0:04 - Podcast Introduction
15:40 - Exploring Emotional Reactions
21:52 - The Desert of Integrity
25:06 - Finding Like-Minded Souls
30:16 - Derek's Story Unfolds
52:15 - The Impact of Drugs on Relationships
In this episode, I engage deeply with our community, addressing a range of thought-provoking questions and dilemmas that many face in their personal lives. We start with a query about the burden of guilt that can emerge from snap reactions to situations, reflecting on how time allows us to revisit our decisions with a clearer perspective. I explore the idea that our minds may be fixated on unresolved lessons until we grasp the underlying truth, which often turns out to be contrary to our initial assumptions. This leads to an insightful discussion about emotional responses, particularly the confusion between feelings of anxiety and suppressed anger.
The conversation transitions into topics surrounding financial markets, specifically the recent movements in gold and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. I analyze the implications of these trend shifts, linking them to broader economic sentiments and government policies, suggesting that optimism about the economy may be affecting the traditional safe haven appeal of cryptocurrencies. These reflections serve as a commentary on the intricate connections between personal psychology and macroeconomic factors.
I take time to acknowledge the supportive community that interacts through our platforms, expressing appreciation for their continued engagement and questions. As we delve into the complexities of personal relationships, I respond to a particularly profound inquiry about navigating toxic dynamics, especially in contexts of parental alienation after a divorce. I emphasize the importance of truthfulness in relationships, especially for the sake of children, asserting that living in duplicity can be toxic not just for adults but also for children observing unresolved tensions and dishonesty.
We then discuss how societal norms can often make integrity feel like a precarious balance, particularly on issues of morality, philosophy, and even personal identity. I advocate for the necessity of maintaining one’s authenticity amidst social pressures and how this relates to the broader cultural landscape. I address the paradox of desiring companionship while needing to uphold one’s principles, pondering whether one must compromise their truth to maintain social ties.
Transitioning into more introspective territory, I turn to the theme of creativity and personal expression, unveiling a glimpse into my upcoming literary work. I share an excerpt that introduces Derek, a character shaped by addiction, existential dilemmas, and societal disconnection. Through Derek, I explore difficult themes such as the consequences of abandoning structure and the search for authenticity, encouraging listeners to reflect on the broader implications of these personal struggles.
The session wraps up with reflections on the long-standing impact of societal structures on individual identity, intergenerational challenges, and how modern dilemmas resonate through historical echoes. I invite listeners to consider how the lessons gleaned from personal experiences can inform their philosophical journey and relationships, fostering an environment of mutual understanding and growth as we collectively navigate the complexities of life.
[0:00] Good morning, good morning, everybody. Oh my gosh, it's almost the end of the month.
[0:04] March 20, 25. And I hope you're doing very well. It is Sunday morning, and we're going to do the first hour open. Second hour is for donors. Thank you for your tip this morning. Think clearly. I hope to live up to your name. And you can, of course, tip at freedomain.com slash donate as well. As well. All right.
[0:30] Hello, Stefan and community. Love the show. Question for you. Have you ever had moments in your life when you reacted to something in a snap moment and only hours, days, weeks later, play it back through your mind and wish you could go back and react in a different manner? How do you get, um, sorry, I just moved a little. I couldn't read it. Manner. How do you get past a feeling of guilt that sometimes can be so overwhelming that it consumes you? I have to find myself asking, how would Stefan tackle this situation? Thanks for your hard work and dedication to the truth. A snap moment. I tend to be somewhat delayed in my reactions. I tend to maybe overthink things a little bit too much from time to time. So I don't think that's my major issue. I wish I could go back. My ear's just ringing a little bit because a friend of mine wrote a musical and I went to go and watch it and it might have been a bit loud. So I don't want to regret about that. But generally stuff recurs, I think, in your mind until you get the fundamental lesson. Like once you get the fundamental lesson, I think your brain will let it go. But until then, I think it recurs. And so the fundamental lesson is often related to...
[1:57] It's the opposite of what you think. So if you're nervous, you feel nervous, maybe you're angry. And that's sort of unacceptable. Like if you were raised in a situation where you were not allowed to be angry, then maybe you sort of turned that anger in on yourself and you feel nervous or anxious. So maybe the lesson there is kind of like the opposite of what you think it is. Oh, hey Dylan, nice to have you back on the live stream. Thank you for the tip. So always um i always start if something is recurring to me i always start with the idea, that it is the opposite that is going on and that can sometimes be really helpful, all right serpanta welcome back says it's crazy to see gold shoot right through 3k us and is now less than 18 away from 3.1k there was little to no resistance at the 3k mark Yeah, that's true. That's true. And compare that to what was it? 27% return on Ethereum since 2017, 2018 or something like that.
[3:04] And Bitcoin, of course, is not performing the way that it used to. Of course, after the 2016 halving, Bitcoin did 30x, 30 times its value. After the 2020 halving, it went 8x. And after the 2024 halving, it's gone 0.2x. I mean, not terrible, obviously, but not comparable. And I think if I had to guess, I would think one of the reasons why bitcoin is not performing as it used to is people have more optimism for the economy at the moment at least compared to what they used to have because trump is really trying to in america bring manufacturing back and i think because of that people are looking and they're not quite as, hungry for the safe havens if that makes sense, All right. All right. Good morning to those on Rumble. And of course, good morning to those on Locals. Very nice to have you here today. And thank you so much for your support and your kindness and your questions. So as I wait for the questions to come flowing in.
[4:25] Let's see what I have saved here. Ah yes look at this michael burry stock trader burry tracker on x wrote 6.1 million americans are behind on their mortgage fha delinquencies just hit 11.03 percent the highest in years that is kind of a a trippy um that is kind of a trippy number to be honest that is not ideal, I will I will share the picture here all right yeah so you can see can I share it from the studio I think I can I don't think so no okay I'll put it in the show notes actually maybe I'll just share it over here on yeah I'm gonna share it over here on Locals. And Windows never seems to keep the last view you had. I know better what you want.
[5:42] Well, that's not it. All right. Where did you happen to put it now, I wonder? Let's try over here. Look at all of this skilled studio work going. It's like a blur of semi-lucid activity there we go all right so you can have a look at there and i think this is well worth looking at it's a little chilling, hello from china well hello i'm glad to see that um you can uh you can see me from china that is very nice.
[6:16] All right um sapanta says bitcoin will eventually turn around i have no doubts about that i don't know when likely when the fed cuts quantitative easing qt and drastically lowers interest rates thus harming the almighty dollar's value well it's tough you know you can't save the economy without re-industrializing and it's tough to re-industrialize without de-dollarizing and if you de-dollarize all of your foreign influence diminishes so it's not easy being an imperial power love the scruff well thank you, uh good morning says uh parallax you always say that philosophy is about prevention what if you did not have the benefit of prevention and married the wrong person you get divorced and now you are the victim of parental alienation is there an acceptable time to walk away or do you always have to put up with the tactics for the sake of the child who did not ask to be there that is i mean i'm so sorry i mean that is so tough um it's a brutal situation And I just really wanted to extend my very deepest apologies for all of that. Now, my father, I did choose, in a way, it was somewhat of a choice to walk away. And I don't necessarily disagree with his decision.
[7:37] And, you know, it's tough. I mean, obviously, in point of fact, you can't know before you know. Right? You can't know before you know, but you are responsible for trying to know before you know. But I mean, I'm pretty good at trying to figure this stuff out as a whole. I'm trying to figure life out as a whole. And it took me a long time to really begin to live philosophy. I've been studying philosophy really for 15 years before I really, really began to put it into practice in my personal life like this journey of you know when I talk to people in the call-in shows this journey is a big and accelerated one for people because you get the benefit of me not living philosophy and realizing how important it was to do that so as far as the answer goes.
[8:39] I mean, I'm not going to give you any advice. I don't know your situation. So this is not any advice in particular for you. These are just my thoughts on the general situation. My thoughts on the general situation is that if I am in a relationship where I cannot tell the truth, that relationship is generally toxic for everyone involved. So of course one of the big challenges of getting divorced is with children is how little truth can be told about what happened right let's say that your wife was really difficult and and you know through things and and you know can you really say that to the kids because it's really volatile, it's really it's a really volatile situation, so if you were a drunk and you were mean as a father say can you tell your kids the truth about all of that, because you're talking about the furnace in which they were forged and the reason for that furnace's existence that's really tough that is really tough.
[10:03] So if you are in a situation where you can't really see your children and you can't tell them the truth, you know again i'm not going to try and give you any advice because again it's a very individual situation but i'm not sure that much in life is well served by being in situations where your kids are just watching you obfuscate, avoid and lie all the time. I don't think that's a good situation at all. And there are times in my life when I've had to walk away from significant investments because I just couldn't tell the truth. I remember being in a business context many years ago.
[10:56] It was a company in the U.S. and I was working with them and they promised a four to six month implementation window for their technical solution. And I of course was a chief technical officer so I know.
[11:17] The challenges of technical implementations. And I talked to the tech guy, the head of their tech department, and he just scoffed at it. He said, no, they keep saying that, you know, some of these are 16 to 18 months, and we're still not done. And a lot of them, he said, I think we did one in six months. And now they're just saying it's a four to six month implementation. And it's just not the case. Now, obviously, that's a business context. But, I couldn't do it. I couldn't, I just, I can't do it.
[11:54] And of course, I know what that's like on the receiving end, right? The receiving end of all of that is that the salespeople move on to make new sales and then the tech people get yelled at for the next, you know, year to year and a half or more for a slow implementation. And meanwhile, While the salespeople are sunning themselves on the beach in Cabo and the technicians, the technical people are working at nights and weekends for no extra pay in particular. When the checks have all been cashed and the salespeople have all moved on. It's a very common problem in tech, of course. So it was scarcely me who was isolated in that. And again, I'm not trying to say that this is a direct kind of analogy as a whole. But I just couldn't I can't be in a relationship where I can't tell the truth, I just can't it's one of the reasons I don't do politics can't tell the truth all right.
[12:57] How often do you find philosophers practice what they preach? Well, for that, I would recommend signing up at fdrurail.com slash locals, and checking out my History of Philosopher series. It's really good. Some of the best work I've done. And you can get it at fdrurail.com slash locals. Or you can go to subscribestar.com slash freedom and sign up there. And you also get it. as well as all the AIs and 12 hours of the history of the French Revolution that I've done and all kinds of stuff. Joe says, that happened all the time in my old job. Sales gave ridiculous timelines. Yes, that's true. That's true. It's very true. And then they move on and they're never seen again. And they get you to sign off on it. And then it's all yours. Yeah if if i can't make an honest living i really can't be in the industry so you have to look at your kids and say if i can't tell them the truth about my life my choices the marriage and so on, how much good can i do.
[14:15] All right uh serpanto says hey Stef i'm wondering what advice you'd have for crossing the desert, i just started this journey recently i made a post on locals and telegram about the brief confrontation i had with my father or family of origin i'm not going into this unarmed or blind i have the amazing work you put out i've been listening to old gems in the hundreds from back before you did this full-time and the amazing therapist I have. I do have a rough plan I've made with my therapist. Okay, I feel that there's more to come with that, so I'll wait on that.
[14:54] And let's see. This is pretty good. It's called the Ikea marriage test. Before you marry someone, go to Ikea together and buy a piece of furniture, bring it home and build it. If you can successfully navigate that entire process without wanting to kill each other, you're ready to get married. It's kind of true. Just try to make everything fun in a marriage as best you can. And you'd be amazed at how much good stuff you can get. All right, let's check over here. Is there more? Is there more? This is through Sopenta. If there is, I don't want to answer.
[15:40] If there's more coming in.
[15:58] All right, let me get back to my questions and comments. Oh yes, this is interesting. There's a psychologist, Albert Ellis, he called something, he referred to awfulizing and horribilizing, better known as catastrophizing. It has become culturally accepted to speak and think. It wasn't upsetting. It was trauma. I wasn't annoyed. I was harmed. They're not difficult. They're toxic. I wasn't uncomfortable. I was unsafe. It wasn't disagreement. It was gaslighting. It wasn't words. It was violence. Most people can see how awfulizing and horribilizing fuel anxiety and depression. It's less obvious that it is rooted in narcissism. By speaking and thinking this way, we transform life's unavoidable difficulties into the most important thing in the universe and ourselves into the main character in the universe.
[17:03] And this is, he quoted Glenn Sullivan, who had a passage from a book called Intro to Psychotherapy, Session 12.
[17:12] And this is Albert Ellis. Take, for example, one of the popular IBs, which I have named... I don't know what IBS, IBS, I capital BS, I don't know what that means, which I have named awfulizing or horribilizing. It's awful if I fail at this important task, and it's horrible if people reject me for failing. This is a crazy idea, because although it may be highly unfortunate for you to fail, and very inconvenient for you to be rejected, when you call failure and rejection awful and horrible, you imply that they are more than bad, or 100%, or 101% inconvenient, which of course they cannot be. They aren't even 100% bad because they could usually be worse. When you overgeneralize and go beyond reality in this way, you will make yourself feel panicked and depressed instead of appropriately sorry and frustrated if you fail and get rejected. Now, why does a bright person like you resort to this kind of silly, unrealistic, awfulizing? Mainly, I contend, because you start with a conscious or unconscious must, and then you easily and logically derive your awfulizing from it. Thus you start with, I absolutely must perform this task well. Then you reasonably conclude, and since I didn't perform as well as I absolutely must, it's awful, it's more than inconvenient, it's as bad as it possibly could be. It's the end of the world.
[18:35] If you only stayed with your preference for doing well and never escalating it into a dire necessity, a must, would you awfulize about your poor performance? Hardly ever, I contend. Yeah. Yeah. So awfulizing is very, very important.
[18:55] All right. Sepanta says, any help you would give would be greatly appreciated. Essentially, my plan is to work as hard as I can on my virtues and the value I can bring and be ruthless on who I have in my life. P.S. I will be giving a donation soon above my regular subs. I've been in the same financial issues, mostly self-inflicted. Oh, I appreciate that. Obviously, wait until you're stable before donating. I appreciate that. It's very kind. All right.
[19:25] The desert. The desert. So we are torn. We are torn creatures. We are torn in two by the irrationality or anti-rationality of society as a whole. But we're torn creatures. So we want companionship, but companionship or social life so often comes at the expense of just basic honesty. Right? I mean, we've all been in those situations where something comes up that we just, you know, strongly disagree with and all of that. And it could be politics. It could be morality. It could be philosophy as a whole. It could be like any number of things or, you know, parenting or child maltreatment or, quote, discipline. Like all this stuff comes up, right? And it's, I mean, I think we all know, we've all experienced this. It's a horrible situation, right? Am I, do I have integrity? or do I have a social life? This happens for young men on dating, right? Because it is so foundational how far left women have moved, young women have moved as a whole.
[20:39] That they're going to say stuff that is just appallingly bad and wrong. Like just appallingly bad and wrong. And they're going to say it in a very superior and contemptuous fashion and it's going to be it's going to be tough so do i have integrity or do i have a social life man it is not it's not an easy decision at all do people want me around only to the degree that i'm willing to self-abdicate my reason integrity honesty and independent thought. Do I have to solve a race in order to be, quote, close to people? Which is like saying, well, I can dance with people only if I turn myself into a ghost. Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean, you can't dance with ghosts. So that's the paradox, isn't it? That's the paradox.
[21:40] I mean, what helped me really the most, thank you, Tony. What helped me the most was a certain amount of faith.
[21:53] And maybe it's not, hope it's not quite as much faith for you as it was for me, because I've sort of given you this example. But one of the things that helped me through the desert was.
[22:10] I have to be myself or I can't have a relationship. I have to be honest and direct or there's no relationship that's possible at all in any way, shape or form. And i really just had to cross my fingers and say i can't be the only really honest indirect person in the universe.
[22:41] There has to be other like minds now of course one of the big challenges that i had was prior to the internet it was kind of tough to find uh right that there's the sort of same minds. I was telling my daughter about this the other day. This was in the 90s, so pre-internet. Was that the 90s? I was in my, I don't know, early 20s or something like that. And I wanted to start engaging in political discussions. I was out of school for a bit. And, I went and bought a mailbox and then I put an ad in the newspaper saying if you would like to discuss politics I have a manifesto based on reason and free markets I'd love to get your feedback on it and we can we can talk about it and so everybody who sent a letter in with their return address I mailed them a copy of my manifesto and we engaged in written discussions you know how some people used to play chess by mail it was a thing and this of course was a very sort of early version of.
[23:58] A message board, I suppose. And I got into a bunch of, I was fielding like, I don't know, 20 people getting back and forth feedback and thoughts and, uh, and all of that. And, it was good. It was very, very interesting, very helpful. And, uh, there were people who had really, you know, obviously great things to say and important things to say. So there are people out there and they're looking for you, just as you're looking for them and at least i mean i don't mean to say well boy in my day it was a lot harder but it was but with the internet and with communities like this you can, much more easily get a hold of like-minded people boy in the past it was tough man it was really really tough i mean the people that i was chatting with below those 35 years ago or whatever, were all over the world, really. And it was tough. It was tough to find people. But you can get them on the internet now. And I think that's a lot better.
[25:06] All right.
[25:14] Dylan says, Stef, do you think it's something psychological when people are slobs? I've worked in a lot of college girls' dorm rooms, and they're all disgusting trash everywhere, old food left out, even one of the guys I share a home with barely wants to shower or clean behind himself. It's a good question.
[25:43] Um one of one of my female friends said many years ago that a man's job is his penis at a woman's home is her vagina it's just kind of a clever thing i've mentioned it on the show before, but when in particular when women are slobs i mean i think everyone knows that you know we males are half apes that need to be civilized by occasional washes of estrogen but i think when a woman is a slob she is signaling a certain dysregulation in her emotional state and she's certainly not signaling any wife material behavior and of course it's not like all wives just have to clean up after everyone but, i do um it is kind of an instinct um a woman who's a slob is like a male with no ambition.
[26:48] So i would say it's probably a sign of some pretty significant depression and i assume it's also a a sign of being are selected and therefore easily available, for sexual access a woman who takes pride in her home and takes pride in her living space and environment takes pride in herself and is not going to give up sex quickly and easily, Pablo says I dig the silver fox look glad it's helpful, All right.
[27:29] Sepanta says, oh, at the same time, I think I was talking. This is the desert guy. I want the integrity because if I sacrifice that on the altar of petty smallness, I won't have any relationships regardless. Something you've mentioned a few times, yeah. Yeah. Glad to see you are rocking the facial hair again. Yes, but not for too long. All right. Andrew says, on the topic of slobs, mom jeans, jogging pants made of denim. Stef, have you ever thought of trying nicotine lozenges? I find they help with focus and creativity. I would say I don't have a huge amount of problem with focus and creativity. And I have finally started my new book. Sometimes it feels like jumping off a cliff to sit down and start something. But I have started it. And I'm very pleased. Actually, hit me with a why. if you'd be interested in hearing a little bit of the new book.
[28:28] It's very raw and obviously pre-first draft, but don't feel you have to. But if you'd like to, I'd be happy to read a little. Yeah, okay. Sorry, I missed a couple of questions. That came out of... What happened to couples who disagreed over the COVID jab? Well, maybe they're not couples anymore for a variety of reasons. All right. Some guys are still looking for that stripper reading Nietzsche. Yeah, yeah.
[29:05] Every seven years, says someone from Rumble, every seven years we are all a cellularly new person. Endocrine and chemical changes along with that. Too much change equals divorce. However, no change is not healthy. Interesting.
[29:22] Um, thank you, Stef. This helps a lot, says the Penta. Sometimes I find it rough on dating apps, looking for like-minded people. DAs aren't my only dating strategy. Oh, direct approaches. I see a woman. She's, she says she's looking for a family, a good masculine man. She says she's conservative, loves deep combos, loves to read, values honesty and integrity. You'd think we'd be a perfect match right away. I've seen so many women like that, but they never get back to me. Well, you have to up your texting game. You have to up your texting game for sure. All right. Okay. Let me see. I think I have a handy dandy copy of the book somewhere close by. I'm crazy. All right.
[30:16] So the genre is modern, and I'm going to read a bit about, a bad brother.
[30:39] All right. So this is the main character. Two disasters that occur in his life. The first was that his brother had become perhaps the laziest addict in human history. The first thing was that his older brother Derek had gone to university to study art and graphics design. He'd been bitten by the scribbling bug early in his teen years and had cranked out massive amounts of medieval fantasy art and bug-eyed anime at the expense of social skills, sports, girls, and sunlight. He scribbled on paper, then sort of became paper, pale, flat, and easily impressionable. Both his parents sighed and wrote checks, more out of any lack of practical alternatives than any foundational enthusiasm for his graphical talents. His art was technically good, but woefully derivative. He was sort of a high DPI photocopier rather than a creative visionary. But what else could be done? He preferred his own company, which is usually a sign of social anxiety or giddy vanity. But in Derek's case, he just never seemed to connect with others to the point where they would have anything practical to offer him. Thank you.
[32:07] His parents were utterly unaware of one of the greatest gravest dangers of an education in the arts which is exposure to other cornered artists most parents want their children to find their own people so to speak not as often realizing that if their children are weird hanging out in the funhouse mirror maze with other weirdos only further distances them from the world of relative normality. People go to art school in order to avoid selling their art, to avoid placing their heightened self-evaluations in the crass market of money-changing. Their art is for the ages, for the universe, as a manifestation of their dreams and dark and lightest desires, not mere pieces of paper or digits to be horked and haggled over like a rusty scooter in a dead-end yard sale.
[33:04] As a teenager, the limited social contact that Derek had with others swirled around the socially scornful and often secretly self-cutting world of Goths and Renaissance fair fans and their oddly dressed fellow travelers. The girls had all grown up without fathers, circled and prodded and sometimes pursued by unrelated maternal boyfriends and other leftovers of the extended families that had somehow survived early divorces or breakups. They took forever to answer questions, pondering what unguessable blowback might follow any pronouncement, had little to no sex drive, and dressed to repel all but the most desperate. Romance was to be scorned and mocked. Everyone was supposed to be friends, which meant listen for eternity while I trauma-dump with absolutely no plan to escape or change. When Derek got to university, his heart was immediately one-shotted by Regina, who always claimed that her name rhymed with fun, and...
[34:15] I should be, sorry. She pulled him into a world of endless introspection and unrelated insights and taught him to always analyze his dreams with the most negative possible interpretation and drew him like a siren of the underworld into jung's mandalas and collective unconscious and exploring the deeper mind like a newly discovered africa and she promised him that his art would improve that he would finally be himself and that she was a gatekeeper to the ultimate goal of authenticity. Derek fell into the role of acolyte with very little resistance. Regina was his muse, his Medusa, his Beatrice, his guide in the underworld that led not to the truth, but to unity and connection and inspiration and every other form of undefined positive. Nothing that could be measured, nothing that could be completed, nothing that could be built upon. And he pursued her into the swamp of manipulative mysteries like a hypnotized leg walker following a dancing will-of-the-wisp into a soggy swamp without end.
[35:36] Derek fed Regina's vanity. Regina fed on his deference, obedience, and worship. She had enough sex with him to get him hooked, then claimed that their relationship had moved beyond the physical, and demanded that they share auras and massage odd body parts. She did not go as far as the cliché of opening chakras, but almost, almost. And then she fed him drugs.
[36:06] Regina spoke of his secret unhappiness, his alienation, his obedience, his lack of self-expression and authenticity. Fact is common to all young people and whispered that the cure was enlightenment. And enlightenment was brain-altering chemical compounds. It was like 20 years of therapy in a single night. There was no such thing as a bad trip. It's the only way to contact true reality, to see beyond the physical and feel beyond the historical. She constantly promised and swayed and seduced with the hint of a reality beyond the mundane accessible only to those who erased absolutely everything about their former selves. To not be who you are is to be everything, she would murmur, repeating, of course, the words of a sinister older cousin who had introduced her to drugs when she was twelve. She could not define evil as evil, so she pretended evil was good. And thus did good by corrupting others in turn.
[37:09] And to some degree, Derek did find genuine relief and release in these drugs. But it was the release of a return to infancy without rational boundaries or clear communication or moral responsibility. It is the short-term reaction of all uncertain souls to find sweet, tremulous relief in the surrender of will to a perceived master. Or, mistress, wax on, wax off. Being led, blindfolded into a mystery loosens us from the responsibility of having to judge and decide for ourselves. We are always promised that if we can self-abdicate, sorry, we are always promised that we can self-abdicate into paradise. But all that happens is we hollow out. And if we are very lucky, only have to spend a few years trying to find our free will again.
[38:03] And, to be fair, there was a burst of creativity in those months, a lack of restraint and self-criticism that produced a significant improvement in technical skills and emotional visions. But the void being produced by Regina's mysticism and the corrosive drugs, the liberation that came not from the achievement of new standards, but the abandonment of all standards, produced dark, grueling visions from Derek's hand. Dead robots dripping down stairwells. Hollow-eyed Victorian housekeepers holding dead birds in front of children in tiny golden cages. shadows.
[38:43] Shadowy eyes at the edge of vision staring at the viewer, cats eating a vaguely human form. All forms of demonic visions came pouring out of him as the borders and boundaries of his personality collapsed. Rational restraint is the essence of humanity. We have to negotiate with rules, find ethical, universal standards. The abandonment of rules is the end of our humanity. And what lies on the other side of restraint is not heaven, not even hell, which is a violation of rules. It is a vaguely disturbing emptiness, which shaves off the nerve endings designed to have us react with horror and claw our way back to the right path.
[39:37] And the abyss that Derek stared into on Regina's drugs began inevitably jumping into his peripheral vision as he played hacky sack in the quad, or traded cash for food vouchers in an acquaintance's tiny dorm room, or followed a black-haired woman with auburn roots as she climbed the stairs to the music practice rooms, dark shapes would flit into view, and he would turn around, and they would vanish. He tried explaining this to himself as a trick of the light or a random deficit of vision, but it kept happening. And he began to slowly, and he resisted this quite seriously, feel that he was surrounded by entities that he had summoned with his self-dissolving explorations, like the ugliest of ducklings that bonded with him because he happened to stroll past. He felt followed and intruded upon and never alone he became jumpy slept poorly and he knew it became annoyingly clingy with regina she had no sympathy for his decay she gave him the very clear impression that he must have done something wrong that everyone else gained insight without becoming paranoid that he had to fight and find his way back to the path.
[40:57] In other words after dissolving his scant will so he could pursue the unknown she then tried to summon the dead in his fight with the perpetual shadows.
[41:11] He went to therapy the university had a very busy mental health department as can be imagined and the therapist referred him to a psychiatrist who spoke with him for 10 minutes and wrote him a prescription for a lifetime of pills, a kind of Deep spasm of survival instinct had him throw the prescription away, then take it back, smooth it out, and file it in a book he had never read. He holed up in his room, quit the drugs, quit Regina, rhymes with done, and tried to regain his sanity. He was lost, without religion, without guidance, without morality or philosophy, battling the inevitable entropy of mindless opposition to discipline, with muscles atrophied after years of isolation, inflated self-praise and untested expertise. And in his isolation, in his silence and mad inner pursuit of anything real and true, Derek began to brush up against the essence of the modern world.
[42:15] He had visions of the world and its maps as tax farms for human livestock. He got a sense of the threads that bind every imaginary individual to the media and propaganda and programming designed in blinding white chambers to steal the eyes of all its subjects. He had visions of the old world, his grandparents' world, where a man in a tweed suit could kiss his slender wife, go to the office for eight hours and afford a lovely house, a white picket fence, a safe neighborhood, four children, and a car well worth tinkering with.
[42:54] Derek became obsessed with looking at the videos of this old world from the early 20th century to the 1950s, with people in suits buying newspapers and staring strangely at the camera lens. They were all dead was his constant thought but it was their world that had died through government borrowed bribery and the greed of new flesh liberated from reproduction and responsibility he imagined the pixelated faces and deep-set eyes trying to warn him but the warning came decades too late all the tragedies that had consumed their world were set in motion long before Derek was even born. It felt so strange to be in a theater, forced to mouth lines at gunpoint, holding a script written by hands long dead. The lost freedoms, the lost honesty, the lost self-expression, the lost upward mobility, the lost... Derek did not even have the words for it. Those had been lost as well. But the world that is, is a hell of manipulation and degeneracy, And the promise that liberty from rules breeds liberty from consequences, that if you smoke enthusiastically enough, you will never get cancer.
[44:13] And nothing was entertaining. It was all just programming. And the world was making children insane far faster than the healers could make them sane. And the lemmings that flowed off the cliff pretended to fly, but just fell forever. And so Derek fell back into his depressed and isolated teenage years, into his rebellion against the shallow hollowness of his parents. And he hovered above the endless vacuum of a life lived in reaction rather than purpose. To recoil like a child's hand from a fire is not to live, but rather just to survive and avoid damage. Prey must always and forever react to predators, to predation itself, to sniff and startle and flee and kick, not with purpose, but in the wild zigzag of desperate survival. To survive the next five seconds is the only purpose, and whatever needs to be sacrificed to not be swallowed is greedily discarded.
[45:17] Derek felt instinctively the greatest gap between generations in the history of the world, which was the boomers to the millennials. The boomers inherited a world of relative reason and predictable purpose, of stability and familiar demographics, and a clear sense of the relationship between effort and reward. For the boomers deferring gratification paid dividends for millennials deferring gratification was a fool's quest like storing ice in blinding sunlight hoping to chill your drinks later, time horizons had shrunk to almost nothing so Derek's generation grabbed whatever happiness they could barely thinking of long-term costs because the mathematical spinal fluid that fills the soul of every intelligent person had calculated that the current system that absorbed them was utterly unsustainable. The debt was too much. The unfunded liabilities were too great. The tensions too unstable. By the time things were going visibly wrong, the entire foundation of society had virtually rotted away. The whispers of misdirection at the beginning of these catastrophes had passed unheeded. And like a smoker who throws away his pack of cigarettes at the diagnosis of lung cancer. All that was left was a hysterical reaction to oncoming disaster. Prevention had left the table decades before.
[46:46] Derek had never voiced these misgivings, but doubtless he felt them deep inside, in the bowels of instincts designed to gather enough food for the family to survive the winter. His instincts of sustainability had been perverted to the cause of general environmentalism rather than personal cultural survival. His generation had been pillaged and sold off to foreign bankers to such a degree that they were like slaves with a chance to drink themselves into oblivion. Why stay sober when self-erasure is the only chance to escape the consciousness of enslavement? And in a slow, radiating detonation, Derek's escalating drug use spread out throughout the family, in waves, in curves, and began to swallow up everyone's time, attention, and resources. His brother Robert felt the impact from a distance, in his parents' whispered tones and angry phone calls, and felt, beyond reason, below reason, that depth led to disaster, and the only way to survive the quicksand of introspection was to gather enough material possessions to keep you buoyant. Wanting to avoid depth, art, self-reflection, and the slow decay of navel-gazing, Robert pursued the central hedonistic god of the upper middle class, wealth, status, possessions, as if the debt demons of math and cultural decay could be kept at bay by white pillars and electric cars.
[48:15] And he put all his hope in this equation, and kept it there all the way through his girlfriend Chloe until he met Helen, and her curves on the beach. So yeah, that's about half of the first chapter. It's starting in the middle, but I'm quite pleased with it. I think it's a good first draft.
[48:45] All right. Somebody says, oof, Mom threw out my old sketch pads and paintings I had on them while I was still in school. I might have tried to do something with them. What the motive was, I have no idea, other than maybe no care or like for art. Derek sounds like a guy who will end up doing ayahuasca. Yeah. Wow. Demonic lures, yeah.
[49:13] Derek and Regina sound like so many quote couples out there I'm loving this novel already I do like how the woman's name rhymes with her greatest quote value in the relationship yeah, aha the horror story we were talking about some time ago I'm scared already, horror of a life wasted nothing accomplished in this life or the next the awful truth coming to light before it's too late or not reads like the drug exploits were held as a mistake an injury to overcome. Yet post-drug Derek seems to finally be alive. Free will is a false concept. Agency is the correct one. We are free to choose an action, but never free of the consequences. Yeah. This is a vivid explanation of don't fuck with mysticism. Well done. Thank you. This new book is great. Damn. Awesome. You are an amazing writer. I was placed right in his eyes. The next part can involve the greenies burning EVs. Great work, Stef. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm pleased with that. It always feels like I'm throwing myself off a cliff to start a new book. So when the creativity really begins to pop in, it's always a great relief and pleasure. All right. Any other last questions or comments? Will there be a happy ending? Well, for that, you'll have to read the book.
[50:31] For that, you'll have to read the book. All right, so we're going to go to touching on the subject of drugs in your new book will resonate with a lot of people and families ready for the full release yeah thank you thank you all right so we're going to go to, no we're not going to go there we're going to go to not there either I really feel like I used to know how to do this ah yes we're going to go to local supporters only so we will go there in about 30 seconds and you can go to fdrurail.com slash locals to sign up there and we can continue there cameron says sounds like a good intro reminds me of a lot of people i knew in college yeah, yeah i've never um i've never really been close to people who drink a lot or do a lot of drugs but i can imagine and i've certainly talked to enough people as a whole I can certainly imagine that this is kind of hell on earth, right? Hit me with a Y, I guess, just before we head out to that. Hit me with a Y if you have been around that.
[51:44] Perfect description. Yeah, thank you. But yeah, I've never written about addiction before, so I am working on that. You have, right? Okay, well, hopefully you can keep me honest as I write about this, having never really dealt with it much myself. If you could keep me honest about it, I would really appreciate that. Let me know if there's anything that...
[52:16] Yeah let me know if there's anything i get wrong all right i think we are locals only, any other questions this is going to stay locals only i think, um i can read more of the book or um you can ask me questions i am at your disposal, LDS or Mormonism is a dry drug-free church Includes tobacco That's good, Most excellent.
[53:02] How possible or probable do you think it is That Europeans will end up on the front lines Well Well, you know, I guess native Europeans are a big barrier to the establishment of more and more dictatorships, right? Native Europeans tend to be quite resistant to being bossed around in that kind of way. So there certainly will be, I think, escalating levels of aggression against that. So they will do what they can get away with, I assume. That's generally the way it works, is they do what they can get away with. Stef, did you see Alec Baldwin talking about his wife's ex-husband's giant penis and his wife just kept laughing? Yeah, wasn't he saying that it looked like a clarinet or something? My gosh. I wonder how the parents' influence will be incorporated into the story. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. The book sounds great so far. Thank you very much. What do you think about Liberation Day this Wednesday I've seen so many people here in Canada lose their minds over these tariffs it's as bad as COVID hysteria yeah.
[54:20] Uh dylan says i would love to hear more about the book a lot of my family used drugs most were functional but a lot were terrible and tormentors yeah yeah, love that first half chapter really looking forward to more so um yeah that's the second half of the first chapter the first chapter is about his brother i thought the second half um, yeah i wrote i wrote a whole second half of the chapter about artists and ai but then realized it would be an anachronism, yeah i mean alec baldwin i mean just you know he's a good looking guy very talented very successful very wealthy and uh you know shot two people and narrowly escaped any kind of trial or conviction and then also um is i assume seems like he's in hell in terms of his marriage so, doesn't uh you know you see that character that he played in glengarry glenn ross.
[55:27] And you think oh it's all kind of tough guy right he does tough guy voice so yeah it's uh it's really sad uh morgan says new book intro sounds like my experience of the 90s in eastern europe a lot of a lot of drugs. Yeah. Yeah. But if, if you, if you peel back the layers of propaganda without philosophy, it's just very easy to just kind of dissolve, I think. I mean, that's, I think the danger that he has. Somebody says, I was talking to people about tariffs years ago. Back then they were important. So our domestic producers are protected. Now when Trump does them, they're bad. People just to say what the media tells them, yeah. Stef is a Toronto native. What do you think of Dundas Square just being renamed to Sankofa Square? I live here and I just found out. What a joke. Yeah, I mean, just general erasure of the past is a standard 1984 stuff, right?
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