0:05 - Rise of Single Motherhood
2:05 - The 80-20 Rule and Men's Challenges
5:02 - Thoughts on Ancient Cynics and Philosophy
6:05 - Raising a Family from Afar
7:35 - America's Political Shift and the Woke Generation
14:20 - Building Confidence Amid Chaos
In this episode, we delve into pressing questions raised by listeners, particularly addressing the rising trend of single motherhood and its underlying causes. I explore how state-supported redistribution of wealth has transformed children from being perceived as financial burdens to becoming economic assets. With the advent of government assistance, women are increasingly recognized as being able to raise children independently without the need for a partner, thereby altering traditional family dynamics.
We further discuss the implications of the 80-20 rule within modern dating contexts, examining how a significant portion of women tend to pursue a limited number of men. I explain that when raising children is centered around economic viability and the necessity for a stable partnership, women's choices in mates are influenced heavily by the perceived reliability of those partners. With the increasing availability of state resources, the incentive to secure a provider diminishes, leading to greater acceptance of single motherhood.
The conversation transitions to the role of socio-economic factors in shaping familial structures, particularly the evolutionary concepts of R versus K selection. In environments where resources are plentiful, the traditional nuclear family loses its urgency, resulting in women adopting alternative child-rearing methods, such as communal support. I draw connections between cultural shifts and economic stability, highlighting how these changes have transitioned societal norms from historically tight-knit familial arrangements to more fluid familial units.
I also tackle the broader societal impacts of the 'woke' movement, touching on addiction to anger and the division of humanity into simplistic categories of oppressors and victims. This narrative fosters a culture of resentment that not only alienates individuals from productive conversations but also undermines the potential for mutual understanding in society. The dangers of this black-and-white worldview, I argue, lead to dehumanization and a cycle of hatred that ultimately destabilizes civic discourse.
The episode includes reflections on personal accountability, the importance of stability in fostering confidence, and the necessity of surrounding oneself with dependable individuals to break free from chaotic influences. I emphasize how predictability in one's environment allows for the nurturing of healthy relationships and the development of self-assurance.
As always, I appreciate the engagement and insightful questions from the audience. The complexity of these discussion points illustrates the evolving nature of societal expectations and challenges, and I encourage listeners to continue contemplating these themes as we navigate the modern landscape together.
[0:00] All right, some more questions from listeners at freedomand.locals.com. What have we got here?
[0:05] Why is single motherhood on the rise? Question two with the 80-20 rule of how are most men faring and the long-term consequences? So, a single motherhood is on the rise because through the power of statist redistribution of wealth, children have been turned from liabilities into assets. So when children are liabilities, and of course, I'm not talking psychologically or emotionally, just financially, materially, time-wise. When children are liabilities, then women need to choose and rely on and must choose men who are productive and mature and helpful and loyal and possessing of all of the virtues of commitment and integrity that have them stick around for the quarter century it takes to raise kids and so on. right? I mean, could be 30 years if you're going to have a whole bunch of them. So when children are liabilities, then women have to choose men who provide. When men are forced to provide through the redistributive power of the state, then single motherhood becomes much more appealing.
[1:12] And this sort of R versus K selection stuff that I talked about in a presentation, which you should really check out called GeneWars, G-E-N-E, wars at fdrpodcast.com. When food is plentiful and the climate is easy and so on, then women don't need men around as much to take care of the kids. They can sort of hover into a sort of semi-coven and raise the children collectively and so on. And so when you get government money printing, a government debt and redistribution of income, then you take a culture that is developed from a scarcity mindset, which is, you know, long sort of northern winters and so on, and you bring it to a tropical mindset, which is why the nuclear family gets weakened when you get free and easy money that you don't have to earn.
[2:06] So let's see here, with the 80-20 rule, how are most men faring in the long-term consequences? You mean 80% of women chasing 20% of guys? Yeah. So as I sort of mentioned before, when you have a small... Or when children are significant economic and time liabilities, in other words, when you need a huge amount of time, effort, resources, and income in order to pay for children.
[2:34] Then what happens is you have to have pair-bonded mononuclear family, right? So pair-bonded families, one man, one woman, one husband, one wife, one mother, one father. And when you get this sort of infinite cavalcade of money that comes in through the state, then women are freed from the need for a provider for their children, right? And so, a woman who wants a male provider must, in return, provide as close to certainty as she can about the patrilineage or the.
[3:11] Genetic offspring of the father, right? So, she has to be a virgin when they get married, and she has to be monogamous and so on, because if the man doubts that the children are his, then he's much less likely to provide for them, or more likely to have his own affairs, or more likely to sort of wander off and try again with a woman who's more loyal to him sexually. So a woman has to be a virgin and be loyal to the man in return to get the commitment from the man that the children he's raising are, in fact, his. Or, to put it another way, when you had men who didn't particularly care that the children were theirs, well, those genes died out pretty quickly. You know, it's daddy's baby and mama's baby, right? For sure. So, when the women as a whole are no longer reliant upon individual men to provide for children and the household, then they can follow lust rather than virtue.
[4:12] They can follow lust rather than virtue. And there's no real way to change that. There's no point shaming when people get resources anyway. Shaming people who get free resources from the government is like saying to someone who just won $5 million in the lottery that they better work hard or they're going to get fired. Right? That doesn't, it doesn't, I mean, the amount of money that goes to single mothers in the sort of modern economy dwarfs the income of the greatest kings up until quite recently. So lecturing is, is sort of pointless. Like if somebody's got a winning lottery ticket saying that they shouldn't cash it in because the government's just going to print the money or borrow the money is not, not great.
[4:54] So we just have to wait for the money to run out or to be replaced by Bitcoin and then things will sort out. But yeah, there's no particular good way to deal with it now.
[5:03] Thoughts on the ancient cynics, Diogenes, Caratus, and so on. Thoughts on asceticism in general. So you can go to, if you're a subscriber, to freedomain.locals.com or subscribes.com slash freedomain, then you can go to the premium section, right? And in the premium section, you get my History of Philosopher's series where you can get all of this stuff. Why aren't you Catholic? Stefan Molyneux. Why aren't you Catholic? Because I'm a philosopher, not a theologian. All right. Hi, Stef. I am very thankful for all you have done. Have you thought through or do you have any essays analyzing Christian presuppositional apologetics? I think you could have a great discussion with a Christian on ethics, morality, and virtue. Nothing in particular comes to mind, but again, history of philosophers, I deal with a bunch of theologians there as well. Can you raise a family with someone and live separately from each other? I mean, it depends what you mean by race.
[6:02] Can the man send money to his wife who stays home, even though she's in another country?
[6:06] Sure, happens all the time. But can you actually raise children if you're not present with them? No, all you can do is pay for them. I mean, one of the things that I'm sort of deeply aware of is how much time it takes to raise children. I mean, I've had, and I thank everyone here who listens, I thank you enormously for the deep and powerful blessing of the time that I've been able to spend with my daughter. It is a real, real joy and a blessing to have that. And it has really helped me to understand just how much time you need to spend with children in order to raise them properly. So, no, you can't. You can pay for a family. You can have your genetics receive your funding. But you can't really raise a family if you're living separately. I mean, I guess you can Skype and so on. But it's kind of just the day-to-day hanging out, which is where the real lessons happen. Like with parenting, you can't go in with big lectures and arguments and ideas and so on. But what does happen is just as you're hanging out, as you did, the conversations just flow in particular directions and things get understood and learned and so on. Right. So it's it's it's hard to predict. It just kind of happens on its own. But you have to be around for that. Do you still do guest appearances on podcasts? Yeah, I mean, Keith Knight interviewed me for five hours recently, but in general, no, in general, no, I'm really enjoying the work that I'm doing.
[7:26] And so I don't have any particular desire or goals. I've had some invitations, but nothing that particularly grabs me. Let's see here.
[7:35] I have a question. How do you see the unfolding of America's new presidential power and public shift to more sensible thinking and personal accountability affecting influence on the younger woke generation? Any predictions of when or how normalcy will become fashionable again? You know, when men were masculine and women were not so focused on blue hair, abortion and anger. Interested to hear if you think it's going to be a short timeline or a jagged Passage.
[8:01] So, the problem with the woke stuff that's not super obvious, or maybe it's obvious to you, and less obvious to me, but the problem with the woke movement is it gets people addicted to anger. And anger, or I guess rage, is a very easy emotion to become addicted to. Because it comes with a whole plethora of being right, self-righteous, megalomania, and so on. The idea that blind rage, which is the carving out of a particular category of human beings and then viewing them as un-persons, viewing them as scum, as worms, as deplorable, as just carving off entire sections of humanity and dehumanizing them is the oldest march towards mass murder in the sad and bloody books of history.
[8:58] So, to give up woke, so the way the woke world, sorry, the way the world works from the woke viewpoint, the way the woke world viewpoint works, there we go, finally assembled it in a semi-coherent way, which I'll not try and do again, is something like this. So, people who do badly, do badly because they are brutalized and oppressed by cold, vicious, unfeeling, uncaring overlords, right? It divides the world into power, right? That those who are dominant dehumanize those who are weaker. Those who are weaker are tender-hearted and warm-hearted and loving and kind and wonderful and caring, right? Whereas all the people who are in charge, you know, the sort of Hunger Games, you've got Katniss who's really caring and thoughtful and loving and so on. And then you have the people in the, you know, weird makeup and funny hair and so on. You have all of those people, and those people are cold and exploitive and callous and mean and human. And what it does, of course, is it just teaches you to hate.
[10:00] It just teaches you to hate. And once you have been shifted into the semi-demonic state of almost perpetual hatred, once you've created this morality play of absolute good and absolute evil, this sort of goes back to the general Marxist view that, you know, mother courage and her children that the the the proletariat so the the the workers the the the underdogs just you know warm and sweet and caring and lovely and loving and and helpful and and so on right and and all the people who are the capitalists are are cold and greedy and hollow-hearted and and manipulative and shallow and like you've just you've just divided the.
[10:41] Humanity into the angels and the devils and those who don't have power are the angels and those who do have power are the devils although it doesn't seem to work politically it only seems to work economically right and that's because it kind of like it doesn't really happen that people view those with political powers demonic and those they oppress as you know helpless wonderful perfect victims but it does work economically speaking because you have to rouse hatred against the economically successful in order to grow political power right so you you have this boogeyman the economically successful and you use that boogeyman to frighten people into clamoring for more and more and more political power and that's how the devil takes your soul takes the soul of a society right the devil tricks you into hatred of those who can't fight back right so hatred against those who can't fight back or won't fight back is really addictive, right? So if you hate some capitalist guy, right? Let's say you hate Elon Musk, right? For whatever reason, you hate Elon Musk. Okay. Well, is Elon Musk going to censor de-platform you and throw you in jail or threaten you? Well, no. It's a capitalist. They don't do that. They don't have courts and armies and police and so on, right? They don't have the power to initiate the use of force, right?
[12:04] Of course, it's the same thing with Christians, that people hate on Christians, because Christians are relatively mild, and of the major religions, they tend to be, of course, more on the pacifist and forgive your enemy's side. So, the sort of the devilish aspect of the human heart promotes the meek and voluntary and peaceful to a position of demonic evil and then you get seduced into hating those who generally and genuinely seem to work for your benefit rather than your harm and so you hate those who are voluntarily interacting for mutual benefit such as capitalists and you then clamor for the sort of violent power of politicians to save you right.
[12:51] And it feels, I suppose it feels pretty courageous for people to hate those who don't have the power, means, will, or inclination to fight back and harm them. So it's bullying, right? It's just picking on the weak. Like you claim you're protecting the weak by opposing the strong, but you're actually supporting the strong, i.e. Political power by attacking the meek or the weak, which is the capitalists, right? who don't, again, they don't have the, they don't have political power directly. I mean, they influence it, and of course, right, but that's just self-defense against the mob. And greed, of course, there is greed as well, but you have a fiduciary responsibility as an executive in a corporation to maximize income and minimize costs. And one of the best ways to do that is to lobby and so on, right? So for the woke, to give up the woke worldview requires.
[13:46] That they recognize that they have been manipulated into hating the peaceful and supporting the coercive. They have to look in the mirror and say, well, I guess we've become useful idiots and we are serving up the platters of the endless feast of freedom to the bottomless more of the politically motivated. Very few people have the ego strength to look in the mirror and say, I've been seduced into evil and hatred and to give up that grand addiction. So I don't think it's going to be particularly smooth.
[14:20] What are your favorite films and why? I've talked about that kind of stuff before. And let's see here. Genetic material, we did that.
[14:31] All right, I think, I think that's the question. So let's see here. Yeah, I did this one. All right. Well, thank you very, very much. I really do appreciate everyone's time, care, thoughts, and attention regarding this. And oh, here's one, here's one, sorry. How can you help a friend who grew up in chaos integrate confidence in general?
[14:50] Well, confidence is about stability, right? Confidence is about stability. So for instance, I'm confident that gravity is going to continue to operate in my life and environment, right? It's stable. Gravity doesn't sort of dial up and dial down, right? So I'm confident in that. I'm confident in the passage of time, that it's not going to flow backwards, it's not going to suddenly accelerate, right? I'm confident that if I need to go from A to B, I need to find some way to traverse the intermediate distance. I'm confident about, for the most part, when I turn the light switch on, I get light and so on, right? So, confidence is about predictability. And you cannot have predictability in your life if you're surrounded by chaotic people. So, if you have people who just, they're moody, they're chaotic, they're up, they're down, they're in the money, they're out of the money, they're enthusiastic, they're depressed, they're manic, they're crashing, they're loving, they're aggressive. If you have chaotic people in your life, then you can't plan your life because you're always bouncing off. Can you imagine trying to, how would you design an airplane when you had people randomly dialing up and down gravity and wind resistance and so on? You couldn't design the airplane because you wouldn't have a predictable.
[16:03] Set of variables to work with, right? So, and by wind resistance, I don't mean dialing up and down the wind. I mean, like, how much it actually affected the material. Could you, could you send a spaceship to the moon or to Mars if the moon and Mars kept accelerating randomly and decelerating in their orbit? And there was no way to predict it. It's just completely random acceleration and deceleration. Well, you couldn't, right? So, you couldn't have any confidence in being able to land on these planets if all of the variables kept changing. So if you have a people in your life who are chaotic, or if your friend has people in his life who are chaotic, then it is impossible to develop confidence.
[16:48] Confidence is stability and predictability. And if people are chaotic, you cannot develop confidence in anything because you're too busy randomly bouncing off the various random moods and behaviors of other people. So the suggestion I suppose is something like don't have the chaotic random crazy people in your life and then you can develop some stability and then you can develop some predictability and through that you can develop some confidence. So I hope that helps. Freedomain.com slash donate. Really do appreciate your time and care and attention and support freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. November is a tough month for the show historically, and I would really appreciate your help and support. If you could, see your way clear to supporting or subscribing. You do get great benefits for subscribing, and I hope you'll check those out. So, lots of love from up here. Take care, my friends. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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