subscribers at freedomain.locals.com or at subscribestar.com slash freedomain can you imagine a two-minute interruption to try and sell you coffee or gold or i don't know whatever right so the fact that you get uninterrupted commercial-free philosophy shows is because people are funding it.
[59:23] So you get a lot of benefit. If you've listened to a whole bunch of shows, you've had weeks of time returned to you by not having ads, right? You should pay for that, right? It's a way of showing empathy and reciprocity, right? Oh, you're providing me value, Stef. Well, I'm not a child and you're not my parent, so I should return value for value, right? We don't ask children to return value for the toys and shelter we give them, right? But I'm not your parent and you're not my child. And the way that you know that you're an adult and have empathy is you return value for value. Somebody says, I've never been worried about finding a virtuous woman. My worry has been not being a virtuous man. Yeah, for sure. For sure. When women, and it's not only women that's true for men too but when people complain about, let's just take an example if women say all men are cheaters then what they're saying is i don't want to pay the price of an honorable and honest man which being which means being honorable and honest myself right.
[1:00:37] If you don't buy something expensive, it's because you either don't have the money or you don't want to pay. And so if men say, oh, women are just greedy and exploitive children, that's because they don't want to pay the price demanded of by a virtuous woman, which is virtue. You're going to have to be strong, intelligent, have integrity, be honest, be direct. Be strong in order to get those qualities in another, who you're with is a direct reflection of your own self-image and actions and so when people complain about their partners it's like a bird pecking at a mirror.
[1:01:25] Right you're just attacking yourself it's like a guy has just finished a statue saying this is the shittiest, worst, ugliest statue in the known universe. Well, you're just criticizing yourself. And it is blindingly obvious to anybody with even a modicum of self-knowledge. But yeah, it's really sad. I mean, so when people say, oh, all men are this or all women are that, some negative, some pejorative, it's like, okay, well, you're just telling me that you don't want to pay the price of being with good people, which is to be a good person yourself. I sympathize with that, but let's just call it what it is.
[1:02:01] Yes, we're going to have a donor-only section today, and it's going to start very soon. Oh, the background set? Well, thanks. Yeah, I appreciate that. I love you, Stef. Been listening, donating, praying for you and family since 2015. Thank you. I appreciate that. I absolutely appreciate that. Thank you so much.
[1:02:23] Somebody says, I had a mind-blowing conversation today. I explained how the welfare state leads to poor people having more kids due to the incentive not to evaluate risk. The woman said it was immoral to stop the subsidies because doing so would be dictating how many children the poor could have, like eugenics. Oh, but taking resources away from non-poor people is eugenics, right? All right. Stef's show is the only one I feel bad for just consuming and not donating. Hollywood movies, not so much. Well, you know, there's a solution to that. freedomain.com slash donate. You'll feel better. Like, you'll feel better because it's a step towards reciprocity and adulthood. I will have dollars shortly. Hate that I can't do all the stuff I want to to support worthy causes. Yeah. I got a DM from a woman, says someone, telling me that I'm a horrible human being for committing, for commenting or pointing out that it doesn't take more than three months to notice signs that someone is abusive. Three months? Three days? Three minutes? Everyone i tell you have this as a principle everyone tells you everything you need to know about them in the first 10 minutes everyone tells you everything you need to know about themselves in the first 10 minutes i've yet to ever see an exception to this rule being virtuous does not automatically bring virtuous women to your life well it's not a goddamn summoning ritual.
[1:03:49] Place four books of upb in the corner and sit down and kneel and concentrate on the non-aggression principle and a goddess of reason jane mansfield with the mind of ayn rand will appear before you in a big x of hyper rationality oh my gosh so here's you know i love you man thank you for coming by. I really do. Like, this is not a nag, but if you want smart people around you, try not to state the blindingly freaking obvious. You know, you can't turn back time. Really? Thank you. Well, you know, being virtuous doesn't automatically bring you a virtuous woman. Who the frack ever said that it did? Who would even think that? Resist the urge to state the blindingly obvious because it drives smart people away from you like you're on fire well no then they'd be going to get a oh gosh i saw f1 i even paid a little extra for a rumble seat, brad pitt is like a caricature he's got he constantly plays characters with enormously traumatic parts who are just super cool and together anyway um yeah just just whenever Whenever you have the urge to contribute something, and I do this with myself, I do this with myself all the time, which doesn't mean it's right, I'm just saying, right?
[1:05:17] So, whenever you have the urge to comment something, ask if it's coming from an emotional place of defensiveness.
[1:05:25] Right. Oh, that was a response to the guy who said, I don't worry about finding a virtuous woman. I just worry about being virtuous. Yeah. Well, I mean, and I, but nobody's, nobody's going to think that being virtuous automatically summons you a virtuous woman. Of course, you still have to be out there in the world. All right. Sam says, I'm late to the show. What is your take on X after a week or so? It's fun. It's fun. I won't say it's not a tiny bit addictive. It's also fascinating for me to see what happens when i'm not being viciously suppressed by bad people right, all right.
[1:06:01] All right let's see here whole world reading relies on memorization no whole world reading is terrible it's terrible and it's anti-conceptual and i think it cripples kids as a whole, all right maybe most people liked you as a political culture warrior so when you stopped doing politics they stopped watching see this is exactly what i'm talking about as far as not stating the blindingly obvious yeah yeah yeah the deplatforming happened while i was still doing politics so the idea that well uh people didn't follow you over because you weren't doing politics it's not not true not true i mean just the idea that uh this never would have crossed staff's mind, you know if you want to be around smart people you have to assume that they're smart which means don't state the blindingly obvious all right.
[1:07:05] I don't usually down talk my husband to people because that paints him in a bad light to people who don't necessarily know him what do you mean you don't usually down talk, what are you talking about when would you ever down talk your husband i mean i know women do this like a stitch and bitch or a hen party or whatever right the women are like oh my husband do this and he never does that and toilet seat and he never raises the the the the toilet paper and he doesn't do the dishes right and he doesn't stack the dishwasher right my god, how absolutely ridiculous it is to do that. How absolutely ridiculous it is to do that.
[1:07:52] Why would you complain about something you voluntarily chose and voluntarily choose to stay with? Can you imagine me bitching about philosophy all the time? Or my wife or my daughter. My God. But what it is is a signal. It's a signal to say, I don't want quality people around me. Because if you have quality people around you, and you are complaining about your spouse, quality people, I don't spend time around people who complain about their spouse. Like, the moment I hear it, I'm out. I'm out. I will not take another step towards that person. All the people in my life, I mean, almost all of them are married, and all of them love their spouses and sing their praises. Why would i want to be around somebody who complains about their own voluntary choices as if they were inflicted on them that's just depressing so all right so we're gonna move move on over moving on up to the east side so we are gonna freedomain.locals.com you can of course you can use the tag fdr url or the website fdrurl.com slash locals you can sign for free, but we're going to go donor-only.
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