Who Runs the World? Transcript

Chapters

0:00 - Welcome to the Podcast
21:52 - The Nature of God and Omniscience
36:06 - Responsibility and the Welfare State
41:29 - The Demand for Responsibility
46:02 - Conclusion and Reflections

Long Summary

In this episode, we dive deep into a plethora of topics surrounding self-ownership, societal dynamics, and personal responsibility. The conversation kicks off with a thought-provoking exchange on the notion of "mansplaining," where I articulate the idea that it serves as an excuse that obscures what I perceive as the lack of knowledge women may have in traditionally male-dominated fields like economics and politics. The concept often serves to mask the disparity in knowledge that can be observed through candid discussions and surveys on various topics. I explore the broader implications of this narrative, reflecting on how it might shield individuals from acknowledging their areas of ignorance.

Shifting gears, I address inquiries from the audience about the current state of politics. I offer a compelling critique, suggesting that what we're witnessing today isn't truly politics, but rather a battleground of propaganda and power struggles. This leads to a contemplation on whether I would ever re-enter the political sphere. My stance remains clear—I'm more invested in timeless principles than ephemeral political trends. I share anecdotes from my past engagements to underline the often violent pushback encountered when promoting ideas that challenge the status quo, suggesting that the essence of true politics lies in the brave pursuit of clarity and truth rather than simply navigating popular opinions.

The discussion further evolves into the intricacies of gender dynamics and societal roles, where I contend that the financial exploitation of men for monetary gain mirrors the sexual exploitation of women. I analyze the expectations surrounding gender roles and how the intersection of these expectations drives the various kinds of exploitation in modern relationships. Each side, I argue, has their own motivations that feed into these dynamics, often obscuring the essence of connection and mutual support that should be foundational in any partnership.

As we transition into matters of personal morality, I contend that the core of societal dysfunction lies not in the hands of elusive elites but within the individual choices people make every day. Highlighting the pervasive culture of avoidance, I challenge the narrative that blames external structures for personal failure, arguing that real empowerment comes from accepting responsibility for one’s actions. I encourage listeners to confront uncomfortable truths about themselves and their lives, positing that only through individual accountability can genuine societal change occur.

Delving deeper into philosophical realms, I discuss various attempts throughout history to logically prove the existence of God. I express skepticism regarding the success of these arguments, contending that if someone claims to have a direct line to omniscience, demonstrating this ability should be straightforward. If anyone genuinely holds such a power, the expectation should be that they can provide indisputable knowledge about things beyond common reach.

We return to the societal implications of these discussions, particularly regarding wealth distribution and the welfare system. I assert that the welfare state was not merely imposed but demanded by those yearning to feel virtuous without actually engaging in the hard work of helping others directly. This demand creates a cycle of self-deceit, wherein the privileged absolve themselves of responsibility, perpetuating a system that rewards the unearned.

The episode wraps up with a powerful call to action: stop enabling those who refuse to claim responsibility for their own lives. The core truth echoed throughout this discussion is clear: true societal change begins with each individual recognizing and embracing their own role and responsibilities. Only then can we hope to dismantle the larger structures of corruption that derive their power from our collective failures to confront our truths. I invite listeners to explore these ideas further—encouraging self-reflection and fostering a culture of accountability in their own lives.

Transcript

[0:00] Welcome to the Podcast

[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well on this magnificent Friday morning of my birthday month. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I'd really, really appreciate it. Some questions from a variety of places. You should join the community of freedomain.local.com. Really great group of people. Somebody says, I think when a woman says somebody is mansplaining that it is the same as a man calling a woman a bitch. What do you think? Yeah, so mansplaining is a term that was invented to hide the appalling ignorance of women on a wide variety of topics. Now uh women are wonderful and they know a lot about things that men don't know about but in terms of you know politics uh economics uh abstract issues and so on where women tend to be drawn to on average tons of exceptions but women tend to be drawn more to uh interpersonal uh feelings and and relationship-based things and so on and that's great i mean it's a beautiful aspect of women but the reason that mansplaining was uh invented as a term was so.

[1:07] Women's ignorance on a variety of topics is is hidden from men and uh, it's a way of making sure that men don't sort of identify that uh clearly and so on right so i mean and you can just you don't have to believe me you can just do this experiment as a whole in your your life ask men and women a variety of political and economic and other abstract questions and see how they do and you know on average men will do slightly better according to the data men will do actually considerably better in some areas so women were you given the vote right and and that's great and then of course women were exempted for the draft which is not the kind of equality they're looking for and one of the i mean i made this tweet years and years ago which which was basically so women, you know, you're welcome to the vote. Do you mind actually studying up on economics and politics and abstract moral issues and law and constitution so you can vote a little more with a little bit more of an informed perspective? And the women are like, no, no, just the vote is fine, thanks, as a whole, right? And it's funny, you know, to me, I grew up with women explaining masculinity to me all the time, you know, toxic masculinity, male chauvinist pigs, patriarchy and so on. So I grew up with endless hordes of tsunami female perspectives telling me all about what masculinity was.

[2:33] Well, of course, not being men, for the most part. So it's a little hard for me to say mansplaining is bad when fansplaining was 80% of my entire childhood. All right. Do you figure you'll ever return to politics? I really miss your takes on many issues. I often wonder, what would Molyneux have to say about this? Anyways, I've been a fan since 2011 and have supported Arvin on since. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I've lent you books to coworkers, et cetera, and they've mostly given good reviews. Sometimes they make comments to the effect of, ah, so now we understand why you think the way you do. LOL. That's funny. I appreciate that. I don't imagine that's going to be the case. To me, sort of my personal perspective and opinion, maybe more than an opinion, but there's no politics anymore. There is propaganda and then there is power.

[3:25] Right? So there's repeated lies, half-brainwashing, and violence. That is sort of in the realm of politics. I mean, I got this when I started talking about more contentious, I guess, controversial issues. In other words, issues that interfere with people's pursuit of power. And, you know, the bomb threats and death threats and attacks upon the audiences. And, you know, when I was giving a, you know, pretty mild speaking tour over in Australia, I mean, the buses that we had to, we had to bus people out, the buses were attacked, they tried to tip over the buses, they threw giant batteries at the bus windows and so on, because I wanted to talk about things that, I don't know, some people didn't quite like. So that's not a very free speech scenario right and it wasn't like the media got mad at it and wasn't like the police uh did in my view quite as much as they could have so there's not really politics uh anymore there is propaganda and power and and coercion so.

[4:37] It's kind of like if uh this is an extreme example but just sort of hammer the point on So it's kind of like if a guy kidnaps a woman, locks her in his basement for a year, and she finally escapes. And then people say, hey, do you think you'll ever be returning to that relationship? It's like, that really wasn't a relationship. It's like, I'm about to enter Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. There's quite a lot of sounds up there. Usually it's a case that some kind of hawk is going for the eggs of smaller birds who gang together to defend. Somebody says, my wife will be delivering our third child by the end of the month, so we'll have three under three. Just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. Former men going their own way CEO, former MGTOW CEO. Well, I think that's absolutely wonderful. I think that's beautiful, and congratulations. And...

[5:32] I bless the house as best I can, and well done. I'm so glad you found love and fatherhood and marriage and a wonderful woman. I think that's just great. All right. One, how to fix women. Two, how to fix men. I mean, you can get all kinds of complicated, and Lord knows I've been one too over the course of my career as a public intellectual, but I don't care what the problem is. Is the solution is less violence and more freedom, right? Whatever the problem is. Oh, women are this, men are that. Okay, but the solution is to have less violence in the initiation of the use of force and more freedom. Freedom cures almost everything. Almost everything. It is a magic wand. It is the healing hand of libertarian Jesus. So how do you fix women? Well, I mean, women have been corrupted by state power, and women can use the power of the state to extract resources from the serf class of taxpaying men, right? Women generally pay about twice into the tax system. Sorry, women take out about twice from the tax system as they pay in. For men, they pay in about twice as the tax system what they take out. So it's a massive transfer of wealth through the power of politics from men to women. This has corrupted women. This has alienated men. and what's the solution?

[7:01] I mean, the solution to slavery is freedom.

[7:09] There's really nothing more or less to it than that. All right. Have you heard anything about voices in the head being related to too much booze? I have not, in particular, heard about that. But I will say that voices in the head tend to be, and I'm no psychiatrist, it's just sort of my personal opinion, voices in the head to me are, you know, like you see sometimes these old dinosaur footprints, you know, from hundreds of millions of years ago on some places, Alberta Flats, of these dinosaur footprints. And to me, voices in the head are scar tissue from massive imprinting, soul-carving excesses of verbal abuse.

[8:00] Voices in the head are like dinosaur footprints. From long ago an impression that got into the mind and and hardened right i mean i've made i make the case in my book which you should absolutely check out and share it's free peaceful parenting you can get it at peaceful parenting.com that a verbal abuse is a violation verbal verbal abuse against children is a violation of the non-aggression principle because they are children are trapped and a verbal abuse when your brain is forming and And you're trapped, and the verbal abuse is from somebody five times your size with all the power in the universe over you. It changes who you are. If you scream into someone's ears and you damage their hearing, even though you haven't touched them, the sound from your mouth has damaged them physically. And you can sue them or charge them with assault.

[8:54] And a verbal abuse against children damages foundationally who they are, and you either end up sinking into the definitions and say, well, I guess I am stupid and selfish and whatever it is, right? You sink into that, or you end up rebelling against it, but you can't have a neutral response to it. And so I think voices in the head are animated ghosts of prior verbal abuse that you're still wrestling with, for which I have massive and deep sympathy. I'm a big fan of talk therapy for these kinds of things. What do you think of philosophy?

[9:29] Wait, that's not it. What do you think of philosophy or philosophers who attempt to break from previous generations or traditions for one reason or another? As an example, the Enlightenment-era philosophers from the Scholastics. Scholastic philosophers were medieval philosophers who tried to bring Aristotelian reason to all questions of faith. So, one example from scholastic philosophy would be, did Adam have a belly button, right? Because Adam was not born, Adam was created in the image of God, and human beings have belly buttons, also known as your first mouth. So, human beings have belly buttons, God obviously doesn't have a belly button, Adam was created in the image of God, Therefore, it would seem that Adam did not have a belly button. We are created in the image of Adam, so where did the belly button come from? And you would bring Aristotelian or quasi-scientific, I mean, by the time Bacon came along, scholasticism was largely in the rear view, but you would bring Aristotelian reason to bear on questions of theology and how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and so on.

[10:37] Can God, who's all-powerful, create an object so heavy that he cannot lift it? If he can't create an object so heavy he cannot lift it he's not all powerful if he can create an object so heavy he can't lift it he's not all powerful because then he can't lift something and the enlightenment philosophers got a little exhausted with that and really felt like the use of Aristotelian reason regarding questions of theology was a round peg versus a square hole it is the wrong tool for the wrong job there is of course a great yearning in people of faith to find rational answers to their faith and I completely understand that I sympathize with that for sure and and they will say well we want to bring reason to our faith but you only have faith in reason you only believe in reason as the result of faith and the conflict between faith and reason is old and deep and powerful and in general what happens is people try to apply rational principles to non-rational disciplines. They make a certain amount of headway, and then they run into endless tangles. They continue to try to push on, because it's worth having willpower on a difficult subject. It's why it took me more than 20 years to come up with a theory that proved secular ethics. So it's okay to keep pushing in a challenge.

[11:56] So rational principles are applied to non-rational disciplines.

[12:01] Progress is made, insurmountable obstacles arise, and then what happens is some people keep pushing and other people bail out in a kind of intellectual horror, like this is a hole with no bottom, this is a nightmare from which we cannot awaken. And the turning of philosophy from the chasing of irrationality to the definitions of, impossibility to actual practical solutions in the real world is very, very important. I mean, this is one of the reasons why, I mean, from the very beginning of the show, I've asked people, and you can hit me up at freedomain.com forward slash call, freedomain.com forward slash call. Let's talk philosophy. How can it help your life? How can Can it make your life better? How can it improve your relationships with those you love? How can it help you find people to love? How can it help you live a more moral life with greater integrity and happiness and joy? All of these things are very important. Philosophy is not for thought. It is not for abstractions. It is not for irrational disciplines. Philosophy is for life. If dieticians said the most important thing to do is figure out how Klingons or Vulcans can best eat. That would be a made-up discipline pursuing non-real things.

[13:21] Nutrition is for improving the quality of your life through diet. Just as exercise is the improving of your health through movement.

[13:32] Philosophy is for the improvement of your life through practical application of abstract principles.

[13:39] So in general, there's a seesaw, right? There's a seesaw. So one of the things that people in power do is they try to lure clear thinkers to pursuing endless and impossible mental tasks, and that way they're not focusing on the powers that be. So that there is a constant challenge because very, very intelligent people are born all the time, and very, very intelligent people can undo the myths that support the power structures of the world, and they can do it actually fairly easily, and especially if they're not just good thinkers but excellent communicators and sort of funny and warm and empathetic and good with analogies and so on. So there's a constant problem that intelligent people might, using the power of their language, which undo the myths that keep aloft the bullies of power, right?

[14:34] Bullies in power always claim the moral good of society, and then if the moral good of society or the moral good of individuals is defined clearly and objectively, then it goes against the moral myths that support those in power. So there's a constant set of breadcrumbs that are being dropped to lead people into infinite, endless dark woods so that they don't challenge the lies of those in power, right? And so they will tell you that philosophy is all of this abstract stuff. Philosophy is wrestling with these edge problems. Philosophy is about the trolley problem and the ethics of emergencies and if you've got to save these people from a lifeboat and philosophy is just abstract and it's about the epistemology of language and all just absolute crap. It's absolute nonsensical. What is the best food for Klingons to eat, just complete nonsense. But what it does is it takes the intelligent out of...

[15:34] The actual wrestling for the soul of society through moral discussion. So they'll just say, oh, yeah, yeah, there's gold in those woods. Just go into those woods. Go into those woods, man. There's gold in those woods. And then the intelligence, and they'll pay them to do that, right? The root of academia is the elites paying the intelligent to be utterly inconsequential, and thus leading others, right? Academia is not, can I think? It's can I gain the approval of someone who has power over me?

[16:08] Academia is, in general, training people to serve authority and serve power, and subjugate themselves to the opinions of others, which is why it doesn't add much value to society. In fact, it subtracts it. So, yeah, if they can get you to believe that your intelligence should be in pursuit of the irrelevant, what was that old joke, Oscar Wilde, about the, uh, The wealthy and aristocratic Englishman hunting foxes is the unspeakable in Hot Pursuit of the Inedible. It's actually very funny. So, yeah, academia and all of this nonsense is about just getting intelligent people to go and circle jerk in the forest and think that they're changing the world. And so intelligent people start to apply their reason to practical real world solutions. And then they run, you know, smack into the blades and walls of those in power. And then they run back to the woods because it's kind of scary running into the blades and walls of those in power. And so there's this seesaw where people come out from the woods to the town and preach reason and morality and then they start to change things and then they're attacked and lied about and ostracized and slandered. And then they're like, oh, well, maybe the woods wasn't that bad after all and they go back to the woods and the powers that be keep their thing going. All right.

[17:28] Uh, have you considered coming back to the mainstream to do an interview with Keith Woods on racial identitarianism? Uh, no, uh, I don't, I don't have any particular desire or go. I'm absolutely loving what I'm doing. And the more I focus on what's going on in the world at the moment, the less relevance I have for the future. I've said this before, but I'm always sort of reminded of Mark Twain. Mark Twain wrote books that are still read. And Mark Twain also had a weekly column for decades, which nobody reads or cares about. So current events, like prominence in the present is invisibility to the future. And I have a 500 year business plan to be somebody whose thoughts are valuable in a couple 100 years or more. So no, I don't have any particular desire to go into intercurrent events or speak with people in the here and now. All right. Is using a man for money the same as using a woman for sex? Is using a man for money the same as using a woman for sex? I can see some similarities, and the reason why all of this stuff has gotten messed up is that.

[18:45] We forget that money, the man makes more money or has the capacity to create more money than he needs, right? I mean, men who are married with children will spend about 90% of their income on their wives and kids. So we have developed, you know, these big analytical brains as men. We've developed these big muscles and this is testosterone and this work ethic. And we've done all of that so that we can provide for women and children.

[19:16] And so if a woman says i want your money without providing a family children and being a wife then yes she's exploiting she's hacking into the man's desire to provide resources to a woman for the sake of building a family right so this simping is this right so in the um in the world of courtship if a woman accepts presents from you if she accepts money from you that is a sign that that she wants to pair bond with you and sleep with you and form a family with you and get married and so on. At least it's a woman who's, if you offer a gift to a woman and she says, no, that's a rejection. If you offer a gift to a woman and she says, oh, how lovely, I'll put it in prominence on my mantelpiece and look at it every day and think about you. I mean, that's a mating ritual, mating signal, right? So it's kind of a hack where, so if there's some woman online and she's asking for money and she's got a low-cut top or whatever and you send her money, your brain is confused. And your brain thinks, well, we keep sending money, and yet we don't have a wife and children. So for a man, he shows an excess of resources to show a woman that he can sustain a family and kids. And that was the deal, right?

[20:38] Using a woman for sex, a sex, sexual activity is about obviously pleasure and fun and intimacy, warmth and love, and it is about a pair bonding in order to found a family where the children are best taken care of by a monogamous couple. So when people are, when women are, you know, going on dates for men with no intention of founding families, that is exploitation. If men are having sex with women that they would never consider having a family with, then they are using that, and it all goes very, very badly. All right. Throughout the Christian era, several thinkers have tried to prove or demonstrate the existence of God from logic or reason. Have you examined any of these attempts? If so, So what do you think of them? I have examined all. I've got a whole history of philosopher series, which you can get at freedomain.com slash donate, or I'll send you to feed this month if you donate anything at freedomain.com slash donate. So yes, I have looked at a lot of these events, sorry, these attempts to demonstrate the existence of God from logic or reason, but they, in general, fall short. Cool.

[21:52] The Nature of God and Omniscience

[21:52] And the reason that it falls short for me is that God is perceived to be, or God is talked about by religions, as an entity that you can talk to and an entity that you can have a conversation with, that you can pray and get guidance and feedback and wisdom and all these kinds of great and good and wonderful things. And so if god is a conversation that you can have to gain the benefits of an access to an omniscient mind i mean that's a that's a pretty it's a pretty wild thing to be able to have direct contact with an all-knowing being is like uh it's google to the google that's google Googleplex, you know, but without the lies of manipulation, really. So if you have access to omniscience, then it's very easy to prove, right? I mean, if someone comes along to you and says, I have direct access to an omniscient mind, that would be quite a claim. And proving that claim would actually be fairly easy, right? Because you would ask...

[23:09] The person, oh, what did I dream about last night? Or what is my earliest memory? Or what is the price of the stock of Apple going to be in 15 minutes? Or what are three major scientific equations that have yet to be discovered? What is the proof for the unified field theory or why do we keep funding superstring theory when there's no evidence for it 30 plus years after. I remember reading about superstring theory in my early 20s and it's like, yep, still mostly crap. And so on, right? So you would simply ask questions that the person could not have an answer to and that would be calling them out on their claim, right? And I'm open to just about every claim. I mean, make all the claims you want. Lord knows I make some claims that people find quite outlandish. I'm absolutely all keen and lovely and let's talk about these claims and you can say to me, hey, I have psychic abilities. I have direct contact with omniscience and so on. Let's do it. Let's talk about it.

[24:18] And the proof of that is fairly simple. Just give me something that you couldn't know that would be known, obviously, by definition, by the omniscient being. You know, like if you were a time traveler, you went back in time with a calculator, and you were to say to medieval mathematicians, I have a magic box that can do just about any calculation. This is a scientific calculator or something, right? I have a magic box that can do just about any calculation.

[24:45] Then, I mean, they would say, show me the box. And if you were to say, well, no, I'm not going to show you the box, but you can fire at me any question you want, right? And then they would fire these questions at you behind some screen, or you'd be in a confession booth or someplace where you couldn't be seen. So they would fire all these questions at you, you'd punch them into your calculator, and then you would return the answers right away. Now, even though they couldn't see the calculator directly.

[25:11] They would know that you had some kind of magic box because you were able to provide the answers to all of the calculation problems that they threw at you, right? So even though they couldn't prove the box directly, they could prove the effects of the box that you claimed, right? Now, if you were to go back in time and you didn't have a calculator and you were to say to the medieval mathematicians, I have a magic box that can answer any mathematical question, including those you don't have an answer to. Well, they would then fire these questions at you, and if you were unable to answer any of these questions, then would they spend a lot of time, effort, and energy trying to prove the logical existence of the box that doesn't exist according to your own claims? Well, he's come back in time. He's told me he has a magic box that can do any mathematical calculations, including some I haven't even thought of. So I peppered him with questions, I got nothing back, and now I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to find logical proof of the calculator for which there's no empirical evidence that it exists. That wouldn't really make any sense to me. Again, I'm sorry if I'm treading on toes, I'm sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but...

[26:31] If people say that they have access to omniscience, that's fairly easy to establish. And if they say, well, it doesn't work that way, then I would say, no. If you say that you pray to an all-knowing being who responds to your prayers, then you're asking God questions. Oh, well, sometimes you ask God the question and sometimes the answer is no. And it's like, so what you're saying is that you have access to omniscience. However, unfortunately, it never demonstrates any omniscience. It only tells you what you already know or gives you some sort of feeling or insight or instinct that never tells you something explicitly that you don't. So how do you know you're not just talking to yourself, to your unconscious, to whatever, right? It's a pretty big claim to say you have a direct pipeline to the all-knowing universe, right?

[27:21] I mean, you could make the same analogy, you know, just go back 50 years with, I don't know, some cell phone that had a magic pipeline to google or something or you know a real search engine and they'd say i have a little magic window that can answer just about any question you ask and then they would ask you questions you'd look them up and you'd get all that you'd give them all of these results no matter how obscure the question and and so on and it would translate things and all of that right so you'd say wow i guess he does have the magic box i don't need to prove the existence of the magic box because it has been shown by the questions and answers right so, all right uh do you believe certain elites run the west the people who in charge of the west the people who run the west the hidden people behind the curtain the uh freemasons the whatever right do you believe that there are these certain elites who run uh the west um, And the world is run by one thing and one thing only, and it is not certain elites. Sorry to bust your bubble. So...

[28:33] The world is run by people's avoidance of truth and morality and their greed for the unearned. That's all. That's all the world is run by. People's refusal to process reality, their refusal to think and to be moral, and their greed for the unearned. If people gave up their greed for the unearned and thought clearly, there wouldn't be any elites that could run anything relatively quickly. That's all. The corruption of the world is not out there. The corruption of the world is in every human heart. I say this as a guy. I have now spent 42 years speaking to the world about reason and evidence. And people use the magic wand of denial, hostility, rage, violence, fogging, evasion, ostracism, insults, slander, lies, and abuse in order to avoid the simple fucking fact that two and two make four. That's all. They accept morals in their life. They accept morals for their children. They just do not accept morals universally.

[29:47] Because once you accept morals universally, your life changes completely. It really does. And there's really no going back. You know, the mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original shape. So people are reasoned with, and I've been reasoning with people for 42 years, and people, and you saw this, you saw this, me doing the Agent Smith neo-battle on social media back in the day, on YouTube, on Instagram, on Twitter, and other places, and you saw it. How many people said, oh my gosh, you know, you're absolutely right, I've looked at this data, and so on. People would get angry at me about the reality of IQ, and I'd say, look, don't shoot the messenger. Here's 17 interviews I did with world-renowned experts in the field of IQ. How many people said, oh my gosh, I went and watched those interviews, and wow. They don't do it. They don't do it. They don't want to think, and they don't want to think because thinking interferes with their greed.

[30:52] Thinking interferes with their greed for the unearned. Thinking always does interfere with your greed for the unearned. So the boomers wanted the warfare welfare state. I mean, they wanted more the welfare state and so on. So the boomers wanted all of this, and they did not want to pay the taxes for their moral posturing about how noble and helpful and virtuous they were, right? Helping every refugee known to man. You know how there are all of these super wealthy people in Dubai, and all they do is sit and think about how they can improve the living conditions of the poor white people at the back end of the Appalachians. You know, that's all they do. All the other world, but in the West, every poor person is the responsibility of every taxpayer. There because you know what happens is that sorry about all this background noise you know what happens is that a society becomes wealthy through freedom and then the elites in power take all of those resources and then sell access to the productivity of the economy to everyone in the known universe and and so on right so people want the greed for the unearned they want to feel good about helping others but they don't want to actually go and and do the difficult and messy and challenging business of actually helping others because it's easy to help people in the the abstract, right? It's easy to help people in the abstract. Helping people in the abstract is just saying, well, you know, I support the taxes that help the poor.

[32:20] Now, I grew up in grinding poverty. I know more about the mindset of the poor than just about anybody who votes for the welfare state who's not directly poor, right? Like all of these elites, the people who are stuck in their high IQ bubble and think that they know anything about the poor.

[32:39] So people want to feel, oh, I'm really, really helping the poor, so I support this welfare state, this taxation, and so on, as opposed to actually going into where the poor people are and trying to help them directly, right? Sorry, a little too bright even for me. So when you actually go to try and help the poor, and there are exceptions, of course, right? But when you actually go to try and help the poor, you realize that a lot of times, poor people are actually kind of horrible. They are lazy. They are greedy. They are hair-trigger, violent, impulsive. They don't want to think things through. They blame everybody else. They won't take responsibility, and they get hostile to anyone who tries to give them any kind of self-ownership, right? So one of the challenges, and again, there's exceptions, of course, right? One of the challenges with actually helping people who are poor is that you say, well, you have to accept that you have some responsibility for your life, and you have to start making different decisions. In other words, they have to stop blaming everyone else for their poverty. And, of course, there are structural things, and I get all of that, but you still have to try and convince poor people that they have some responsibility for their lives and they can make better choices and things can become better for them, but they have to take some responsibility and start making better choices.

[33:58] And, you know, honestly, go try that. You know, and again, maybe there's a few people who listen, Listen, but there is a very, very large number of people who will get very aggressive and hostile and even dangerous if you try to tell them that they have some responsibility for their own life and that their poverty is to some degree the result of their own choices.

[34:24] So you go to, you know, the single moms who've got, you know, well, I have kids with these three different men, three kids with three different men, and they all left me and say, well, why did you choose these men? You have some responsibility in matter. I mean, right? I mean, they just get really, really aggressive at any sense of responsibility. Responsibility so going to actually help people is a very tricky and difficult business where it's just shoveling money at them is a way to make you feel like you're doing something which is actually making the things worse right um so the boomers wanted to feel like they were helping the poor without actually wanting to go in and help the poor i i don't have any respect for anyone one who talks about helping the poor who hasn't spent time directly among poor people trying to help them with his or her own money like i just it's like the people who say well refugees are fine but don't have any in their house it's like it's just noise right it's just noise so that that is the greed for the unearned so the quote powers that be said to the boomers um oh uh yes there There are poor people, isn't it terrible and sad, that there are poor people. They're poor because you're wealthy, give us money, we'll take care of poverty, and you don't have to worry your pretty little heads about actually going in and dealing with the poor and talking to the poor and helping the poor. Right?

[35:49] And they were like, oh, great. This gets it off my conscience. I get to feel like a good person because I'm troubled by the existence of poor people, so they say they're going to take care of the problem, and I don't even have to pay for it that much because it's mostly going to be funded through debt. So the welfare state was not imposed upon people.

[36:06] Responsibility and the Welfare State

[36:06] The welfare state was demanded by people so they could feel good about themselves without having to do the difficult and sometimes dangerous work of actually helping the poor.

[36:23] No, people want something for nothing. They want virtue without strife, effort, self-knowledge, rigor, discipline, danger. The spread of virtue, the spread of self-ownership is a very dangerous business. And I'm not even being allegorical, and I hope that I have some credibility when I say this. I think I've earned that. The spread of virtue, truth, reality, reason, evidence, facts, morality, self-ownership, responsibility, the spread of these things is a very dangerous business. because there is great profit in pretend helplessness.

[36:58] Right? This is, I think, a Warren Farrell quote that a man's weakness is his pretend strength and a woman's strength is her pretend weakness. Pretending to be a victim, is a prelude to aggression. Pretending to be a victim is a threat in general, for the most part. And I'm not talking about kids who are genuine victims. I'm talking about adults who've made bad decisions. So when somebody says, it's not my fault, they're saying, pay me, or else I'll attack you if you tell me it is my fault. Right? And that deal, the expansion of power is driven by the demand for the unearned. The expansion of power is driven by the demand for the unearned. And of course, there are people in power who will say, Oh, you made a bad decision? No problem. I'll steal money from the unborn, give it to you so you feel better. And that's a great temptation. It's a great temptation. Of course. Of course.

[38:08] But if people didn't want to escape the consequences of their own decisions through violating the rights of others, particularly the unborn, there's no greater theft than stealing from the unborn, the dead and deferred liabilities. But if people weren't greedy for the unearned, those in power would have nothing to sell us.

[38:40] If the boomers say in the 1960s had said when they were told oh there's all these poor people and it's structural and you're wealthy because they're poor and and you're terrible and they're innocent and perfect and wonderful and virtuous and there but for the grace of god go you and right if they'd have said oh yeah you know what i am concerned about the poor yeah i am concerned about the poor so let me roll up my sleeves and go and spend time with the poor and then when you you go and spend time with poor people, you find out quite quickly that the majority of them, are poor because they won't take responsibility. And because they won't take responsibility, they can't learn anything and they keep making bad decisions, right? I mean, this has been said a million times. It's pretty easy to get out of poverty, friends. Get and hold a job for at least a year, finish high school. Don't get pregnant out of wedlock. If you do that, the overwhelming odds are that you'll make it to the middle class. It's not that complicated. It's not like you have to become a neurosurgeon. You just have to do these three basic things. And if you don't do these three basic things, then you're probably going to stay poor.

[39:54] Holding the poor responsible for their own behavior creates a lot of aggression and can be dangerous. Disarming the self-pity of the poor is a very volatile business. And again, I say this with great and deep experience. And if you doubt me, that's fine, obviously. I mean, you should not take my experience, decades though it was, you should not take my experience as gospel. Of course, right? Just go find the poorest person you know, figure out what bad decisions they've made, and then hold them accountable and responsible for making those bad decisions so that they can learn and do better. Just go and do it. Go and find the most self-pitying person you know and try to hold them responsible for their own choices.

[40:44] You and I know exactly what's going to happen when you, right? There's massive torrents of verbal abuse, hostility, hatred, self-pity, reputational destruction trying to get you fired. It's tough. It's tough. And I have a lot of sympathy for people who end up in this situation, right? Who are poor and have made bad decisions. After a certain amount of bad decisions, you're walled off from good decisions because your conscience will just take you to the woodshed, right? So what runs the world is people's greed for the honor and what runs for the world is people snapping like lazy fish at every worm known to man because they pretend there's no hook there.

[41:29] The Demand for Responsibility

[41:30] People don't want to take responsibility for their lives. Hopefully we can raise a generation of people more comfortable with that, with peaceful parenting, that's the goal. People don't want to take responsibility for their own lives. And if you can't take responsibility for your own life, you have to force someone else to take responsibility for you. The woman who won't take responsibility for her irresponsible procreative choices has to force other people to pay for her children.

[42:02] It's very sad. The man who won't take responsibility for the need to earn a living through voluntary trade in the free market forces other people through theft or violence to pay for his life. If you won't take responsibility for yourself, you have to force other people to take responsibility for you, and that is the root of the dysfunction. So I don't view these major sinister elites leads as the foundational drivers of human corruption or decay. It is in the choice of every individual. And I, myself, one of the biggest quality of life improvements I've had in my life, is I do not have people in my life who do not take responsibility for their choices. I won't have it. I won't have it. I won't do it. If people say, I'm poor because I got screwed by the system. If people say, well, you know, I got fooled into taking on excessive student loans. He's like, no, no, you didn't.

[43:10] You wanted to go to college because college is a lot of fun. There's a lot of drinking. There's a lot of drugs. There's a lot of sex. There's not that much work. College is a place where silky syllables caress you out of the ownership of your own soul. And it was fun. And it got you to avoid adulthood, it got you to avoid getting a job, and it was fun, so you didn't look into it. You didn't look into what are the job opportunities that I could have coming out of an art history degree, right? I mean, you didn't look into these things. You avoided thinking, you avoided taking responsibility, and you said, ah, yes, well, I was just a kid. It's like, well, but you can't go to college until 18 or 19. So if you're saying people can't make decisions about their own lives how can they vote and make decisions about other people's lives right so it's all just uh nonsense the only people i will have in my life are people who take 100 self-ownership for everything that they do.

[44:11] Because otherwise, they'll prey on me, they'll prey on you. Everybody who, you can't remove responsibility, you can only shift it from one person to another. You can't erase it. You can't erase responsibility. And I know if people don't take responsibility, they're going to end up blaming me, manipulating me, demanding things from me. Because the self-responsibility they shared lands like a ton of bricks on my shoulders and wallet. I just don't have people in my life who don't take responsibility for themselves. 100%. 100%.

[44:42] I mean, I hope I modeled that. I haven't blamed anyone but myself and my choices for being deplatformed because I didn't want the unearned. I wanted to tell the truth. I had enough of being forced to lie as a child. I want to spend the rest of my life doing it for money. Yeah. So yeah, just try this. Try this in your life. Try holding people accountable for their choices. Try holding yourself accountable for your choices. It's a frightening, alarming, sometimes dangerous, sometimes destabilizing, but ultimately absolutely fucking glorious mindset to have. So yeah, stop blaming the elites. The supply of corruption exists because of the demand for corruption. We can't solve the supply side. We sure as hell can work on the demand side. Do not support people who don't take responsibility. Because if people won't take responsibility, don't enable them, don't provide them resources, time, attention, and money, because they're going to just have to learn by heart experience that we are all responsible for ourselves in this life. And if you don't want to take responsibility for yourself, you are bringing back a whip that cracks on the backs of the productive.

[46:02] Conclusion and Reflections

[46:03] Thank you, everyone, so much. Freedomain.com. I look forward to your support. Hope you have a wonderful day. Bye.

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