0:05 - Introduction to the Evening
1:21 - Acting in an Imperfect World
3:31 - The Nature of Wish Lists
6:24 - Measuring Impact and Effectiveness
8:44 - The Challenge of Real Change
13:05 - The Competition of Ideas
18:07 - The Business of Philosophy
20:59 - The Role of Artists in Society
23:37 - The Decline of Traditional Values
27:20 - The New Replacements for Religion
34:34 - The Mystery Religion of Modern Times
39:31 - The Intersection of Science and Religion
45:04 - Fear as a Driving Force
50:50 - Dark Humor in a Crisis
53:45 - The Myth of Scientific Objectivity
54:31 - Fear-Based Control Mechanisms
57:39 - The Rise of Scientism
1:03:31 - The Future Beyond Science
1:10:53 - The Role of Authority in Belief
1:15:52 - The Religion of the State
1:22:26 - The Illusion of Freedom
1:26:30 - Decentralized Narrative Control
1:30:17 - Accountability in the Age of Scientism
1:34:12 - The Challenges of Engagement
1:39:15 - Closing Thoughts on Belief Systems
In this episode, I explore the complexities of societal expectations and the philosophical underpinnings of action versus inaction in a flawed world. I start by expressing my commitment to addressing listeners' questions and concerns while steering clear of political discourse, which I deem more about power than argument. The crux of my discussion revolves around the misconception that one must wait for an ideal world before taking action. I challenge this notion, asserting that meaningful participation in society requires engagement with reality as it exists.
I delve into the philosophical idea that perfection can hinder progress, likening it to a physician’s role in addressing health issues. I draw parallels between various professions, emphasizing that true change comes from tackling problems head-on rather than waiting for favorable conditions. I reinforce that good can come from imperfect situations and highlight the danger of merely dreaming about solutions without actionable plans. Reflecting on past experiences, I recount conversations from my business days that illustrate the gap between desire and tangible results.
The conversation then expands into the realm of morality and practical solutions. I stress that the promotion of virtue often comes with personal risk and backlash, especially when challenging the status quo. I discuss how societal advancements often provoke dissent from those benefiting from corruption, motivating listeners to consider whether their actions attract discontent from those invested in maintaining the current system. This leads to a profound consideration of genuine contribution versus simply expressing good intentions.
The dialogue shifts as I touch on topics of philanthropy, wealth distribution, and the efficacy of charitable endeavors—highlighting that positive impacts must be measurable to ascertain genuine progress. I share my thoughts on the importance of precise definitions and clarity in discussions about societal issues and personal experiences, alluding to the complexity of interpersonal relationships shaped by prevailing systems.
I introduce the idea of a "mystery religion" reflected in contemporary culture, notably through the lens of science as a modern ideology. I elaborate on how certain narratives promote blind faith in authority figures or popular movements, exploring the dichotomy of established knowledge versus emerging theories. This exploration delves into the implications of losing critical thinking—illustrating how reliance on 'expertise' can lead to stagnation in thought and action.
Throughout our conversation, I advocate for holding discussions surrounding challenging topics, encouraging listeners to engage thoughtfully with uncomfortable questions. As listeners raise their queries, a lively dialogue unfolds, examining themes of faith, critique of current institutions, and our collective role in shaping a healthier society.
The episode culminates in an invitation for deeper reflection on the importance of questioning and understanding our beliefs in the context of personal responsibility and societal norms. I stress the need for ongoing dialogue, critical engagement, and the courage to confront prevailing narratives that discourage individual thought. Each contribution from listeners brings new dimensions to this discourse, emphasizing our shared journey as we navigate the complexities of life with philosophical rigor and integrity.
[0:00] Well, well, well. Well, well. Good evening, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
[0:06] Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio. And what is on your mind? What is on your thoughts? My apology for not getting to everyone today. We had some lengthy conversations, and I don't want anyone to feel left in the lurch or left behind. I don't want to leave anybody with the aching blue nuggets of philosophical incompletion. So I am here for you, and I am eager and thrilled.
[0:33] And happy and
[0:34] Willing to answer your questions. Just remember, of course, I ain't doing politics no more. It's not exactly the realm of argument now, it's the realm of power, and it is not an appropriate place for a reasoner, for me, at least.
[0:48] At the moment.
[0:49] So if you have questions, challenges, issues, problems, I'm absolutely thrilled if you would poke them into my brain and see what we can summon up in response. And just as we await, of course, people who want to talk, I did want to say that one of the things that's kind of terrible that happens in the world these days, and it always has, I think it seems to be more vivid these days. It's this idea that you cannot act until the world is perfect.
[1:21] People say, in the manosphere,
[1:23] Right? And they've been saying it to me. I understand. I sympathize. Well, Stef, we've got to reform the family courts, and we've got to get rid of the welfare state, and we've got to do this. Listen, you could not preach to a more willing and enthusiastic choir, but we do have to work with the world that is. And saying, when the foundational problems of corruption and immorality in the world are solved, why then I will participate in the doings and dealings of the planet is a very bad idea. The perfect is the enemy of the good, as you know. I'm going to wait until all women are sane, all men are sane, the institutions are reformed. You know, all we have to do is see, get rid of fiat currency and central banking. I mean, even trying that can result in a horse head in your bed, or of course, as Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein found it can be a little perilous to try, or Iran, right? It can be a little perilous to try and avoid the central banking setup. It is not going to happen that the world is going to be what you want it to be, and then you can participate. We are in the nature of physicians, physicians. And it would not make much sense, of course, for a physician to say, I'll become a doctor when there's no illness in the world. When everybody's healthy, I'll.
[2:51] Be a doctor.
[2:51] No nutritionist would say, well, I'm only going to hang up my shingle and be a nutritionist.
[2:55] When everybody eats perfectly for themselves.
[2:58] That's not something that's going to happen.
[3:01] We are here to fix,
[3:02] To repair. No mechanic is going to say, I'll open up my shop as a car mechanic once nobody has any cars who break down anymore. We are in the realm and nature of doctors, healers, reasoners, philosophers, moralists. And to try to find a way to bring morality to a benighted and corrupt world is the big challenge. And you don't bring morality to a benighted and corrupt world with a wish list.
[3:31] And listen, I got no problem with the wish list. Lord knows I've made a few of my own over the years. could fill volumes, the wish list. All we need to do is. It sort of reminds me, so way back in the day, when I was in the business world, I did some business in China. And.
[3:49] I remember talking to
[3:50] People who were doing business in China, and they would say, well, listen, man, all we have to do is get 3% of this widget market, and we'll be making a fortune. I'm like, well, I mean, 3% doesn't sound like much. Three cents on a dollar, 3% doesn't sound like much.
[4:08] But when you
[4:08] Sort of break it down into actual numbers, well, it is, in fact, quite a lot. and it's hard to get. A wish list is not an action. This is something one of my early project managers said. It's a pretty common statement in business and elsewhere. Hope is not a strategy. Desire is not a plan. How are we going to practically and measurably make the world a better place? I remember, I'm not, of course, a big fan of Bill Gates, but I remember when he first got into charity after he was kind of chased out of Microsoft by the DOJ, constantly going after Microsoft for it. Anti-trust violations, which it had done, I think, 30 years before to IBM and infestrated that company as a creative force. And he kind of went into the philanthropic or the charitable realm. And, you know, people are saying, oh, we're taking all this money and we're doing what? I don't know. We're distributing mosquito nets in Africa. And he'd say, oh, okay, well, how this, how that, you know, what are the numbers? What has been the reduction in mosquito-borne illnesses? And nobody had a clue. I had any clue. Nobody had any clue.
[5:13] And he said, look,
[5:15] You can't manage what you can't measure. You cannot manage what you cannot measure. If you can't measure the good you're doing in the world, you're not doing any good in the world. I had a marketing guy once and it was not, I didn't hire him. I'm going to sort of put that up front. It doesn't particularly matter. It's just a little bit of ego retention here. And if you want to ask me questions or make comments, honestly, please just, just raise your hand and we'll flood you in. But I had a marketing guy and he was constantly, you know, spending money and going on trips and doing conferences. And I'm like, okay, but, but how do you tend, how do you tangibly measure whether what you're doing is the best thing to do? We can all do just about anything in this life, in this world. How do you know that.
[6:05] What you're doing
[6:06] Is the best thing that you could be doing? Well, you have to measure it. You have to measure it. When I see people, and again, I sympathize. Well, we got to reform the family court system. It's like, okay, that's nice.
[6:18] But that in
[6:20] The business world is the equivalent of saying, we need to get 50% of this market share.
[6:25] Oh, and it's really, really important that our costs are less than our income. It's like, yeah, but that's kind of taken for granted. Like, of course, your costs need to be less than your income, of course. And yes, it would be nice to get 50% or 3% or 80% of this market share, but how? It'd be nice to reform the family court system. I talked with someone just the other day on the show, and he was like, well, I've been talking about this, that, or the other with regards to liberty. Oh, yeah. He wanted billionaires to fund legal defenses for right-wing courses. It's like, okay, have you achieved that? No, but I've talked about it. I've talked about it. It's like the marketing guy. I'm raising brand awareness. I'm influencing mindshare. It's like, that's a whole bunch of syllables to, don't you dare measure what I'm doing. I want to talk about things. I.
[7:19] Want to have
[7:20] A wish list, but I don't want traction because whenever you promote virtue, you interfere with the plans and goals of corrupt and evil people. Right? You're not a, if you're a forensic accountant, you're supposed to go in and find fraud in some sort of area or place or company. And you find the fraud and you track it down to the people, you know, accountant style. Well, those people are going to be very unhappy that you're closing in on them and finding the massive tranches of money that they've spun off into the stratosphere of their Swiss bank accounts. So they're going to have, you know, the enemy gets is say to, right? So I think, at least for me, one important way to guide the time and effort and energy that you put into the world is to say, who's bothered by what I do? Now, this, of course, in a moral sense, is most foundational, but even in the business sense, right? When I sold a million dollar system, that meant my competitors didn't get to sell their million dollar system. Is anyone bothered by what you're doing? If you get the girl that everybody wants, then other guys don't get the girl.
[8:34] That you get.
[8:36] If you get the job,
[8:38] All the other people lined up. Do you understand? Is anyone bothered by what I'm doing? Is anyone bothered by what I'm doing?
[8:45] If nobody's bothered by what you're doing.
[8:47] Well, my friends,
[8:49] You're not really doing anything. Is anyone who profits from the corruption of the current family court systems, which is not to say they're all corrupt, but there's some pretty significantly corrupt elements. If anyone who profits and gains power from the corruptions of the family court system, are they bothered by you saying, gee, it'd be nice if we could reform the family court system? I would hazard a guess and say, no, they're not really bothered. You know, if you actually do things that bother evildoers, then you experience blowback. Now, of course, everybody wants the benefit of feeling like they're doing good without actually provoking a response from corrupt or evil people. I understand that. I understand that. But it's fake. It's fake. Reason why nature has implanted in such a thrill and substantial.
[9:39] Level of bone marrow joy in the
[9:41] Pursuit of virtue is that's what's needed to survive the blowback from corrupt and evil people when you actually promote virtue, which is the same as thwarting the designs and desires of evil.
[9:54] If there's a whole bunch of counterfeit bills running around,
[9:57] Right, floating around, and you come up with a little wand,
[10:01] You just wave the wand, and it will immediately light up the counterfeit bills.
[10:06] Well, if the
[10:08] Violent and corrupt counterfeiters, I'm talking about the, not the public ones, but the private ones, if the violent and corrupt counterfeiters get wind of this invention of yours, well, they're going to have a say about it too. They may bribe you to not release this. They may threaten you. They may set fire to your little basement factory. They might threaten your family. They might do just about any number of things.
[10:35] You know, if the counterfeiters
[10:37] Are getting kickbacks from people in power, they might contact those people in power and say, well, you ain't going to be getting any kickbacks if this guy's counterfeit detection machine gets out into the marketplace, bro.
[10:48] So what are you going to do about it?
[10:50] How are we all going to stay in our vicious business? Now, if your counterfeit detection machine doesn't work, it's not going to bother anyone. In fact, they might actually prefer it if it's like Theranos, right? Because then people think that they're protected from counterfeit bills when they're not. If you run a profitable organized crime ring producing counterfeit bills and you hear someone say, yeah, you know, it'd be really great if there was some kind of way to figure out counterfeit bills more easily. Would you be bothered by that? Nope. Bother you at all you'd probably have a bit of a wry smile you might even order the guy a drink yeah me too man that would be great but if you see someone maybe at some conference demonstrating boom foolproof way foolproof way of immediately identifying counterfeit bills well that's going to get your attention isn't it because now the promotion of virtue in.
[11:48] Honest money is going to impact you and
[11:51] Your criminal enterprise. And not only are your counterfeit bills going to be worthless, but your ass may go to jail. Because if you can scoop up all these counterfeit bills, maybe the fingerprints on it, maybe there's some dye they can trace back, maybe there's some paper they can trace to a theft.
[12:10] It's bad.
[12:12] It's bad. So don't think you're doing something by saying, wouldn't it be nice if, I wish if, well, what we've got to do when you don't actually do anything. And by doing anything, I mean promote and reason, right? Nothing violent, right?
[12:25] But we got to be nice if,
[12:29] We got to, I mean, don't. Just resist the urge. Because when you put out these wish lists, and again, I say this with sympathy, and Lord knows I've had my own. So, you know, this is not any superiority thing.
[12:43] But oh man,
[12:45] If you put out these wish lists, you make it so much harder for those of us really working to create tangible goods and tangible virtues in society. You make it way harder for us. Because what happens is, we have the high road, the hard road, and you have the easy talk about things and never achieve anything road.
[13:05] The seductive road, the road of easy virtues that lead nowhere and change nothing. And we're, you know, the reason why I'm being a bit blunt here is that you and I are in competition.
[13:17] Right?
[13:18] You and I are in competition because... Trying to get people off the couch and out in the world doing things, and you're saying, oh, just stay on the couch, man. Just daydream and talk about, wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be good? Wouldn't it be nice if, and we got to, you know, but never actually do anything to bring anything about. We are in competition. I'm telling people, you got to exercise. You got to change your diet. And you're saying, you just have to read books about it and just, you know, you just got to think about it. You say, ah, I got to change my diet. It'd be great if we change our diet. Be nice to exercise. So we're in competition because when people see that fork of the road, one leads to the big chatty forehead and one leads to whatever sopophoric, quicksand, sophistry, paralysis, indecision, quagmire you're describing or luring people into, you, then they won't take the hard road if they're tempted by the easy road, right? That's just not a thing, right? They're not going to take the easy road. Sorry, they will take the easy road, if they think the easy road is effective. And if you just jawbone about stuff and wishlist it.
[14:34] Right?
[14:35] As opposed to, you know, the promotion, say, of peaceful parenting. Sorry, the person who wants to chat, who has got a username, which is my last name, I get it. You're just a troll. But if you do have you know serious questions or objections to anything that I'm saying criticisms, I'm thrilled to hear from you really love to chat with you all, and this is my part apology tour for not getting to people earlier today but I can it's funny like I can feel in my brain, when the hourglass runs out you ever do those little egg timers or you play these games you flip over the hourglass I can feel those last cranes of sand escaping my brain falling out of my brain and it turns into this leaden shoe print of smoking former inspiration. I remember when I could philosophize and I had good ideas. Ah, what, what, that was wonderful. Yes, magnificent. I remember it was somewhere on the Burma Road. Old imperialistic footprints of glowing thought, how they hath faded away, carried off by the native bearers who are startled by the sound of a lion. All over. I could feel it draining away. I have this one. I'm writing a book at the moment, And I can feel that. For me, it's always around 3,000 to 5,000 words. I can just feel like it's not mid-sentence, but I feel like, oh, oh, got to bring this in for a landing. Inspiration's running dry. So that's what happened earlier today.
[15:59] But I guess like a teenage boy of 19,
[16:02] I recharge fairly quickly, you know, in terms of muscular, muscularity and, and, and tendon recovery.
[16:10] Yeah, we're in competition.
[16:11] I'm offering people the hard road, which works. You know, my goal was to create measurable reductions in the amount of violence in the world. My goal was, and is, and remains, to reduce, measurably reduce the amount of violence in the world. And again, it's impossible.
[16:29] To know for sure, but back of the napkin
[16:31] Calculations are that I've reduced a billion and a half hits on children through the promotion of peaceful parenting and other things. That's measurable. And this is, you know, for those of you who don't know the history of this, I'll keep it brief. And again, happy to have you chat. I'll keep it brief. So libertarians and I were, you know, thick as thieves, cheek by jowl. We were close. I was invited to libertarian conferences, all kinds of good, wonderful stuff. And I kept haranguing them about a couple of things.
[17:06] Number one, you
[17:08] Cannot claim to have an affectionate relationship with people who want you thrown in jail for disagreeing with them. You cannot. That's not love. That's not affection. That's not good regard or anything like that. You got to live by your values or drop your values. If you're going to break bread with people who want you thrown in jail for disagreeing with them, which is most statists, again, after they understand it, not before, right? Because you got to understand things before you help morally responsible people kind of in a state of nature, right i talked about that at libertopia in 2011 it was dick gregory the great dick gregory introduced me and is a great guy man he could do a fantastic muhammad ali impersonation, i hit you so fast i miss you catch a cold anyway, there was that, and then there was peaceful parenting. And if you want to spread the non-aggression principle, you should apply it to the sphere, which has the most common violations of the non-aggression principle that you can do the most about. Say, ah, well, war is a really bad violation of the non-aggression principle.
[18:08] Yes, but you can't do anything about it. You can't stop it. But you can talk to people about hitting their kids. You can do that. and they didn't like that. All right. I don't even know how to pronounce this username. My smart, Miss Mood. Miss Mood. What's on your mind, my friend? How's it going? I'm good. How are you? Well, thank you.
[18:32] I just want to say I'm big fan of yours and thank you that you're doing good things.
[18:39] Thank you. Well, that's a nice little bounce in and bounce out. Here I was, relaxing and waiting to absorb the floodgates of curious language from a listener, which is fine, which is fine. So yeah, to sort of continue with the libertarians, and don't get me wrong, I love me some libertarians.
[18:58] Love me some libertarians.
[19:00] But, and I had this debate with Walter Block, Dr. Walter Block, about spanking, and all that kind of stuff, and privately, privately, the libertarians have told me, yeah, that does kind of work. It is kind of important. And we thank you for that aspect of it. And it does, you know, there's something about a business education that is kind of irreplaceable. I mean, and by a business education, I mean, like, like a serious high.
[19:29] Stakes business education.
[19:32] So as you probably know, I grew up really poor, dirt poor, welfare poor, and all of that. And then I ended up in the business world or started, co-founded a company in the business world. It was really high stakes. I'd studied economics, of course, but I didn't know sort of the practical aspects of the business world. And I had to sign these big promissory notes to the bank to cover payroll, which would have bankrupted me for a long time if we hadn't been able to make the business work. So just measurable stuff. Business is a metronome of cash requirements. Because sometimes businesses take 30, 60, 90 days to pay, but your payroll is every two weeks like it or not. Cash flow is king. And most businesses fail because they don't take into account cash flow. Well, the money's coming. It's like, yeah, but you can't say to your employees, I'm going to pay you in 30, 60, 90 days. You've got to pay them every two weeks because they've got their bills to pay. And so measurable results. It sort of shook me. The business world deeply and viscerally shook me out of the abstract world that I've been in because, of course, I was a debater. I did two years of an English degree. I was almost two years at the National Theater School. I did a history degree. And then I worked. And then I did a graduate degree in history. And it was, I mean, you've got your basic bills and all of that kind of stuff. But it wasn't high stakes in that way. It wasn't high stakes in that way.
[21:00] So when you have actual, tangible, measurable things that you have to achieve, that's really important it clarifies things it clarifies things now.
[21:10] Of course it's a lot easier
[21:11] To do speeches about you know ending the fed and and the need for property rights and i hate tariffs and i mean that's fine i mean i enjoy it and i've got lots of shows on that kind of stuff as well but let's not pretend it's doing any particular.
[21:25] Virtues in the world
[21:27] So all right we have someone, Austin, the Byronic man. Austin, what's on your mind, my friend?
[21:37] So about the artists going to the government, and that's what they do now. Musicians and artists, because I'm I play music and I've kind of taken a break from it, but I've kind of felt the same way, that it's just like this we're sucking on the teat of the government liberal point of view,
[21:58] It seems like.
[21:58] There's no avenues other than you have to be a liberal artist. Entertainment. I was curious, is that what you meant for when you talked about that?
[22:08] Well, I mean, what did you get out of the show? I don't want to repeat it. So what was your sort of essence of the show that I did? Because I obviously don't want to repeat the speeches. So if there's some new tack you want to take, I'm thrilled that. But my basic idea was that AI has shown to us.
[22:27] Of course, that people
[22:29] Have no loyalty to artists. Like they'll just, oh, just get AI to do it. And there's.
[22:33] A certain amount of hostility
[22:34] Towards artists as a whole, particularly on the right. And of course, that's because the people on the right have been attacked, belittled. And like, there's a scene in a movie called The Watchman, where the main character, there's some obviously cliched, southern, horrible, racist Christian, and the guy goes in, like, it goes into the church, and just like murders and slaughters there's like a hundred Christians. And it's like, you try that with any other religion, right? My God, it would just be absolutely appalling. So certainly on the right, which tends to be more Christian, they have been regularly mocked and attacked by just about everyone under the sun. I mean, of course, one example is the sort of relentless focus in the media for many, many, many years. I think particularly in Boston.
[23:21] The sexual abuse allegations against Catholic priests. And does the media care about the sexual abuse of children? No. Not in particular. They haven't tried to figure out where the 300,000 children that went missing under Biden have gone, and they don't at all care.
[23:37] In fact, they actively cover up the fact that you are much, much, much more, many, many times more at risk of being sexually abused by a government employee or teacher in a school than you are in a church. so they don't care about any of that stuff. But what they do want to do is they do want to smear the church. And that has been constant. All the priests are evil. All the nuns are bad. And it's just, it's constant. All the Christians are prejudiced. And, you know, outside of, you know.
[24:06] Maybe Father Stu and some stuff by Mel Gibson, and of course, the stuff from Angel Studios, Christians are just portrayed as, you know, bigoted, close-minded, small-minded, and hypocritical, and it's just, it's constant. So that's how Christians view art. And it's really, really hard to understand, in particular American politics, though this is really in the West, but it's most in America. It's really hard to understand American culture and American politics without understanding that it's full of Christians and secular people who seem to have a rabid, if not demonic, animus towards Christianity. So my general argument was that people have, you know, they embrace AI, they don't care about, they don't care about the artists. In fact, they kind of hate the artists. And it's like, good riddance to the artists, I'll do it myself. Thank God I don't have to deal with any artists anymore. And I think that's because of this level of betrayal. So that was sort of my general argument. Is there something that you wanted to clarify or go further in that formulation? Or if you disagree with it, I'm certainly happy to hear that.
[25:11] I agree. I think the Christianity thing is very prevalent in our, I mean, obviously in America. And I find it all interesting that we're, the church and state thing is so, it's a ball and chain in a lot of ways in my mind. I think it's a ball and chain for any kind of actual legislation for like politicians and politics. I think it's, if we were to, you know, what is your take on churches being tax-free? Like, what do you think? Do you think that should still be going on?
[25:38] Oh, I think it's absolutely terrible. I think it's absolutely terrible that only churches are tax-free. Every institution and organization should be tax-free. We should have a voluntary society.
[25:48] Where people trade without
[25:51] The, you know, infinite corruption of political power. I am an advocate of a stateless society, which we can hopefully achieve in a couple of generations with peaceful parenting. But yeah, I think it's terrible that churches are taxed or not taxed because that reminds me that everyone else is. and so I think it should be I think it should be everyone who doesn't get text.
[26:14] Yeah because it just seems outdated I don't know I mean I'm just I mean I'm sure you can agree a little bit it seems outdated I mean our
[26:20] Country is young come on man be rigorous right outdated doesn't mean anything what does that mean what do you mean by outdated well Christianity is.
[26:30] Low key going away I think in a lot of ways to like zoomers and millennials And do you think they'll ever really believe these stories or Bible, you know, like, you think it's going to stay prevalent or keep going for these generations or, you know, because these institutions like a church is just like, it doesn't mean anything, I feel like for these younger people.
[26:59] Certainly, Christian attendance at church and other measurable forms of religious faith are definitely diminishing, for sure. Do you think that it's being replaced? What do you think it's being replaced by? Because it's not like we all found objective reason and philosophy and so on.
[27:21] So what do you think, with the diminishment of Christianity, what do you think is replacing it?
[27:26] We're talking on it. We're talking on it right now. That's the replacement. The replacement is, you know, social media, even YouTube, the internet. I feel like as soon as the internet happened, Christianity died in a lot of ways. It had been given a terminal illness.
[27:46] Go on. I'm not sure. I'm not disagreeing with you. Of course, I'm just curious what you mean, if you can explain it a little more.
[27:53] Yeah. so like i said you know this it's there's less attendance you know because what what do people rather what would they rather do they'd rather be at home you know on the phone or playing the video game or whatever you know and i think social media just in general makes you just like look you can just take a picture of yourself in the bathroom like look i'm doing something you know like there's my there's my story of the day like people do this like it's this has been going on and my because i'm younger i'm millennial right and i believe there's some sort of thing where it's like doing the bare minimum of your own like lifestyle choice of taking a damn picture you know showing you've have you're pretty or you you worked out today or something like at your house or you know it's like it's some kind of it's it's some kind of a thing you don't you don't have to do at the church anymore you have to go to church and tell your friend your buddy at church you did that or you did you were doing something you know because churches were mostly used for like, you know, gatherings, the community, communal things, you know, I mean, you know, I'm not trying to like make education on what churches really were for, for a lot of people. It's like, they just want, you want her to talk to somebody. And now with social media, you can do that.
[29:04] So
[29:05] Extent beyond any under, you know, standing of what church is used to.
[29:12] Well, you don't need to go to church to talk to people, though. You can talk to your family, talk to your friends at home.
[29:17] Exactly. I mean, yeah, that's... No, no, so
[29:20] Saying that church is there so people can talk to each other, it's more work to dress up and go and talk to people at church. I don't think that's what it was about.
[29:28] Well, I mean, even like a preacher, what was a preacher like? A preacher is a person you would look forward to talking to every week, right? or every couple times a week, which people still do.
[29:38] Well, no, no, the preacher you listen to.
[29:40] Yeah, well, listen to. I mean, to be honest, I'd rather listen to you a couple times a week than a preacher,
[29:46] X.
[29:47] I mean, maybe that's the 1% you talk about, the preference for 1%.
[29:51] But in reality,
[29:52] It's more people, even if an actor, for instance, did what you're doing right now, less people would want to go out or do anything. They're just like, oh, I can go talk to Pedro Pascal a couple times a week on a social media site. I hope I'm not going too far out in the world. I'm just trying to make a point about the churches and what they meant at one time to
[30:13] People in the communal
[30:14] Sense.
[30:15] I mean, I appreciate your optimism. I really do. I think that you're very optimistic about the fall of Christianity and that it's only being replaced by things like selfies and online chats and so on. I don't think that's true. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just my perspective.
[30:37] So governments have so much power these days, really, that almost nothing happens in a general sense that is not permitted. Almost nothing happens that is not permitted. So then the question is, for me, how does the fall of Christianity benefit those in power? Now, one of the things that is the most powerful to have in life is what's called a mystery religion. And this, in many ways, was the Catholic Church before the Protestant Reformation, where the laity, the congregation, did not speak Latin. The services were conducted in Latin, and you couldn't even read Latin, unless you were, of course, very well educated. And what that meant was that you could only get the facts about Christianity from the priests. You couldn't go to the source material because you couldn't read Latin and maybe you couldn't read anything and you couldn't really understand what the priests were saying. And so you couldn't read the book yourself directly. You had to have the priest tell you. Essence of the religion was. And so, you weren't obeying, really, anything other than a dude.
[31:55] A dude.
[31:56] Like the king. He's just a dude with a crown, right? Or you should see me in a crown, right? So, you're just dealing with a dude. Now, if you're just a dude, you actually have to make rational arguments. You have to maybe have some charisma. You have to have a turn of phrase. You have to be good with analogies. You have to have some evidence, some facts, you know, in order to convince people. But if you can plug in a general sense of the all-perfect divine, well, then I'm not just me. I'm connected to and bound up with infinity and eternity and omniscience.
[32:38] This was the oracle at Delphi, sort of way back in the days of Socrates, that there was a guy who was at the temple of Delphi and the oracle, you'd go and ask him a question and he couldn't lie. This is the thing that got Socrates on his whole quest, right? Because Socrates went to the oracle of Delphi and said, hang on, like who's the wisest? Because I really want to learn from the wisest because I feel like I don't really know anything for sure. So who's the wisest? And the oracle of Delphi said, well, you Socrates are the wisest. And Socrates said, that doesn't make any sense. I really don't know anything. So then Socrates said, well, I have a paradox here. Well, the oracle can't lie, but I can't be the wisest because I know almost nothing. So then he went to go and test everyone, all the great poets. And when he talked to the poets, he said, well, they don't really know anything at all, but they think they know something. But, you know, their genius for poetry and dialogue and so on is just a kind of weird epilepsy that they don't really understand, and it doesn't really give them any particular wisdom. And then he went to the great learned teachers and so on and he cross-examined them what is justice what is truth what is virtue and he found that they just contradicted themselves all.
[33:49] The time and and
[33:51] So on right and so long story short eventually he was like oh man okay okay okay okay i get it oh my god i believe.
[33:59] It took me this long i
[34:00] Get it so when.
[34:03] I say i
[34:05] Can't be the wisest man because I know almost nothing. But the oracle says, you are the wisest man. What the oracle is really saying is, you are the wisest man because at least you know you know nothing, whereas everyone else thinks they know something but is wrong. So you're the wisest man because you've already accepted that you know almost nothing.
[34:23] And so the oracle
[34:26] Was a mystery religion. It was just some guy who was backed up with something you cannot question called God.
[34:35] Christianity went from, to some degree, I'm really simplifying, but that's clarifying, boiling it down to its essence. Christianity went from an empirical religion, because people saw the miracles of Jesus, and they saw his divinity, they saw his ascent to the heavens, they saw him coming back to life. So that was an empirical religion. It was not a religion, in a sense, that was just science at the time. And then, over time, it kind of morphed into a mystery religion, in that people couldn't read the text, they didn't understand the language the service was conducted in, and they could only go and ask the priest. And then the priest's answer was informed by omniscience. The thief, sorry, the priest, whoops, the priest cannot be wrong. Because, I mean, the Pope is infallible, right? Because he is motivated by the all-knowing, all-perfect, unlying God.
[35:32] So, a mystery religion is, I will tell you what the all-perfect, omniscient, unlying God says, and that way I cannot be wrong. I cannot be wrong. I cannot be wrong. The ultimate AI. Imagine an AI that was all-perfect and could not lie, never hallucinated, and got everything exactly right. Everything. And I, and I alone, can run this AI. You can come and ask me questions. You can't ask the AI direction. You can't ask AI the questions directly, but you can ask me, and I'll ask the AI, and then I'll tell you what the AI says.
[36:13] You can't look at the screen yourself.
[36:14] You can't see what I'm typing. I go into my little booth. I go in behind the curtain, Wizard of Our Style, and I come out and tell you. Now, if you believe that the AI is perfect and omniscient, and you believe that I'm telling you the truth about what the AI said, then what I say becomes all perfect, omniscient, and unlying. I cannot falsify. I cannot be wrong. That's a mystery religion. Man goes into a booth, comes out with a perfect answer. You can't question him. That's a mystery religion. And of course, Martin Luther got kind of annoyed at all of this and indulgences and a bunch of other things. And he decided to translate the Bible into the vernacular, into the vulgar, into the local Germanic, and then it got translated to all kinds of other things. And then people started reading the Bible.
[37:01] And they're like, holy
[37:02] Smoke on a stick. What's in the Bible is nothing close to what I've been told by these priests. Power loves a mystery religion, I will tell you the truth You can't see the source documents I can talk to God You can't talk to God You ask me I'll ask God I'll tell you back And to obey me is the same as obeying God God is all perfect Can't get anything wrong Therefore, whatever I say to you is all perfect Can't be wrong Can't be wrong And if you question whether it's wrong We have a nice bunch of fiery stakes to strap you to, Arthur Mill is the Crucible, another anti-Christian story. So people in power, oh my gosh, do they love themselves a mystery religion. It's perfect. Now, what is the new mystery religion?
[37:56] It obviously isn't Christianity.
[37:58] This is a real question. Anybody wants to take a stab at this? What is the new mystery religion? Austin, feel free to take a stab.
[38:09] I mean, AI, but you just kind of already said it. If it's not AI or the technology, I don't know what else it could be.
[38:18] Well, it's not AI because you can talk to AI directly.
[38:22] Right? Yeah. You can talk to, you know, people are so, there's a spectrum of ideas of what AI is. It's this, you know, thing that will progress into a singularity or it's just a thing that blurts out information, which I believe, you believe that, right? You believe this is a thing that just blurts out information.
[38:43] Yeah, it's a word guesser and a synthesizer. And of course, AI is, I mean, sorry, I shouldn't say it's not a mystery religion. It's a bit of a mystery religion in that, no, people don't think AI is infallible, but AI is programmed so it will program you. I mean, we all know the things that you can.
[39:00] Things that are absolutely
[39:00] True that you type into the AI and the AI freaks out and lies to you, right? So it's programmed. doesn't do that on its own. You'd need much less processing power if the AI wasn't propagandized to avoid certain topics. So, it's not AI because AI came about long after the first fall of Christianity. If Christianity was needed by those in power, it would not be allowed to fail. However, those in power have actively helped to slaughter the remnants of Christendom.
[39:32] So there must be some other mystery religion that has taken its place. Now, it's not politicians. Politicians have been revealed as fallible and so on, right? It's not the will of the people, which has no voice of its own. What is the modern religion.
[39:48] Well, you bring up the Oracle of Delphi, which is very interesting. I don't want to tell you what the new mystery of the religion is, but if it isn't our phones, I don't know what it is. I keep reverting to technology. I'm going to go there only because I know that it's like, well...
[40:10] No, but you can use technology directly.
[40:13] So that's not the same. so you don't I guess you're right because there's no mystery in using it you kind of know what you want to do when you grab a phone or you get on social media you kind of have an idea of what you know what you can do as a person there's no like mystery behind what you can do
[40:32] With it sorry somebody else has a real semi-stroke mouthful of a name Sue Poppin. What's on your mind? Are you with the question? What is the new mystery religion?
[40:49] Statism?
[40:50] That's not new. That's been around forever. And with regards to statism, you can look up the laws directly. They're not in some inaccessible way or place. I mean, that may be somewhat contradictory and incomprehensible, but it's not that. Oh, I don't know.
[41:05] Maybe the monitors. Everyone's going to kick themselves.
[41:06] Oh, you're going to kick yourselves. I'm so sorry. It's so annoying. You're good at these. You're good at these. No, because we've all experienced it directly.
[41:16] All right, my smod.
[41:17] We're just going to throw people in here and see. Now, listen, I could be wrong. I'll make a case for it. I could be talking out of my armpit here, but I'll make a case. My smod, what is the new mystery religion?
[41:32] Jack, are you chomping
[41:33] At the bit too? What is the new mystery religion? Tell me, my.
[41:36] Brothers and sisters.
[41:39] Sunday. It's Sunday. tell me, what is the new mystery religion? Tell me.
[41:47] Fear? I would say it's a religion of victimhood, where everyone feels like they're a victim, and victims are praised.
[41:55] I mean, that certainly is a mechanism of power, but you can at least go and query those victims, you can look at their data, you can rebut them. It's not a mystery religion.
[42:04] Okay, thank you.
[42:06] No, it's a great comment though, and I think it's close. You got, what is the mystery religion? Brothers and sisters. So I agree with climate change. Climate change. I think that's a part of it. That's a part of it. Maybe woke as well.
[42:23] That's a good one. That's a good one.
[42:25] I think it's a part of it, but you can look at the source data. And in fact, you know, there's people who have looked at Michael Mann's work and so on and found it wanting in various ways. So it's, it's a subsection of a larger thing.
[42:42] Is it wokeism?
[42:43] You know what? We're just going to throw everyone in. No, wokeism, you can cross-examine and you can look at the source data and you can argue against it. So anybody who hasn't chimed in, honestly, you all could have better answers than I do. So don't, I'm not the oracle here. So what is the new modern mystery religion? Because it has to be something because it's so useful to those in power. Sorry, go ahead. Is it science? Oh, okay. Now we get to somewhere.
[43:12] That's a good one. That's what I wanted to say as well.
[43:16] All right. Y'all make the case. I was about to say something. Make the case. Make the case. How is science? Oh, come on. Think of COVID, man. How is science the new... You have people who claim that they're smarter than you, and then they tell you something, and it's like, oh, you know, let's listen to this, although you have no idea where the proof is coming from, but because they're the experts, it's like, you know... The applause sound effect that's great sorry go ahead if you're.
[43:39] If you're having a a society that's like a trying to push scientists on top and then you're having the system feed in those same scientists
[43:49] By only having
[43:51] A structure that benefits them then they can just make whatever effects that they want and they have the quote-unquote meritocratic proof to do so
[43:59] Okay can Can you query the scientists directly? Can you get all of their source data? I mean, look under COVID, right? And like, I'm not saying this for all science, right? There's some subsets of science where you can request the data and so on. But let's look at the big advancement of scientism, right? Which is the cult of science, the mystery of religion called science. It's not real science, obviously. It's the dogma. What did Anthony Fauci say about trust and science?
[44:30] I am the science.
[44:31] And to doubt me is to doubt science. This is exactly the goddamn same as a psycho priest saying to doubt me is to doubt God himself.
[44:45] It's safe and effective.
[44:47] Oh, can we see the data? Hell no. Sorry, go ahead. That's true.
[44:51] What I would consider dangerous here is that science or whatever is trying to hijack has been presented as a direct contradiction to what you are saying about religion.
[45:05] Is being solved as something. We have finally solved the issue of this being a superstitious mechanism of obtaining knowledge. We have finally resolved the issue. And many people do not notice that what we've basically done is we've replaced one priestly class with another.
[45:26] Well, we have returned from the relative objectivity of, at least you can read the Bible in your own language, to, if you try to ask for the data, we're going to laugh at you and hide behind the government. Religion is the guys in the white coats. Sorry, go ahead.
[45:44] Well, isn't it just technocracy then? I mean, wouldn't technocracy be trusting the experts and the technical... That's the religion of... Or that's their idea.
[45:56] The whole point, you can't trust the experts because they don't provide the source data so often. They don't tell you why. They don't step you through the reasoning.
[46:04] They say the
[46:04] Most absurd stuff, and you get punished if you question. That's how you know. Like, what do I say every show? I say questions, comments, criticisms, whatever you like, push back, man. I did a whole show on Friday night telling people, tell me everything I got wrong about young men. Fix me up, right? Lead me away from error.
[46:23] So, I mean, you know what happened to people in social media who said things, basic things, like, hang on a sec, this is mRNA is completely untested technology. It fails on animals all the time. How could you possibly say it's safe and effective after only testing it for a couple of months? How can you say it's safe for pregnancy when your testing cycle is significantly shorter than the cycle of pregnancy. You can't know these things. You can't know. I remember saying this, I mean, back in the beginning of 2020, when they first started talking about these vaccines, I did entire shows where I said, look, come on, this is not super complicated, folks. The average length of trial for a vaccine using existing technology, not this new freaky stuff, the average length of trial for a vaccine is 10 years, and it has a 94% failure rate. So if they say it's safe and effective, and they've only done it in a couple of months, they need to tell us what steps they skipped, right? It's kind of like if you say, oh, I need to get my basement finished, right? And some guy comes to you and says, well, you know, it's a big job, man. It's going to be 150,000. It's going to be six months, right? And then another guy comes and says, eight minutes, 45 bucks. The second guy seriously i mean probably not right because it'd be like that that's that's impossible right so if they're going to take a 10 year if they're going to take a 10 year process down to three months or whatever it was it's not believable sorry go.
[47:49] Ahead you you were saying uh asking whether i would treat this person seriously it depends who's paying them for this the same
[47:56] Thing no no no it's your your basement your basement hang on it's your basement let's not complicate things right doesn't depend who's paying it i said it's your basement someone's going to fix up your basement in.
[48:05] This case i agree i was being overly metaphoric but i was what i was trying no no no please
[48:10] Please we're trying to simplify here please don't don't try to look clever by over complicating things because this is like you're not going to believe someone if you get a bunch of estimates that say of course you know like six six months a hundred thousand bucks 150 000 maybe five months or seven months but some guy comes and says eight minutes 45 bucks you're just going to say well this is a madman right it's a madman there was a price.
[48:29] There was a price that had to be paid for disbelieving it, doubting. And that's a price because you've brought the example of what happened to the people on the social media. And the social media was not where this problem ended,
[48:45] Right?
[48:46] People were jeopardizing their work, for example. No, no, no,
[48:50] But I get that. So social media is just one of the punishment things, right? So what drives mystery religions? Why would you be bothered? What drives mystery religions is fear. Fear.
[49:02] You're going to go to hell,
[49:03] Right? And what drove the mystery religion that was occurring in COVID? Fear. You're going to die. Remember, we saw all of these not exactly organic articles of like, well, Billy Joe Bob thought he was too good for the vaccine, and as he drew his last breath, surrounded by his four sobbing children, his dying words were, By God, I wish I'd taken that vaccine. Right?
[49:29] Can I have one question about that? Like, how do you
[49:31] Get people to believe fear-based religions?
[49:35] Well, no, because it's not religion to them. I mean, I'm not afraid of the punishments of Zeus, because I don't believe in Zeus, right? So if somebody can go, Zeus is going to punish you. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Your imaginary friend holds no power with me. So they have to believe that it's not a religion, that it's real, right? So Socrates went to the oracle of Delphi. The oracle of Delphi told him he was the wisest man, though he said he knew nothing. and the oracle of Delphi cannot lie. So it was a real connection to a real, all honest, all-knowing God. So it was not a religion, it was physics. And so people felt that without the vaccine, they were gonna die and the vaccine was perfectly safe and effective and free so it would be insane and evil not to take it. You're gonna kill grandma, you're gonna make other people sick because of your anti-science, willful prejudice against the common good. And you're going to die without the vaccine.
[50:33] Go ahead, sorry.
[50:34] Did you not, sorry, I just had to make the most disturbing peek of this situation was whenever people on CNN were laughing at people dying in beds because they didn't take the vaccine. And I remember, like, family members of mine, like, just saying, like, well, they should have took the vaccine.
[50:50] It's like, did you ever run into that situation where it was like that, It was crazy. I'll never forget that situation that was going on at the time.
[51:01] Well, I mean, okay, so listen, I hear what you're saying, and of course it was pretty corrupt. I mean, you've heard of the Darwin Awards, right?
[51:10] Of you who don't know,
[51:11] I'll keep this real brief. The Darwin Awards are handed out to people whose absolute idiocy have taken them out of the gene pool, right? So, there was one example of a bunch of guys who went up on a ski hill late at night after the ski place had closed, the ski resort, and they took a bunch of padding from the bottom of one of the poles that keeps the chairlifts going. They took a bunch of padding off and they decided to write it down and they wrote it down and they crashed into the pole that they'd taken the padding off and died. Now, is that a bit amusing? It kind of is, right? Is it horrible that they died? Yes, it is. But it's also a little bit amusing. And I think they were just taking that approach. Like, if you're so stupid that you won't take this free, absolutely safe vaccine, and you just hold on to your weird little dogmas and you endanger people, it's kind of funny. Like, I think we all have a bit of black comedy streak in us as a whole. So I think it was along those lines. Sorry, go ahead.
[52:05] Yeah, yeah, I hear that. That's what happened. I don't think most people were trying to be cruel with this or having some feeling of revenge. It was rather this kind of dark humor that was in the people. It was so easy to avoid it. You just had to do X, Y, and Z and you'd be still alive.
[52:25] That's honestly how I feel about people who do die from the vaccine and the booster shot.
[52:30] Listen, I hear what you're saying. That's a different conversation. And I understand where you're coming from. And also, of course, if people, like if they believe, look, you get this virus and then you spread this virus. If you don't have the vaccine, the vaccine stops your getting infected. It stops transmission, even though it turns out they never tested for that. But it's like this guy died, which means he's not going to infect...
[52:55] Other people. And remember, there were times when, I mean, people were just way off in terms of they thought that like 20%, 30% of people died from COVID. So if some guy is going to infect, you know, 10 people, that's two or three, he's going to kill. And if he dies, and then can't pass that along, because he's too idiotic to take the vaccine, you know what I mean? Like, if you have that perspective, you can understand, I mean, not that you would sympathize with it, but you can understand where it'd be like, they're rolling their eyes, shaking their heads. Well, I guess this guy, Darwin, award himself out of the circulation, but at least he's not spreading the virus to other innocent people. So that's the most reason. Now, this is why I said earlier, and again, I'm not an oracle here, this is my perspective, but when you said, I can't remember who it was who said climate change. Well, sure, climate change, I mean, nobody understands these models.
[53:46] They just keep tweaking the models until they get the outcome they want, which is not science. And they're well-paid for disaster outcomes, and they're not at all paid. In fact, they'll probably lose half their career or more if they don't come up with dangerous scenarios. It was kind of a joke in the scientific community for decades that, you know, if you want to study squirrels.
[54:05] You're not going to
[54:06] Get any money. But if you want to study the effect of climate change on squirrels, they'll give you $5 million. And it was just, you know, I mean, this is not science. This is government science, but it's become a mystery religion. It's become a mystery religion in that the scientists can't be questioned. They won't show you the source data. Sometimes they won't even share the source data with others.
[54:27] But additionally, this problem is forbidden from being solved.
[54:32] Yeah, and it's driven by fear. Yeah, it's driven by fear. The entire planet is going to get microwaved, right? If you don't, like, everyone can take their 747s with their gas-guzzling limousines to Davos or whatever, right? But you've got to half choke on paper straws because you don't want the planet to die and you don't want granny to die. So it's fear-based. You're going to hell if you don't believe this stuff. You're going to live in hell if you don't believe this stuff. And if you don't believe it, we'll make your life hell just to drive home the point. So it's fear-based.
[55:07] Is incredibly high stakes,
[55:10] Life and death of the entire planet. It's the same thing as heaven or hell for eternity. And to question it is a sin. To question it is evil. Doubt is evil. And you get this, trust the priests. And you saw this absolutely insane thing. It's completely mental, like deranged psychosis. Trust the science. Absolutely freaking not. Abso-freaking-lutely not. Trust the science. Are you insane? All science is founded on skepticism of experts. That's Dr. Richard Feynman, one of the great physicists of the 20th century. Science is skepticism. Science is bullshit. Like the little cough in the back of Top Gun, right? So all science is based on skepticism. Trust the science is the complete opposite. It's like saying fudge the math. The math is not fudging. And so the idea that people with a straight face would both say and listen to and repeat a mantra called trust the science, it means that instead of funny hats and big robes, you have white lab coats and little pocket protectors. And now this is the new mystery religion that you better shut up and obey. You cannot question. It's all fear-driven and it's incredibly high stakes. And.
[56:26] If you question
[56:28] Them at all, you're getting people killed. If you question global warming, then you are going to drown all of the people in the Philippines. You know, like people are so deranged about this stuff. I mean, I was talking to a guy not too, too, too long ago who was saying, well, these islands are going to be underwater. And I'm like, what? What do you mean these islands are going to be underwater? They're in the middle of the Pacific. Why would only those islands be underwater? They get a little mountain of water just where those islands are? Doesn't it kind of raise evenly? Do you ever try in your bathtub to scoop the water to one end? No. It just rises evenly. But this is what people say. So, with regards to the fall of Christianity, yeah, but Christianity has fallen because they found... Mystery religion called scientism, because people were having some skepticism over the old priests, right? Because the free market in science was doing more good, certainly more material good for humanity than the church ever did. Now.
[57:26] You could say
[57:26] The church saved souls, and I get all of that. But in terms of material benefit, science, modern medicine, and the free market materially improved humanity's life by hundreds and now thousands of times in terms of improvement.
[57:40] So people weren't quite believing so much in christianity and who were the new people who were improving humanity well for a while they kind of worshipped industrialists but then the marxists came along so that kind of went tits up and then ah the scientists so what the people in power do is they latch on to whoever has a good reputation and milk that reputation for power So scientists, scientists have, I mean, they put people on the moon, they invented penicillin, they invented the shots for polio. And again, I know some of these are like dicey, but the scientists are these objective and rational people who just tirelessly work behind their horn drum glasses for the very betterment of humanity, no matter what. They're like robots, they're like Vulcans, they're like machines of reason, they can't be corrupted. And so because scientists had a really great reputation, all those in power are like, okay, we're gonna scare.
[58:36] The shit out of people.
[58:37] We're gonna tell them the scientists can save them. And anybody who questions the scientists or the experts, like there's a larger sphere called the expert, but we're really talking about scientism at the moment. Anybody who questions the scientists wants people to die and is like, well, you've seen this very famous cartoon from not too long ago where.
[59:00] Wife at the door, and there was a guy at a computer, and he said, hey, hey, honey, honey, check this out. I've found something important that all the world's top scientists and experts have missed. And this was like mocking, right? Because to question the scientists, to question their motives, to question their dedication to reason, to question their objectivity, to ask for their data is a new, it's blasphemy. Yeah, we have blasphemy laws, which is you get fired if you question the scientists in the same way that in other religious times if you didn't believe in God you couldn't get a job x y and z you get fired from your job you couldn't work for the government or whatever it was or even private sometimes right so the new blasphemy is questioning the new high priests of the modern mystery religion so the fall of Christianity has not gotten in fact we've regressed because at least you could read the source data in all forms of modern Christianity. I mean, there's no form of Christianity that has any traction where it's in ancient Aramaic only, and you have to go to a priest to get any kind of facts about it. Everybody can read everything that's translated now.
[1:00:11] So yeah, the new, that's the new modern mystery religion is scientism. And quote, experts say, right? I mean, that's just the same as like God has ordained. Experts say, trust the priest, trust science. I am God. I am science. It's all completely psycho, but it's the oldest control mechanism in the book. If you doubt that witch doctor who controls the rain, then clearly you want everyone to die of thirst and starvation when the rains don't come.
[1:00:41] What you have mentioned a while ago is the reason for which there's been a replacement. This displacement of religion by science. You've provided an example of material benefit delivered by the scientific revolution. That would suggest that this change was rational. And I'm not exactly capable of clarifying my thoughts here, but I'm not sure that this reasonable change was actually dictated by reason. And that raises a question in me.
[1:01:20] Hang on, hang on. Sorry, sorry. I'm a little lost. My apologies.
[1:01:24] Yeah.
[1:01:24] So, are you saying that the scientists were good and then became bad or something like that? Like the scientists did provide material benefits and then it didn't? This is what I'm.
[1:01:33] Yeah, this is what I was interested when you said that, Science has replaced the role of religion by providing material benefits.
[1:01:46] Well, so, sorry, but remember, originally science was private. Science was voluntary, right? So scientists were, you know, the gentleman scholars, the aristocrats, the middle class, and so I've got a whole scene in my novel called Just Poor about the rise of science in the middle of nowhere. Like, there were scientific communities, even in the middle of, like, farming communities. There were, and so I've got a whole scene about this, and that actually comes from quite a bit of accurate history. So science was private. It wasn't run by the government. It wasn't controlled by the government. It wasn't controlled by public money or debt. It wasn't in the service of those in power. Now, it was, to some degree, they loved the benefits because, you know, you got to design new weapons and better ships and, you know, improved gunpowder and so on. And the scientists figured out that scurvy was killing off the British sailors, right? In fact, more British sailors died from scurvy than from enemy gunfire or cannon fire, I suppose. And so science was originally private. And then what happened was because scientists had such good reputations and priests were losing their reputations, the government started paying scientists to harness their good reputation and turn them into new high cult leaders of the mystery religion, if that makes sense.
[1:02:56] Yeah, thanks so far for this remark. But what I'm wondering right now is whether that could be replaced with something else. Something less scientific.
[1:03:14] Well, there's almost nothing less scientific than what's going on at the moment. Because when science gets co-opted as a mystery religion, it becomes profoundly anti-science.
[1:03:23] I'm purely talking about appearances, of course. It is being sold by science, and that's when the accuracy ends.
[1:03:32] But what I'm wondering is whether there is going to be a next big thing after this.
[1:03:38] See, that's the funny thing. You're the overcomplicated, you're the complication guy.
[1:03:41] Right? Yes.
[1:03:43] So, I think we've got a huge chunk of information to process and absorb here, right? I mean, if you haven't heard this argument before, there's a lot to process here, right? Because this explains all of COVID and almost all of the modern world in terms of why the government funds science. So, that's a lot to process, would you say, right? Uh-huh. But you're like, well, what's going to replace it? What's the next thing? And I'm like, can we just process this thing? Like, you jump to complications like crazy.
[1:04:10] Right? Sure, I understand.
[1:04:12] I mean, just absorb, right? Just absorb, and you can criticize it and all that, but it's a way of moving away from the current understanding to say, ah, yes, but what could replace it in 100 years? It's like, that's not really valuable in the context of what we're talking about.
[1:04:30] Sure.
[1:04:31] Open-source information sounds like a great way of replacing that sort of stuff. Also, Stefan, I wanted to get your thoughts on feudalism and whether, like, let's suppose, like, would feudalism be, like, a better alternative to, like, the current, like, EU political system in Europe?
[1:04:51] Why would you, I mean, what's the, I mean, we're not getting feudalism, so I'm not sure.
[1:04:55] What's the point. Yeah, like, just as,
[1:04:57] Like, I don't know,
[1:04:58] Would it?
[1:04:59] No, but why,
[1:05:00] We're not getting feudalism. It's like the people who say, well, would the ancient Norse religions be better than Christianity? It's like, what, they're not coming back. Like, why would we talk about these kinds of, I mean, I'm happy to talk about it, but I don't really know what the point is.
[1:05:13] All right. I mean, I feel a lot about this on, like, a lot of political issues. Like, what's the point of it? But I also want to get your thoughts on Gnosticism. Gnosticism, like Gnostic Christianity. So, I mean, like, what are your thoughts on the Demiurge as a concept?
[1:05:35] Okay, so do you know whether or not we got a whole bunch of people listening here, we got 10 people in the conversation. Do you think it might be helpful to explain to them what you're talking about, or is that something that I should do?
[1:05:49] I'd say you're probably better at explaining it than me.
[1:05:52] Explaining Gnosticism?
[1:05:54] Yeah, and the demiurge. You seem like a pretty confident, articulate individual. So, okay.
[1:06:00] All right. So, Gnosticism is very early religious beliefs around the first century AD. And they wanted people to have a direct connection with God and not go through the church as a whole. Like, pray to God directly. And, I mean, that really is the ultimate not-mystery religion is you don't even need a priest. you can just talk to God directly. And so that would be, I mean, obviously, there's a lot to it, and I'm certainly no big expert on it. But is there something that you wanted to talk about in more detail?
[1:06:39] Yes, like the concept of a demiurge in terms of Gnosticism, such as God, rather than being benevolent, he actually does plenty of bad stuff and confines people in some ways to the material world. So we could use... So that's more of my own personal belief.
[1:07:05] Sorry, the demiurge. Demiurge is another way of saying God. Is that right?
[1:07:10] Yes, but it's like a not benevolent God who's bad or evil.
[1:07:15] Okay. So your belief is that God is evil?
[1:07:19] No. My belief is that God is the all. So he, like, generates our entire existence. And so it's, like, pretty much his fault. Like, so you can think of God more as, like, a giant computer that creates reality. So he pretty much creates all the good stuff and all the bad stuff that exists.
[1:07:38] Okay, so it's another way of saying everything that is, but imbuing it with the concept of a creator. Is that right?
[1:07:46] Yes.
[1:07:48] Okay. So what is it that you would like to, or what is it you would like me to talk about with regards to that?
[1:07:54] I just wanted to get some of your own philosophical takes on it. And I wanted to touch up on the thing about, what was it called? Oh yeah, like involving science. I find it pretty
[1:08:08] Ironic that a lot.
[1:08:09] Of people who push the science stuff, they also deny anatomy and physiology and biology. Yeah.
[1:08:16] So that's a very interesting topic about the Demiurge and narcissism and so on, but I think it's a little bit off the beaten path of what we're talking about as a whole, which is trying to sort of penetrate and understand the mystery religion of modern scientism. And so let's bookmark that. If we have time at the end, we can talk about that more, but I don't want to go off on a journey when we've got 10 people in here. I think we're talking about the mystery cult of modern science. So I'm happy if other people have comments or criticisms or questions. How about China, Stefan?
[1:08:48] Is it China and their government?
[1:08:49] Like, aren't they just,
[1:08:50] Isn't that literally, like.
[1:08:51] The way they think right now? Modern China and CCT? Like, aren't they, like, they're all in on these ideas? Or am I, is this propaganda?
[1:09:02] Okay, well, what do you mean by these ideas? We've talked about a lot.
[1:09:05] Oh, trusting the expert. Like, they, I mean, they've gotten to the point, I mean, what they work with, they, you don't really, they're at the point where you don't even, you can't question the expert. In China, right? Isn't that kind of like...
[1:09:18] Well, yeah. So I think you're onto a great point there, which is that any entity that is considered to be essential and moral, which cannot speak to itself, must have spokespeople who inevitably can't be questioned. Right? So in the communist world, you say, I represent the interests of the proletariat, right? And that the proletariat are noble and good and virtuous and so on, and long-suffering and moral. But obviously, the collective, the concept proletariat can't speak for itself any more than God or science, right? Can't speak for itself. And so you have to promote yourself as the spokesperson for this concept that can't speak for itself, right? The good of the nation. I represent the good. Who knows? I mean, the good of the nation is just like an invisible friend that blesses everything you say with omniscience and perfection, right? So rather than make, and people do this with aggression too, right? So you're dealing with sort of cult ideas when you are aggressed against for, like, we can see this with some of the incel anger that's sort of coming at me over the last couple of days, right? That's the bad arguments because there's just a lot of escalation and aggression.
[1:10:27] And so if I could convince everyone in the world that I had an invisible friend who only talked to me, who could never be mistaken, then all I would do is say, my invisible friend, Bob, has said to me X, and then everybody has to accept X because he's infallible and only I can talk to him. It's a really psycho way of establishing dominance in any kind of conversation.
[1:10:54] Now, the invisible friend could be a kind of God, it could be a class, I speak for all women, as a woman, as women, when we, right, could be some concept of womanhood, it could be race, it could be any number of things.
[1:11:08] If you can convince people that you are the spokesperson for a perfect concept that can't speak for itself, they have to obey you. You know, I speak on behalf of the proletariat. Well, I don't agree with you. Oh, so you hate the proletariat? Like, you know, we've seen these sort of false dichotomies all the time. If you question the vaccine, then clearly you want people to die. If you say that there may have been some reasons why Russia responded to some of the aggressions in Ukraine. Oh, well, then you were a Putin lover or whatever, like these sort of false dichotomies. But yeah, so people are constantly, constantly setting up these imaginary concepts, that can't speak for themselves and then putting themselves forward as the spokesperson. And you can't question them. If you do question them, then you're corrupted. It's a heresy. It's a heresy. And you have to punish those people because if too many people question it, the whole thing falls apart so.
[1:12:04] We're leading towards the communist
[1:12:05] Yeah we're.
[1:12:07] Leading towards it we're leading towards the communist thing right now this is what you're i feel like we're sowing into something here with
[1:12:13] Well no no no it's it's the communism the scientism the the mystery religion they're all part of the same continuum they're all they're all different, branches off the same tree which is i have access to perfect knowledge that you don't have access to, therefore, you have to obey me. And it really comes from parents, right? The reason why this stuff is believable is because that's how we all operate when we're little kids. Because our parents are just these big giants who have this mystery knowledge of things and just tell us what we can or can't do. And we don't really understand it, but we just have to obey them. So mystery religion is keeping people in an infantile state.
[1:12:53] Really, I mean, in some ways, a pre-verbal state because I mean, kids learn no around the age of two, two and a half, and you can't even say no or question a mystery religion. So like most corruptions, it comes off, you know, some fairly bad and aggressive, parenting, but also just some of the necessary aspects of parenting, which is you have to say to your kid, listen, if you've been handling tadpoles, I got to wash your hands. Well, why? Well, germs. Well, what are germs? Just like you have to wash your hands, right? And so there's a certain amount of your parents just know all of this stuff and you just kind of have to submit to it and you can't really understand it all and you just have to trust. So the mystery religion comes from the real toddler's relationship to the parents, but then writ large. Your parents are gods who have access to information you can't understand, but you just have to obey them. And it's the same thing with the mystery religions, if that makes sense.
[1:13:50] Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
[1:13:54] Point of punishment, it occurred to me that the people were calling for like,
[1:14:00] Oh, sorry about that. People were calling for like, you know, put these people in camps to take their children away and all this other stuff when it came to COVID. And so it was justified by this whole,
[1:14:12] You know, if
[1:14:13] You don't believe in the science, you're a sinner, right?
[1:14:17] Yes. And of course, if you are raising your children to disbelieve in the mystery religion, the mystery religion must take your children from you in order to.
[1:14:25] Save them did did
[1:14:27] We have anything like that with like previous uh scares like climate change or i guess race and iq is a little bit different one but well uh i know that there are punishments and stuff but like people lost their jobs like like that
[1:14:40] Well i'm sorry with climate change as well when you have people who are adherents of the mystery religion called science then if you question that then you pay a significant social penalty.
[1:14:54] People are like, oh,
[1:14:56] Well, you're just like, what are you, anti-science? Like, you don't care. Like, oh, you're just one of these deniers, right? They always use this word because it's a Holocaust denier. So they just use like denier rather than skeptic because skeptic is actually kind of healthy and denier sounds like you're just refusing to state that the earth is round or something like that, or you're refusing to state that it's raining when you're raining because of sinful pride, right? So to rebel against the.
[1:15:22] Truth is satanic,
[1:15:23] Right? Because Satan or Lucifer, the bringer of light, knows that God is all powerful, knows that God is all good, but rebels against it anyway. And so to rebel against facts that you already know.
[1:15:35] Or should know to be true is
[1:15:37] The ultimate sin. And so you are punished as a heretic. You are disassociated from, you are ostracized, you're unfollowed, as they would say in some areas. So people will look at you funny. Yes, sir.
[1:15:50] Do you mind if I step in on this topic here?
[1:15:53] Yeah, go for it.
[1:15:54] So that's kind of what I wanted to get into. It's an old video you did years ago. It's the story of your enslavement, right? But it's the enslavement of your identity, which is what Lucifer claimed, right? So he claimed the identity of God, and he took a third of the angels with him, and they were cast out. And that's why we have things like pride and sloth and gluttony, right? Because they are the identifiers which we identify with. And it's the story of your enslavement. It's not that it's a new religion. It's just a mystery because our identity has been enslaved to the world. So if you look at like, say, science and all the people with the COVID thing, right? Their identity is so wrapped up in trusty experts. Or wokeism, their identity is trapped up in their sexuality, right? And they forget where they come from. They've accepted the identity of the story of your enslavement. It's the way, the life, the truth. I could ramble on forever about it, but that's kind of how I see this mystery religion.
[1:16:59] Instance you would say that lucifer is the purveyor of a mystery religion is that right.
[1:17:03] Yeah so how
[1:17:05] Would that be the case and not the case for say the catholic church way back in the day i'm not talking now which only did the liturgy in latin and all that kind of stuff.
[1:17:16] Well they absolutely did so like you were talking about earlier how people didn't really have access or even literacy to be able to read latin or read the bible let alone a printing press for the average person to get a hold of the bible so it wasn't well
[1:17:31] No it's a very conscious decision because the yeah the catholic church at any time could have translated the bible into the local language right.
[1:17:38] Absolutely it's the the bureaucracy of leadership power right yeah
[1:17:43] Yeah it's a lot easier to not be questioned if people can't get your source data right yeah and this is.
[1:17:48] And look at these look at these feudal this feudal era though right like so if you go to england you go to france you go to all these nations they have their identity and the core of the identity was It's like the kings in Catholic churches, right? It was controlled by these churches and everything, and all these schisms happened. So the mystery religion is the story of your enslavement, right? You're stuck staring at the information on the wall, and whenever you try to leave it, you're beaten to death.
[1:18:15] Well, and of course, as you know, this whole science came around in many ways to rescue humanity from— like Europe was going through like 300 years of religious war after the Reformation, during and after the Reformation. And so science came along and said, look, we have a way of resolving disputes. It's not about willpower and violence. It is not about the willingness to use aggression or violence to get other people to believe stuff. We have an objective methodology or discipline by which we can resolve our disputes according to the scientific method. And that revealed the, to others so that it was no longer a mystery religion. Now, government scientists have these weird, overcomplicated models. You can't get hold of the source data. You can't puzzle out what the hell they're doing, but you have to obey them anyway, which is, again, back to the mystery religion side. But sorry, go ahead.
[1:19:03] So, yeah, that's kind of what science does, is it identifies how the universe works, right? This is how it works. This is what it is.
[1:19:11] And it connects the dots, right? Yeah, certainly not government science. Yeah, the modern era is twisted, right? Yeah, engineering is better this way. Yeah, engineering is better this way. But no, it's really brutal what's going on with science these days. All right, is there anyone else who wanted to add to this?
[1:19:28] Oh, yes, I actually wanted to add quite a bit. I was actually showing my younger brother earlier today that video, The Story of Your Enslavement, which I'm just going to say it's fantastic work, Stefan. Thank you. Besides that, I wanted to touch up on that thing about science, which was it's like I'm not going to expect us to like really win over like those institutions because like they're state owned and we'll like subsidies and stuff but like I'd say like certain areas where like the right in general like we're better at it it's like and besides like nuclear stuff, crypto stuff like they can't control that's not regulated like that's generally like where it's on the free market like that's our domain so it's like if anyone wants to launch like a crypto token or anything like that or has like a computer science position like on a project needs help let me know and make sure to dm me thank you i was
[1:20:32] Wondering if can anybody hear me am i on yeah
[1:20:36] Go for it.
[1:20:37] Like y'all were talking about engineering and classifications something i've noticed with religion and like the mysteries it's like there's if you can break it up into a classification because sometimes it's like with christianity if you're at a church everybody's kind of aware that there's a religion around you right but sometimes like with the state there's a religion around you and if you talk about all your religious you just worship the state like they're dumbfounded It's like they're unaware that they're participating in a religion pointing their free will towards a non-existent entity, you know, and I think maybe that's where some of the mystery of all are to me kind of...
[1:21:24] Out, it's like the more mysterious happens when there's like this fog where it's in between the two, where some people blatantly and openly worship the state, but some people are unaware that they worship the state. I've had conversations with people who identify themselves as anarcho-capitalists, and as you have this conversation, they will talk about, you know, make an encapistan or whatever, some island that they're able to create a stateless society. However, if you talk to this group very often, they will always say the same thing. They will say, well, eventually a state will emerge. And if you kind of ask them, well, if you say the state is inevitable, then what are we doing this for? It's like, you must be a statist as well.
[1:22:12] This is where I disagree with you. Like, a state's not guaranteed to emerge. Like, if you have, like, an armed enough populace that's trained enough to defend themselves, whereas the more dependent people become, the more easily controlled and subjugated they also become.
[1:22:26] I'm not trying to argue about what would or would not happen. I'm just saying these people are unaware that they are completely believe in the inevitability of a state. Almost like— I don't. Like, they believe in its existence, a non-existent thing. Like, we all... I'm pretty sure everybody in this conversation kind of understands that the state is a concept, is an idea, right? Like, the government doesn't really exist. The buildings exist. But it's an identity,
[1:22:57] Right? And it's one that's difficult to identify with because it's a physical... It's almost a physical thing that's like you can identify with the rock.
[1:23:05] But these people are.
[1:23:07] Completely unaware that they worship this thing. And, like, some people... Some people are like, yeah, I worship Jesus Christ. And, you know, maybe they've got a fog in the back of
[1:23:18] Their mind of, well, is God real that they don't talk
[1:23:20] About out loud or whatever? But it's like stated, this is our religion. This is the religion we're discussing. I'm not going
[1:23:27] To agree with you that political ideologies are like a lot of the times like a new religion that are emerging. So if that's like your point that you're trying to make, I do agree with you there. How
[1:23:40] Is this different it's kind of a weird thing where there's a religion that nobody realizes yeah what they're fought what's allowed they're standing in is what religion are we kind
[1:23:49] Of like I half agree with you but it's like it's more that so even if we were to like take scriptures and stuff like that yeah you're supposed to do stuff out of the law of liberty but it's like no to get into it because like it bible generally tells people to submit to authorities so this is yeah
[1:24:11] I will say religion is a way of life right so if you're identifying let's say you're a libertarian and you have your libertarian way of life or your or your conservative way or your liberal way or whatever it might be it's a way of life and if that's where your principles the foundation of your principles are that's your object of worship that's your identity right And that's kind of what's happened with politics, right? I'm sorry.
[1:24:34] I thought religion was where, you know, somebody says there is this thing called the blank and I speak for this thing called the blank. I thought that was
[1:24:43] The religion we were talking about. It's a way of life, right? It's a way of life, a code of conduct, a moral structure, a foundation for which you would live your life. And there's all these different religions because everybody has a different idea of what's true.
[1:24:55] Yeah, but it's a foundation that somebody else tells you to do because they're trying to tell you what to do, right? And they're claiming to speak for the non-existent entity. But like some religions are known to the followers. And that's what I'm trying to just say that maybe a classification would kind of add to why some of these are so more mysterious. Because some of these people are following a religion where they are genuinely unaware that they are pointing to
[1:25:25] What it is.
[1:25:26] Towards a non-existent entity.
[1:25:28] Yeah, they're calling bitter sweet and sweet bitter, you know?
[1:25:33] I kind of wanted to jump in. Stefan, have you heard of the cathedral from Curtis Yarvin?
[1:25:43] Vaguely, but you'll have to break it out for me a bit.
[1:25:46] A lot of what he says is a bit of gobbledygook,
[1:25:49] But I think he perfectly
[1:25:50] Analogized it to, he sort of borrows the cathedral term from the dominance of the Catholic Church. Where the establishment was the Pope, and he would send out his scriptures to the bishops who would propagandize it and push it onto the populace. And he says how that's sort of been replaced today, how the establishment, which is mainly the state, will fund scientists and bureaucrats and push it onto journos to lay it out to the populace. It's decentralized narrative control.
[1:26:27] Yeah, I certainly accept that that's a thing.
[1:26:30] It's a very good analogy that I picked up from him. He sort of has another one called Mandarins and Barbarians, where there's a certain amount of class of people that want to try and create as many laws and another that want to tear them down.
[1:26:48] Right. Yeah, no, I think that's,
[1:26:50] It's soft power, right? I mean, one of the things that's happened in America is because there are legal protections for speech. The control of speech has had to go underground and, you know, arguably is more damaging, right? I mean, you might get fined a couple of thousand bucks for a hate speech violation, but deplatforming can cost some people huge amounts of money, right? So, you could argue that the speech is actually more punished in the U.S. With the First Amendment than it would be elsewhere. So, with the difference that there's no jail right so i get all that but yeah it's uh it's uh it's rough how that kind of stuff works but you know that's the inevitable blowback that you're going to get from as the aforementioned interfering with the goals of evil sorry go ahead yeah.
[1:27:30] It's it's completely also down to the interpretation of who's in charge what what agencies motives are being ruled as in the uk we never really had a certain amount of protection on speech but under the because it's been all right, not as good as you'd like it, but it's okay. And then as soon as another agency takes over, they, using the same laws, completely go hammer and start sending people two years, three years in prison for Facebook posts.
[1:28:02] Oh yeah, or now emojis, right?
[1:28:05] Emojis, yeah.
[1:28:06] Yeah, emojis has now become a thing as well. All right, so listen, we've had a good old chat. Is there things that people wanted to toss in at the end here, get your sort of final thoughts in before we close down for the night. And really appreciate, this has been a first sort of roundtable on X, which I really, really appreciate.
[1:28:22] Is this only related to scientism?
[1:28:25] Yeah, don't open up new topics, I would say, because, yeah, I mean, but honestly, it's been a real pleasure having everybody in. This is the first time I've tried having a whole bunch of people in it. It's worked beautifully, and I really.
[1:28:34] Really appreciate everyone for that. Thanks for having me on.
[1:28:36] Yeah, I had another thought on science, the science religion or scientism thing, which is sort of a sort of an effect of it but you know you see people who talk about like
[1:28:48] Flat earth stuff
[1:28:49] And i feel like there's some sort of connection there as well i know it's kind of opening up a bigger topic to talk about but there's something to mull over i think because it's like the science has been like the actual skeptical science that you can look at the stuff and you can evaluate the arguments but people just sort of disbelieve in theories that had you know, a good basis for quite a long time. And now that whole, because, because the, the science establishment is a religion in
[1:29:21] Like an obvious sense,
[1:29:23] People just sort of dismiss a whole lot of what science kind of quote-unquote established. I use that term advisedly here.
[1:29:31] Well, and I think that's a good point. One of the ways you know that something's cultish or it's a mystery religion is that people don't accept responsibility for being wrong, and there's never any punishments, right? So the typical formulation is, well, if good things are happening to you, that's because God loves you, and you're being rewarded for your faith. If bad things are happening to you, either it's because you did something wrong or because God has singled you out for testing because you're extra special, valuable, and need to be tested and challenged and so on. So there's never any fault. Of course, we can see the same thing with the climate change models that they're all wrong. They're all completely wrong, but it doesn't matter. Nobody loses any funding. Nobody loses any work or jobs, foreign policy. Same thing, federal policy, interest rates, money printing, and so on.
[1:30:17] Nobody suffered for COVID and all of the bad decisions that were made through that. And so this is another way that you know you're dealing with a mystery religion.
[1:30:26] And people do this with COVID too, right? They made terrible decisions at the time, wrong, corrupt, immoral decisions. And then they say, well, later, well, you know, I mean, we didn't have perfect knowledge. We were just trying to make the best decisions we could. Parents do this, the same thing. We did the best we could with the knowledge we had at the time, which is never acceptable for you when you're writing a math test in grade eight or something. But yeah, so this inability or this unwillingness or this lack of capacity for the system to self-correct, that's another mystery religion thing. It's like, well, why are bad things happening? It's a mystery, right? There's no punish. Like the witch doctor, right? The witch doctor says, well, do this and I'll bring the reins, right? And then if the reins don't come, he says, well, you didn't do it right.
[1:31:06] Or somebody came and gave the presents to me, but in bad faith. They didn't do it with good faith. They can just make stuff up, so there's never, there's no negative return on decisions, and there's no null hypothesis. You can't disprove any of it.
[1:31:24] That's a really frustrating part, too, is because, like, when it's not a mystery religion, like, if you're having a conversation with a Buddhist or something, or the medicine man, like, longer, it will take up more of your time because they will keep like, you know, changing the terms and moving the Gold Coast. But if you're having a conversation with somebody that doesn't realize that they're religious, that doesn't realize they're part of the religion, it's like the conversation just goes off the rails a little bit or gets violent or whatever faster, but like sucks more of your life away arguing with the people that are known, like they know they're religious or they admit to be religious than the people who really don't know their inner religion.
[1:32:08] Stefan posted a video where he, it was the video where you're talking about the inner monologue and to find out if somebody has an inner monologue or not, you would ask them if they understand your position. Yeah, yeah. If they don't understand your position, don't even engage.
[1:32:25] Right, right. I mean, that was sort of the conversation I had today with the guy about the risks of marriage and so on. And it's like, he couldn't even articulate. Now, I think I did a fairly good steel man job of his when the other guy was like, well, you should have handled it differently. I'm like, okay, let me play him and you be you and show me how you'd handle it better. And it's like, he couldn't do it, right? So, so that's just sort of a foundational thing. And, you know, if people want to tell me how to handle things.
[1:32:48] Isn't that called cognitive dissonance when you present facts and information and they reject them as facts and information?
[1:32:55] I wouldn't say cognitive dissonance. So here's the thing, right? So, I mean, with the guy today, not the first guy, but the guy who was trying to tell me how I should have handled it differently or better, and I said, it was all too abstract, and I like practical examples of things. And so, when I said, okay, I'll be the guy who's the hedonist, and you be me, right? I don't know if you were all listening to that call or not, but it's going to go out tonight, at least on Twitter. So, what happened was, he said, Stef, I know how to handle a hedonist better than you do. So then I role-played a hedonist, and he role-played me, and within about five minutes, he'd run out of things to say. He couldn't counter the arguments. He couldn't deal with it. Now, rather than say, huh, Stef, wow, you know what? I thought I could handle a hedonist better than you did, but it turns out I can't. I don't really have any answers for him and so on, right? So, you know, I withdraw my criticism, or if I do have suggestions, I'm going to try and find a different approach and so on, right? That would be, I think, a reasonable thing to do. But all he did was he said, well, that's not what he would say. So, again, this is just a movie with the goalposts, right? So, yeah, that's definitely...
[1:34:03] Out of curiosity, how would you, Stefan, handle a hedonist?
[1:34:08] Well, you're going to have to listen to the show...
[1:34:11] Yeah, I guess so.
[1:34:12] ...in which I handled a hedonist. Yeah, so, I mean, his basic argument was, Stef, you should have been nicer so you can change his mind. And I was like... Said there's no benefit to men to get married right and then i listed off like 15 different fairly scientific benefits for men to get married right and then he you know like for instance i said oh.
[1:34:34] Yeah yeah i
[1:34:35] Remember i said i said like you can live seven to ten ten years longer and he's like yeah yeah that's that's no good if you're senile it's like what the hell is it's still it's still seven and not everyone's if.
[1:34:44] You have yeah if you have a good wife and you're senile or you're alzheimer's your good wife's gonna take care of you in those seven to ten years of forgetfulness.
[1:34:52] Stefan, I have a quick question about this sort of conversation. Whenever it comes to marriage or relationships, it's like, I find that a lot of people in those topics are like incels who it's like, they can't even find someone to get married to, so it's like you're trying to persuade them on something that they can't even relate on.
[1:35:16] Well, okay. See, but I view it rightly or wrongly, I view it as a more fluid situation. So there are people, of course, that you can't change. There are people who already agree with you when you focus on whatever percentage of people who are undecided or who might change. Now, I think that there are some guys out there who are nervous about their sexual market value and afraid of rejection and a wide variety of things, and they face a fork in the road. So they can come to me where I say, you know, just keep practicing and you can get there and all that kind of good stuff. And don't be too scared. Hang on, hang on, hang on. I'm right in the middle of saying something, bro.
[1:35:54] So that's one fork in the road. The other fork is, you know, women are evil and the system is going to crush you and divorce, rape. And they just like, then they just, thank goodness, I don't have to take on this challenge because the system is going to destroy me. I mean, the same thing, of course, happens to, you know, if you talked about minorities and so on, and you say, well, the system is crushing you and there's so much racism and sexism for women. It's just a way of helping people to believe that their avoidance of necessary challenges is somehow a wise accommodation to a brutal reality. So I think that there's a lot of sin that's going on around young men these days. Some of it, of course, is institutional. Some of it's government. Most of it's government. But some of it is these influencers who are just feeding into all of this fear and anxiety and really stripping these guys and saying, well, you don't have irrational fears that you can overcome. It's realistic, man. All women are terrible. And, you know, the government will crush you and the family courts will destroy you. And it's like, bro, that's really harsh. I mean, I don't know how people live with putting that kind of stuff into people's heads.
[1:37:00] I feel like the younger generation lacks examples of failure. So when I was in high school and stuff, and we'd like watch our friends go up and approach girls and just get humiliated failure after failure. We've had girls just as a joke, call security on people and have them executed from malls. Like these things were common occurrences.
[1:37:19] Have them what? From malls?
[1:37:21] Oh,
[1:37:22] Be in the mall but this story we had no i
[1:37:24] Just didn't hear the word did you say executed from malls.
[1:37:26] Yeah x they chopped off his head no they like kicked out i probably used the wrong word kicked out from the mall right because they thought it would be fun expelled okay so i think the young generation lacks the exposure to these kinds of failures so it's like they see it on the internet and they're just like oh
[1:37:46] Fuck that i'm gonna be honest with you like no that's not the case like I used to be an incel. I've been single for like eight years and I'm not an incel anymore because I know how to find hoes. But it's like.
[1:37:58] Okay, please don't call them hoes. What are you doing, man? Come on.
[1:38:03] I, well, it's like I'll be. No, no, no, no.
[1:38:05] Come on. What are you doing? What are you doing?
[1:38:08] You got 99 problems, but.
[1:38:10] No, no, come on. What are you? Little Nash X here? What's with the hoes thing? You're calling women whores?
[1:38:19] Like, it's honestly safer, like, it feels safer to ask a hoe how much for your time than it does to, like— Oh, you're
[1:38:27] Talking about literal.
[1:38:28] Prostitutes. Yes, but it's safer to ask a hoe how
[1:38:31] Much for your time— But you're still an incel if you're paying for sex.
[1:38:33] Yeah, I'm not an incel anymore, but I used to be.
[1:38:36] Oh, so you used to pay for sex, but now you don't.
[1:38:38] No, no, I mean, I used to be an incel before I figured out how to do that.
[1:38:42] What do you mean you figured out how to do it?
[1:38:44] How? You just find, like, a number on, like, certain websites.
[1:38:48] You just go and pay for sex. That's not like a figuring out. You haven't solved the problem. It's like where.
[1:38:53] You find them is like a different store. It's like, all right, I mean, sure, you could hang out outside of hotels to find hoes.
[1:38:59] Okay, I'm not having this conversation, bro. I'm not having this conversation about how to find prostitutes. That's not what this show is about. All right, but there.
[1:39:08] Are certain websites where you find numbers.
[1:39:10] Okay, but what did I just say, bro?
[1:39:13] I'm just saying it's safer to do that. No, shut up. Shut up.
[1:39:16] Than it is to like shut up no no no
[1:39:19] Okay okay just stop stop talking this is a troll or some nonsense like that so anyway listen I do appreciate everyone's time tonight I'm gonna stop here and I really do, I did have a fantastic time talking even the last guy was kind of fascinating in his own kind of way so I appreciate everyone of course if you're listening to this later you can of course join me on x at Stefan Molyneux S-T-E-F-A-N M-O-L-Y-N-E-U-X And, of course, if you could help support the show at freedemand.com. I'd hugely appreciate it. Have yourself a glorious evening, everybody. So much love from up here in the headquarters of philosophy to everyone out there in the world. Take care, everyone. Have a great night. Bye.
[1:40:01] Have a good night.
[1:40:03] Good night.
[1:40:04] Good night.
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