In this episode, we dive into the complex dynamics of personal relationships as we progress through the various stages of life. I outline my theory on why relationships can become fragile over time, particularly as individuals traverse significant life milestones such as education, career choices, marriage, and parenthood. The concept of life stages serves as a framework for understanding how we form friendships and connections with others who generally share our level of intelligence and, consequently, our experiences.
I explore the idea that individuals often find companionship among those with similar IQs, suggesting that shared intellectual capabilities can foster deeper connections. However, as time marches on, these relationships may sputter when one person stays stagnant at a certain life stage while the other moves forward. I unpack how success correlates to these stages and emphasize that achievement, represented by significant milestones like career advancements or family development, can create a rift when one party feels left behind or begins to lie to themselves about their situation. These fears of change and societal pressures can stifle personal growth and consequentially impact friendships.
We discuss how individuals often grapple with fear—an anxiety that can manifest during critical life transitions, such as entering new social or professional environments. I draw parallels between my own fearful moments when moving into the entrepreneurial sphere and how they can influence many people's trajectories. Overcoming fear can sometimes lead to success, but it often requires acknowledging and wrestling with our comfort zones. This relates back to my observations about relationship dynamics, especially when one person steps boldly into new experiences while another opts for the comfort of familiarity, leading to an unbridgeable gap in shared experiences.
In-depth conversations with callers further illustrate these points, highlighting personal anecdotes of friendships strained by varying life choices. We reflect on how repeated patterns and choices determine the nature of these bonds and the implicit critiques that arise from them—whether they be perceived personal failures or a lack of ambition. I emphasize the importance of honesty in relationships and how relationships devoid of truth can lead to a feeling of detachment. When aspirations diverge significantly, lingering feelings of judgment or inadequacy may prevent true connection.
Additionally, we tackle the societal structures that reinforce these dynamics and how perceptions of success and failure can lead to interpersonal dissonance. My explorations touch on broader themes of personal responsibility and societal expectations, particularly regarding modern cultural shifts around success, achievement, and the choices that lead to them. The conversation ultimately urges listeners to reconcile their ambitions with the choices they make, championing a mindset geared toward personal growth.
Throughout this episode, I advocate for self-reflection in assessing whether we are genuinely moving toward our goals or merely coasting through familiar patterns, while also acknowledging the challenges posed by societal pressures and personal fears. We collectively ponder how these multifaceted relationships shape not only our present but also our futures, encouraging both personal accountability and radical honesty in our shared journeys.
0:40 - Life's Stages and Friendships
3:49 - The Fragility of Success
6:31 - Dating and Relationships
9:31 - Implicit Criticism and Detachment
11:45 - Missing Stages in Life
13:30 - Lying to Ourselves
16:45 - Honesty in Relationships
17:54 - The Impact of Friendship
21:19 - Choices and Consequences
24:29 - The Weight of Criticism
29:36 - The War of Sacrifice
33:55 - Crossing Social Classes
35:41 - Poverty as a Choice
38:24 - Sympathy and Consequences
40:36 - The Cycle of Choices
42:42 - Sympathy as a Weapon
52:50 - The Use of Sympathy in Politics
59:24 - Finding Second Chances
[0:01] So hit me with a Y if you'd like me to sort of give you my theory about these for the fragility of these relationships or obviously you can go to fdrurl.com slash live call if you're on a tablet or a pc and we can talk about whatever's on your mind hit me with a Y if you'd like me to talk about this or if there's other topics you know you are you are donors i'm absolutely thrilled to have your support and I'm deeply and humbly grateful for your interest okay looks like we are all right and I think someone touched on this earlier here for me.
[0:41] Life has its stages right I mean the seven stages of Shakespeare but life has its stages right so you toddlerhood early childhood puberty teenage years the education years the career years the marriage years, the family years, the elder statesman of your business years, and then your retirement years, your grandkid years, your wrestling with ailments years, and then your death. So these general stages in life. And generally, we're friends with people who have similar IQs. In the same way, people are generally as attractive as each other. People in general are together with others who have similar IQs. Because if you don't have similar IQs, you just really don't have that much to talk about. So similar IQs should end up with similar levels of success. IQ is one of the biggest determining factors in life success. So your friends should be generally as smart as you are. And since intelligence generally begins to shake out mid-teens, that's sort of where you would track your friendships from going forward. And certainly in university, generally, at least there used to be more IQ sorting. There's less now. well.
[2:07] But in general, similar levels of IQ should result in similar levels of success. And it could be in wide different fields or whatever it is, right? Or at least similar levels of achievement. Achievement and success, not always the same thing. Achievement is when you've done the job. Success is when other people pay you for it. So obviously, I wrote books. I wrote many books before people started to read them. So I had achieved writing books. I had not achieved success in writing books. So for me, I think what happened was my friends and I were generally as smart as each other. And the D&D crew that I played with, D&D is a pretty high IQ game, statistics, probability, memorization, strategy, imagination, and all.
[3:06] And so there are these stages in life, right? Youth, education, career, family, right? That's sort of where my daughter is going to be 17 in a couple of months. So I'm sort of at the tail end of parenting. So that is a pretty powerful stage. I mean, it's the foundational stage, because if you're not parenting, there are no stages after you. And we're all here because our.
[3:50] When people who are smart don't succeed, it's always an interesting question as to why. How was it? Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle was a pretty funny comedy. And there is somebody who says, well, you're really smart. You should become a doctor. And he's like, just because I have a big dick, does that mean I should do porn? Like, according to the, I mean, because it's not the same thing. But this is if if everyone's smart and i would say that most of the people that i knew, had at least iqs of 130 and probably closer to 140 plus so and a lot of the intellectual wrangling that i came fresh with to my public career as an intellectual was based upon private conversations with people over many decades about very important and deep ideas. So why do people stop, right? Why do people stop in the progression through these stages? Why do they stall? Why do they, what's their ceiling? What's their cap?
[4:57] And mostly it's fear. I mean, it's not going to tease you with some big complicated thing, right? It's fear. I mean, I remember when I started And as an entrepreneur, I was nervous. I didn't really know the business world. It wasn't so bad in university because I kind of knew the university world. But I was kind of nervous. And I didn't know how to act with sort of highfalutin business executives that we were selling to. And, you know, I can cover up pretty well. And I'm a pretty quick study. But it's just nervousness, right? And that was the same thing with podcasting. it was quite a leap to go full-time because it was pretty hard to get any kind of answer about how to monetize or how to make any kind of living at it. This is sort of very early on.
[5:49] So I think, isn't it fear? Or, you know, why is it that people don't date? I had a surprising number of people I knew when I was younger who didn't date. I wouldn't call them incels because I think they could have dated. But, you know, But the stage, right, there's a big stage in your teenage years, mid-teens, which is, will you ask a girl out? Will you ask a girl out? It's a big stage. And people who miss that stage, well, you've heard them in the call-in shows. It's not a death sentence for your genes, but it certainly is a suspended sentence for your DNA.
[6:32] Excuse me, let me just cough for a second. I'm going to mute. So, that stage of dating, if you continue to date, you know, there's only so many third-wheel things you can have, and the guys who don't date, and I'm sure it's true for the women as well, but I didn't have direct exposure to that, but the guys who don't date got progressively stranger.
[6:55] Sorry, it's just a fact. Don't shoot the messenger. They just got progressively, stranger because they just didn't have that continual feedback and striving and challenging and by staying out of the most essential arena in the world which is reproduction it's just an oddity it's a very odd choice that none of your ancestors made so it's a massive deviation from what everything your ancestors did come back like four billion years you're like no, funny game the only way to win is not to play and it's odd strange um and so, if you date and then you get into relationships and other people don't date, they're just missing the stage and you have less and less in common. This is true of marriage and it's true of career success. Although I never had any problem with people who had not succeeded, but had achieved, right? So, you know, if someone I knew was like, I'm working on a rock opera, hey, that's cool.
[7:56] That's great is there a role for me right so that's fine i have no problem with that i mean at some point you do have to succeed at something right you can't just, be potential and resentment for the rest of your life but and the most true is with with when you have kids because i mean your life just changes so i think that there are these stages right the dating, the education, the career, the marriage, the kids. And when people don't achieve these stages.
[8:31] I think the relationship just has nowhere to go. There's nothing in common anymore. And I think there's kind of an instinct to detach from each other, like a rocket to stages, right? I think there's kind of an instinct to detach from each other, because I think there's implicit criticism that can't be expressed. I think when there's a lot of implicit criticism that can't be expressed, the relationship, despawns almost like it never was, so if you have kids you get married and you have kids and this is something that the guy was talking about earlier if you get married and you have kids then that's your life and that's most of your life.
[9:31] And your friends who don't get married and don't have kids, is there not, I'll be honest with myself, maybe that's not the case for you, but is there not just this implied criticism of like, what are you doing? Like the guy, he's talking about his wife and his kids and they're talking about sports ball. You know, like that old Eddie Murphy bit about, like, you don't want to be that guy who's too old in the club. Is it Eddie Murphy or some comedian? You don't want to be that guy who's just a little too old in the club. Like, hey, Gramps, you know, don't bust a hip making those moves, right? You're just missing the stages, right? You're missing those stages. And...
[10:21] When you miss those stages there's an implied criticism of you missed the bus, and can you really talk about it so let's say that you're a woman and you're married and you're 40, and your sister is 40 or a friend a close friend is 40 she's not married no kids and at 40, no real chance of having kids she's not going to do it when you make when you don't get to the next stage when you avoid the next stage those who break through to the next stage there's an implied criticism and it's very deep and it's very foundational like basically what's wrong with you and this is sort of what i was talking about on x a month or two ago just about like just trying to have kids you don't need all this money you don't need a you know one of the problems is people who grew up in middle-class households don't like downsizing. It's like, well, what do you mean I have to have? And for me, everything was an upgrade from living with good old mom, right? So I didn't particularly mind. But for a lot of people, you know, grew up in a nice four-bedroom house in the suburbs. And it's like, well, what do you mean I have to have a basement apartment? It's probably how your parents started. You don't want to compare the wealth potential or the wealth actualization of somebody who's 22 with somebody who's 42 or 52, right? It's just a whole different planet.
[11:45] So I think that's the stages thing. I mean, I'll be perfectly honest that the people I knew, I mean, friends of mine who were a married couple, and they didn't have kids.
[12:01] I remember in the house that they lived in, they had a kind of, it was a child-sized doll that was in the corner, pretending to play hide-and-go-seek. It was in the corner by the bathroom. And every now and then I would get up if we were having dinner or something. I'd get up and go to the bathroom and forget about this little doll that looked like a child hiding in the corner. I'd be like, a little startling. And I just, I had a, like, why wouldn't you have kids? Like, why not? And I think I talked about them with them once. I think I talked about it with them once. But I'll be telling you, I'm honest, there's an implicit criticism. I had an implicit criticism of the people I knew who had a lot of vanity about what they were capable of, but without actually doing it, right? Like, oh, this is when I was younger. Oh, you know, this song is so repetitive. That's some hit song, right? You spin me, right? Oh, this song is so repetitive. I could do better. It's like, but you should. Then sit down, right? you know a friend of mine was a great singer good guitar player and so on i kept saying like man go to go to open mic go go sing go write you know if i could do what you could do i'd be doing that, nope, nope.
[13:30] Nope. Or the people who are like, I've got this business idea, I've got that business idea, you know, I could do better than my boss and all of this, you know, talk yourself up kind of stuff. And after a while, it's fine to listen to that. But after a while, it's just like, can you actually do something rather than talk about it? Like the people who knew every answer to every problem in life, but never actually achieved anything. And i think i think the implicit criticism that comes from you know if if someone's dating the wrong person and you tell them and they won't listen there's this criticism it's like you're falling prey to the sin called lust because this is it's not going to work out you're not listening, and you and it's not that you're not listening it's you're lying about it like the fundamental sin is not even any sin it's just lying to yourself about it right so you if someone's dating the wrong person and you say hey man you're dating the wrong person, and they say, no, no, no, she's great, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? It's the lying, right? So I think when people miss their stages, they start lying to themselves.
[14:53] Right, I mean, I sort of, Marx was obviously a very intelligent fellow, Karl Marx, a very intelligent fellow, but he missed the stage. He only ever had one job, I think as a clerk for the British Railway or something like that very briefly. And he failed. And what happens with people who fail is they make success failure and therefore they have integrity. Like musicians who never achieve any success, they say, oh, the successful band's all just sold out and we have integrity. And then they make a virtue out of their failure. People who, for whatever emotional reasons or problems or whatever it is, they never rise to management and say, oh, management sucks, man. It's just all headaches.
[15:38] It's the falsehood, I think, when people don't get to the next stage or the people who are like, well, modern women are just trash, they say. Just hose, village bicycles. And then they say, so it's not that I'm failing to attract and keep a good woman. It's that there aren't any good women and therefore right all the capitalists are, exploiters therefore i'm superior by not working like it's it's not so much that they don't get to the next stage it's that they lie to themselves about the reasons why because if they were honest about the reasons why they'd probably get to the next stage the reason i'm not getting to the next stage is i'm scared of the next stage i'd rather take comfort in familiar and sterile vanity than go through the insecurity of getting to the next stage. Because I'd rather feel competent and certain in things that don't matter, rather than incompetent and uncertain in things that do matter, right? So I'd rather be a really good dungeon master into my 30s rather than go start a business, which would put me on the back foot and it would be hard on my vanity.
[16:45] So i think the people who get to the next stage are doing things that are sort of honest and truthful to some degree and the people who don't get to those stages who uh turn back who, punk out who chicken out they then lie to themselves as to the reason why and therefore the relationship has to be based on some kind of honesty i think the relationships It's despawn because the people not getting to the next stages aren't honest about it with themselves or others. And therefore, because there's no truth, there's no longer any relationship. And people can fool you. I don't know if you've ever been fooled by this. People can really fool you about getting to the next stage and why. All right. Flying Gato. I will take the next caller with happiness. Sorry if you've been waiting for a while, but Flying Gato.
[17:46] Can you hear me?
[17:48] Yes, go ahead.
[17:49] Excellent. I just wanted to, I was talking about friendship in high school.
[17:54] I just didn't continue because we just kind of grew up apart.
[18:02] And I think you might find it interesting. our last conversation that we had and i remember distinctly i had just bought a
[18:11] 2016 honda civic hatchback my first brand new car ever and uh i hadn't spoken to him for like a year and i was driving home with my wife and we're thinking about the future and it's like all right let me call my friend that i haven't spoken to for a year and by the way i grew up with him since basically in i don't eighth ninth grade or something like that so this is like a decade-long friendship and so i call him up and i say hey so i got this new car it's a nice civic it's very good on gas and you know i'm starting this this new career and and doing this and doing that and we're planning kids and we're planning to buy a couple more houses and investments and then you know i try to just share with you know an update and then he's i'm like okay what's going on with you? And he's like, well, I kind of, I was thinking about getting a truck driver's license. You know, I'm living in my girlfriend's parents' attic. You know what I mean? And I'm like, well, why didn't, you know, ask him, why didn't you do the things I told you to do, right? Why don't you go and study for that exam? Like I told you, why didn't you, you know, rent out this cheaper place that you don't have to live, so you don't have to live with dysfunctional people. You know why don't you do xyz and i i kind of realized then and this is this is what i realized i realized he wasn't listening anymore it was going over his head all of my advice was kind of like yeah you don't know what you're talking about i know better than you
[19:41] That's the vanity, right?
[19:43] Right, exactly right. And that really struck me that for the last five years of our relationship, his vanity overtook any advice, any conversation, basically anything. He would like to poke fun at the fact that I have never been to a football game. And he used to go to a bunch of them, like an NFL football game. I still haven't been to a football game. a decade after that
[20:08] two and a half hours of play time five minutes of play thank you, but...
[20:12] right right and i'm like well dude you gotta you gotta level up you know we're in our back then we're we're in our mid-20s or early 20s you gotta you do things make choices that you know have you do better in life and it was almost like a like an insult to him it's like do better in life you know i i'm doing very well thank you very much
[20:32] Okay so so let me so so you had your i guess fairly explicit criticism of him what were his criticisms of you because i think it's mutual.
[20:42] So yeah i mean his criticisms he he he once told me that i i'm selling out right because because i work too much
[20:49] right
[20:50] i'm i'm...
[20:51] working for the man! wage slave! cuck!
[20:54] Actually no you reminded me of something so so i remember his biggest criticism of me was i was i was going to college full-time. I was taking 18 credits and I managed to get my schedule to be Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then I would work every other day, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I would work at a big box retailer for electronics,
[21:16] let's say, fixing computers, selling computers, et cetera.
[21:20] And I would work like 45 to 50 hours a week and I have my full-time college. And so I would only have time to hang out like after I work. And I was always exhausted. that I fell asleep on his couch a number of times, by mistake, just, you know, tired, right? And he would say, man, you're just, you're, you're not living your life to your fullest. You're not enjoying your life. You got to enjoy your life. Play all these video games that I play, you know, you know, he also made fun of the fact that I, I, I have never, I've never enjoyed and I don't watch pornography. He was a big pornography enjoyer.
[21:51] I never understood the, I never understood the appeal, but I didn't have a laptop until I was in college. So maybe that's, maybe I missed out on that, but he was just, he would criticize the fact that I would work too hard and that I'm not enjoying my life constantly to the point of like, man, you're just like a loser. You're a loser for not enjoying your life. You're just working yourself. Like it's terrible. And then that was in the last conversation we had that kind of flared up again. He's like, well, when are you going to have time to just hang out and go to a football game? And I'm like, ah, not for a while. In fact, in the last decade that I haven't spoken to him since, I still haven't had time to go to a football game, and I don't think I will.
[22:36] Yes. I mean, anytime I think about, gee, I could have done more with X, Y, or Z slice of time. I'm like, yeah, but at least I never watched sports. So I do sports. I don't watch sports. Oh, that's interesting. And what's the last that you know of him?
[22:55] I kind of just I couldn't watch I didn't know this at the time but after listening to a few there's something you said I don't know like a year ago in one of your streams that you really can't I don't want to watch a train wreck in slow motion I don't want to stand by and watch his life deteriorate into something unrecognizable something I don't understand I mean I would understand I just don't want to see it and so I just stopped you know I I don't know, probably a decade ago. I never really was big on Facebook. I could look him up. I just don't. I choose not to. Because, and I think it's because, and you're making me think about this, I think it's because what could have been, he's not a dumb person. He's fairly intelligent. And if he just did 10% more work, 10% more application of his intelligence, he would he would have a much better life and when I left him I say I left him but the last conversation I had I just kind of said well I guess he's in the rear view now and maybe one day I'll catch up with him and I just never have and I don't think I will and it's really because I can kind of predict I've gotten good at predicting kind of where people's lives are going to go again he was living in an attic of this girlfriend he had he got married to that I had she was very overweight, not the best person.
[24:24] She hated me. She was very overweight, is that right?
[24:26] She was, yes.
[24:27] Okay.
[24:29] And she hated me because I was his friend and she wanted to keep me away from him and I advised him not to do any, not to be with her, but, you know, he just basically stopped following my advice because I sold out. I'm a sellout. And so I just, I know he's not doing well, right? I know he's not successful he doesn't have kids and i do know that through other friends that have told me oh he has no kids he's still living with her parents i don't think i think they've graduated to living in the basement now instead of the attic you know they're in there yeah yeah they're almost 40 they're almost 40 years old it's ridiculous and so i just when you when you brought up this topic this brought a lot of these memories back and i'm like holy wow i mean he's the closest friend of mine but there's a lot of like probably five or six others that have the same trajectory and my friendship where I made friends with them in middle school and high school just because they were near me, I guess. And we just, hey, I want to do something with my life. I have an opportunity to do something. I'm here in this world, maybe 80 years. Let's do something. And they were like, no, no, no, let's just enjoy it. Let's just have fun. I'm like, I can have fun and do stuff. I don't know.
[25:42] That's my thought. Well, and at a time when you're young and you have the energy and the focus to work that hard, yeah, it's not a lot of fun. It's not like you had a great deal of fun working the big box store for 40 hours a week plus having full-time college. And your alternative is what? I mean, to not work, to not – and then what, right? I mean, so this guy's got another 40 years on his planet. Maybe his obese girlfriend a little bit or a lot less. But then what, right? It's a long time to have these copy paste days because hedonism is the same deteriorating day over and over again and you know just doing what feels good doing what what you like uh in the moment no no particular discipline no sacrifice no no deferral of gratification and um you just run out of fun uh you run out of fun a lot longer sorry you run out of fun a lot quicker than you run out of life with hedonism and that's the devil's bargain right but if you if you work card when you're younger, then you can do a bit more coasting and a bit more enjoying, of the fruits of your youthful labor when you're older. I mean, I studied philosophy, economics, history, and like for decades before I became a public figure. And all of that study, which seemed to lead nowhere at the time, led to something very productive later on. And.
[27:04] And there's this war. And the war is, let's say you have discipline and he has hedonism, which sounds like the general difference. There's a war. And I don't want to have friends in my life where there's this underground war. And my philosophy has always been, if something scares you, that's probably where something good is.
[27:28] And and certainly i never wanted to let fear overcome what was necessary or positive or useful or good so when i had the opportunity like i i produced a play which was a very difficult task for me in my early 20s i wrote and produced a play in downtown toronto and had no particular experience doing it and it was a lot of hard work and a challenge very glad i did it i wouldn't particularly want to do it again even though i did make some money off it but um in in the business world in particular you know i didn't know anything about management really i didn't know anything about uh you know how to schmooze or how to present at conferences and i was but i was just like i would not want uh fear to stop me from doing something that was positive and and good and other people they do and they they call this fear by a bunch of different names, and hedonism means that you take the easy path and fear is the tough path and that's just why hedonism leads to this sort of slow spiral of repetition and decay is that you're just not doing things that you need to do in order to succeed all success requires sacrifice it's the old argument from what was it of their own like if it was easy everyone would do it and it's not easy and that that war between.
[28:45] Pleasure and sacrifice. He's saying, you sacrificing makes you a loser. And you say to him, you not sacrificing makes you a loser. And that's a negative sum game. One of you has to be a loser. And I don't want to be in those relationships because there's just going to be sabotage. Now, there's not going to be sabotage from you to him because you're achieving things, but he's going to undermine your success and try and plant seeds in your mind. It's like, well, I predict that you're not going to be happy if you pursue a life of hard work and discipline. And if you're not unhappy, I'll make you unhappy by sabotaging you or talking down or, you know, whatever it is, right? And I just, I just, I can't, you know, you simply cannot do high wire acts with
[29:32] saboteurs, like you'll just crash and there's no net in particular in life for high achievers.
[29:36] So I think that subterranean war is something that I just did not want to participate in.
[29:42] I mean he always tried to get me to quit the jobs that i had he always said why don't you just quit that job you don't need that job you already got you saved up so i bought a i bought a old honda prelude that i that was my only car for 12 years for 11 years um so i already had the car that i wanted and you know i was like he's just like you don't need that job anymore just you know go to college graduate late it doesn't matter you got plenty of time you always try to convince me like man yeah yeah exactly and he wasn't a weed enjoyer or any of that thank goodness but even so I mean One last thing on this I just remembered is that I remember when I first met him, I was in middle school, and I used to go to his house because my parents, for various reasons, we kind of grew up poor. We were immigrants to this country, and so we were working our way up. And so I went to his house and, you know, they've been, they've, their family has been here for generations. So they have, they had a fridge full of, you know, soda and juice and drinks and cold, cold water. What is this? You know what I mean? You have a fridge with cold water. What's that? And, you know, actual snacks and potato chips. And yeah, you want to order a pizza? I'm like, order a pizza. What is that?
[31:00] You get, you get whatever scraps you get and that's it. So anyway. So I was like, well, okay, cool. This guy, you know, this family is like rich, right? Compared to what I had. And then the progression from there was just complete deterioration. Now they're, you know, his parents are much older and doing, they were doing terribly. They were living off welfare and it just completely downhill from there. Like the contrast cannot be any more insane i mean my i built my parents a home on my property a brand new house and and their his parents are living off welfare now and i'm like how could you squander your life this way how can you do that to your life your your your your people your lineage it doesn't make sense to me
[31:45] well But you've got make that trek across the desert that i talk about in my book on truth right you got to make that so if you're around a bunch of people who are losers and failures.
[31:59] You've got to cross that desert. And you don't just step out of one world and into another, right? There's a whole, like going from the depths to the heights is like the bends with scuba diving, right? You've got to acclimatize. You've got to be in that null zone, right? So down at the bottom is the cool stuff, the coral and the fish and all of that. And then as you're going up, you're rising like your bubbles, rising to not get at the bends, there's just nothingness, right? You're just hanging in water. Then you get to the surface and there's all these other things you get on the boat and go to town and go to dinner and go to a disco or something like that. But there's this hanging in the middle stuff between the interesting stuff at the bottom and the life at the top. There's just this decompression, this acclimatization to make sure the nitrogen bubbles don't form in your joint to overflex the metaphor or the analogy. But you've got to cross that distance. And it's brutal. It's brutal to cross that distance. It is brutal. You feel alone. You feel like you're going crazy. We are not designed to change tribes because that's not what happened throughout most human history. Slaves did not become masters. Masters did not usually become slaves. And so crossing the classes, crossing the world of the failures to the world of the successful is very tough. It's very tough. and this is successful, you know, in England, of course, it's the old money and this happens in America too, but it's really pronounced in England. It's the old money versus the nouveau riche.
[33:29] And the nouveau riche are, you know, class and uncultured because they come from poverty, but they made a lot of money, but they still have their sort of trash, trailer park mentality, according to sort of the more refined and wealthy and multi-generational wealth and so on. So if you leave the poor because you've made money or become successful in some other way, then they don't want you around because you're too successful.
[33:51] But those who have been successful for generations, you don't have much in common with either.
[33:56] So, you know, it's tough. It's tough to break these sort of thermoclines of class stuff. And there is a lot of they'll try and pull you down. You'll try and pull them up. It's almost impossible to pull them up because they lie to themselves. And you can't help people who lie to themselves, right? You simply cannot help them. Because if he were to say, if your friend were to say, Yeah, you know, my girlfriend is obese. I'm living in an attic. I'm addicted to whatever this, I think it was pornography or something like that that you were talking about.
[34:27] If he were to say, I feel bad that I'm not putting my obvious intelligence to good use, maybe you can help him. But if he's like, no, man, you're the loser for working too hard. I'm having a fun life that's great. And I'm wise for not falling prey to this mantra of workaholism. Because when he lies to himself, then he's not admitting that there's a problem. And if people don't admit that they have a problem, they're like Superman's chess and bullets is not immune. It's not more immune to criticism than people who lie to themselves. People who lie to themselves are absolutely beyond external correction, at least until they stop lying to themselves, which is usually too late. And it is kind of depressing. It is kind of depressing to see people who've wasted their potential and justified it and spread that lack of potential like a virus, which is why I'll always challenge people to try and improve themselves, to try and do better, to not put any kind of artificial ceiling on their abilities. It is really a sin and insult to your potential to do that. And you are popping out of some pretty depressing stuff. And, I mean, why would you want that boat anchor when you're trying to swim across a lake to a golden destination?
[35:42] I mean, my controversial take on all of this, just observing my friends and others' lives, is that in America, while I'm not saying getting rich is easy, but I think being poor in America is a choice. I think it's a choice.
[36:00] Assuming a certain floor on IQ, I think you're pretty right.
[36:04] I agree. Yeah.
[36:05] because as you know, all you have to do, finish high school, get and keep a job for a year, and don't get pregnant outside of wedlock, and you're 98% likely to get to the middle class. Now, I'm not saying everyone who does that, because you know there's a certain amount of intelligence you need to just know that those things are important but uh definitely uh most people for most people for sure uh poverty is a choice and listen and this is the thing like i don't view people's choices as problems to be fixed, i mean i certainly give advice in the world and i'm certainly happy to hear um thoughts opposing to this but, I don't view, let's say, somebody like your friend, right? He goes to his sports ball games. He, you know, bounces like a trampoline on his obese girlfriend, and that's his life. It's not a problem to be fixed. It's not a choice that I respect, but it's not a problem to be fixed. Like people who don't save for their retirement, I don't think that's a problem to be fixed. You just made a choice.
[37:02] People who don't, I just did a whole show about this insurance, right? So people who don't buy insurance, let's say they don't buy insurance and their house burns down, I don't view that as a problem to be fixed any more than I view somebody who gambles and loses $1,000. That's not a problem to be fixed. You just made your choices and here are the consequences.
[37:21] People who get pregnant outside of wedlock. I mean, this is why I'm against the welfare state. It's like, oh, my God, they're poor. This needs to be fixed. It's not. I mean, people who are involuntarily poor, people who've got severe cognitive deficiencies or, you know, really, really terrible parents and they're young or whatever. I mean, yeah, charity help people. But I don't view people's life choices as problems to be fixed. And the problem is people make bad choices often because people view their bad choices and those consequences as problems to be fixed. So if you didn't save for retirement, yeah, you're going to live pretty lean. You're going to have to work a long time. you're going to have to you know live in in a one-bedroom a studio apartment or you might have to double up with roommates and yeah you're old and you're you're broke but you chose not to work you chose not to save you chose not to whatever that's not a problem to be solved but because people are like oh woe is me i'm i'm old and i'm poor and it's like oh well we've got to give them money it's okay they just make it more old broke people like you're just i don't view people's choices
[38:21] as problems to be solved.
[38:25] I just don't want to subsidize their bad decisions. My issue with the state is that it's forcing me to subsidize people's bad decisions, and that is not a problem to be solved. They're just choices. And now, as long as they're not evil choices, like they're initiating the use of force or fraud against people.
[38:43] But your friend, if he's depressed, that's not a problem to be solved. It's like, okay, you chose the hedonism path and it turns out that you ran out of happiness long before you ran out of life which was perfectly predictable it's been talked about since the very beginning of any kind of religious thought or idea any kind of philosophical or religious wisdom says that hedonism is a bad choice.
[39:09] And it's like the people who say, well, I want a lot of sex. So they just date a lot of people. And it's like, well, no, no, because you're going to age out of physical attractiveness and so on. And so if you want a lot of sex, then you should get married to someone you love. And you'll have, you know, assuming no health problems, you'll have sex a couple of times a week at least for the rest of your life, or at least until you get too old. So if people say, well, I want a lot of sex. I'm going to date around and sleep around and so on. It's like, okay, you might get more sex for a little while. And then you're going to get no sex because you're going to be old, crusty, dusty with no pair bonding. And so it's not a problem to be solved. And this idea that people's bad choices are a problem that desperately needs to be solved.
[39:52] You choose your, you make your choices and you choose your consequences. And people who don't study and who don't get educated and who don't learn things, yeah, the life is going to be baffling and confusing. People who don't study self-knowledge who aren't honest with themselves uh who stay you know like i knew um people in when i was younger who just every time they got together they'd have to drink they'd have like you couldn't go to a cottage without a couple of cases of beer like incomprehensible and you know pointing out it's not really socializing if everyone's drunk it's not really socializing you're not really talking about anything you're not you know the particular content and what do you hear back. Well, not everything has to be so deep all the time, man, you know, uh, you know, we could just get together and have fun. You gotta loosen up and
[40:35] like all of this sort of stuff, right?
[40:37] That's okay. So then they don't have any particular quality relationships. They're not learning how to negotiate in relationships. They're just getting together and having, getting drunk and woo-wooing and thinking they're having a blast and making fun of the guy who falls asleep first. And you try and take a beer from his, oh, he wakes up to hang onto his beer. And that's so funny. And right. And okay. So then later on, you know, in their forties and fifties, they're losers. And I don't, I don't view that as a problem to be solved.
[41:05] I mean, give people good advice. If they don't take, I just don't want to be forced to pay for people's negative choices, but I don't view people because it gives too much power. It gives too much power over you. If people who make, I'm not saying this is you, but it gives too much power over people. If you say, well, these people have made really bad choices and we have to fix it. It's like, what needs to be fixed?
[41:27] Choices and consequences like if somebody um somebody smokes and then they get sick, it's not a problem to be fixed they they enjoyed the cigarettes and now they don't enjoy being sick somebody eats too much they get fat and then their joints hurt it's not a problem that needs to be solved
[41:43] well sorry
[41:44] sorry go ahead
[41:45] sorry to interrupt but
[41:47] no you should interrupt it's supposed to be a convo, sorry go ahead.
[41:49] I was i was watching the patrick bed david thing uh the where he the 20 anti-capitalist or whatever i don't know if you've seen it but uh he talks about uh so so he brings up well capitalism is great and these people come up here's like yeah but what about the single mother i'm like single mother made a choice what are you talking about what like are these people insane i haven't watched the mainstream thing in like a couple of years now so when i was watching this i'm like are they missing like the point like you can't eat for free number one and you can't like if you make a poor choice of if you're like it was all about the single mother like half these questions, have these rebuttals, we're like, oh, but the single mother needs to be protected, and the single mother needs resources and food, and how is she going to feed her kids? I'm like, have these people lost their minds? That single mother made a choice. It's all choices. And like you said, I'm tired of paying for these choices.
[42:42] I am too. And so when you mentioned that, I just remembered that little...
[42:49] There was this awful, awful incident where this Ukrainian woman was stabbed to death out of nowhere by this black guy. I think it was on a train or a bus or some form of public transit.
[43:04] And of course, oh, here's a mental health issue, mental health crisis, blah, blah, blah. And so there's all this sort of forgiveness and we can't jail our way out of these problems kind of thing. So it's all this sympathy and forgiveness to an actual murderer. And I think he was arrested like 14 times before. So it's all by design and by calculation. And, you know, I try not to be bitter. I really, I try. Mostly I succeed, but I couldn't help but notice, and this comes back to, like, people make bad, people make mistakes. So we've got to give all of this money to a woman who chose to have a child outside of wedlock, who chose to have a child with a bad guy. We've got to give all this money, support, help, sympathy, right? But when I talked about, say, the science of IQ or maybe what was going on with George Floyd wasn't straight up obvious murder, maybe it was other more complicating factors or when I talked about Ahmed Amari or I talked about, oh gosh, all the way back to George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin and so on. Right. So, I mean, I'm just doing my analysis and I certainly, you know, with the IQ stuff, I talked to like 17 world-renowned experts in the field of human intelligence. Nobody disagreed. Nobody said it was a lie or made up or whatever. Right. So it was a shoot the messenger kind of thing. So.
[44:23] I have to be de-platformed for talking about the truth or having a counter-contrary opinion. And that, of course, costs me significant chunks of my life work. It costs me massive amounts of exposure. It costs me income, all that kind of stuff, right? And there's no forgiveness.
[44:43] There's no, well, you know, but, you know, Steph was raised by a crazy single mom. You know, give him some leeway. Like, even if they thought I was completely wrong, I didn't know. He's, you know, maybe he's going through a mental health crisis, or maybe he's, you know, there was no sympathy, right? It was all just outright, you know, condemnation. And so there's, you know, people are trying to generate sympathy for this murderer, but there's no sympathy for me when I'm talking philosophically, right? So murderers must be understood and forgiven, but philosophers must be condemned and cast to the outer void and ostracized and so on. And it's the same thing with the single moms, right? So we got to, well, you know, we got to have all the sympathy for the single moms. And it's like, well, where was the sympathy for me when all I was doing was philosophizing and telling the truth and interviewing people, right? So I look at where society has the least sympathy for the least egregious situation, right? And obviously, it's not me, but it's more personal to me, so I understand it more vividly, right? So society as a whole outright condemned me with no sympathy whatsoever just for telling the truth and making recent arguments right with you know all the caveats that i did about iq like you never judge individuals i was being reasonable in all of that right so when i look at society and i say okay.
[46:07] Where do you have the least sympathy, with the least justification right and i would look at something that or other people and so So that society, they have the least sympathy with no justification. They actually – and it's not just a lack of sympathy. It's outright condemnation, reputational destruction, and all of this kind of stuff.
[46:27] I'm sorry. I need to interrupt you because I think it's actually the children. The society has the least sympathy for the children of society. I think the children have the least sympathy for the worst injustices.
[46:40] I would quite agree with that because at least when you look at what happened, it was I think it was about 10 years ago. That we saw the picture of that Turkish three-year-old kid washed up on the beach that caused the open borders stuff in Europe. And I think, as far as I understand it, there were people who actually arranged that kid to look that way. So there's a lot of knee-jerk sympathy for children and, oh, well, what about the children and when it comes to deportations? Well, you're going to separate the children. There's a lot of sentimentality about that, just not for clear thinkers and philosophers. So I'm in a Trump society and I say, okay, so you have more sympathy for a murderer than a philosopher. You have more sympathy for a single mother than a responsible family man who's doing research and talking about the truth. You have more sympathy for all of that. And therefore, I just know that the sympathy is not valid. it's just a talking point, it's sophistry. They don't actually have sympathy. They maybe have some sentimentality, but there's no rational basis for their sympathy because, I mean, anybody who's out there telling the truth about controversial things know that society has no sympathy at all for truth tellers, but endless sympathy for like murderers and people who make bad choices for who are single moms. Sorry, you were saying?
[47:51] Well, you gave me some time to think there. So I think you're onto something. I think what you're kind of saying is that sympathy is used by propagandists as a weapon because like you know i back to the children thing the reason i bring that up is because i read that you know the trump administration found like i don't know 20 or 30 000 of the kids that were lost during the biden administration and i couldn't get through the whole article because i'm like oh the rapings and the killings i'm like oh my god and the three-year-olds i'm like i have a three-year-old no way this is and
[48:20] I don't even know if they were lost or sold or trafficked or whatever right.
[48:24] Right but then when this like this this black guy kills his random russian lady or whatever she was uh oh my yeah yeah oh my god she's you know he's he had a bad childhood and this and that it's like well what where is the sympathy is it is it's because it's not real sympathy it's just well another
[48:41] Example would be the the AIDS crisis i mean you're a younger man than me so you probably went around for the AIDS crisis but the AIDS crisis sort of 80s and 90s, massive amounts of sympathy for people who, of course, some people got AIDS by accident, some people got AIDS without knowing, and so on. But by the time it was well publicized, the fact that there were still a lot of gay orgies, and you heard some of this sort of stuff with the monkeypox stuff, but these are people who were engaging in seriously risky behaviors, right? Gays was transmitted largely through gay sex and through drug use, intravenous drug use, i think and so and of course you know we can have sympathy for illness and even people who have, um done something to to or taken risky behavior that's increased the chances of them getting some illness but it's like endless sympathy and the poor victims and so on right and so uh that was the way that society looked at it and then you know you sort of fast forward to um.
[49:44] The COVID thing and the unvaccinated, but just to be roundly condemned, like no matter what, right? So if people say, have sympathy for this group, most people would just be like, okay, I'll have sympathy for this group. And then if people say, don't have sympathy for this group, right? Because you see, the unvaccinated were spreading the illness. Now, it turns out that really wasn't the case because they never tested the COVID vaccine for transmission or preventing transmission. But you see, the unvaccinated were putting other people at risk by spreading a disease, right? Now, COVID, much less dangerous than AIDS. Certain promiscuous people and the drug addicts and so on were putting other people's lives at risk by spreading an illness. But you see, you have nothing but sympathy for people who are putting other people's lives at risk by spreading an illness, a much more dangerous illness than COVID.
[50:35] You have much massive sympathy for them, But you must hate people who are, quote, spreading an illness, putting other people's lives at risk. You must hate the unvaccinated, right? So you see, none of it makes any sense, like even remotely, logically. But it's just what people are programmed to hear and what they just automatically get on board with. And of course, you can certainly make the case that the people who were vaccinated are.
[51:05] Were actually spreading the illness more because if vaccination covered up symptoms, they may not even know that they're ill, but they're still transmitting the virus, or at least the people who weren't vaccinated got sick and stayed home and so on, right? So none of this sort of sympathy stuff makes any sense at all. And in general, as you know, on the left, they generate sympathy for the people who vote for them, and they generate hatred against the people who don't vote for them, right? So this Ukrainian woman was more likely to be right-wing because Ukraine, of course, suffered under communism for many decades. So this Ukrainian woman was more likely to be conservative or anti-communist than the black man because blacks regularly vote for Democrats by a very wide margin.
[51:53] So single mothers regularly vote Democrat for a very wide margin. So it's not anything to me to do with a moral sympathy. It's just like I'm going to extend my benevolent moral protection and sympathy for those who vote for me, and I'm going to condemn those who vote against me, right? So it's nothing to do with any moral stuff. It's just in-group political brownie point preference, sympathy, and resources going to the group who vote for you. To me, I don't think it has anything to do with actual sympathy or morals or anything like that because then it would be more evenly distributed and the people on the left would have actual sympathy for people on the right or skeptics and so on, but they don't, right? So it's got nothing to do with anything moral. It's just political in-group preference and extending your protection to people.
[52:48] Your team if that makes sense
[52:50] yeah.
[52:51] no it does i mean that's you described how they use sympathy as a weapon i mean very very well so...
[52:58] yeah and and it's a threat too right so uh if you can whip up sympathy for your political friends you can whip up hatred for your political enemies right and so that the the the barely restrained mob you know it's sort of very clear, why this sort of hatred is whipped up. It's to keep people in line, right? So if you don't go with this particular, the dominant one happens to be the back, it sometimes happens on the right. But if you don't go with the dominant paradigm, we've got, you know, it's a nice little career there. A nice little career you got going there. It'd be a real shame if we unleashed the mob on it, right? And it's just a kind of shakedown.
[53:38] I think that's why it's better to just go watch football and marry an obese woman and live in an attic
[53:43] Well except that it's depressing as hell and um uh you end up with no uh no forward right yeah all right um is there anything else that you wanted to mention? it's a great topic
[53:58] no i appreciate as usual uh i just wanted to also mention you you had a banger on i think this past week or two weeks ago i listened to it was basically you reinstated the against me argument when you talked about what's going on, I think, in Ireland or England or one of those British Isles up there. And I just wanted to thank you for putting that out and reinvigorating at least...
[54:22] Yeah, I mean, if society goes totalitarian, then you lose your family anyway. So you might as well do it when you have a chance of pushing back against the totalitarian stuff. All right. Let me just see here if there's any other questions. Comments i want to make sure that um that these are not lost to time and we had a long chat there so let's see here all right having wisdom is good having no one to pass it on to sucks well again the internet means you can pass it along right all right, somebody says ooh that's really James says ooh that's really interesting I remember distinctly a flip regarding a friend when I was 16 we were friends since about 12 bonded more through exclusion than anything else and I never really thought what his criticisms of me were but I never expressed my criticisms of him either, and one of the reasons why people don't criticize each other is they don't have enough common ground in terms of communication and values for the criticism to go anywhere, One criticism easily could have been, man, you're this. Oh, this is James. Man, you're this brilliant guy, but what's with the 50-plus extra pounds? It's embarrassing. Right, right. Well, not it's embarrassing, but, you know, sort of understanding, right?
[55:45] What's more is that people like that, says someone, will manufacture some reason to place fault with you for their failures. Yeah, for sure. Speaking of stages, if I recall correctly, you are a successful chief technical officer prior to writing UPB. Yes, it was a bag full of acronyms. Do you think the successful completion of your career stage needed to precede your full-time philosophy stage? I think so. I think so. I mean, the technology just wasn't available to do podcasting when I was a CTO. But it certainly helped. You know, I have, I think, more than, I wouldn't say more than any philosopher, because I haven't obviously studied the personal lives of all of them. But I would say, certainly more than most philosophers, I have direct, vivid, real-world experience of the things that I'm talking about. And that's very unusual.
[56:40] When it comes to my criticisms of mysticism, my mother was a mystic and so on, and I have vivid, real-world experience. Corruption, vivid, real-world experience. When I talk about economics, I'm talking about it with regards to the actual small business economy, which is where the most free market stuff still actually occurs. I'm talking about leadership. I have been a leader in the business world. And when I'm talking about art, I have direct experience as an actor, a playwright, a director, a producer, even made a small movie that was a finalist in the Hollywood film contest many years ago. So I have manual labor and so on. So I have a lot of direct real world experience about the things that I'm talking about when it comes to intelligence.
[57:30] Um i ended up when i was a chief technical officer creating an intelligence test uh this is like long before google and stuff like that so i ended up creating an intelligence test which turned out to be by far the most successful way to hire people sort of back in the day so you know i have a a lot of experience with these kinds of things and i think that's really really helped and you know when you have direct real world experience people talking about stuff just doesn't matter like it just it just doesn't matter you know when when people and i i asked this to someone the other day you know the goalies theories about business i'm like have you actually run a business have you have you run a business like do you like people who are like your business is this it's exploitive it's corrupt it's like okay have you ever run a business do you know like if you're no experience why would i listen to your theories right i mean it is direct experience that counteracts propaganda right well and and the other thing too is like the people who are just like bitching about business, they just can't succeed because they resent having to have a job and they'd have no motivation and so on. All right. And I did make some money in the business world, but I also took some time off to write novels, and that was a bleed down of the savings quite considerably.
[58:58] All right. Somebody says, I missed my success stage, but thanks to the proverbial kick up the ass this show and your advice has given me, I now have a second chance to jettison that stage and find success in what I'm passionate about. It is not easy and maybe not in the way I wanted years ago, but that's the consequence of my previous choices. Nobody needs to solve problems either other than me, but I thank you for helping me find my way to a second chance. Fantastic. Fantastic. That's great to hear.
[59:24] How is that for millennials who got held back from the success stage by their fourth once in a lifetime crisis yeah it was brutal it was brutal that was brutal yeah they didn't forgive your mom for being assaulted in that way when she was eight and again i don't have any direct proof of that but i'm absolutely positive that that's what happened for a variety of other reasons, all right.
[1:00:02] Yeah, normally people who are doing shows, they have commercial breaks with which to bleed the bladder. Drain the vein. All right. No, I was muted while I was away, so whatever sounds you heard, it was not me. The old pity the Menendez brothers, they're orphans now. How about no? Okay, the Menendez brothers, according to them, and there's lots of documentaries in this, and you should probably look into this, the Menendez brothers were raped continually by the father, and there was a lot of creepy stuff going on with the mother. and so on.
[1:00:52] The caller talking about his friend reminded me of something Steph said on an X-Base about poor versus wealthy kids. Poor kids have to crawl their way to the top, whereas rich kids have unearned high status. As someone who was raised by an upper-middle-class family with parents, they never taught me much about work ethic outside of some household chores. I suffer from a lot of entitlement and the reassurance that money will always be there. I almost wish I'd been born poorer, to be honest. Yeah, for sure. Thank you for the tip. I appreciate that. I really do. All right. Have we come to the end? I think we have. Thank you very much for answering my question. You are welcome, and thank you guys so much. If you're listening to this later, freedoman.com slash donate. I do appreciate your support and gratefully, deeply, humbly appreciate it. Don't forget to check out my first chapter. I've now revised all the way up to chapter six out of 24. So it's that a quarter of the way through. So freedoman.com slash books, freedoman.com slash documentaries. so you know the drill free domain.com slash call if you would like to book a public or private call in i finally got around to automating that which is uh good good good good all right thanks everyone for a lovely lovely chat lots of love from up here i will talk to you guys soon and thanks again for your support bye.
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