0:05 - Cultural Coarsening and Its Consequences
32:25 - The Philosophy of Free Speech
39:30 - The Role of Scientists in Society
51:55 - Happiness and Comparisons
In this episode, I tackle a variety of pressing questions that reflect on the latest trends in societal norms and personal experiences. One question that resonated with me was about the coarsening of our culture, particularly in relation to music. I explore how the decline in the beauty and virtue of our artistic expressions can result in a societal vulnerability. By arguing that a culture steeped in ugliness allows for easier ideological takeover, I draw historical parallels to strategies used in warfare aimed at demoralization.
Shifting focus, I respond to a question regarding the nature of truth and its interplay with social bonds. I delve into the paradox that arises from being social creatures; while pursuing truth is inherently a collaborative endeavor, it often puts individuals at odds with their social circles. This dichotomy between the quest for personal integrity and the desire for community acceptance amplifies the challenges of philosophical inquiry in a society that tends to favor conformity over individuality.
I then address the deeply impactful topic of narcissistic parenting, specifically the emotional legacy it leaves on children. Through personal anecdotes, I discuss how growing up with a narcissistic mother can lead to feelings of inferiority and later superiority, as these children navigate the complexities of their self-worth. I draw parallels between children and objects that serve the whims of others, emphasizing how this treatment can diminish their sense of individuality and value.
Additionally, I reflect on the societal apathy towards child abuse, which often goes unchecked despite our professed care for the well-being of children. My experiences reveal a disturbing truth: claims of societal concern for vulnerable children often ring hollow in the face of inaction and negligence. This bleak outlook on societal morals challenges listeners to reconcile their beliefs with reality and reevaluate their role in addressing issues of harm in their communities.
As the episode unfolds, I also touch on questions related to occupational instability and the notion of job security in unions versus individual employment circumstances. I advocate for a pragmatic approach to understanding workplace dynamics, cautioning against the assumption that job security within unions equates to a deficiency of workplace conflict.
In conclusion, I emphasize the importance of contextualizing our comparisons to foster a healthier mindset regarding happiness and fulfillment. Drawing from personal experiences and observations, I argue that true contentment comes from understanding our modern advantages in relation to the challenges faced throughout history. This perspective invites listeners to reevaluate their expectations and recognize the value of their current circumstances. I encourage everyone to reflect on their journey and the tools available to shape a more meaningful existence, offering that we can find joy in our comparisons and the choices that define our lives.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. I'm Stefan Molyneux, from Freedomain. Hope you're doing well.
[0:05] So, questions from over the holidays, sorry. It took me a little time to get to them. I did the single Mom One. And then somebody writes, How did we become such a vulgar society? I listened to classical and 50s music. The music used to be so beautiful, and the lyrics focused on love, marriage, and children. Virtually no references to sexuality or money were made, unless the message was of wanting to avoid valuing these things. I can't listen to modern music without revulsion now. I've even noticed how bad much of the rock and roll I used to like is. This is quite a black pill experience, and I'm not sure how to interpret it. Well, none of this is by accident. The coarsening and vulgarization of a culture is there to weaken it.
[0:51] Men, we work for beauty. We defend beauty and love. And a culture that is beautiful and full of love, of beauty, and of virtue is impossible to take over, because men in general will fight like crazy to protect it. But if the culture is ugly and fetid and gross and bestial, then people will not fight in particular to protect it. So, you know, there's an old sort of trick of warfare, which is not to fight the enemy, but to poison his water supply. Or, as the old saying goes, an army marches on its belly. And if you can cut off the food supply to an army, you don't need to fight the army, you can just let the army starve. And of course, this is what Russians did. They get invaded and they do the scorched earth policy and so on. So they simply let winter take care of the troops. The best way to win a war is not to fight the enemy. And this is what demoralization is all about.
[2:06] The scandals in the UK, Rotherham and so on, have a lot to do with simply demoralizing people. And having them not want to fight for an existing regime. And then you can see this happening. A lot of ex-soldiers, like a lot of ex-military, like, well, I wouldn't fight for what America has become, you know, that kind of stuff, right? So you want to make it as vulgar as possible so that it can be... The beauty and the virtue and the honor can all be lost. And then the culture and therefore the country can be... It's not exactly taken over, but the existing power structures can be fairly easily displaced. All right, somebody says, I truly wish that messaging in the culture war and political arenas could be steered away from such blatant religious tones towards more specific values-based language and ideals. How do we fix this? Messaging in the culture war and political arenas could be steered away from such blatant religious tones. Well, you're asking people to become philosophical. And of course, to become philosophical is to pursue the truth in a tribal animal. Human beings are social animals.
[3:19] So, it is a sort of core paradox of society as it stands, of humanity as it stands. The core paradox is this. the truth is a social pursuit. Pursuing the truth is social. We do it through conversation. We do it through reading. We do it through language. And conversation, reading, and language, negotiation, debate, these are all social constructs. They don't exist in nature in that way, in the way that trees and rocks do. So, the pursuit of truth is a social endeavor, and it is because of our social nature that we are able to have language and philosophy and the pursuit of truth, debate, and so on. So, it is because of our social nature that we have these things, but our social nature doesn't want to be ostracized. You see the paradox? It is only because we are social that we get to pursue truth at all. But the pursuit of truth generally harms our social bonds.
[4:31] So our social life, and I don't just mean, of course, going out, but all of the collective language, books, endeavors, and history, and thought that we get because we're social animals. We only have language, right, in the way that we do. Certainly conceptual language, written language, because we're social animals. We want to tell our stories, we want to remember stories. So, society is required to serve us up the pursuit of truth, but our society is often the last casualty in our pursuit of truth. Our social bonds provide us the tools which cut our social bonds. So, it is because of society that I am able to pursue truth because of social constructs such as language and debate and so on. It is because of society that I'm able to pursue truth, but the pursuit of truth destroyed my personal society as it stood when I was younger. So you're asking people to become philosophical, which is only possible because of social bonds.
[5:38] But social bonds are generally the last casualty of being philosophical. I don't have an answer to this other than that I prefer the truth to habit. I prefer the truth to social bonds. I prefer facts, reality, and virtue to accidental social-born bonds I happen to be born into. I prefer, infinitely really now, that which I have chosen rather than what the fates chose for me. I do not want to play the hand I was dealt. I do not want to play the game at all. Play the hands that you were dealt implies that there's a card game. I know it's an analogy, but it implies that there's a card game that you kind of have to play according to somebody else's rules. Well, I don't want to do that. I don't want to. I will not do it. So if it is a religious revelation that you were in pursuit of, well, there are millions and millions and millions of people who have that same religiosity. And therefore, the pursuit of that truth does not harm, but in fact, reinforces your social bonds. The pursuit of truth philosophically, though, harms social bonds. Remember, moral language was invented to control. Trying to use it to actually promote virtue is trying to wrestle the biggest weapon away from the most dangerous enemy. It is not an easy thing.
[7:07] Could you talk a little bit about how having a narcissistic mother might result in a child, in this case a boy, experiencing feelings of inferiority when young and superiority when older? Did you ever experience these feelings having been raised by your mother? Well, Robert, that is a very, very big situation. That is a very, very big situation. So, if you have a narcissistic mother, if you have a cruel and cold and selfish, and narcissists are often sentimental, and you can always tell the narcissist by the slight smirk. But if you have a narcissistic parent, and this really could be expanded to all abusive parents, but the more subtle the better, right, in terms of this particular path. So, if you have a narcissistic mother, then she belittles you because you only exist to serve her needs. You only exist to serve her needs. I thought my mother took great pleasure in my writing, but she took great pleasure in telling people I was writing. My mother took great pleasure in the fact that I was taking adult computer science courses when I was about 12.
[8:32] But she didn't ever care to figure out what I was learning. I was actually learning how to read and write blocks on a five and a quarter inch floppy.
[8:41] She, and I actually remember got in trouble because I got bored in one of the classes. These were just like night courses, just side stuff. But I remember the teacher got mad at me because the teacher thought I was playing a game on the computer, but I was actually programming a game on the computer and testing it. I just get bored with it.
[9:01] So, my mother did not take interest in me. She took interest in feeling good or being able to brag about what I was doing. This is quite a common phenomenon, of course, among selfish parents, that the child exists for the vanity of the parents, usually the mother in this case. So, the feelings of inferiority are because, to a selfish mother, you do not exist as an independent entity. You are an object designed to provide pleasure. The closest analogy would be a television. So, you have a television, and you've never asked the television or think about what the television might like to watch. The television exists to serve your preferences and pleasures. If you want to play a video game, you turn on the television and you play the game. If you want to watch a show, maybe you want to browse the internet, and some people do apparently, on their TVs. But the TV only exists to serve your pleasures and your preferences. And you don't ever think about what the TV might or might not want to do because it is an object that serves your pleasures and your preferences.
[10:15] In the same way that, you know, most people have a drawer full of old cell phones, right? So you had a cell phone and you unwrapped it and you got it and you were excited to get it. And it turned out over time, you know, it slowed down or the battery didn't work as well or there was new features or speed or whatever that you wanted. And so you took your old cell phone and you tossed it in a drawer. You didn't sit there and think, oh boy, the cell phone has its own preferences and pleasures and doesn't want to get tossed into a drawer and loves listening to me chat and wants to play me videos and see me smile with a video game or a phone game or something like that. No, you just, no, this thing is not of utility to me anymore. And so I'm going to toss it in a drawer. And it actually just struck me while I was talking here that I bet you the toy story narrative, right? There's a movie Toy Story from the, what's it, from the 90s, I think, where the toys are actually alive and don't want to get tossed in the corner, but have to play dead when the boy Andy comes to play, right? So they have this whole life, but then they have to play dead when Andy comes by. And there's a massive plot hole in that Buzz Lightyear doesn't know that he's a toy, but still plays dead when Andy comes by. It's a massive plot hole that's never explained, but you know, whatever, right?
[11:42] So I bet you that was conceived of or written by someone within our narcissistic mother. Because the toys only being alive when the owner is not around and then playing dead when the owner is around and being used for the owner's pleasure, that is the child of a narcissistic mother or even darker, the child of a pedophile or some sort of other catastrophic abuser. You're only alive when that person's not around and you have to play dead when that person is around and, That's the narcissistic mother's child.
[12:24] So the reason why you end up feeling like you're not worth much when you're young is because you're not worth much when you're young. If you can imagine that your television or your phone or your computer did have consciousness, it would feel very unimportant to you because you would simply sit down and use that computer for your own pleasure and purposes and never think about what the computer wanted. The computer would feel worthless, and the computer's preferences are worthless to you because you don't ever think of the computer's preferences. It is simply an object, like a livestock, right? Livestock is another kind of analogy, right? So a farmer who has a cows cares about his cows only insofar as caring about the cows, serves his economic needs, because the cows are livestock.
[13:21] If people want free-range grass-fed cows, you can sell it for more, then he'll do that, but not because he wants to make the cows happy, but because there's a market for it. And of course, you know, there are some people who do care about their cows and so on, but they tend not to be the larger, more efficient and productive economic concerns. So you are treated as an object when you are young, and you are not cared about. And your value is only insofar as you serve the preferences of the narcissistic mother. So that's your insecurity when you get.
[13:55] When you're young. Now, the great and dark secret of victims of child abuse, this is not just the children of narcissistic mothers, but the great and dark secret is that people who are abused as children know very, very deeply that society is bullshit. That society is bullshit because society cares, or claims to care so much about the children, the future, and there's all this sentimentality, and hug your children, and so on, right? And the teachers claim to care about the children, and you see, government education exists because the children are so precious, and such a wonderful resource, and they need to be trained up into the next generation, and they have to be, and children need health care and love and all of these wonderful things. So society claims to be dedicated to the well-being and protection of children. That's what society claims.
[15:00] All sorts of tyrannies are justified or, quote, justified on the grounds of protect the children, right? But everybody who's been abused by parents or other authority figures in society knows that that's all a complete and total lie, that society doesn't really care. I mean, how many people over the course of my childhood had reason to believe that something bad was happening in my house? Something very bad was happening in my house. how many priests when I was younger went to church, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins.
[15:47] Teachers. I mean, from the age of 15 onwards, all of my friends' parents knew that I was paying my own bills. And not only did all of my friends' parents know that, but one of my friends came to live with me. I mean, a real lost boy's island of premature maturity. So everybody knew. And no one came by and said, hey, where is your mother? Why are you paying the bills? Why has my son come to live with you? Why is this happening? What's going on? Are you okay? Do you have enough money? Do you have access to dental? Like, nobody cared. Nobody cared. Yeah, they're off doing their own thing and all of that, right? So, if people, and this was universal, everywhere I went, no matter what. Everywhere I went, no matter what. My father, of course, I mean, I spent months with him at a time. Well, not with him, but with him in the vicinity, I suppose you could say. Off and on as a kid, every, you know, he'd be in a week or two in Ireland, and I'd be out there as well. And then I spent some time with him at the age of six and at the age of 16 in Africa. And not once did he ever ask me what it was like growing up with my mother. I mean, he knew she was dangerous and violent and criminal. Never asked.
[17:15] His second wife never asked. When my brother was airlifted back to England for a couple of years, when my mother was going mad and being institutionalized, I have relatives they had grown up with me. I visited them a lot as a kid. They didn't live too far, one train ride away. I visited them a lot as a kid. Not one phone call. Not one letter. Now, you could say, well, but maybe, maybe they sent letters, but my mother destroyed them. No, no, I mean, for significant portions of that time, my mother barely got out of bed. Right, the mother in almost doesn't come out of nowhere, my friends. Nobody phoned. And, of course, even if you did send letters and didn't get a reply, then you'd phone. It was certainly possible to phone. It wasn't that expensive, you know, five minutes, right? To see, how are you doing? How is your mother doing? Does, like, nobody cared. Nobody cared. I mean, I would hang around friends' places around dinner time hoping to get a bite to eat.
[18:15] Nobody cared. Not one friend, not one friend's parents, not one priest, not one teacher, not one of my relatives extended, you know, at least 10 to 20 people in my family knew about all of this sort of stuff. Not one person, not one person. And you could say, oh, well, you know, but you were a kid. Even when I met them when I was older, nobody asked, nobody cared. Nobody's ever inquired. I've been very public about the child abuse I suffered, not one relative. Over the last 20 years since I went public. So boring, right? So not one relative has ever contacted me to say, kind of sorry we let you down or how you're doing now. You know, anything like that, right? Nothing. So when you are a child and you suffer from child abuse, and I'm not an isolated case, you understand? I'm not an isolated case. And so when I got older, I said, well, if I'm ever in a position to help people with regards to their child abuse, I will never hesitate, nor will I reject anyone who wants and needs help. And if all I can offer them is a sympathetic witness, that is what I will do.
[19:27] So, the matrix, in a sense, is self-congratulatory, vainglorious, sentimental bullshit about how moral society is and how much it cares about. things. And you could say it gives you a certain kind of arrogance, but what it does do is, I mean, I'll sort of give you an example, right? Who's been in the show before, right? I'll give you an example. So, I mean, it's not funny, but it's a little funny. So, when, When you've gone through this kind of experience on three different continents, nobody giving a shit about flagrant child abuse, abandonment and neglect and violence happening within its own community, right? Paper-thin walls all through my childhood. Nobody called the cops when I was being assaulted. Nobody called Child Protective Services. And this is true in Canada and in the UK. Nobody lifted a finger. One anonymous phone call could have saved me. It really could have.
[20:31] And it would have stopped the beatings for sure, right? So my mother would be frightened of authority, right? So I don't view my mother as an abuser. I view society as abusers because my mother only abused because she knew she could get away with it. She knew that nobody would lift a goddamn finger and everybody would just turn up the TV when they heard a child being assaulted in the building, right? So it's not my mother who abused me. It's society.
[20:56] It's society. So So, again, this is the part, it's darkly funny, so forgive me if it seems bitterly humorous, but the reality is this. When you've gone through something like that, and, you know, I'm pushing 60 years of age, I have been public about the violent and deranged abuse I suffered, the hands of my mother, the fists of my mother, for, you know, I guess I put a stop to it when I was, I don't know, maybe 14 or 15, maybe 13. I can't remember exactly when, but I put a stop to it when I got big enough.
[21:36] So I went through all of that for, you know, close to a decade and a half. No protection from anyone. Nobody cared. Not no sympathy, no acknowledgement, no protection, nothing, right? And then nothing from family and friends over the years, over the decades, I've been public in talking about the abuse I suffered as a child for 20 years, and generally all society does is abuse me further, like I've never received a shred of sympathy. In fact, people have simply, in the public, have in general just piled on the abuse, right? So that's where society is, right? That's where society is. It's a cesspool as a whole, right? It's a cesspool of imagined virtues and very real and enacted betrayals of all that is good and noble in reality.
[22:29] So, what that gives you is this amazing perspective. It's truly dizzying. It's a little terrifying, deeply empowering. Which is when, to take an example, right? Sorry, let me laugh again. But it's so absurd when you understand this perspective. And it's not even a perspective. This is just straight up facts, right? So when society says, well, you know, we really care about what the temperature is going to be in 100 years.
[23:00] My God. It's beyond absurd. It's like somebody smearing shit on the wall of their asylum box and claiming to be Michelangelo. When society says, well, you see, we have to lock you in your house because we just, we care about the children getting COVID. It's like, well, no, you don't care about that. Like, whatever you care about, it's not that. Whatever you care about, it's not whether the temperature is half a degree higher on average in a hundred years. Like, it's not that for sure. I mean, everybody says, well, we care about education, you see. Children have to be educated, and children need socialization. You can't just homeschool, they lack socialization. Well, or, or, or, alternatively, we could lock them in their houses, often with terrifying abusers, where they get no education, really, and no socialization, and they get depressed and anxious and lose IQ points and all of that for, you know, a year or two years, because of a disease with a fairly tiny mortality rate and a virtually non-existent mortality rate among kids, right?
[24:21] So, the reason that there seems to be a certain arrogance is, you know, that I've never seen the movie Anchorman, but, you know, this, I don't believe you, I don't believe you, and then gives you a cynical look while he lights a cigarette, right? The Ron Burgundy is the name of the character played by Will Ferrell. And so, you just don't believe anything that society says. You see all these editorials about how, oh, women's rights and the women of Afghanistan and the temperature in a hundred years, and I mean, it's all absolute nonsense. People don't care about others. We live in a profoundly self-obsessed and selfish society, which doesn't even have the courage to admit that it doesn't care about these things. Because if you don't actually care about the abuse of children in your environment that you could do something about, that something being one anonymous phone call. And look, I'm not saying that the state of solutions to child abuse are ideal, far from it. But in the minds of most people, the state is dare to protect children. And it's one anonymous phone call can get a wellness check on a kit, right?
[25:31] Is an absolute constant that people do not care at all about abused children in their immediate environment. They do not care. They do not lift a finger. They do not ask a question. They do not get involved. They go about their days. They watch their stupid fucking sports ball. They drink their beers. They play with their belly lint, and they ignore the screams of children being devoured by psychological monsters in their immediate vicinity. And then these intergalactic assholes have the temerity to claim that they care about refugees at the temperature in a hundred years and what's going on in Afghanistan. And oh my gosh, he's terrible. You don't. You don't.
[26:16] Because that to me is the litmus test. Do you care about and have you done something about to victims of abuse in your environment. Say, oh, well, but there's blowback from the parents. Well, no, not with an anonymous phone call, there isn't. Or any shred of sympathy. But even if that's true, oh, I fear the blowback from the parents. Okay, let's say that that's true. Then, when the children become adults, why not give them sympathy and apologize for not intervening before? Oh, because then you'd have to face your own conscience. And people would rather massage their own conscience into submission with the imaginary joyous use of moral heroism by caring about the temperature in 100 years rather than doing something good in the here and now and helping the victims of child abuse, even if you chicken out and wait till they're adults, right?
[27:06] So, if you say, well, how do you go from the insecurity to the arrogance? It's just that I personally get as much moral content.
[27:18] From people's ethical pasturing in the world, I get as much moral content from that as I do from a chihuahua yapping at a squirrel. That's all I hear. That's all I hear. That's all I hear. I know the truth, and they know the truth, that they don't care about the victims of child abuse in their own family, in their immediate environment, so nobody with half a brain cell gives a flying fuck and a rolling donut what they care about, what they say they care about in abstract terms. If you don't care about child abuse in your vicinity, in fact, not only do you not care about it, but if somebody brings it up, you will hate them for it. Then don't tell me that you care about what's going on in Ukraine or Afghanistan or Syria or anything like that. Like, I remember when I was a kid, was it Sally Strother? Anyway, when I was a kid, there were these endless specials on TV about the starving kids in Africa, right?
[28:23] And everybody was turning themselves inside out because of the hungry kids in Africa. Now, of course, this was usually the kids were hungry in Africa because of the result of socialist policies that were currently being implemented in the West, but that's neither here nor there. So people were just like turning themselves inside out and crying and beating their chests about the hungry kids in Africa while I was being beaten right in their environment. Do you see? Oh, oh, those hungry kids on the other side of the world is really terrible. You know, there's a kid being tortured, tormented, bullied, and beaten right here. No, no, but the children overseas, right? So sending money to kids in Africa, I'm not saying that's a bad thing or anything like that, but that's a whole lot easier than actually doing something moral in the here and now. And people just want that greasy, evil, nasty virtue signaling rather than doing some actual good in their own country in the here and now. They want all of the virtue that comes with zero risk whatsoever and they don't want any of the actual virtue.
[29:28] Comes from opposing the interests of evil people in their actual vicinity and environment. And I was, of course, always told, do the right thing no matter what. Tell the truth that the skies fall. Tell the truth and shame the devil. Don't you dare go along with the crowd. You have your own conscience, your own integrity, and so on, right? There are infinitely more people who care about stray cats than there are who will do anything about the victims of child abuse. So that's just fact. And it's a grotesque pantomime of imaginary virtue. Society is involved, and people are just led around by the noses and told what to be virtuous, quote, virtuous about, and they never think for themselves, and they don't actually work out their own first principles. So, is it arrogance? It's just like, well, I don't believe that society cares about the things it claims to care about. Because as a victim of child abuse, I know that society, for now almost 60 years, has not cared about me being abused, and in fact, has been happy to pile on the abuse that I suffered as a kid, as an adult, right? So, yeah, it's a bunch of yapping chihuahuas looking for meat. It is not any kind of reason to moral discourse. Does that make me arrogant? I don't think so. It just makes me...
[30:58] Skeptical. It just makes me skeptical. Has the atheist community done anything? The science is very clear on the effects of child abuse. I've detailed it in endless presentations. And so, follow the science means that we should really work hard to stop the child abuse. And the child abusers continue to do what they do because they know that nobody's going to say a goddamn thing, but is instead going to expend all of their imaginary moral energies on giving billions of dollars to governments to change the temperature in 100 years. Oh my god, it is such a, it is in the future, this will not be looked upon as a society, but an asylum. It's an asylum. And it's full of very dangerous, volatile people, that if you take away their drug of self-righteousness, they will fuck you up. And it's one of these sad but true situations. So, do you go from insecurity there against? No. You realize that society doesn't care about anything, really, other than feeling good. So you don't believe any small commandments. So I hope that that helps. All right.
[32:08] Immigration debate. It's too boring. Let's see here. So sorry. A lot of questions, but I have a bunch of stuff to do before my call-in. I'll do one more. I'll do one more. Stef, I've worked in the private sector my whole life. I've never had a union. The one thing that makes me jealous about them is that they cannot be arbitrarily let go.
[32:26] I've had it happen to me once where I was let go based on a personality conflict between me and the boss and not due to my work performance. I sometimes worry the same thing may happen again in my current position despite me trying to keep my head down. Any thoughts?
[32:41] Mean any, what do you mean any thoughts? I'm not sure what you're, I'm not sure what you're asking me here, my friend. Are you saying that the union, let's say a government union or a private sector union, you can't be let go arbitrarily? And do you think that solves the problem of having jerks at work, that you can't fire anyone, and therefore there aren't any jerks at work? Tell me you're kidding me. Like, tell me you're wise and smart enough in philosophy to know that making it virtually impossible to fire anyone does not eliminate jerks in the workplace. In fact, it means that there are far more of them. Because then the jerkiness is not just your boss, but it extends to all of your co-workers who tend to get kind of pompous and arrogant and inefficient and lazy and entitled and aggressive because they can't get fired. People can't handle power. Nobody can handle power. Nobody can handle power. And so, if you take away the right to fire people, then instead of having a possible asshole boss, you end up with generally asshole co-workers. So, you're smarter than this and do better. Just do better. Do better. All right. Let's see here. Let's do one more.
[34:04] Dear Stef, the following question is about providing you feedback to a recent question you answered on your most recent Q&A's Locals podcast, and I will provide that feedback via asking a new question. Does a nuanced question merit a nuanced answer? I don't know what you mean by nuanced. So, hopefully, I haven't read this question yet, but hopefully, you're going to define to me what you mean by nuanced. For example, I previously asked why you were still living in Canada, given the fact that you are pro-free speech libertarian. And Canada, of course, does not have free speech unlike the United States. Despite my nuanced question, you did not read out my question. You did briefly, and I believe inadequately, answer my question, and I thank you for taking the time to do so. However, the purpose of you answering questions is to educate all free-domain listeners on the philosophy of the question being asked.
[34:52] So you're telling me now what my job is. Let's see here. The purpose of you answering questions is to educate all free domain listeners on the philosophy of the question being asked. I'm not sure what that means. I think it's to answer questions, right? So in America, you believe that you have all of this free speech. But if you look at the Twitter files and other things, you can see that the government has done quite a lot to pressure companies into limiting free speech.
[35:20] So, if you're just looking at the pieces of paper, you'd say, well, Canada doesn't have a First Amendment and America does. If all you do is just look at the, but I'm an empiricist, I look at the facts, right? Not the theory. I mean, I've always been an empiricist. So, if you look at the companies that have deplatformed me, how many of them are American and how many of them are Canadian? I mean, I'm just looking at the facts, right? So, as an empiricist, you should look at the facts. I don't think I need to explain that you should look at the facts, not listen to theories. By not reading out the question, don't you think you, it is disingenuous. What? By not reading out the question, don't you think you, it is disingenuous. So, my friend Hegel, if you want me to answer a question in more detail, I suppose, maybe that's what you're asking for, but lecturing me about what my responsibilities are in answering questions, and not referencing the answer that I gave, I'm not sure what to make of that, and also not checking whether what you read, what you wrote is comprehensible. Whilst I know the question being asked, the rest of your audience doesn't, so therefore your answer has very little philosophical value to listeners who don't even want to know the question you are answering. What's okay? This is just turning into word salad here, right? Whilst it is perfectly okay to summarize a question if the question lacks depth or nuance, I don't believe the question I asked lacked depth and nuance. For example, you did answer my question, but you didn't answer the crux of my question.
[36:47] You said, paraphrasing, that the United States has free speech in theory, but it does not practically have free speech because private companies such as YouTube and the old Twitter censored and deplatformed you. While the point is certainly a very valid and pertinent point, ultimately it still stands that you, Stef, could be jailed in Canada for speech whilst in the US the government cannot jail anyone for speech. I don't think that is an insignificant distinction, and you did not address that in your response. Okay, well, let's just see here. When was the last time Canada jailed someone for speech? I don't even know exactly how to look this up. So when was the last time someone in Canada was jailed for free speech? I mean, there was a law. I think it was reformed in 2013 under the last conservative government, under Stephen Harper, if I get this right. So there was a bad law that people got persecuted for, but that law is gone. So it's been a while, right?
[37:41] I don't think that is an insignificant. The crux of my question is something that you are all too familiar with, and that is principle. Stef, you are a libertarian, yet you choose to remain in Canada despite the fact that the United States is arguably the most libertarian society due to the fact that free speech is guaranteed by the Constitution. And yes, Stef, you are still subject to speech violations by private companies, but ultimately the government cannot take away speech of individual citizens. Well, that's just, I mean, I think that's just naive. I think that's just naive. Stef, in principle, you should want to leave Canada and go to a country that is more aligned with your values. Now, I don't want to strawman you and pretend that Canada is as bad on free speech as North Korea, China, or England. So I'm not saying it is necessarily hypocritical of you to not leave Canada. I'm just curious what your justification for staying in Canada is. Maybe you tried to immigrate, but you were denied. Maybe you couldn't find a job in the US when you were younger, so it was practically impossible. And maybe you were simply short of time, so you did not take time to answer my question. In conclusion, my feedback is if you decide to answer a question, don't strawman the question and give an incomplete answer. Well, I didn't strawman the question. I talked about the empirical evidence.
[38:47] And here's the thing. Like, it's a matter of trust, right? So just saying, well, there's theoretically more free speech in the U.S. Than there is in Canada. And therefore, I should live in the, I should move to the U.S. Well, you might want to go talk to lawyers and accountants and just see what's involved in changing countries. I'm just, you should, you should look into that. You should look into that. And then you should have kids. Then you should look at the empirical facts of what has happened to me. So you can look all of that stuff up. I'm not going to give you a whole lesson on all of that because I'm not an accountant or a lawyer.
[39:31] So you can just look this kind of stuff up and figure it out for yourself. You're a smart person. All right. After reading about some of the more famous physicists and scientists from history, they all tend to dip into the realm of philosophy from time to time. People also tend to give them a lot of credence or respect for their philosophical opinions. Why do you think that is? And would a scientist have anything worthwhile to say about the subject that would be of interest to you? I mean, scientists, depends. If they are not paid by the government, I would certainly listen to them.
[39:59] But scientists have lost credibility in two waves, one to the perceptive and one to the less perceptive, right? So the first wave that scientists lost credibility about was global warming, right? It's global warming, global cooling, global warming, and then climate change. And so, believing that scientists can take all the variables into account of the entire solar system and human activity, and then predict what the temperature is going to be in 100 years is beyond deranged. I mean, that's a complete fantasy. And I've done environmental modeling as part of my career as a software entrepreneur, so I know a little bit about this. And modeling is just modeling. I've done business projections, and you can, right? Next week, a doctor with a flashlight shows you where sales projections come from. I think that's a vivid line from an old Dilbert. So scientists lost waves. They lost waves in denialism of IQ, right? Just massive IQ denialism. They lost faith in that. And then, I think, under COVID, the trust the science stuff, science is the opposite of trust, right?
[41:10] Science is founded upon a skepticism of merely mortal authority. So trust the science is the opposite of science. And so, and, you know, what's happening now with the dominoes falling with vaccine skepticism starting with COVID and moving to other vaccines, you know, the fact that Africa was barely vaccinated and seems to have survived COVID fairly magnificently, the fact that the Swedish lockdowns didn't seem to produce that much of an ill effect, the winter of severe disease and death predicted by the White House for the unvaccinated did not come to pass. And if you talk to people about what they've experienced post-COVID vaccination, you can get some stories. Let's just put it that way. So if somebody was really interested in science, was doing their own science, privately funded or in a sort of private industry, and they were talking about the philosophy of science, yeah, I would be interested in that for sure. But listening to a government scientist, I mean, come on, doctors used to recommend cigarettes, the idea that experts know what they're talking about when they're financially and morally compromised. I mean, do you think that your doctor is giving you the right treatments or the treatments for which they are subsidized and paid the most, right? All right.
[42:27] You know what, let's finish it off. Let's finish it off. Hey, Stef, love the show. Thanks for all the hard work you put into it. I listened to one of your shows recently where you talked about how women view criticism from themselves and others as a reason to self-doubt and shame themselves for failing and making mistakes instead of simply using the mistake as a learning experience. And moving on, any advice on how to avoid this self-doubt and shaming?
[42:48] Well, I would say that happiness is in the comparisons. Happiness is in the comparisons, So there's an old saying about aging sucks, but it beats the alternative. The alternative to aging is death. You say, ah, you get older and hey, look, you've now replaced your financial concerns with health concerns. You're always going to be concerned about something. So a guy I knew some years ago in another life was going through a hernia operation. Apparently, this is quite common happens to like 25% of men and 800,000 a year in the US. It's one of these things, it's worlds you don't really know about until you know about it, right? He's going through a hernia operation.
[43:34] And he was an older gentleman. And he was complaining about it. And I said, look, I mean, of course, I understand. I understand the complaints. But I can tell you how to not complain about it if you'd like, right? And he's like, okay, sure. Right. Tell me. He said skeptically. And I said, okay, well, the way that you don't complain about it is you are comparing having a hernia operation to being in perfect health. And if you have, as your standard, perfect health, then all deviations from perfect health will result in unhappiness. However, there are other more rational standards that you can compare things to. So I said, so if you look at your hernia operation and you compare it to living in a time where you could not get a hernia operation, or if you got a hernia operation, there was virtually no anesthetic.
[44:30] There's two ways, if I understand this correctly, two ways to deal with the hernia. One is called the mesh technique, where they basically put part of a screen door in underneath the weakened abdominal wall that's letting the intestines bulge through. And the other is called the shoulders, where they take natural sutures and sew it all back together. The mesh one is a quicker recovery, but there could be more complications. The foreign object can't go through scanners, and the shoulders one is a longer recovery time. But I've heard slightly better long-term outcomes. Do your own research. Now, this is medical advice, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but this is just what the guy told me. So, I said, look, if you're going to compare every deviation from perfect health as a disaster because your standard is perfect health, well, there is no rational standard called perfect health because shit happens in the body. Even if you do everything right, stuff can happen in the body, right? So, what you want to do is you want to compare the people who had to live with hernias in the past, or maybe the people in the third world who just have to live with hernias, which can be dangerous, right? The intestinal wall can protrude. Sorry, the bowels can protrude, get pinched off, get necrotic. It can be bad stuff, right? Again, none of this is medical advice. Talk to your doctor. This is just what my amateur understanding is. Do your own research. Talk to your doctor. So.
[45:44] Compare having a hernia to perfect health and you are unhappy. Or you can compare a hernia to 99.99999% of human history when you just had to kind of live with a hernia and have some sort of weird trust that tried to kept it in place. And, you know, it's, you know, bad, right? It gets worse over time. They don't self-repair. So you can say, oh, well, you know, but I have the healthcare, I have access to healthcare where you can get it fixed under a local anesthetic. They don't even puts you all the way under usually. And, you know, it takes a couple of weeks to recover, but then you're fine, right? Or I said, alternatively, if you have this weakness in your abdominal wall, then what you can do is you can get it fixed now.
[46:27] I think he was in his 50s or early 60s or something like that. So I said, look, it's happening now. And isn't it better to have it happen now, rather than 20 years from now, when you're in your 70s, or your 80s, right? In other words, isn't it better to have this happen now, when you can recover fairly easily, or at least a lot more easily than you would if it happened later on in your life? So it's all fixed and sorted, you're back on your feet, and you're recovered quicker, because, you know, from what I've talked about with older people, recovery from significant surgery is a lot slower and more difficult when you're much older. So, it's really what you compare things to. What do you compare things to? I mean, everybody who compares their wealth to Elon Musk feels broke, right? Everyone who compares their wealth to a homeless guy feels wealthy. So, happiness is in what you compare things to, right? This is my fundamental question. Compared to what, right?
[47:36] I go to the dentist, I always praise the dentist and thank the dentist. And I said, you know, one of the great unsung joys in the world is modern dentistry. Modern dentistry is, in general, a truly beautiful thing. And if you don't appreciate that, go read the book Angela's Ashes, where the characters are regularly in agonizing tooth decay problems and spitting out teeth, like used up gum. So, just anesthetic. Anesthetic is a glorious, glorious thing, right? So, it is in what you compare things to, is where happiness lies. Happiness is the net result of two variables, or rather, sorry, happiness is the net result of one fact and one variable. Now, the fact, this guy had a hernia. Is that a drag? Certainly is.
[48:37] But it's not usually life-threatening. It's fairly simple to solve. And with the mesh stuff, you can leave the same day, a couple of weeks to recover, and you're good as new. So you have the facts of what is happening, and then you have the variable called what you're comparing it to. What are you comparing it to? So if you, say, take all of the disadvantages of age and you compare them to all of the advantages of youth, you will hate getting older. Am I as limber and as flexible as I was when I was 20? Well, of course not. Of course not. I'm doing pretty well. I can still do, I can still, you know, walk 20, 25,000 steps. I can hike. I can play a solid hour of pickleball. I work out. So, but, you know, obviously, I've slowed down, right? I mean, I'm going to be 59 this year, right? So getting out of a car is a little slower than it used to be.
[49:36] I also, when I was 20, I didn't know who I was going to marry. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life in any sort of fundamental way. I didn't. I was completely broke, right? So those are disadvantages. Now, I know who I'm spending my life with and who I'm growing old with. It's my lovely wife of 22 years plus and counting. And I also know that I have absolutely broken and reversed the curse of abusive parenting in my life. And I now know, and my daughter is 16, right? So still some parenting to do, but not much. I know that I've broken that curse.
[50:16] So, and I also know what I'm going to be doing with my life. I've been doing it for the last 20 years, and I will continue to do it hopefully for the next 30 or 40 years, if I'm lucky. So that is a plus and what i do is of course as i say to myself back in time right this is a good good thing to do right so if you said yourself back in time hey this is where you are at 58 right this is where you are at 58 would you be happy so well you're happily married you got a great family life good friends and a meaningful way to spend your time and all of that would you say, oh, that's terrible. No, I would, honestly, if I were to throw a view back of my life now to when I was 20, my 20-year-old self would be like, damn, son, damn, son, you did all right, you did all right. So, that's an important thing to remember as a whole as you cruise through life. It's what you compare things to. Now, if I were to compare only the advantages of being older with the disadvantages of being younger, then I would look at youth negatively. But it's a balance, right? And you can compare yourself to just about anything in this world. And what you compare yourself to will absolutely determine your happiness.
[51:32] So, I mean, you can always compare your romantic partner to the most beautiful person in the world, right? It's like, okay, so then they just look less attractive, right? And then, of course, you're handing them the card to do the same thing to you, and I ain't no bread pit. So, yeah, just what you compare yourself to, what you compare your circumstances to.
[51:56] You know, I had to have a tooth drilled out, which gave me a little droop on the right of my lip, because it went through a bunch of nerves. And I can say, well, that was a drag, that they didn't fix that when I was a kid in England. Or I can say, well, thank goodness, there's this surgery where I didn't feel any pain. They put a bunch of bone fragments in to make the bone whole again and like just great stuff right so instead of.
[52:22] Yourself to the very best or the very optimum, which is a guarantee of and happiness and dissatisfaction, compare yourself to at least the medium negatives that existed throughout almost all of human history. Or as a friend of mine, remember we said in my teens, can you imagine kissing a woman who'd never brushed her teeth? Now we have all of this stuff. So it's a big plus, right? You get an infection, you can take antibiotics, generally get better. That's a good thing. so this is why it is a, blessed blessed life having this technology being able to have these conversations it is a consummation devoutly to be wished alright freedomand.com slash donate to help out the show, lots of love from up here big kisses to everyone big hugs to everyone it is the year of frankness I will talk to you soon bye.
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