HOW TO PURGE EVIL PEOPLE Freedomain Livestream

Name: HOW TO PURGE EVIL PEOPLE Freedomain Livestream
Uploaded: 2023-12-31T22:24:11+00:00
Duration: 2 h 2 min 35 s
Channel: Stefan Molyneux

Stefan Molyneux

12/31/2023

2023 New Year's Eve Sunday Morning Livestream

When you were at the height of your social life, your family life, how many people in your life claimed to care about you?

https://freedomain.com/how-to-purge-evil-people-freedomain-livestream-transcript/

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00:00:00 Should be like undoing a bra, getting that button going on the camera, but Happy New Year everyone!

00:00:05 It is, ah, do you know, once in a lifetime, once in a lifetime.

00:00:10 The date today is 1-2-3, 1-2-3.

00:00:14 Everybody's felt that, you've felt that depth, power and complexity of this magical, vaguely sinister date, 1-2-3.

00:00:23 1-2-3.

00:00:25 Anyway, so.

00:00:27 Happy New Year, are you New Year's people?

00:00:32 Start your own tech firm to buy, build and install towers for the internet, bribe government to break monopoly.

00:00:36 Yeah, I'll get right on that.

00:00:38 Because Lord knows, the world needs another businessman, and not a moral philosopher focusing on the health and happiness of childhood.

00:00:44 That's right, that's right.

00:00:47 So, I have topics, of course, as I am wont to do.

00:00:52 But, I'm also happy to hear what you all have to say, of course.

00:00:57 And hit me with a why, are you somebody excited by New Year?

00:01:01 Do you care?

00:01:03 You know, of course, when you're a kid, your birthday is like super fun, right?

00:01:07 Then as you get older, you're like, eh, you know, just another day, just another dollar.

00:01:13 And it's slightly less exciting to have your birthdays, and are you that way inclined?

00:01:20 Do you find New Year's to be an exciting time?

00:01:24 I remember disliking New Year's.

00:01:26 Well, first of all, it's tough to find something as exciting as your imagination on New Year's, unless you're, I don't know, skydiving directly into the tip of the Dubai firework parade or something.

00:01:35 But, it's tough to find something as exciting as you see in movies.

00:01:38 And, also, I remember, oh gosh, I had a girlfriend, we had this battle a couple of New Year's, because she's like, I'm going to spend it with my parents.

00:01:50 And I'm like, what now?

00:01:52 Well, you know, they like spending New Year's with me.

00:01:56 And I'm like, ah, so, you know, well, we can do something the next day.

00:02:02 It's like, what, New Year's Day?

00:02:04 When everyone's hungover?

00:02:05 Yeah, let's get right on that.

00:02:06 But, are you a New Year's person?

00:02:08 I like it.

00:02:09 I like it as a whole.

00:02:10 I think it's a fun time for reassessment.

00:02:12 It's a fun time for planning goals and all kinds of cool stuff.

00:02:15 So, Happy New Year.

00:02:18 Happy New Year, Philip.

00:02:19 Thank you for your kind wishes.

00:02:21 Of course, this is Happy New Year.

00:02:24 On the bright side, it's not much time left for the year to get any worse than it has been.

00:02:29 Yes, but there's always next year.

00:02:32 There's always 13 hours from now.

00:02:34 So, you know, have hope.

00:02:36 Things can always get worse.

00:02:39 Inverting Howard Jones.

00:02:40 Ho-Jo.

00:02:42 Ho-Jo.

00:02:44 Beginning of January.

00:02:45 Gary says, beginning of January is always a bit depressing.

00:02:47 No more holidays and the weather here in Ohio is always cloudy due to that, due to the Great Lakes.

00:02:52 Just got to get through January and February.

00:02:55 You know that SAD thing, Seasonal Affective Disorder or Seasonal Affect Disorder?

00:02:59 Ah, you know, I can kind of get that.

00:03:03 I ain't seen the sun in three damn days.

00:03:07 Last week, week and a bit in Canada, I was just watching Viva Frey who was like, yeah, back.

00:03:11 He's a Florida guy.

00:03:12 He's a lawyer from Montreal who moved to Florida, but I think he's back for Christmas.

00:03:17 And he's like, yep, haven't seen the sun in over a week.

00:03:23 That's kind of true.

00:03:24 That's kind of true.

00:03:26 All right.

00:03:27 Let me just make sure everyone's cooking and chipping away and chatting away here.

00:03:32 Hello from Russia.

00:03:33 Hello.

00:03:34 Nice to meet you.

00:03:35 Hello back.

00:03:38 Oh man, do you ever do this?

00:03:41 You ever do this?

00:03:43 It's depressingly common.

00:03:46 Most of human productivity that the Internet has provided, and that there have been some wonderful provisions of beautiful productivity from the Internet,

00:03:55 unfortunately, almost all of it has been erased because the caps lock gets left on too often.

00:04:01 I think I'm right about that.

00:04:02 I mean, statistically, rationally, philosophically, empirically, that is just a fact.

00:04:06 The number of times I've typed out a message to someone and I look up and it's like, oh, caps was on and I don't want to scream at them all.

00:04:15 So you either boot up word copy and paste it and shift F3 to get it down to the lower case or you just type it all again.

00:04:21 And of course, the number of times that you've got the lower case beginning and then the upper case because caps lock is on.

00:04:27 I like caps lock, but I'd like to put it in a headlock and slowly choke it out because it is just one of these things that just is completely backwards.

00:04:38 Is that coffee?

00:04:39 Is that a coffee mug or a bucket?

00:04:41 This is a coffee.

00:04:43 It says, ask me.

00:04:47 And I'll ask the Internet because I'm on the Internet.

00:04:50 So it is a coffee mug, but it's decaf.

00:04:55 I went out for a brunch with my daughter, which was really nice.

00:04:59 And we talked about New Year's, what she thinks about it.

00:05:03 And we also talked about that phase in your mid teens.

00:05:06 I'm assuming she's going to hit it in her early 30s.

00:05:08 But the phase in your mid teens, do you remember this phase?

00:05:11 Your parents are kind of like gods to you when you're younger.

00:05:14 They're just all knowing, all wise, all perfect and everything.

00:05:18 And then when you get into your mid teens, you're kind of like, I guess they're human after all.

00:05:23 They have some weaknesses, some vanities, some foibles, some hiccups, some moodiness and all that kind of stuff.

00:05:28 So we were talking about that phase.

00:05:31 And I was obviously loftily instructing her in my typical patriarchal fashion that she must never, ever go through that phase.

00:05:36 Well, maybe with her mom, but never with me.

00:05:38 Never!

00:05:39 Or I threatened to make jokes to the waitress.

00:05:42 That's, I think that's a punishment that should be, if not already is, banned by the Geneva Convention, which is dead jokes to an attractive waitress.

00:05:52 Oh, oh, not good.

00:05:55 Not good.

00:05:56 So just a reminder before I get into my topic, again, happy to answer your questions.

00:06:04 Oh, let me just go back here and see if there are questions that I missed at the very beginning.

00:06:10 Oh, boy, weren't you all here earlier.

00:06:12 Okay.

00:06:13 Let's see here.

00:06:16 Yeah, a question about addiction.

00:06:18 I think that's good.

00:06:19 Right before New Year's, which makes sense.

00:06:21 To me, what else do we have?

00:06:24 Thank you, Jay Park, for your tip.

00:06:27 I appreciate that.

00:06:28 This is, of course, the last tipping day for 2023 for free domain.

00:06:32 I appreciate that.

00:06:34 Welcome back, Sleepless Cat.

00:06:36 Oh, I think I'm about to either start scatting or rapping, because scatting is the white man's rapping.

00:06:41 2024 is going to be a sturdy year.

00:06:44 Je suis aqui.

00:06:47 Good morning, Parson Molyneux.

00:06:49 Ah, yes.

00:06:51 Yes, yes, yes.

00:06:54 All right.

00:06:56 Happy New Year.

00:06:58 It's not a tech guy.

00:07:00 I don't need a tech guy.

00:07:01 I just need tech to stop faffing up.

00:07:05 Reminded that post, demotivator's website.

00:07:07 Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.

00:07:10 It's true.

00:07:11 Well, it's funny, because I actually have been a chief technical officer of a software company.

00:07:16 I've been working with computers for 45 years, and they're still hard.

00:07:26 You hate automatic autocorrect?

00:07:28 Oh, yeah.

00:07:30 Caps lock is a demon.

00:07:31 Transition to using shift only.

00:07:33 Yeah, yeah.

00:07:35 I used to think I had seasonal affective disorder throughout my 20s, but it was APS asshole proximity syndrome.

00:07:40 Yeah, very true.

00:07:41 Very, very true.

00:07:43 I disable caps locks and switch it to control.

00:07:45 Super nice.

00:07:47 Did you ever buy the bowls?

00:07:48 Yes, we did buy the bowls, and then we bought more bowls, because they weren't quite right.

00:07:55 P.Dot, thank you for what you do.

00:07:57 Have a two-week-old due to your convincing.

00:07:59 Oh, congratulations, and happy new baby year to you.

00:08:03 Wonderful, wonderful thing.

00:08:04 I'm moving in with my man tonight.

00:08:06 I've been living alone for a few years.

00:08:07 Any advice?

00:08:08 Ah, that is a very, very good question.

00:08:11 Living with men.

00:08:13 Living with men.

00:08:15 Get used to the windy gases.

00:08:18 It's like swamp water in a hurricane.

00:08:20 So, let me just get here.

00:08:24 Thank you for your tips.

00:08:25 So, yeah, if you'd like to help out the show, freedomain.com/donate.

00:08:28 I would appreciate that.

00:08:29 Are you adopting Tim Pool's fashion line?

00:08:31 Oh, geez.

00:08:33 You're right.

00:08:34 You're right.

00:08:35 Oh, but I didn't get my hair done.

00:08:37 I got my hair done by time and the sandstorm of male pattern baldness.

00:08:44 I started making dad jokes in my late 20s.

00:08:46 It must be something genetic.

00:08:47 I was worried because I still wasn't a dad now that I am.

00:08:49 I feel justified and not at all embarrassed by my dad jokes.

00:08:52 I mean, it's a very interesting phenomenon.

00:08:54 We'll get to sort of why there is such a phenomenon as dad jokes.

00:09:00 But it is a very real thing.

00:09:01 It is a very real phenomenon, not to be taken lightly, like ball lightning on the balls.

00:09:06 All right.

00:09:10 So, let me get your questions.

00:09:13 And you can, of course, tip on Rumble.

00:09:16 You can tip right here on the app on Locals.

00:09:20 I quit eating plants.

00:09:21 Now gas is no longer an issue.

00:09:23 Yeah.

00:09:24 A friend of mine tried the five bean diet many years ago, and he says, like,

00:09:26 "I just can't spend that entire time being a hurricane.

00:09:28 Like, I just can't be the center of wind for southern Ontario.

00:09:32 I just can't do it."

00:09:33 I just, like, you know, you ever try this thing where it's like you need more water than you think,

00:09:37 so you drink a lot of water, and it's like I can't spend my entire day either peeing or needing to pee.

00:09:41 I just, I think I'll just wait until I'm thirsty.

00:09:45 The amount of money that gets made from people saying, "Well, you may feel this, but it's wrong.

00:09:50 Your body may have evolved to tell you when you're thirsty, but it's wrong.

00:09:53 Your body may have evolved to tell you when it's hungry, but it's wrong."

00:09:56 And it's like, it's like the new, you know, all of your animal impulses go against God.

00:10:03 It's the new way of just saying that.

00:10:07 All right.

00:10:11 Rearrange all this furniture, but first tell them to buy some.

00:10:14 Very good.

00:10:15 Very good.

00:10:16 All right.

00:10:17 So I would get to advice for living with men, which will be shocking and horrifying,

00:10:21 if not downright appalling.

00:10:23 But let's...

00:10:28 Ah, interesting.

00:10:29 Okay.

00:10:32 Ah, interesting.

00:10:35 Sorry, Windows has this new thing where Notepad is now tabbed.

00:10:44 I used to keep them all separate, so it used to be all tabbed.

00:10:51 But no.

00:10:53 All right.

00:10:54 Close that off.

00:10:55 And so, yeah, I used to just be able to keep them all in separate windows.

00:10:58 Now they're in tabs.

00:11:03 Ah, oh, yeah, we did the IQ thing.

00:11:07 Boom.

00:11:14 All right.

00:11:15 Sorry.

00:11:16 I'm pretty sure I put this someplace useful.

00:11:18 There we go.

00:11:19 Is being an addict a mental disorder and not a choice?

00:11:22 If so, are the actions of an addict regarding theft, harm, etc.,

00:11:26 the result of the disorder and not choice as well?

00:11:29 I've recently bumped heads with two women on these questions,

00:11:31 and both were unsettled and no longer wanted to talk with me.

00:11:36 I have a really hard time agreeing.

00:11:39 The second question isn't a choice.

00:11:43 Sorry, second question.

00:11:44 Is being an addict a mental disorder and not a choice?

00:11:49 I don't know.

00:11:50 The second question isn't a choice.

00:11:53 Is being an addict a mental disorder and not a choice?

00:11:55 If so, are the actions of an addict regarding theft, harm, etc.,

00:11:58 the result of the disorder and not choice as well?

00:12:00 Yeah, I don't know what you mean by this.

00:12:02 I don't know what you mean by the second question,

00:12:04 but I will talk about addiction from, obviously, an amateur,

00:12:07 untrained philosophical perspective.

00:12:09 So, an addict can be determined,

00:12:15 whether something is a disease can be determined

00:12:18 by the billion-dollar question.

00:12:20 The billion-dollar question.

00:12:21 And this is way back in like the first six months of the podcast,

00:12:24 I think it was.

00:12:25 So, the billion-dollar question goes something like this.

00:12:28 If you have a disease, can you not have that disease for a day

00:12:32 if I give you a billion dollars?

00:12:36 So, if you have cancer and someone gives you a billion dollars,

00:12:40 you can't not have cancer for that day.

00:12:42 If you have multiple sclerosis or you have whatever, right?

00:12:47 Like if your tooth got pulled out for decay,

00:12:50 you can't get a billion dollars and have that tooth back

00:12:53 or not have multiple sclerosis and so on, right?

00:12:56 Or Tourette's, if somebody offers you a billion dollars

00:13:00 to not have those outbursts, you can't do it.

00:13:03 Or epilepsy, you just sort of get the idea, right?

00:13:05 If you get a really bad sunburn and somebody says,

00:13:07 "I'll give you a billion dollars to not have a sunburn,"

00:13:10 then if no matter what the incentive, you can't make a different choice,

00:13:18 then I think that's a disease.

00:13:21 Now, you could say, of course, when it comes to something like a mindset,

00:13:25 like ennui or depression or something like that, a billion dollars.

00:13:30 Of course, if you have depression, someone offers you a billion dollars,

00:13:32 you're probably pretty, at least a little bit happier for the day and so on.

00:13:35 But if you have, like if you're a nicotine addict, right?

00:13:42 If somebody offers you a billion dollars to not smoke for a day,

00:13:45 you cannot smoke for the day, right?

00:13:49 So it's just a matter of incentives and choice.

00:13:56 If you can choose it, whatever the incentive,

00:13:58 world peace or whatever it is, right?

00:14:02 I will introduce you to your ultimate boyfriend or girlfriend

00:14:06 if you don't smoke for the day.

00:14:08 Now, if you're an alcoholic and somebody offers you a billion dollars

00:14:11 to not drink for a day, you cannot drink for the day, right?

00:14:16 If you're a food addict and someone says, "Don't eat bad food for a day.

00:14:19 I'll give you a billion dollars," the billion dollar question,

00:14:23 and the billion dollars is just an analogy for whatever is the most

00:14:26 incentivizing thing for you, right?

00:14:29 So if someone says to you, "If I give you a billion dollars,

00:14:34 can you alter this?"

00:14:36 Well, if you can alter it, it's not a disease.

00:14:38 It's in the free will.

00:14:40 It's in the aspect of free will.

00:14:44 And that's just a really, really--you know, if somebody says,

00:14:48 "I'm a sex addict," okay, well, I'll give you a billion dollars

00:14:51 if you don't screw anyone today, just today, Samantha, right?

00:14:54 Just--that's from Sex and the City, not anyone I know.

00:14:56 But I'll give you a billion dollars if you keep your legs crossed

00:15:02 like a pair of rusty old scissors just for the day.

00:15:04 Well, a sex addict cannot sleep with someone for a day

00:15:07 if the incentive is sufficient.

00:15:12 And so, of course, I developed this in part because of the question

00:15:16 of child abuse.

00:15:17 I said, "Well, my parents had a really bad childhood,

00:15:20 and because they had a really bad childhood, they became abusers."

00:15:24 They became abusers because they had a really bad childhood.

00:15:29 Okay, well, that's to say that the bad childhood, like dominoes,

00:15:33 causes them to be abusers, which would mean, like, if, for instance,

00:15:37 you didn't get enough food as a kid and you grew up stunted,

00:15:40 like you had sort of height issues or you were short,

00:15:45 that is a very real effect, and it can't be changed.

00:15:50 Like you can't become taller and then shorter and then taller

00:15:52 and then shorter.

00:15:53 However, abusive parents can very easily not abuse you,

00:15:56 and in fact, they very constantly don't abuse you when you're out

00:15:59 in public, when you're in front of a policeman or a priest,

00:16:01 when they're at a teacher-parent conference.

00:16:03 There's all kinds of places, and you're at the mall,

00:16:05 and there's a security guard around.

00:16:08 Abusive parents spend most of their time and all of their time

00:16:13 out in public with you, not abusing you.

00:16:16 If you have some violent parent and you're "acting up"

00:16:20 or misbehaving in public, the parent says, "You wait till we get home."

00:16:24 "Ah, you wait till we get home."

00:16:26 Now, is it to say, "Well, my parents' bad childhood caused their abuse,

00:16:30 caused them to become abusers."

00:16:32 It's like, well, when they're out in public,

00:16:34 they still had their bad childhoods, didn't they?

00:16:36 When my mom was out in public, she was still born during the war.

00:16:39 It didn't sort of shift personalities or history.

00:16:41 No alternate timeline, no sliding doors nonsense.

00:16:45 So, she had the bad childhood, and yet, when we were out in public,

00:16:51 she didn't abuse me.

00:16:56 So, it can't be the bad childhood that causes the abuse,

00:17:01 because the abuse doesn't occur in public, but the bad childhood is.

00:17:06 So, the bad childhood is a constant.

00:17:09 So, it's not the bad childhood that causes the abuse.

00:17:12 It's the choice.

00:17:13 Now, you can say, "Well, because they had a bad childhood,

00:17:15 they're more likely to abuse."

00:17:18 Well, I don't know that that's necessarily true.

00:17:20 You can say, "Well, statistically, it does seem to be true

00:17:22 that bad childhoods trigger more abuse, but that's also because

00:17:27 we don't have the philosophical ethics of childhood

00:17:30 and all of this kind of stuff.

00:17:32 So, we can work."

00:17:34 "Some of these efforts do beat their kids in public."

00:17:37 That's tricky.

00:17:40 That's tricky.

00:17:42 It certainly does happen.

00:17:44 It certainly does happen, but do they beat their kids in public

00:17:48 when they will get arrested?

00:17:51 Right?

00:17:56 Do they do it when they can get arrested or when they will get arrested?

00:17:58 Nope, usually not, right?

00:18:00 So, I've never seen someone beat--I mean, I've been around the world

00:18:04 and all that--I've never seen someone beat their kids in public.

00:18:06 I've seen them yell at their kids in public, but not in church.

00:18:12 In church, I've never seen anyone yell at their kids.

00:18:14 I've seen them hiss at them.

00:18:15 I've seen them take them outside, but I've never seen--

00:18:18 So, if you have the capacity to not do it,

00:18:22 you're not dominated by the past.

00:18:24 If you have the capacity and you exercise the capacity

00:18:27 to not do something, you're not dominated by your past.

00:18:30 So, David Bowie had two different eye colors

00:18:34 because he got into a fist fight with someone when he was in his early teens,

00:18:37 and so he had two different eye colors and a haunting, nicotine-fueled,

00:18:43 skinny vampire look and a great mop top, but he couldn't change that.

00:18:49 So, his eye color, his damaged eye, was the result of something

00:18:53 that happened in the past.

00:18:54 He couldn't change it.

00:18:55 You couldn't give him a billion dollars to have the same eye color.

00:18:58 That wasn't going to happen.

00:19:00 Somebody who grows up really short because they didn't get enough food as a kid,

00:19:04 they can't intermittently become taller.

00:19:06 It's just fixed.

00:19:07 That's beyond their will.

00:19:08 You can't get them a billion dollars to become taller.

00:19:12 But if you say--because I just had this--

00:19:16 I was talking to a call-in show with a woman.

00:19:19 The family life was so bad that her sister ended up getting murdered,

00:19:23 and she was like, "Well, my parents--my parents, their bad childhoods,

00:19:27 that's not causal."

00:19:30 If you can think of one time when your parents were strained from hitting you

00:19:33 because of negative consequences to them,

00:19:35 then it was not the past that caused their problems.

00:19:40 It was not the past that caused their problems.

00:19:44 Trauma is trying to heal you, in my humble opinion.

00:19:48 Trauma is trying to heal you.

00:19:52 What trauma is doing is it is giving you negative stimuli for being traumatized

00:20:00 so that you don't re-inflict the trauma.

00:20:05 So when you're traumatized, if you've been abused as a kid,

00:20:08 you've got the angel and the devil in your ear.

00:20:10 The angel is saying, "Look, you know how bad it is.

00:20:12 The last thing you'd ever want to do that to someone else.

00:20:15 You know how bad it is.

00:20:17 The last thing you'd ever want to do is do that to someone else.

00:20:20 That's your future. That's your future children.

00:20:22 That's your conscience. That's your higher self.

00:20:24 That's your reason. That's your virtue calling you to--

00:20:28 "You know how bad it is.

00:20:30 I know how unpleasant it is to be screamed at by a parent.

00:20:34 That's why I've never raised my voice at my daughter.

00:20:36 Never have. Never called her a name. Never raised my voice."

00:20:39 Occasionally we'll get irritated with each other,

00:20:41 but we always talk it out and it actually ends up better.

00:20:44 So you've got the angel on your side saying,

00:20:46 "You were hurt, so don't hurt others.

00:20:48 You were hurt, so don't hurt others."

00:20:50 And then you've got the devil on your side,

00:20:52 which is basically your parents trying to destroy your soul

00:20:54 by having you repeat their evils.

00:20:56 Satan claims another soul.

00:20:58 If you listen to the devil, your parents saying,

00:21:01 "Well, they're wrong. Yell at them.

00:21:03 They're wrong. Hit them. Assert authority. Be good."

00:21:06 The Roman from my novel, The Future,

00:21:09 which if you haven't read, freedomain.com/books,

00:21:11 you should read it or listen to it.

00:21:13 It's fantastic. It's fantastic.

00:21:15 A great book. It's my outlast for what it's worth.

00:21:18 If you ever want to know what we're fighting for,

00:21:20 you should just listen to my novel. It's free.

00:21:22 My novel called The Future.

00:21:25 And then you can listen to the present and then the future.

00:21:28 I wrote a contemporary novel called The Present

00:21:30 and then I wrote a science fiction novel called The Future

00:21:32 because I'm all about creative names for books.

00:21:35 So if I give a coke addict, as somebody says,

00:21:42 if I give a coke addict a million dollars,

00:21:44 then they may not have an addiction problem.

00:21:46 They have a supply. It only becomes a problem for them

00:21:48 if they have no supply from the addict's POV,

00:21:51 not from reality. I don't know what that means.

00:21:53 Sorry. That's super unclear.

00:21:56 That's super unclear.

00:21:58 Let's see here.

00:22:05 My father started screaming in public a few times.

00:22:08 Again, see, you're looking for the edge cases, right?

00:22:12 You're looking for the edge cases.

00:22:14 What I said was, if there was one time

00:22:18 when they did not abuse you because the consequences

00:22:20 would be negative to them, then they had the ability

00:22:24 to not abuse you, which means that they were not

00:22:27 dominated or dictated by the past.

00:22:30 I saw someone spank their kid right in front of the store.

00:22:37 Yes. But spanking in many places remains legal

00:22:41 and is considered good behavior.

00:22:43 It's considered good parenting.

00:22:45 Dave says, "I think parading them in public

00:22:48 is more dominance on the witnesses and also an invitation

00:22:51 to get into it with another person.

00:22:52 They are feeding off creating chaos and fighting with the kid

00:22:54 and whoever dares step into it with them."

00:22:57 It's insulting to people with real illnesses

00:22:59 when alcoholics say, "I have an illness."

00:23:01 Yes, of course, of course, right?

00:23:03 But you're trying to strip mine the sympathy.

00:23:06 Like, addicts are manipulative.

00:23:08 Addicts are liars, emotional terrorists, and manipulative.

00:23:10 So if they can get you to view them as having an illness,

00:23:13 then that's bad, right?

00:23:15 Phil says, "I too have never seen any child being abused in public.

00:23:18 However, I've heard the occasional, 'You wait till we get home,'

00:23:21 which to me, in agreement with your point, Steph,

00:23:22 seems like someone who has a choice to control their temper."

00:23:24 Yeah. Right, right.

00:23:27 If you have an epileptic seizure,

00:23:33 you can't say to your epileptic seizure,

00:23:36 "Not now, let's wait till we get home."

00:23:38 Right? It just happens.

00:23:39 I don't know if you've ever had this happen once or twice in my life

00:23:41 where emotions just overwhelm me

00:23:43 and there's no chance of them not overwhelming me.

00:23:47 And you burst into tears, maybe even against your will,

00:23:49 or you have a laughing fit almost against your will,

00:23:51 or whatever it is, right?

00:23:53 But where even the emotions seem to be

00:23:56 outside of one's control as a whole.

00:24:05 So, now, I think we can also say

00:24:10 that somebody who is an addict

00:24:14 did not start off with a full-blown addiction, right?

00:24:18 Somebody who was an addict

00:24:20 did not start off with a full-blown addiction, right?

00:24:22 Take an obvious one, which is smoking.

00:24:24 So with smoking, you choose to smoke your first cigarette.

00:24:29 And then you have, I guess, a positive experience,

00:24:32 and then you choose to smoke another cigarette,

00:24:34 and then you choose to smoke another cigarette.

00:24:36 And over time, you begin to develop this kind of addiction, right?

00:24:41 Now, even if we say, "Well, once the addiction is full-blown,

00:24:46 they can't stop themselves.

00:24:48 They become so physically dependent, this, that, or the other," right?

00:24:51 And, you know, I remember this when the lockdowns were happening in Canada,

00:24:56 or at least here in Ontario.

00:24:58 When the lockdowns were happening,

00:25:00 they left the liquor stores open.

00:25:02 Like, they closed the schools, they closed libraries and malls,

00:25:05 but they left the liquor stores open.

00:25:08 And I was like, "Well, that's kind of crazy."

00:25:10 But people were telling me, "If somebody's a serious alcoholic,

00:25:13 if they don't get alcohol, they might die."

00:25:15 Like, if you don't have some sort of medical help

00:25:19 with the transitioning or something like that, right?

00:25:23 And so, alcoholics may be in a situation

00:25:30 where they could die without alcohol.

00:25:34 Apparently, this is true. I'm just going to accept it.

00:25:37 I have no expertise on alcoholism, but...

00:25:39 Now, you can say, "Well, at that point, it's kind of beyond free will

00:25:47 because they have to have alcohol like we have to have oxygen.

00:25:49 Like, without alcohol, they die."

00:25:51 And it's like, "Okay, so, yes, there are times, let's say,

00:25:53 that that's a state kind of beyond free will, right?

00:25:55 It's certainly beyond regular free will because, in a sense,

00:25:57 they have a gun to their head called alcohol deprivation

00:25:59 that will cut... They're in a state of coercion, in a sense,

00:26:02 because they'll die without the alcohol.

00:26:04 Sure, okay, but they still chose to get there, right?

00:26:08 I mean, if some guy chooses to jump off a bridge,

00:26:11 he is now no longer able to flap his wings and fly

00:26:15 or reverse gravity or stand Flintstones-like in the middle of the air

00:26:18 or bounce off a cloud.

00:26:20 He's going to fall, and he's going to smash himself up in the water.

00:26:23 So, there are things that you choose...

00:26:27 I mean, everything we choose reduces choice.

00:26:30 Everything we choose eliminates choice,

00:26:34 but that doesn't eliminate free will.

00:26:36 I'm choosing to do this live stream this morning,

00:26:39 which means I'm not doing anything else.

00:26:43 I'm not reading the audio book for peaceful parenting.

00:26:48 I'm not learning how to do cartwheels.

00:26:50 I'm not wrestling with my printer to get it to work.

00:26:54 I have a printer in the house that used to work with Windows.

00:26:57 Now it doesn't work with Windows. Can't even see it.

00:26:59 But no problem printing from a tablet.

00:27:01 So...

00:27:02 It's just funny. Oh, it's just funny.

00:27:06 Stuff is all such garbage. It didn't used to be.

00:27:08 Things used to work pretty well, but it's all such garbage these days.

00:27:11 So, yeah, you can look at someone and say,

00:27:15 "Well, they don't have any choice now."

00:27:17 Sure, but they had choice in the past.

00:27:19 And that's why free will is important, because some choices you make...

00:27:22 Well, every choice you make eliminates everything else.

00:27:25 If you go for dinner at a restaurant,

00:27:30 you are eliminating every other place in the world that you could eat from.

00:27:34 Catching pigeons with a trident in a net.

00:27:38 If you go... Like I went for brunch this morning with my daughter,

00:27:41 and that eliminated every other place that I could go,

00:27:44 every other thing that I could eat,

00:27:46 every other activity I could be engaged in.

00:27:49 So, yeah.

00:27:50 That makes sense.

00:27:52 So, yeah, if you see an addict and they're in the late stage of their addiction,

00:27:55 where you could say, you could make the case that they have no functional free will left,

00:27:58 okay.

00:27:59 So, yeah, I get that. I get that.

00:28:07 But if I don't train for a marathon, I can't run a marathon.

00:28:10 So, I mean, saying that people don't have a choice...

00:28:13 Well, yeah, I accept that.

00:28:15 I accept that. I mean, it's certainly more than possible that by the time...

00:28:20 By the time I met my mother,

00:28:23 in terms of being aware of her identity and so on...

00:28:28 Gosh, let me just... Let me do this math.

00:28:30 I'm going to think I was...

00:28:32 My earliest memories are about 10 months old, but...

00:28:36 I was probably...

00:28:38 In terms of my memories with my mother, I was probably maybe 3 years old.

00:28:43 So, sorry to do this in my head.

00:28:47 But... Oh, now I need numslock. Now I need numslock.

00:28:50 3 years old, 1969.

00:28:54 So, yeah, my mother was in her early 30s.

00:28:59 By the time I had any particular conscious awareness of her, her choices and her behavior.

00:29:04 You're going to eat till... You're waiting to eat till 4? It's New Year's!

00:29:09 Eve!

00:29:10 Oh, you're going to eat and then have half-digested stuff for dancing?

00:29:14 Yeah, it's good.

00:29:15 I'm going to a very dangerous buffet tonight.

00:29:18 A buffet! A Jimmy buffet. Anyway...

00:29:20 So, yeah, my mom was in her early 30s. Now...

00:29:23 She had been, you know, cruel or mean or abusive, whatever.

00:29:27 So, how much functional choice did she have to be a good person by the time she was in her early 30s?

00:29:33 Not much. We can even say zero.

00:29:36 But that doesn't mean that her past did it to her.

00:29:39 That doesn't mean that her past did it to her.

00:29:44 I can't give anyone the past.

00:29:47 Free-willed preacher man. Right.

00:29:52 Now, in general, and the guy to go to for this is Gabor Mate, M-A-T-E,

00:29:59 with all kinds of swirly hieroglyphic accents and circumflexes and so on.

00:30:03 But Gabor Mate, G-A-B-O-R M-A-T-E, has been on this show a couple of times.

00:30:07 In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts is the book to go to.

00:30:10 In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts is the book to go to very, very briefly.

00:30:14 People who are unhappy, who then take a drug,

00:30:18 they go from like minus 50 happiness to plus 50 happiness.

00:30:22 And they've never experienced that before.

00:30:25 So, they think that life is just kind of miserable and they're kind of sour, pessimistic, negative, or difficult,

00:30:30 or whatever it is they've abandoned, all ye hope, those who've entered into the world.

00:30:34 And then they go to either a normal or slightly elevated level of happiness,

00:30:38 and they realize the burden they've been carrying.

00:30:41 But because they're short on dopamine and they get something that adds dopamine to their system,

00:30:45 they go to a normal level of human happiness or slightly higher,

00:30:48 and then they crash back down below minus 50 to like minus 75.

00:30:52 And this is where the addiction cycles.

00:30:54 Because they've felt normal.

00:30:57 They felt normal or slightly better than normal, probably for the first time in their life,

00:31:02 and they realize the pain that they've been having,

00:31:05 and then they crash even lower.

00:31:08 Because when you get external dopamine, your body stops producing its own internal dopamine to some degree.

00:31:12 Again, this is all amateur nonsense, don't take anything I'm saying with any seriousness,

00:31:16 I can't give any medical advice, and this is just ridiculous nonsense opinions,

00:31:20 go talk to the experts, but my way of understanding it,

00:31:22 goes something like, you're unhappy, you take a drug, you get to normal or slightly above happy,

00:31:26 and then you crash below even the level of unhappiness you had before,

00:31:29 but now you really experience the unhappiness and you're desperate to get back to normalcy.

00:31:34 So you take the drug again, but instead of getting to plus 50, you get to plus 25,

00:31:38 and then you crash down to minus 100, and you start this cycle, right?

00:31:42 You start this cycle.

00:31:43 People take drugs not to feel high, but to feel normal, to cease agony,

00:31:48 like a lot of people are alcoholics because of social anxiety.

00:31:51 They don't know how to interact with people, they don't know how to be normal with people,

00:31:54 so they drink to disinhibit themselves, to remove their anxiety,

00:31:58 to remove their paranoia, to remove their uneasiness,

00:32:01 and they can't socialize without it.

00:32:03 But then when they're alone, they feel very unhappy,

00:32:06 so it's more like the drug of alcohol allows them to socialize,

00:32:10 which removes their unhappiness or distracts them, right?

00:32:13 By the way, chat is past time to have read...

00:32:20 It's past time to have read The Future, but today is a good time to start correcting that if you haven't read it.

00:32:24 Yeah, it's a great book. It's a great book.

00:32:26 Now, if somebody is unhappy, but they think that's the human nature, right?

00:32:32 So, hit me with a "why" if you've ever known a really cynical, negative person or group or people.

00:32:38 A really negative or cynical group or individual.

00:32:46 I certainly have. In fact, I wrote about this in my friend group in my teens,

00:32:51 who was pretty cynical. Very cynical.

00:32:53 And... yes, yes, yes, yes, right?

00:32:57 So, what do cynical people do?

00:32:59 The addiction is not to the thing. The addiction is to the justification, right?

00:33:03 It's very hard to grow an addiction without the justification.

00:33:08 Now, sometimes people later on are mad at their addiction, they hate their addiction,

00:33:12 so they don't justify it anymore, but then they're already addicted, right?

00:33:15 So, the way that you grow an addiction is you make it a virtue, right?

00:33:20 You make it a virtue.

00:33:21 So, people who are drunks, they're like, "Hey, man, I just like to unwind.

00:33:25 You've got to stop being so uptight. Life is there to be enjoyed. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," right?

00:33:29 The weed people are like nuts this way.

00:33:32 Like, it's a truly... it's a weird, deep, half-nature, fetishistic cult.

00:33:37 The weed people are just brutal when it comes to this kind of stuff.

00:33:41 Because the addiction is not to the substance. The addiction is to the justification.

00:33:45 If that makes sense, right?

00:33:47 So, cynical people, what they do is they say,

00:33:53 "Life is pain. Life is difficult. Life is problematic."

00:33:58 And the only people who are happy are the stupid people, right?

00:34:02 Shiny, happy people holding hands from that REM song, right?

00:34:05 The only people who are happy are the people who are programmed,

00:34:13 major media-consuming idiots.

00:34:18 To be happy is to be wrong, is to be shallow, is to be foolish,

00:34:24 is to ignore the grim depth of the human condition.

00:34:28 Now, of course, if you define happiness as foolishness,

00:34:34 if you define happiness as being an idiot,

00:34:37 then you won't pursue that which will make you happy.

00:34:46 You won't pursue that which will make you happy. Of course you won't.

00:34:49 Any more than you would pursue anything that would reduce your IQ.

00:34:57 Like, if there was some pill you could take that dropped your IQ by 20 points,

00:35:01 would you take it? Nope.

00:35:02 And so, if happiness indicates an IQ drop of more than a standard deviation, right?

00:35:07 And it's probably even higher than that,

00:35:09 because the people who are my friends in my teens were all super smart.

00:35:12 Like, they all went on to, like, really high intellect careers and all of that.

00:35:16 It's all really good. All really good.

00:35:19 So, for them, it probably would be, they would go from 130 to, like, 85.

00:35:26 We're talking, like, three standard deviations down.

00:35:29 Like, from IQ 130 to IQ 85 would be their guess as to go from

00:35:34 unhappiness to happiness.

00:35:38 They would have to just cripple and destroy their entire brains, right?

00:35:42 So, they don't want to do that, because they enjoy being smart.

00:35:48 Now, I get, so smart people can be a little bit more anxious.

00:35:51 Smart people can see, because they can see further over the horizon.

00:35:54 And worry is sort of part of the European, certainly the northern European tradition, right?

00:36:00 It's worry, because you've got to worry about the winter.

00:36:02 You've got to worry about predators. You've got to worry about, like,

00:36:05 there's things you can control. Anxiety is about the things you can control.

00:36:08 You've got to worry about germs. You've got to worry about sick people.

00:36:10 You've got to worry about the war.

00:36:12 And, but things that you can do something about.

00:36:15 You can wash your hands. You can prepare for the winter.

00:36:17 Whatever it is, right?

00:36:19 They are often also the most sarcastic and snarky people. Right. Right. Right.

00:36:23 So, that cynicism is really, really tough.

00:36:27 All the cynics in my life were bright. A sarcastic sense of humor requires intelligence.

00:36:30 Yes, that's right.

00:36:32 Somebody says, "You're right in my case about being uncomfortable around people,

00:36:35 but I never took drugs or used alcohol. I never found it easy to be around strangers.

00:36:38 Once I know people better, it gets easier somewhat." Right. Right.

00:36:41 I have a cynical streak for sure.

00:36:43 Same, team friends were very cynical. Yes. Yes. Yes.

00:36:46 Let me just go and check the comments here.

00:36:51 For a billion, Ronald says, "For a billion, I'd stop drinking for sure." Yeah. Yeah.

00:36:56 "Career or business advice for a 23-year-old Vietnamese male with disability,

00:37:00 crippled body who drops out from computer science college." Thank you, Steph.

00:37:04 I couldn't really… That's a long way from my experience and a long way from anything

00:37:09 I'd be able to particularly help you with, but I'm sure that there are services

00:37:13 that you can call to get some career advice about that kind of stuff.

00:37:19 Let's see here.

00:37:22 "It's almost impossible not to social drink in Russia on New Year's Eve."

00:37:25 Yeah, but you can nurse a drink, right? You can nurse a drink all night.

00:37:29 One of my friends was famous for that in his late teens.

00:37:32 Just nursed a drink all night. Like, he'd go to the bar and, right,

00:37:37 just buy a drink and just… We'd joke it was basically just evaporating.

00:37:48 So, let's get to your messages.

00:37:52 "I was surrounded by sarcastic people as a kid and into my 20s. We all had screwed up houses." Right.

00:37:59 "Old friend of mine used to say," says Steve, "I've got to get my head straight,"

00:38:03 by which you mean he needed to get high. Right.

00:38:06 So, the real addiction is to the justification.

00:38:11 "You just get zero alcohol beer." Yeah, which actually tastes fine.

00:38:15 Actually tastes fine. "Healthiest way to drink is to let it evaporate."

00:38:18 Yeah, it doesn't really seem that there's any good amount of drinking, right?

00:38:21 There's any sort of safe or healthy amount of drinking.

00:38:24 "Best show on the interwebs and only a few of us are getting the privilege of catching it live."

00:38:29 Yeah, well, you know, I get it. I mean, I don't listen to other people's shows live,

00:38:32 although I will occasionally listen to replays. So, that's fine.

00:38:35 "Hang around members of a dry church. That can help." Right.

00:38:39 So, it's the justification. So, cynical people justify their cynicism by saying

00:38:44 to be intelligent is to be cynical. "You can't fool me. I'm not going to… I can't buy it."

00:38:49 That was sort of a constant refrain of my friends and my teams.

00:38:51 "I just, you know, I get religion. I just can't buy it."

00:38:54 Like, it's a sales thing. Everyone who's trying to convince you of something is a con man.

00:39:00 All love is just biochemical attachment for the sake of reproducing babies.

00:39:07 It is just awful. I mean, it's awful. Without enthusiasm, I don't know why you'd…

00:39:15 Sorry, that was a little too harsh. I will keep that one.

00:39:19 "I'm addicted to Pellegrino." Mmm. Burpmeister 101.

00:39:25 So, you know you've made it when… "I'd like some water. Sparkling water."

00:39:30 Sure. "Oh, my God, I've made it." As opposed to tap water with some rusty ice cubes in it.

00:39:36 But without enthusiasm, I have no idea how anyone enjoys life.

00:39:41 Like, without enthusiasm. Or how appealing… How can anyone be appealing who is really too cynical to enjoy life?

00:39:50 To have anything to look forward to, have any enthusiasm or anything like that?

00:39:55 Oh, it's terrible. It's terrible. So, you end up with other people like that, right?

00:40:06 "The drive for water is greater than the sex drive." Not if there's a busty water nymph involved.

00:40:13 Then I think the two kind of merge together. "Water feels great when you're dehydrated."

00:40:18 Oh, yeah, of course. Dave says, "My life is so much better sober than when I used to be friends with

00:40:23 who are drunks and potheads would never, ever give it up. It's contagious to be around.

00:40:27 They're not part of my life. A big red flag on people is they can't accept I don't drink, ever."

00:40:31 "You're a water snob?" "Oh, I just… I mention fluoride and say I need to burp. That's the way it works for me."

00:40:38 So, yeah, the real addiction is the justification. And that's why people, when you take away their justifications…

00:40:47 If you take away their justifications, they get really angry at you because then it exposes the need, right?

00:40:52 The need hides under the justifications. Now, smokers, to be fair, know that they're addicted.

00:41:00 They know smoking sucks, and they rarely make justifications.

00:41:03 Although I did see an interesting graph that when England banned smoking in certain places,

00:41:06 productivity stopped increasing, which is pretty wild.

00:41:12 Nicotine is an intellect and creativity enhancer.

00:41:18 And that's one of the reasons why society is against nicotine but pro-marijuana, right?

00:41:25 Like, they'll legalize marijuana, and you see lots of pro-marijuana messages in movies, particularly like these trash comedies.

00:41:35 So, you'll see weed promoted, but nicotine denigrated.

00:41:39 Now, of course, neither is best, but at least nicotine makes you sharper and more creative.

00:41:47 And it can raise your intellect, so to speak.

00:41:51 So, I'm not recommending it, obviously, right?

00:41:54 "Is being addicted to top-tier philosophy a thing? Do we want a cure if it is?"

00:41:58 No, I don't think so. It's not.

00:42:00 Like, an addiction is something that… smokers get shit done.

00:42:04 That's true, that's true. That's true.

00:42:12 I'm sorry, I'm trying to follow a conversation, but…

00:42:15 Oh, yeah, I mean, if you want to get something done, find a smoker.

00:42:18 I mean, I hate to say it, but it's kind of true.

00:42:21 It was kind of a well-known trope in work that the smokers were like, "Oh, yeah, they'll… they're sharp, they'll get it done."

00:42:26 People are like, "Well, they take smoke breaks."

00:42:28 It's like, "Yeah, but they get five times as much done when they're not on their smoke breaks than you ever will."

00:42:32 So, it's sad but true. It's sad but true.

00:42:35 And, of course, it's not completely accidental that some great philosophy came out of the West after the discovery of tobacco, nicotine, like, from the New World and all that kind of stuff.

00:42:46 So, it's complicated, but, I mean, obviously, not recommended, but it's…

00:42:52 Of the mental stimulants you can take, caffeine will have some of the more positive effects,

00:43:00 while, of course, the negative effects are emphysema, COPD, lung cancer, death.

00:43:04 So, you know, don't do it, but, you know, there is definitely that aspect that it tends to raise intelligence and creativity, at least in the short run.

00:43:12 So, what I'm saying is that when somebody starts off unhappy, they take a drug and they feel normal, or slightly above normal, or maybe significantly above normal, and then they crash below, they have a question.

00:43:25 They have a question, and the question is, "Well, why was I unhappy? Why was I unhappy?"

00:43:31 Now, why they were unhappy is because, you know, they were traumatized as children, they're not living their virtues,

00:43:37 and, in general, the people who re-inflict their traumas on others tend to be the most unhappy of all.

00:43:42 Like, the people who re-inflict their traumas on others tend to be the most unhappy of everyone.

00:43:48 And you're unhappy because you're not living virtue, right?

00:43:55 And not only you're not living virtue, but you're spreading misery, discontent, unhappiness, cynicism.

00:44:02 You're spreading immorality or amorality.

00:44:05 And so you're unhappy.

00:44:08 Now, that's the real answer, for the most part.

00:44:10 And, of course, while I have sympathy for people who've gone through child abuse, I don't have sympathy for those who are re-inflicting their child abuse on others, right?

00:44:17 Or causing other people to be immoral or amoral, like spreading cynicism and all of this sort of stuff.

00:44:22 So, oh, I'm so sorry, I missed it. It's not really updating me on the tips.

00:44:31 Let me just make sure I get through these.

00:44:33 Thank you, Jay Park. Thank you, Matt.

00:44:35 Thank you, Existert. Thank you, C2.

00:44:42 Spark, thank you, P-Dot. I appreciate that.

00:44:45 And, of course, if you'd like to tip, it's really, really great.

00:44:49 Nicotine is not a bad drug, but tobacco is a terrible delivery system, right?

00:44:53 Don't do it, though. If you start taking nicotine, your body will reduce or stop making it endogenously.

00:44:58 Hence, you will be dependent on exogenous sources to feel normal.

00:45:01 That would be true.

00:45:03 I was thin when I was a smoker in my 20s. I ran on donuts, coffee, Marlbors and pot.

00:45:10 Yeah.

00:45:12 Oh, yeah, there's an ode to smoking in Atlas Shrugged.

00:45:15 Like, the fire of the cigarette is the fire of the man's mind.

00:45:18 Yeah, man, she really did love her nicotine.

00:45:21 And her speed for drugs.

00:45:30 Let's see here.

00:45:32 But on the flip side, it states, "If I didn't have these snarky friends as a teenager, I don't know if I would have made it out of high school in my crazy house.

00:45:38 The cynics and the sarcasm gave us all the common language and helped build friendships.

00:45:41 Or I would have been alone. We all congregated in theater.

00:45:45 Especially the technical end. We were a twisted family with a common goal and nasty attitudes."

00:45:50 So, cynicism is not that there are bad people in the world.

00:45:55 Cynicism is that, not that there are liars, but everyone lies.

00:46:01 Except the cynic.

00:46:03 Cynicism is a form of unearned virtue.

00:46:06 Because you say, "I know that everyone lies. I look down on everyone.

00:46:10 Everyone is false. Everyone is manipulative. Everyone is dishonest.

00:46:14 And I'm the only one who sees it, or maybe we're the only small circle that sees it."

00:46:18 So, it's a way of elevating yourself by looking down on others without actually having to be virtuous yourself.

00:46:23 Yeah, it sounds like the...

00:46:25 This was my...

00:46:27 One of the few comedy things I've done was significant sections of my novel, "The God of Atheists".

00:46:34 There's a boy band.

00:46:36 And they say, "We want to be a boy band, but we want to have an edge."

00:46:39 So, they call themselves "Boy Band" with those two little German dots over the O.

00:46:42 Boy Band.

00:46:44 With an umlaut.

00:46:46 I don't know, I just love that.

00:46:47 Boy Band. The umlaut is our edge.

00:46:50 They were very cynical and very funny and very bitter and very damaged.

00:46:54 So, it's a way of saying, "Well, I'm not going to be smarter.

00:46:59 I'm not going to work to be wiser. I'm just going to hang around with unwise people and consider myself superior."

00:47:06 So, rather than saying, "Why am I unhappy?"

00:47:10 What they do is they say, "Well, when I get together with these people and I smoke weed,

00:47:15 we're exploring the depths of the universe, we're opening up human consciousness, I'm being creative,

00:47:20 I'm letting go of my bourgeois restraints, and I'm dancing with the rhythm of the universe."

00:47:25 They come up with all of this phantasmagorical, hypnotic bullshit to avoid why they're unhappy,

00:47:32 which is they're unhappy because they're immoral.

00:47:37 So, if you're too positive, you're naive.

00:47:42 And if you allow bad things to happen to you, if you're too negative, you're a cynic,

00:47:45 and you won't allow good things to happen to you.

00:47:47 Yeah, I mean, obviously, cynical and naive are two extremes, and you need that Aristotelian mean.

00:47:52 But I remember, I very clearly remember, "Oh, God, this is going to sound bad."

00:48:00 But I was always the backseat guy. Oh, it was terrible. I was always the backseat guy.

00:48:04 I never had a car. I never had a car. I didn't get a car until my early 30s.

00:48:07 I never had a car, and so my friends would all--they had cars, and I was usually the last guy to be picked up whenever we were going anywhere,

00:48:17 so I'd always end up in the backseat. And if there was three of us, I'd just be the backseat guy.

00:48:21 And you know what the backseat is. You've got no control over the music.

00:48:23 All you see is people, like the side view of everyone having fun and laughing,

00:48:27 and you lean forward trying to catch the conversation, but the music's kind of loud,

00:48:30 so eventually you just give up and sit in the backseat and smile vaguely.

00:48:34 And you know, some comedians, it's like you try and make contact with other people in the backseats of cars and wave at them,

00:48:39 play little hand games, and maybe you draw on the dust or whatever it is, but you're still stuck in the backseat.

00:48:44 I was a backseat guy. And I remember my friends and I, we were at Young and Eglinton,

00:48:50 and they were trying to find a place to park, and there were these girls dressed up.

00:48:55 We don't know why. I mean, it could have been a wedding party or something like that,

00:48:59 but there was a gaggle of like 10 or 15 girls all running up the street and laughing,

00:49:04 and they looked beautiful, and the sun was out, and you know, just one of these flashes in life

00:49:09 where you just get these perfect little postcard memories of something that's really quite lovely.

00:49:14 And I loved the fact that they were laughing, they were going someplace they were very excited to be,

00:49:18 they had dressed up, their hair, they're just beautiful, and it was just a lovely little,

00:49:22 in the midst of a gritty street to see these naiads and dryads and nymphs running up in their beautiful crinoline

00:49:29 to get someplace fun. And I just thought it was kind of delightful, and my friends in the front seat

00:49:35 just immediately fell on them mentally like a bunch of barking, rapid dogs, like,

00:49:39 "Oh, I guess they're running. You better run along to get to the surgery residence.

00:49:43 You better run along to write your LSATs. You better run along to get your law degree.

00:49:47 You just run along and you get all these wonderful things, you brainiacs."

00:49:50 You know, just like, because these women were beautiful and happy, they had to be stupid.

00:49:57 They had to be stupid. Right? They had to be stupid.

00:50:01 And so there's that cynicism that if they're happy and enthusiastic about something,

00:50:06 they have to be retarded. And I was just like, you know, one of these things,

00:50:10 it just kind of, this was towards the end of my closeness to these friends,

00:50:13 because it was just like, "It's kind of toxic, man. This is not kind of, this is kind of toxic."

00:50:18 And it's terrible. I thought it was actually really nice.

00:50:23 That was really nice.

00:50:27 Smoking ruins taste buds, is that right?

00:50:33 I quit the cynicism, then the bad food, then the cigarette, and then the pot in that order.

00:50:37 Well, good for you.

00:50:40 So, the way, I think the way that people get addicted is they're unhappy,

00:50:45 not because of bad childhoods. They're unhappy because they're not dealing with their bad childhoods

00:50:50 and they're spreading their trauma. So they're doing wrong. They're doing immoral things.

00:50:55 And not evil, like they're not killing people or anything, right? Not beating people up, right?

00:50:59 But they're immoral in that they're doing things that are destructive to other people's happiness,

00:51:04 without prompting, without need, right? I mean, if you escape a kidnapper, he's unhappy, but that's just, right?

00:51:10 So they're unhappy, they're doing wrong, and so they get into smoking, they get into drugs and so on,

00:51:19 or whatever it is, or cynicism was the big one.

00:51:25 And then they reframe it as something positive, right? They reframe it as something positive.

00:51:30 It's wisdom. It's self-acceptance. It's hanging out with cool people.

00:51:35 It's not doing the mainline bourgeois thing. Like, these people always hate the suburbs.

00:51:40 Always hate the suburbs. Little boxes on the hillside. Little boxes full of ticky-tacky.

00:51:46 Right, so they just, like the weeds theme, right? They hate the suburbs. They hate the suburbs.

00:51:51 Oh, little boxes, everyone's the same. It's not true.

00:51:56 All their shitty families were all the same, but that's not the case, right?

00:52:01 They're cynical and negative and hostile and bitter, angry deep down, but they reframe that anger as wisdom,

00:52:09 and happiness is to be an idiot. And so, you find something that relieves your misery,

00:52:16 in this case it was a false superiority of cynicism, and then you justify it,

00:52:20 and then you keep doing it to the point where you can't stop doing it.

00:52:23 Like you hollow yourself out, right? Like if you start to smoke weed, and you're unhappy,

00:52:28 and then you smoke the weed, and you feel normal or slightly happy,

00:52:32 and then you miss the weed because it makes you more unhappy, you can either confront and say,

00:52:35 "Well, why am I unhappy?" And it has to do with the fact that you're probably being immoral.

00:52:38 And then you just jump into the weed, and back into the weed, but you can't say,

00:52:42 "Well, I don't want to confront myself. I'm just going to do the weed thing,

00:52:45 because that feels bad, right? That feels bad."

00:52:47 So then what you have to do is you have to justify it by saying,

00:52:50 "You know, we're just loosening up, and we're having fun, and all that kind of stuff."

00:52:57 And then eventually you hate it, and you realize what an addiction it is, but only, right?

00:53:02 As I always said, the devil will reveal everything to you when it's too late to change.

00:53:06 The devil will reveal everything to you when it's too late to change.

00:53:09 Yeah, this is a Paul Johnson thing we talked about in Intellectuals.

00:53:22 There's a line from Anna Karenina, which goes something like,

00:53:28 "Every happy family is alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

00:53:33 And Paul Johnson wrote this in his book Intellectuals, Tolstoy, right?

00:53:38 And he said, "No, this is not the case at all, really.

00:53:41 I mean, dysfunction, misery, addiction, they're all the same thing.

00:53:45 All the same. Miserable families are all miserable the same way,

00:53:48 but happy families allow for individuation and different interests and different perspectives,

00:53:52 and they're all different because they allow for the flourishing of individual personalities,

00:53:56 whereas, you know, beaten kids have that hangdog staring at the slum-shouldered, staring at the ground situation

00:54:04 where everyone just seems kind of the same."

00:54:08 "Have you ever moved to a new place and been alone and unemployed?"

00:54:11 No, I mean, I've moved to new places.

00:54:13 I mean, I moved around quite a bit when I was working out north as a gold-pannered prospector,

00:54:17 but, um, no. Or, I mean, in schools.

00:54:21 When I go to university, I went to a bunch of different schools,

00:54:23 but that's not quite the same as unemployed. That's when I was a kid.

00:54:26 "My dad stopped smoking when he narrowly missed being T-boned by a drunk running a red light.

00:54:36 He'd gone out to get smokes."

00:54:37 Yeah, because you can take that as a sign from the universe,

00:54:39 and then you can substitute mysticism for your will, which I don't think really...

00:54:43 When I think cynical, I think Bill Maher.

00:54:50 Yech. Buh.

00:54:58 Yeah, I remember reading many years ago a guy rather plaintively writing in to a doctor saying,

00:55:02 "You know, when I quit smoking, but now I gain 20 pounds, I mean, isn't it better to just smoke and be thinner?"

00:55:06 And, of course, the doctor wouldn't let him have that false dichotomy, right?

00:55:09 "Sorry, you've gotta not be fat, and you've gotta not smoke. That's just the way it is."

00:55:20 "How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been.

00:55:23 How gloriously different are the saints." Yeah.

00:55:26 "Weed makes you complacent. Complacency is being comfortable when you shouldn't be,

00:55:29 and that opens you up to a lot of danger." Yes, for sure.

00:55:35 Yeah, like people say, like, anxiety is the worst thing. It's like, no, it's not.

00:55:39 Lack of sense of danger is the worst thing.

00:55:43 "All right, I'm moving in with my man tonight. I've been living alone for a few years. Any advice?"

00:55:47 Right. Right. It's a great question.

00:55:53 It's a great question, and I really, really, really appreciate you asking it.

00:55:57 Let me just jump over to Rumble here and see if I get any...

00:56:00 "You the man! Thank you, Zomvie!" I appreciate that. I appreciate that.

00:56:04 "Happy New Year! Is this pre-recorded?" Yes! No.

00:56:08 "Reading comments live?" Yes, that's right.

00:56:11 "I get nothing done on pot." Well, that's the point, right? That's the point.

00:56:14 To drug you into avoiding any kind of personal or social improvement or change.

00:56:20 It's very tragic.

00:56:25 Somebody says, "I quit marijuana more than two and a half years ago after smoking for two years.

00:56:29 The part that makes me the most angry is the self-development I miss by making my unhappiness,

00:56:32 masking my unhappiness with weed." Yeah, for sure.

00:56:36 I mean, weed is like, I mean, addictions as a whole are kind of like this demonic,

00:56:40 red-fisted grip on your soul, and when you take away the justifications and have somebody

00:56:44 actually confront the fact that they're not in control of their life because they're an addict,

00:56:49 then they... I don't view it like... When I would post against various addictions

00:56:54 back in my sort of social media heydays, and people would get really enraged at me,

00:56:59 I don't take it personally, right? I mean, to take a sort of extreme example,

00:57:04 if demons were real and possessed people, and you are exercising the demon, the holy water,

00:57:09 and the Lord's Prayer, or whatever it is you're doing, and the demon screams all these insults at you,

00:57:14 you don't take it personally. It's just the demon doesn't want to give up control over the soul he's got, right?

00:57:18 So they're screaming, "You F this, you MF that," and all of this, "Errrgh,"

00:57:23 head spinning around and vomit spraying, James Woods style.

00:57:27 So... But you don't take it personally. It's just the demon doesn't want to give up, right?

00:57:32 The demon doesn't want to give up control. And so when you come in as the priest,

00:57:36 which takes away the justifications, which is the demon's fuel and food, the demon gets mad.

00:57:41 You know, like, if you diet, the bacteria that live on whatever food excess that you were giving,

00:57:48 they will complain and make you uncomfortable. It's like, it's not personal, they just...

00:57:52 Like if you cut out carbs, then all the bacteria that fed on the carbs gets mad and upset

00:57:56 because they don't want to die and make you uncomfortable and all of that, right?

00:57:59 You're actually just a mechanism to feed your gut bacteria for the most part, right?

00:58:06 All right, so, living with men.

00:58:12 The key to living together happily is humility.

00:58:21 Now, you live with someone, guaranteed, something they do is going to annoy you.

00:58:26 Maybe a couple of things they do are going to annoy you, right?

00:58:30 And it's very easy to then feel superior and say, "Well, this person is being annoying

00:58:35 and they did this, they did that. I don't like this, that or the other," right?

00:58:38 They just put their dishes in the sink. They don't put their dishes in the dishwasher.

00:58:42 Why is it that they throw their... Like, I'll do the laundry, but why is it that they don't put the...

00:58:47 They don't put it in the basket. They just leave it on the floor and you can just get these things,

00:58:52 you can set them up and they just chafe at you and just chafe and chafe and chafe.

00:58:58 And every single time you see it, it bothers you.

00:59:01 And maybe you'll mention it a couple of times.

00:59:05 Maybe there's some change. Maybe there isn't.

00:59:09 And then, the great trap and why relationships fail for the most part is,

00:59:17 someone does something, like your man does something that bothers you,

00:59:22 you swallow it for a bit, you remind him a couple of times, and then you take it personally.

00:59:29 Right? So let's say it is... He doesn't put the dishes in the dishwasher.

00:59:36 He leaves them in the sink, right? "It bothers me. I've got to take this."

00:59:40 Maybe he doesn't rinse it properly. He doesn't rinse things properly before he puts them in the dishwasher.

00:59:44 Like any number of frankly retarded things that people get mad about when they live together.

00:59:49 So the general pattern is, it bothers you every time, and you don't just sit there and say, "Well, he's different."

00:59:55 And the humility is saying, "I do things that annoy him too."

00:59:58 I don't mean to. I don't mean to annoy him, but I do things that...

01:00:00 Because, you know, you both have lived apart, right, for a long time.

01:00:04 For most people who get married, they've lived on their own for a couple of years at least.

01:00:07 They've developed their habits and their way of doing things.

01:00:11 And so the general pattern goes something like this.

01:00:14 He won't rinse the dishes properly before putting them in the dishwasher.

01:00:18 And I was actually wrong about this. Somebody emailed me when I said,

01:00:20 "Well, why do you need to rinse things? Because it's already a dishwasher. They come out clean,

01:00:23 and apparently there's these traps in the back, these sieves, and if you don't rinse the dishes,

01:00:27 the sieves collect bacteria, and that's bad for you."

01:00:30 And so I had a number of people email me who were experts in the field,

01:00:33 so I was wrong about that. Never tell my wife.

01:00:36 But I was wrong about that. I'll never admit it any other place but here,

01:00:38 because at least, you know, at least this is just private, private convo.

01:00:42 So he doesn't rinse the dishes, and you get annoyed,

01:00:46 and the annoyance goes up maybe a little bit each time.

01:00:51 And you don't sit there and think, "Well, um...

01:00:58 Maybe I'm doing things, and does it matter? Does it matter?

01:01:01 Is it worth a conflict over putting things in the dishwasher?"

01:01:06 Now, the reason that people get mad at these things, and I'm sure you've seen these videos

01:01:09 where some woman is complaining that some guy's electronics are laid out on a table

01:01:14 or his tools are in the garage laid out because he's in the middle, like,

01:01:18 heaven forbid you're in the middle of a do-it-yourself project

01:01:20 and your wife cleans up your tools, right?

01:01:23 But... And so the woman is complaining that the man's got some stuff lying around,

01:01:28 and then the man takes his woman by the hand, leads her up to the bathroom,

01:01:33 and shows her all of the face and hair crap that's on every square inch of the bathroom surface, right?

01:01:39 And that's just the humility, where you say, "Okay, so she's doing some things that are bothering me,

01:01:44 but I'm doing things that are bothering her, and either we can start to fight about these things,

01:01:48 or we can just let it go. Like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter."

01:01:51 Right? I mentioned this before, this is a really heartbreaking story about the woman,

01:01:56 she was married to a guy for like 50 years, and she was constantly complaining

01:01:59 that he wasn't putting his clothes in the laundry hamper, but just leaving them on the ground

01:02:03 or by the laundry hamper or something. And the guy dies, she comes back from the hospital,

01:02:07 and she sees his clothes on the ground, and she's like, "I can't tell you what I wouldn't give

01:02:11 to have this problem for the next 10 years." Like, I can't... She burst into tears.

01:02:15 Like, I can't... I'm absolutely appalled that I will never be able to put his clothes

01:02:21 in the laundry hamper again. Like, this is the worst thing. Worst thing ever, right?

01:02:24 It's just tragic, right? And then all those stupid fights about this stuff, what does it mean?

01:02:27 What does it matter? Who cares? Who cares?

01:02:31 So, that's just the beginning of the problem. So, what happens is, he won't rinse the dishes.

01:02:37 It bothers me, it bothers me, it bothers me, because of vanity, which is,

01:02:41 "Well, I'm perfect, I never do anything that bothers him. He only does things that bothers me."

01:02:46 It's a form of false superiority, right? It's a form of false, "I'm perfect, he does annoying things."

01:02:54 So, then you tell him, "Listen, I really, really need you to... Will you please just rinse the dishes

01:02:59 before you put them in the dishwasher?" Now, the man, then what's happening is,

01:03:04 you're momming him, like you're turning into a mom, and there's nothing less sexy than a woman

01:03:08 nagging and turning a man into a mom. And look, it happens the other way too, but

01:03:12 I think this is a woman talking about this. Yeah, she's talking about moving in with her guy.

01:03:16 Never mom your man. Like, do not mom, do not lecture him, do not scold him, do not

01:03:20 complain at him, do not nag him. That's mom stuff, and that's just gonna kill.

01:03:24 Like, if that doesn't kill your sex drive, you're living with a psychopath.

01:03:29 I'm just joking, right? But if you momming him doesn't kill your romance, then

01:03:34 you've got a very disturbed individual, in my opinion, on your hands, so you might not

01:03:38 want to do that, or maybe do it and find out, and get out.

01:03:42 So, then what happens is, this terrible

01:03:47 connection happens in the woman's mind. "Oh, it's brutal, and it's brutal."

01:03:52 And the terrible connection is this.

01:03:57 If he loved me,

01:04:02 he would rinse the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.

01:04:06 Ouch. Literally, the relationship,

01:04:10 the doom of the relationship is sealed when that connection happens.

01:04:14 If he loved me,

01:04:18 he would rinse the dishes. So, now,

01:04:22 it's not about the dishes, it's about,

01:04:26 does he care about me at all?

01:04:30 So, the man is feeling resentful because

01:04:34 he also is doing a bunch of things which she's not thanking him for.

01:04:38 The typical thing is that the man does a bunch of things that he's not

01:04:42 thanked for, but every little thing he does wrong, he gets nagged at. So, he's resentful.

01:04:46 And then, so he doesn't want to obey the woman because she's not praising him.

01:04:50 He doesn't want to surrender to her will because

01:04:54 she's not praising him for the things that he does that she should appreciate.

01:04:58 You know, like, usually the woman does stuff inside the house, the man does stuff outside the house.

01:05:02 So, he may be mowing the lawn, he may be

01:05:06 taking care of the driveway, he may be

01:05:10 shoveling the driveway if you live in a cold climate, and so on. And he doesn't

01:05:14 get praise or thanks for it. Of course, he may be paying all the bills, too. He doesn't get praise or thanks for any of that.

01:05:18 So, then,

01:05:22 what happens is the fate of the relationship is sealed. And it doesn't mean

01:05:26 the relationship ends, it just means that the quality of the relationship is going to collapse. Because now,

01:05:30 the stakes are way too high for any appeasement or compromise

01:05:34 or striking things off. Because now, the love test is

01:05:38 does he rinse

01:05:42 the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher? If he doesn't

01:05:46 do that, it's because he doesn't love me, he doesn't care about me, he doesn't respect

01:05:50 me, he doesn't listen to me. And you're doomed.

01:05:54 Because now, you can't give that up. Now you have to get him

01:05:58 to rinse the damn dishes. Because if he doesn't, he doesn't love you

01:06:02 and you can't love him back and the relationship is a false and fake and he doesn't care and he's only there for

01:06:06 sex and whatever nonsense is going on in your head. Now, it's like, well, if

01:06:10 if he loved me, he'd rinse the dishes. So, then you put more

01:06:14 and more pressure on him, which means that you're more and more momming him, which means he's

01:06:18 going to flip to his mid-teen self of resisting maternal authority.

01:06:22 Because the only way that you were able to marry him is because he resisted

01:06:26 the maternal authority of his mother and was able to pair bond with a woman.

01:06:30 So, the fact that he fought his mother's controlling or nagging nature

01:06:34 is why you're with him. And now you reproduce

01:06:38 the scene of his most successful and essential battle, which is resisting maternal

01:06:42 authority. You're now recreating that scene and you're attempting to impose

01:06:46 maternal authority on him and he won't do it!

01:06:50 He won't do it! And so, the fact that you're trying to control him

01:06:54 he's resisting that control, which is what men do

01:06:58 but you see him resisting your control as him not loving

01:07:02 you, so you increase your control. Anyway, you get how this works, right?

01:07:06 You get how this works. Oh, it doesn't work, right?

01:07:10 Don't do it!

01:07:14 Don't do it!

01:07:18 Let me just see if I can get

01:07:22 get your

01:07:26 comments. "I hate what we did to my brother. I can't

01:07:30 talk to him anymore because he believes it will cure cancer."

01:07:34 That's so interesting. Most dysfunctional families are very similar from those who are not. Oh, come on!

01:07:38 You probably haven't listened to all thousand plus, but I've done like a thousand plus

01:07:42 call-in shows with people over the years, more probably, and

01:07:46 the unhappy family dynamics are all the same. They're all the same.

01:07:50 "There's a lot of difference in healthy family dynamics." Yes, that's right.

01:07:54 "I was exposed

01:07:58 to marijuana at age 11 by an older sibling who's five years older. Being a neglected child

01:08:02 it made me feel normal. It's been so hard to shake, but I know I'll get there. Thanks for talking about this, guys."

01:08:06 You're welcome.

01:08:10 "Seen a video by a young lady giving good advice for men and women.

01:08:14 A woman breaks up after many years and all he gets is, 'You should have

01:08:18 known.' No, you should have told him. Letting resentment build over years is self-destructive."

01:08:22 Why should she have told him?

01:08:26 There's this funny thing. It's a bit of a female thing. A bit of a female thing.

01:08:30 Men do it too, but I think it's a bit more of a female thing. Where it's like, "I'm bothered

01:08:34 so I need to tell him." Why?

01:08:38 Why?

01:08:42 My God. Half of relationships is shutting up.

01:08:46 I mean, that's equally

01:08:50 for men or for women.

01:08:54 If you're a married man, this is all theory for me, right? If you were a married

01:08:58 man and you see

01:09:02 some really sexy woman, you're at the mall with your family,

01:09:06 you see some really sexy woman, what do you do? "Oh, well I must share this with my

01:09:10 wife. Wow, she's really sexy."

01:09:14 No.

01:09:18 No, you don't do that.

01:09:22 Any more than you want your wife to go, "Oh, that guy's super hot. You know the guy with the abs that you don't have?

01:09:26 He's super hot." You don't want that. Half of relationships is

01:09:30 keeping you canceled. Nothing wrong. You don't need to share

01:09:34 everything. So, if your husband is doing

01:09:38 something that bothers you, you don't have to say it.

01:09:42 You can always just take the radical step of working to not be bothered,

01:09:46 right? And the way that you work to not be bothered is you

01:09:50 have the humility of knowing that you're annoying too. Everyone's annoying from time

01:09:54 to time. Yeah, I don't recommend cohabiting before

01:09:58 marriage either, but it sounds like this one's a done deal.

01:10:02 It says, "So many thanks, Steph. This relationship has happened

01:10:06 because of your advice in March. I need men every second of the day. Humility is great advice.

01:10:10 Bless you." Well, thank you, and I hope it works out really beautifully for you.

01:10:14 Uh...

01:10:18 "Is it normal for women to confuse preferences with commands?

01:10:22 Like if a man says, 'I prefer bronze over brunettes,' women act like they've heard, 'Dye your hair

01:10:26 blonde immediately.' That's an order. And fight against the command they have

01:10:30 imagined." Well,

01:10:34 if a man prefers blonds over brunettes

01:10:38 and his wife is a brunette, she should never know that fact.

01:10:42 She should not know that fact.

01:10:46 Right?

01:10:50 Because

01:10:54 that's a shallow physical preference

01:10:58 which has nothing to do with the moral qualities of the

01:11:02 love of your life and the mother of your children.

01:11:06 Like if a man says, "I don't know, I like a big butt,"

01:11:10 does that mean that the woman goes out and gets a Brazilian butt lift or something?

01:11:14 Well, no. He... I don't know.

01:11:18 "If, say, how he does something bothers you, work it out then. Not bottling it up over

01:11:22 years, resenting him for not doing it your way. Either accept it or train him."

01:11:26 "Is it important?" Is it important?

01:11:30 Thank you, David.

01:11:34 I appreciate your support. Is it important?

01:11:38 Like seriously,

01:11:42 have...

01:11:46 have...

01:11:50 the deathbed perspective. Like on your

01:11:54 deathbed, are you going to look back and say, "Boy, I'm sure glad I spent

01:11:58 years mad at my husband for him not rinsing the dishes. That was really, really

01:12:02 time well spent. My gosh, that was fantastic.

01:12:06 Couldn't have spent my time any better. Thank you for all that frustration, that

01:12:10 alienation, that distance, that lack of sex, that lack of intimacy, that lack of fun.

01:12:14 Boy, that was a great thing to do."

01:12:24 Somebody's asking, "Steph, do you do non-recorded talk therapy

01:12:28 sessions? How much for a six-pack if you're listening to me complain about my kid's mom?"

01:12:32 I'm really sympathetic for that. I really sympathize for that.

01:12:36 No, I don't do non-recorded therapy.

01:12:40 I'm not a therapist, right, so I don't do therapy at all. But no, I don't do the non-recorded stuff.

01:12:44 Because I really do want people's challenges to

01:12:48 help instruct the world as much as possible. So I appreciate the offer, but no.

01:12:52 I remember my mom got annoyed having to always ask me to take out the trash.

01:12:56 I didn't mind doing it, but she expected me to do things like that without asking.

01:13:00 I felt it was her job to remind me.

01:13:04 Of the two sexes, and yes I mean two, who tends to be more virtuous in your estimation?

01:13:08 Well, men tend to be better at preventing

01:13:12 more slow-moving disasters, and women tend to be better

01:13:16 at preventing more quick-moving disasters.

01:13:20 But I wouldn't say either one tends to be more or less virtuous in my opinion.

01:13:24 No, it's a great question though.

01:13:28 We have different areas of specialty as a whole.

01:13:32 Is it worth it?

01:13:36 Why must men resist maternal authority?

01:13:40 I grew up in a certain minority culture where there was a lot of mama's boys, and there's a great shame on young men who resist

01:13:44 maternal authority. Growing up I was looked at different by my family by having many

01:13:48 arguments with my mother, and eventually I felt ground down which sent my growth as a man for many years.

01:13:52 Why must men resist maternal authority? That's a great question.

01:13:56 Let me just make sure I get the whole thing here. Why must

01:14:00 men resist maternal authority? Because you

01:14:04 can't have any leadership in your own household if you're subjugated to maternal

01:14:08 or female authority. We say female authority, right? But the first

01:14:12 authority figure we need to overthrow are our own parents. And by overthrow I simply mean

01:14:16 we have to challenge and think for ourselves and not assume that everything they say is perfect

01:14:20 or not just be photocopies, copy-paste of them. So yeah, you have to resist

01:14:24 maternal authority because if you can't have any leadership

01:14:28 in a marriage then you're codependent. And I don't mean you lead the marriage

01:14:32 but there are certain areas where my wife has authority, there are certain areas where I have authority.

01:14:36 That's

01:14:40 how it's worked out. And so if you

01:14:44 can't resist female authority then you can't

01:14:48 assert any authority in a relationship with a woman which means

01:14:52 you're not going to get a woman who's going to respect you.

01:14:56 Hopefully that

01:15:00 I could go into that in more detail but hopefully that makes

01:15:04 some kind of sense. Can you expand

01:15:08 more on why cohabiting before marriage is not a good idea? I have some ideas like people

01:15:12 value each other by treating each other like cars that need to be tested but I want to see if you have more thoughts.

01:15:16 Well, if a woman is worth

01:15:20 living with, why isn't she worth marrying?

01:15:24 Daniel, it's your first live stream. Fantastic.

01:15:28 Spartan says the key to living together is agreeing on every item having a set

01:15:32 place that you agree on. I don't know about that, that seems like a bit

01:15:36 rule-based. You're annoying sometimes, she's annoying

01:15:40 sometimes. Be annoyed together and don't try and fix everything.

01:15:44 So, a woman, if you say to a woman

01:15:48 and this is generally more of a female thing, if you say to a woman, "I want to live with you

01:15:52 I want regular sex, I want to save

01:15:56 money and I want regular sex and regular companionship but there's no

01:16:00 way in hell I'm going to marry you."

01:16:04 Ouch. I'll give you the equivalent for a man. The equivalent

01:16:08 for a man, and I got into this situation once, the equivalent for a man

01:16:12 is a woman who says, "Oh yeah, no

01:16:16 I want you to take me out on dates, I want you to pay for everything

01:16:20 I want you to set everything up and I want you to pick me up and drop

01:16:24 me off and I don't want to see a bill the whole time but I'm never going to date

01:16:28 you. I'm never going to be your girlfriend." Right, so I want all the benefits

01:16:32 of being your girlfriend but I don't actually want to

01:16:36 kiss you, sleep with you, cuddle with you, be monogamous

01:16:40 so I want you to pay all the bills but I'm not going to be your girlfriend.

01:16:44 Well, um,

01:16:48 as a man, how would you feel about that?

01:16:52 Well, you'd be, that'd be kind of gross, right? That'd be a gold digger or something like that, right?

01:17:02 Steph has the authority on the dishwasher, his wife on the router, that much is abundantly

01:17:06 clear. That's funny.

01:17:10 So the woman is going to view it as an insult that you want

01:17:14 regular sex, companionship, save money but you don't want to marry her.

01:17:18 I mean, how long do you need to test drive a car before you buy it?

01:17:26 *sigh*

01:17:30 Dave says no woman will trust you if you can't

01:17:34 take a stand against her whims or if you can't resist her. If you can't resist her, how can you protect both of you

01:17:38 against the world? That's not a male/female thing. If you have someone in your life who agrees

01:17:42 with you about everything, isn't that kind of gross? I mean, that's

01:17:46 clearly not about you, it's not about them, it's not about having a relationship.

01:17:50 Daniel says, "This is really difficult for me since it rings

01:17:54 so true."

01:17:58 What is difficult about it?

01:18:02 Now, somebody had their dream.

01:18:06 They had their dream.

01:18:10 Oh, that one we did.

01:18:18 We closed that. Oh, wait.

01:18:22 Somebody says, "I often think about inflicting emotional cruelty on my parents.

01:18:26 This will last about 8 months. Is there a simple reason for this?" I think that one's from last livestream, so

01:18:30 I will toast that. And thank you for those. I will try and get this done

01:18:34 today. If not today, tomorrow. Those of you who've put out this regular

01:18:38 call for questions on freedomain.locals.com.

01:18:42 Boo boo boo boo boo. Once that you've decided

01:18:50 on a killing.

01:18:54 First you make a stone of your heart.

01:18:58 And if you find your hands are still willing,

01:19:06 then you can turn a murder into art.

01:19:10 Alright, did the addict one,

01:19:14 did the maternal one.

01:19:18 No, so agreeing with somebody is manipulation.

01:19:22 Right? Over agreeing with someone is manipulation.

01:19:26 And I don't like being manipulated.

01:19:30 I just don't like being manipulated.

01:19:34 I mean, we all have that temptation, and I get all of that, but

01:19:38 I really, really don't like being manipulated. And the people who agree with you

01:19:42 or don't challenge you or don't have any skepticism about what you're saying

01:19:46 are trying to drug you with compliance and control you through

01:19:50 subjugation. Like, if you think about

01:19:54 dogs, when dogs have a dominance problem, then the older

01:19:58 dog, the bigger dog,

01:20:02 growls and pins the other dog down, and then the other dog

01:20:06 bares his throat and submits. And through that submission,

01:20:10 he controls the bigger dog. He controls the

01:20:14 aggression of the bigger dog. Right? So, pretending to be helpless, pretending to be

01:20:18 agreeable, pretending to not have your own opinions, is an attempt to

01:20:22 manipulate and control others.

01:20:26 My big takeaway is to work on my faults that my indulgence in addictions was used to treat

01:20:38 the bad feelings. I only cover them up, not solve them until I face them. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.

01:20:46 What about sex before marriage?

01:20:50 I mean, it's very common throughout history. Like, a third of the recorded marriages in the

01:20:54 19th century in America were shotgun weddings. So, I mean, it's very common to have

01:20:58 sex before marriage. Ah, yes, thank you, the dreams, there we go. Thank you so much

01:21:02 for helping me out there. I really appreciate that.

01:21:06 A big thank you to Paula. I appreciate that. Alright.

01:21:10 Hi, Steph. My dreams are often, maybe once a week, filled

01:21:14 with zombies, monsters, or vampires chasing after me.

01:21:18 It goes about 10 years like that. I don't see, and would not describe them as

01:21:22 nightmares, because I always fight and can for the most time defeat them.

01:21:26 There is no substance abuse or no financial problem in my life. Obviously

01:21:30 verbal abuse in my childhood, but could that be a connection to

01:21:34 those dreams? Thank you for your great show. Now, doing dreams without more detail is

01:21:38 tricky, but hey, I'm all about the tricky. I'm all about the high wire act.

01:21:42 I'm all about the sticking of the landing from 20,000 feet. So, I will

01:21:46 do my best to do this, right? Now,

01:21:50 your dreams are not

01:21:54 about physical creatures. They are about

01:21:58 imaginary creatures, right? Zombies, monsters, vampires. So, it's not like

01:22:02 you're having a dream about a bear breaking into your tent, or you're having a dream about a shark in the water,

01:22:06 or something like that. Now, if you have dreams

01:22:10 about things that don't exist, your dreams are telling you that the danger to you

01:22:14 is mental, is psychological, is thought-based,

01:22:18 is imagination-based, or something like that.

01:22:22 Because they're saying that, your dreams are saying that the threat to you is not coming from anything

01:22:26 in the real world. Zombies, monsters, vampires,

01:22:30 and so on, right? So, this ties into the fact that

01:22:34 verbal abuse was the problem in your childhood. So,

01:22:38 verbal abuse is obviously not physical abuse, but it creates

01:22:42 distorted thinking within your mind. In other words, the problems that you have aren't out

01:22:46 there in the real world, they are in your mind. I mean, the problems were out there in the real world,

01:22:50 in that your parents verbally abused you, but the problems that you're facing,

01:22:54 the danger that you're facing, is in your head. And how do we know that? Because

01:22:58 every monster in your dream is

01:23:02 in someone's imagination. It's in their head, they're not in the real world. So, the dreams are not

01:23:06 preparing you, like you see these dogs

01:23:10 who are napping or whatever, and you can see their legs twitching, you know they're chasing some rabbit in their

01:23:14 dreams, and the dreams are training them.

01:23:18 The dreams are training them to hunt rabbits,

01:23:22 to hunt real rabbits.

01:23:26 So, you're

01:23:30 not going to run into zombies or vampires in the real world, so it's saying

01:23:34 that the dangers that you face, the problems that you face, exist

01:23:38 in the realm of language. Because if you think of the word vampire, vampires don't exist in the world, vampire

01:23:42 only exists as a mental category, as a concept. They don't exist in the real world.

01:23:46 There aren't human beings who dissolve in the face of sunlight and

01:23:50 are opposed to garlic and live off the blood

01:23:54 of other human beings. These things don't exist in the real world.

01:23:58 And so, when you have dreams about unreal things,

01:24:02 your dreams are telling you that the danger

01:24:06 that you face is not external, it's not out there in the world, it's in the

01:24:10 realm of language. Because all of these creatures are defined by language,

01:24:14 not by empiricism, not by facts, not by reality. They don't exist anywhere except

01:24:18 in language. Zombies, human beings that are dead that shuffle around and

01:24:22 eat the brains of others, they may exist in politics, but they don't exist in the real world.

01:24:26 Zombie is a word. So, the danger is language based, the danger

01:24:30 is words.

01:24:34 And so, I would assume that it's pointing you at unresolved issues to do with verbal abuse.

01:24:38 You know, kicking out the verbal

01:24:42 abuse is really tough.

01:24:46 Thank you, K-Meeks, I really, really appreciate that. And again, Happy New Year. Tips are

01:24:50 greatly appreciated. This is the

01:24:54 last day for 2023, of course, that you can tip, and I would really, really

01:24:58 appreciate it, if you could.

01:25:02 Have you ever talked about the underwear dream? I don't know that I have.

01:25:06 Could you please do the philosophy of cognitive distortion called

01:25:10 magical thinking?

01:25:14 Oh, magical thinking is basically

01:25:18 that you can have the effect without the cause. That you can have the

01:25:22 effect without the cause. Yes, so

01:25:26 Sir Humphrey with Jim Hacker is a minister and prime minister in the British sitcom, Yes Minister,

01:25:30 Yes Prime Minister. He calls manipulation professional guidance, about agreeing until his

01:25:34 mind is changed for him. Yes. Sir Humphrey is brilliant at that, about

01:25:38 how you control someone through being, "Yes, Minister." You know, being very

01:25:42 sort of positive and helpful and all of that, but really controlling the

01:25:46 person, right?

01:25:50 I don't think that a shotgun wedding is what they mean when they ask about

01:25:54 sex before marriage. I think the assumption is that they don't get married. No, a shotgun wedding is

01:25:58 when the woman is pregnant, or the girl is pregnant, or the woman is pregnant, and

01:26:02 the community forces the boy or the man to marry her.

01:26:06 So, yeah, magical thinking is when you think you can get the effect without the cause.

01:26:10 Right, so somebody who wants to be buff without working out, somebody who wants to be more

01:26:14 slender without any diet or exercise, somebody who wants

01:26:18 resources without earning them, or being of some

01:26:22 like, without voluntarily getting them, thinking it's virtuous. So when you want the effect without the cause.

01:26:26 So, cynical people want superiority without improvement. They just want to put everyone

01:26:30 else down. They want to give everyone else shortness pills so that they feel taller, right?

01:26:34 I don't know what the underwear dream is, by the way.

01:26:38 Always been grateful for my HQF

01:26:42 high quality female telling about you. I've told many people about you. You are real much appreciated.

01:26:46 Thank you. I want money without working. Well, you can get money without working.

01:26:50 I mean, without

01:26:54 working productively, you can get charity and things like that.

01:26:58 For the donors, sorry, I'm getting some requests here from the donors

01:27:02 to please share the Peaceful Parenting chapters

01:27:06 in text form. Yes, I will. And

01:27:10 also, where should we? I think we should.

01:27:14 I think we should. You know what, you guys are, again, I really appreciate you guys being here

01:27:18 on this New Year's Eve. And here is

01:27:22 the Peaceful Parenting audiobook feed. Normally it's for

01:27:26 donor heads, but you're here. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

01:27:30 And there is your feed. You can copy and paste this into any podcast, Catcher, iTunes,

01:27:34 or whatever you're using, and it will give you... we have 14 chapters

01:27:38 now in the Peaceful Parenting book. We're about halfway through.

01:27:42 It's about 14 chapters. And I will be writing a shorter version when this is all said and done.

01:27:46 I will write a shorter version, which I'll keep to 100 pages or less

01:27:50 to just summarize the arguments and the perspectives.

01:27:54 So, all right, let me just go and check here.

01:27:58 I promise once I get my credit card situation straightened,

01:28:02 I'll join your channel. Oh, you can't do it from this account. You were a supporter when I...

01:28:06 I was a supporter when you were on YouTube. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

01:28:10 ZomVie, thank you so much. Happy New Year. I wish you the best. Thanks for your content.

01:28:14 Thank you for your support. I appreciate that.

01:28:18 Any recommendations on how to stop unconditionally loving

01:28:22 someone who absolutely despises you, but you have a kid together?

01:28:26 What do you mean by unconditionally

01:28:30 loving someone? Boy, I was just talking about magical thinking, wanting the effect without the cause.

01:28:34 Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.

01:28:38 Love is. Love is what I got for you. Love is our

01:28:42 involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.

01:28:46 So, since love has conditions, two conditions being

01:28:50 the person you love is virtuous and that you are virtuous, those are the two conditions.

01:28:54 So, there's no such thing as unconditional love. Unconditional love would be biological attachment,

01:28:58 you know, like animals have with their offspring, right? They don't value

01:29:02 their offspring for their virtue. They value because they're genetically programmed to have

01:29:06 dopamine, whatever, oxytocin baths

01:29:10 when they're in the presence of their offspring and so on, right? You know, like

01:29:14 every kid, you know, when my daughter got ducklings, the ducklings would follow us around.

01:29:18 Oh, they love us so much. It's like, no, they're just programmed to follow the biggest moving thing around. That's all.

01:29:22 They're just programmed. It's not love.

01:29:26 So, yeah, unconditional love is a blank check that's going to drain your bank account

01:29:30 dry on every conceivable level.

01:29:34 How do you make it stop?

01:29:38 I don't know.

01:29:42 I'm happy to answer. How blunt do you want me to be?

01:29:46 Do you want me to be 1 to 10?

01:29:50 How do you get a bad person out of your heart?

01:29:54 How do you get a bad person out of your heart?

01:29:58 1 to 10, how blunt do you want me to be?

01:30:02 1 to 10, how blunt do you want me to be?

01:30:06 How do you get a bad person out of your heart?

01:30:10 Is love our involuntary response to evil if we're evil?

01:30:14 No. No.

01:30:18 No, you can work together as evil people, like you can have a criminal gang that works together,

01:30:22 the bank robber, the getaway driver, and so on, right? So they can work together,

01:30:26 but there's not love, right?

01:30:30 Will there be a paper copy version of the book? I don't know yet. I don't know that.

01:30:34 [silence]

01:30:38 Roundhouse kick.

01:30:42 [silence]

01:30:46 All right. All right. All right.

01:30:50 I donated before the live stream at freedomain.com/donate.

01:30:54 Freedomain.com/donate is a good place to donate.

01:30:58 I think it's got the least overhead, if that makes sense.

01:31:02 Thank you, of course, for your donation this morning. I appreciate that.

01:31:06 Yes, freedomain.com/donate is a good place to donate.

01:31:10 I, of course, love the Locals platform, and it's great. So if that works better for you,

01:31:14 that's totally fine with me. I'm not going to have any complaints about donations as a whole.

01:31:18 All right. We are going to perform an exorcism.

01:31:24 Blunt is cool. Go to 11. All right, Gorzak.

01:31:28 All right.

01:31:32 [silence]

01:31:36 You got a bad person in your life.

01:31:40 You got a bad person in your life.

01:31:44 You got a vampire in the house. Now, of course, one of the most powerful things

01:31:48 about demonic possession, about

01:31:52 vampires, all these sorts of monsters.

01:31:56 [silence]

01:32:00 The cool thing about these stories is the one thing they have in common.

01:32:04 [silence]

01:32:08 You have to invite them in.

01:32:12 [silence]

01:32:16 When you claim to love a bad person, all you're doing is avoiding

01:32:20 your own corruption. I mean, you told me to be blunt.

01:32:24 With all love and affection, and we've all been there, and this is not any kind of

01:32:28 high holy place that I'm coming from. But

01:32:32 when you continue to love a bad person, it's because you don't want to confront the corruption

01:32:36 within you or around you that had you

01:32:40 open the door to the vampire and say, "Come on in!

01:32:44 Here, right here, jugular, right here. Come on, man. Sharpen up those

01:32:48 pearly whites. Drain me dry. Come on in.

01:32:52 Let me make you a key. Here's the code to the security system.

01:32:56 You come on in." Right? Why did you do that?

01:33:00 Why did you invite the bad person into your life? Why did you marry the bad

01:33:04 person? Why did you have a child with the bad person? Why did you give the bad person

01:33:08 a child? Why?

01:33:12 [silence]

01:33:16 Why?

01:33:20 I had bad people in my life. I'm not, you know, "Eh, I'm not

01:33:24 above this." I'm telling you from, like, we're both in the trenches.

01:33:28 Why did I have bad people in my life? Because

01:33:32 just about everyone in my life is bad. And I didn't

01:33:36 want to see that. I didn't want to see

01:33:40 the trash planet I was living in.

01:33:44 I didn't want to challenge that. I didn't

01:33:48 want to try and escape it. I didn't want to look for anything better because I wasn't sure there was anything better out

01:33:52 there, and I kind of bought into all the propaganda.

01:33:56 I'm not saying everyone in my life was bad. But

01:34:00 for the most part, I mean, they're not in my life now. As soon as I went full philosophy,

01:34:04 "Ha ha, buh-bye!"

01:34:08 Loving them is pretending to love

01:34:12 your own bad decisions. And you have to stop loving your own bad decisions if you want to be

01:34:16 wise, if you want to be virtuous, if you want to be happy, if you want to be safe and secure. You have to

01:34:20 stop loving your own bad decisions. And if this person is in your life and it was a bad

01:34:24 decision to have this person in your life, claiming to love them is just avoiding

01:34:28 the reality of the fact that you invited her in.

01:34:32 And there were other quality people around you

01:34:36 didn't invite in. You begged her to come. You took her out. You

01:34:40 dated. You did all kinds of funky stuff, all kinds of fun stuff, all kinds of cool stuff.

01:34:44 You slept with her. You bought her clothes, jewelry, a diamond ring.

01:34:48 You married her. You gave her a kid.

01:34:52 It's not your love for her

01:34:56 that's the problem. It's your fetish for your own bad decisions.

01:35:00 To dislike her

01:35:04 if she's done wrong, doing bad, whatever, right? I'm going to accept that.

01:35:08 I don't have her side, right? So if she's doing bad,

01:35:12 that's on you.

01:35:16 I mean, the fact that she's doing bad

01:35:20 is not on you. She's her own person with her own sovereign will and free mind.

01:35:24 But the fact that it affects you, that's on you. The fact that

01:35:28 she has control over a child, that's on you because you gave her the child.

01:35:32 Now maybe nobody in your life warned you

01:35:36 about her. Maybe people in your life did warn you about her and you didn't listen. That's on you.

01:35:40 Maybe people in your life didn't warn you about her, in which case

01:35:44 their lives are dysfunctional because they're not warning you about a dangerous woman, which means you have

01:35:48 other dysfunctional people in your life and the last thing that dysfunctional people in your life are ever going to do

01:35:52 is warn you about some new dysfunctional person. They'll kind of like it.

01:36:06 It's your own bad decisions

01:36:10 that you're attached to, not her.

01:36:34 When you've been groomed by a bad person, you might feel attached to them, but it's not love. Letting go is a

01:36:38 necessary ego death. No, it's not. I mean, sorry to be annoying.

01:36:42 No, no, no. But it's not an ego death fundamentally because that's...

01:36:46 Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other. That was the sort of nonsense poem

01:37:00 when I was a kid that made no sense, right?

01:37:04 You know that we can't

01:37:08 spot evil entirely on our own. You can't win a war entirely

01:37:12 on your own. You can't hunt difficult prey entirely on your own.

01:37:16 You can't build a house these days entirely on your own. Again, we can think of

01:37:20 some exceptions, but like a modern sort of house, you just can't get all of the expertise, right?

01:37:28 If you have bad people in your life,

01:37:32 that is a social problem. That is a

01:37:36 social situation.

01:37:40 If you have a bad woman in your life,

01:37:48 that's to do with parents, siblings,

01:37:52 friends, extended family, everyone and their dog

01:37:56 who knows you and claims to care about you. If they say, "Oh, I know you.

01:38:00 Your name is Bob." I say, "Your name is Bob." Actually, no, let's get your real name or your

01:38:04 screen name. "Gorzak." Gorzak the Magnificent. All right.

01:38:08 "Oh, Gorzak, I love you, man. You're a great guy. Yeah, I love you."

01:38:12 Right? "Yay, you're wonderful." Right?

01:38:16 And yet, what do they do?

01:38:24 What do they do?

01:38:28 Do they protect you from evil? Do they protect you from predation? Do they notice

01:38:32 evil doers in your midst? "You can't escape this logic. I told you last show, man. Logic solves everything.

01:38:36 Logic fixes everything.

01:38:40 Logic fixes everything. My watch thinks I'm working out.

01:38:44 That's how hard I work for everyone and me."

01:38:48 Most people, how many

01:38:52 people, let me ask you this. It's sort of the height of your

01:38:56 social life, your family life. How many people in your life claimed to care

01:39:00 about you? For me, it's probably about 20 people. Probably about 20 people in my life

01:39:04 in my 20s and early 30s claimed to be in my life and really care about me.

01:39:08 They just really cared about me. Some of it was, "I love you." Some of it

01:39:12 was kind of implicit, "We've been friends for decades," or whatever it is.

01:39:16 So when you were in the height of your social

01:39:20 life, maybe that's now, maybe it was in the past. What was the maximum

01:39:24 number of people you've had in your life who claimed to care about you?

01:39:28 Tell me that number, please.

01:39:32 What was the number of people in your life at the height of your socializing?

01:39:36 Zero? Don't believe it. I don't believe it. You never had

01:39:40 parents. The parents never cared about you. You never had an extended family. Come on,

01:39:44 people. So if somebody says about

01:39:48 that many, about 50 to 10, does that mean 50 to 100?

01:39:52 Oh, 5 to 10. About 5 to 10? 2 maybe, 0.

01:39:56 So 2. 2 people. The maximum people you've ever had in your life who

01:40:00 care about you is 2. Ever.

01:40:04 Friends, family, extended family, people who you

01:40:08 hang out with. At the height before I got married, about 30. Friends and

01:40:12 family. Now we're cooking with gas. 20, 30,

01:40:16 maybe 5, 15, 20 to 30, 30, 15 to 45, 15,

01:40:20 10. Right. Now those I believe. The self-pitying,

01:40:24 "I have no one who ever cared." I just don't believe that. I think a lot of us here care about

01:40:28 you, Steph. I appreciate that. That's very kind and I'm obviously pouring heart, mind, and

01:40:32 soul out to try and do my best for you guys as well. So thank you. Thank you.

01:40:36 I appreciate that. Now,

01:40:40 let's say 20. You've got 20 people in your life. Because that was my number, so it's

01:40:44 everyone's number because I'm a female. No, I'm kidding. So let's say 20

01:40:48 because some people more, some people less.

01:40:52 So let's say you get involved implicitly 100 people.

01:40:56 2 maybe is now. No, no, no. I said maximum, not now.

01:41:00 6. Okay. Right. Fair. Fair.

01:41:04 Alright. So we'll say 20 people. Maybe it's less, maybe it's more.

01:41:08 If it's the first question you asked that got the low numbers. Oh, like now?

01:41:12 I thought I said pretty early on that it was in the maximum.

01:41:16 Church, school, giant extended family. Yeah, people who claim to care about you.

01:41:20 People who claim to care about you. Alright.

01:41:24 This is going to hurt, right? This is going to hurt.

01:41:28 But logic solves everything. Logic solves everything. It just doesn't

01:41:32 solve the pain of what logic solves. But I'll tell you, right?

01:41:36 Logic solves everything. Oh, sorry. Let me get to the actual.

01:41:40 The actual guy who had the question. Max was

01:41:44 probably 20. Okay. So the guy who's got the crazy ex

01:41:48 the abusive ex, I assume, had 20 people. Okay, 20 people.

01:41:52 So we're right. So there's 20 people in your life who claim to care about you. They claim to love you.

01:41:56 They claim to have whatever, right? I mean, I may not say it. Maybe it's just friends of many years

01:42:00 that wouldn't say, oh, bro, I love you. Or maybe if they're drunk or whatever, but they care about you.

01:42:04 Alright. Now.

01:42:08 We can only love virtue if we're virtuous.

01:42:12 Or love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.

01:42:16 Because I've defined that doesn't mean I created that. That's been true for all

01:42:20 history, all across time, all across, as soon as we develop the capacity for morality,

01:42:24 love was our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous. Now.

01:42:28 If

01:42:32 20 people in your life let you get taken down and half destroyed,

01:42:36 by a corrupt and immoral person,

01:42:40 there's really only a few possibilities.

01:42:44 Right? There's really only a few possibilities that can happen

01:42:48 if 20 people in your life let you get taken down by an

01:42:52 immoral person.

01:42:56 Either they have no capacity to recognize evil,

01:43:00 they have no clue who's good, who's bad, who's crazy,

01:43:04 who's sane, who's right, who's wrong, who's moral, who's immoral, who's

01:43:08 loving, who's a psycho, who's kind, who's sadistic, they have no clue

01:43:12 whatsoever about any difference between good and

01:43:16 evil, right and wrong. They are absolutely peak ignorant,

01:43:20 shark liver amoral. They're barely mammals

01:43:24 when it comes to predators. They have no capacity

01:43:28 to determine good from evil, right from wrong.

01:43:32 Alright? So they can't love you.

01:43:36 Because if they can't figure out who's virtuous, they can't

01:43:40 love you. Because love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.

01:43:44 Which means that if they can't determine right from wrong, they can't possibly be virtuous

01:43:48 themselves and they can't identify virtue so they have no capacity

01:43:52 to love and no object of love. The capacity to love is

01:43:56 our ability to be virtuous. If we're virtuous we have the capacity to

01:44:00 love. Finding somebody to love is finding

01:44:04 somebody who's virtuous. But if they have no idea what virtue is,

01:44:08 they can't be virtuous themselves. Which means they have no capacity for love.

01:44:12 And they can't find a virtuous person because they can't possibly identify a virtuous person.

01:44:16 It'd be like me saying to you, "Okay, I want you to grab

01:44:20 just one atom, just one atom, just one O2 atom, that's it, just grab one, it could be a nitrogen,

01:44:24 helium, whatever, CO2, deadly, right? I just want you to grab

01:44:28 one atom." You're like, "I can't grab one atom, it's not possible. They're too small, I can't

01:44:32 see them. I can't grab just one. I can maybe grab a hundred million, but

01:44:36 I can't grab one."

01:44:40 So if they have no capacity to

01:44:50 tell good from evil, then the fact

01:44:54 that you got taken down by an evil person, alright.

01:44:58 A blind person can't warn you against

01:45:06 dangers that are only visible. A deaf person can't

01:45:10 warn you against dangers that are only audible. So we don't blame them because they can't identify

01:45:14 those things, right?

01:45:18 Some blind guy up in a

01:45:22 apartment building sees someone walking into traffic. He can't see

01:45:26 anyone walking into traffic, so he can't yell down and say, "Hey,

01:45:30 you're walking into traffic, you can't see it." So if

01:45:34 we say the people around us who fail to protect us from immorality,

01:45:38 well, they just can't tell good from evil. Okay, well then they can't love you.

01:45:42 They can't love themselves, they can't be virtuous.

01:45:46 They can't tell the truth because telling the truth is essential, it's necessary but not sufficient to be

01:45:50 virtuous and the first virtue is always honesty.

01:45:54 So then the people

01:45:58 who claim to love you are lying because they won't even protect

01:46:02 you from a beast. Like imagine if I said, "I don't even want to

01:46:06 say it, mate." So imagine that there's some guy, he says, "Oh,

01:46:10 my, I love my wife so much, she's everything to me, I would

01:46:14 do anything for my wife, she is my world, my life, everything, blah blah blah," right?

01:46:18 And then

01:46:22 they go on a safari

01:46:26 and his wife, there's some lion stalking them and he sees it

01:46:30 and he just moves ahead so to make sure that the lion eats his wife and not him.

01:46:34 Can we believe that he

01:46:38 would do anything for his wife, he loves his wife, she's his world, if he watches her

01:46:42 get stalked and eaten by a lion when he could have done, they could have jumped into the bus, they could

01:46:46 have done anything, right? He can't say that he loves her and also let

01:46:50 her be taken down by a predator in the same way that those around your friends, family, I don't care

01:46:54 who they are, they can't claim to love you and also what you get taken down by a predator,

01:46:58 by a predatory human being.

01:47:02 So one possibility is they can't identify evil in any way, shape or form, right?

01:47:06 Okay, then it's not a relationship.

01:47:10 Now, there's another possibility

01:47:14 which is they can identify evil and they

01:47:18 just let you get taken down. Why? Because they're sadistic, because they enjoy it,

01:47:22 because misery loves company, because they want to punish you for something. So they're cold and they're cruel

01:47:26 and they see the lion approaching and they're like, "Hey, you know what? You got a sunburn

01:47:30 on your leg, you should really rub some ketchup and marinate on that." Because they know the lion's coming, right?

01:47:34 So when you

01:47:38 say, well, it's ego death, it's like, no, no, no, if you have been

01:47:42 taken down by an evil person, everyone in your life has accountability.

01:47:46 Everyone in your life, you have some accountability for sure, absolutely.

01:47:50 But everyone else in your life has accountability and either they can't determine

01:47:54 evil, in which case, I mean, I don't believe that for a second, or they can determine

01:47:58 evil, but they're fine with you being subjected to it, right? So when I was in a bad relationship

01:48:02 and it wasn't a terrible relationship, it wasn't abusive or anything, but it just wasn't, I mean

01:48:06 now that I've been in a great relationship for over 20 years, I know the real difference. When I was in a

01:48:10 mediocre relationship in my 20s, nobody warned me about it. Nobody. Nobody

01:48:14 warned me about it. Nobody said, "Oh, I don't know, blah, blah, blah." Okay, so either

01:48:18 they can't figure out what's not working for me or they like that it's not working for me.

01:48:22 I mean, it's the only possibilities, right? Either they can't figure out that people are

01:48:26 dangerous or they want you to get mauled.

01:48:30 Now, having people around who can't figure out who the predators

01:48:34 are when we live in a predator-filled world is really dangerous.

01:48:38 Would you think of evolving in Africa where, you know, the hyenas

01:48:42 or the whatever, the beasts of prey, the lions and tigers and

01:48:46 jaguars and panthers and whatever, right? That they can attack you.

01:48:50 Would you let a blind guy guard you at night while you slept, knowing that predators

01:48:54 could attack you? Maybe that you couldn't even smell them, like they know enough to

01:48:58 approach from downwind or something like that, right? So would you

01:49:02 let a bad guy, like would you let a blind guy protect you from predators?

01:49:06 No, because you can't see the predators. And we can't get

01:49:10 into a safe world because we live among human beings and human beings are the greatest predators

01:49:14 on earth. That's why we're the apex, we're literally the apex predator. We're at the top of the

01:49:18 predation chain. We are the apex predators

01:49:22 and yet we have all these people in our lives who won't protect us from

01:49:26 predation.

01:49:30 So that's what you're avoiding, all of that stuff.

01:49:34 All of that stuff. Why didn't anyone warn me

01:49:38 that a relationship wasn't great? Because they wanted me to

01:49:42 fail because I was into philosophy. They wanted to

01:49:46 punish me for having questions, for having comments, for having criticisms, right?

01:49:50 I thought you meant number of people who claimed to love you

01:49:54 and actually did, my bad. Oh sorry, sorry if I was unclear.

01:49:58 If only my IQ would consistently be

01:50:02 if only my IQ would consistently translate directly to rationality

01:50:06 but IQ alone won't do it because you need your gut, right? You need your

01:50:10 second brain. There's great wisdom in the gut, in the unconscious, in the emotions

01:50:14 IQ can't do it alone.

01:50:18 IQ is just one of the gears you have for getting around in the world and when you have a hill, IQ

01:50:22 doesn't work.

01:50:26 No virtue in my family of origin, says Dave, and very little in my extended family. Repeated

01:50:30 that in my friends for ages just as I was starting to grow and escape. Then I managed

01:50:34 and married a non-virtuous woman and invited her messed up family to help

01:50:38 them all keep in the cat quagmire. Yeah, for sure.

01:50:42 Oddly I'm able to pick out red flags for others but when I'm fooling myself

01:50:46 my vision is blurred by the matrix of lies I tell myself about the people

01:50:50 I wish were virtuous but aren't. Eh.

01:50:54 Eh. Eh.

01:50:58 I mean, do you know what the opposite of integrity is? I mean, you could say

01:51:02 corruption but that's the effect. Millions of brilliant ancestors

01:51:06 in your gut. Yeah, for sure. What if a person

01:51:10 can identify predators but as cowardly? Is that possible? No.

01:51:14 It's not possible because for you to say to someone

01:51:18 "Are you happy? I'm not sure this relationship is... there's something not quite... I mean, it could be wrong

01:51:22 just explore and are you happy and is this the best?"

01:51:26 Right, so that's not...

01:51:30 that's not a huge amount of courage. Right, for the guy to say to his wife

01:51:34 being stalked by the lion "Get on the bus!" Right, that

01:51:38 doesn't mean he has to fight the lion, he just has to get his wife to safety so it's not a coward... it's not a courage thing.

01:51:46 What is the opposite of integrity?

01:51:50 The opposite of integrity is greed.

01:51:54 The opposite of integrity is greed.

01:51:58 So why is it that young men get involved with dysfunctional women?

01:52:02 Why is it that young men get involved with dysfunctional females?

01:52:06 They get involved with dysfunctional females because they're greedy for sex and they're greedy for

01:52:10 romance and they're greedy for companionship and they're greedy for

01:52:14 cuddling, whatever it is, right? They're greedy. Why is it that

01:52:18 people betray others

01:52:22 for financial gain and so on? I mean I was in the business world and I saw

01:52:26 a lot of greed and dysfunction in the business world. Greed and

01:52:30 dysfunction kind of went hand in hand, right?

01:52:34 So when you say "Well I have all these lies I tell to myself" and that's all this...

01:52:38 you're throwing a lot of fog into the whole situation.

01:52:42 Right, I mean why are you going to be...

01:52:46 they literally call it temptation. Temptation is for the unearned, right?

01:52:50 Temptation is for the unearned.

01:52:54 You want a relationship without the requirement of virtue

01:52:58 because you're concerned that if you have the requirement of virtue you'll be alone. And I can't guarantee

01:53:02 that you won't but I guarantee you that you'll never be more alone than when you're in a bad relationship.

01:53:06 So not being in a bad relationship is the

01:53:10 least isolation and loneliness you can possibly have.

01:53:14 Right, not being in a bad relationship

01:53:18 because you get in a bad relationship, especially if you get married,

01:53:22 have kids and so on, that person is in your life for the next 20 years.

01:53:26 Functional people, healthy people don't probably want to be around that kind of stuff. You can find exceptions and all of that

01:53:30 but yeah, it's...

01:53:34 you'll never be more lonely than being in a bad relationship.

01:53:38 You say "Oh but I could end up alone!" It's like, well you're worse than alone.

01:53:42 You're distracted, alienated from yourself, hostile to your own instincts,

01:53:46 hostile to your own ethics, unloved, unlovable, unloving

01:53:50 and having the bad people around you is keeping the good people

01:53:54 from actually caring about you.

01:53:58 False affection is the ultimate antidote to

01:54:02 real love.

01:54:10 So yeah, you're avoiding the knowledge,

01:54:14 the deep knowledge of everyone around you and you're avoiding

01:54:18 the deep knowledge of yourself and your own capacity

01:54:22 which we all have to make bad decisions. We all have the capacity to make bad

01:54:26 decisions and when we have people around us who care about us

01:54:30 or claim to care about us, they are directly involved

01:54:34 in our bad decisions. You can't claim you love someone and then say

01:54:38 "I have absolutely nothing to do with your bad decisions" because if you love someone, part of what you do

01:54:42 is you help them not make bad decisions.

01:54:46 Alright, all day long...

01:55:00 seeing past relationships with rose-colored glasses. All day long, especially

01:55:04 when you're super young, but it's one of those tools that needs to be ditched later on.

01:55:08 I can't help you as an adult. This thought process helped me change the rules

01:55:12 I live by as an adult. The old rules of survival strategies for a helpless boy.

01:55:16 Dysfunctional women for men can be sexy and reminds them of home.

01:55:20 Well, I hear what you're saying and again I'm sorry to be Mr. Nitpicker but it's not

01:55:24 necessarily that dysfunctional women are sexy, it's that dysfunctional women

01:55:28 will put forward sex as a way of distracting you from their craziness, right? You know, the hot crazy

01:55:32 matrix and so on, right? So they'll put themselves forward as a

01:55:36 hyper-sexualized manner, they'll put themselves forward

01:55:40 with sexual availability, they'll sleep with you early on

01:55:44 out of a form of self-contempt or self-hatred.

01:55:48 Do you think that people living in scarcity are more prone to greed or is it always a moral problem?

01:55:52 Well, the reason that people live in scarcity is because

01:55:56 they were prone to greed in the past. Right? So, socialism leads to

01:56:00 economic decay, leads to scarcity and hyperinflation and so on because people were greedy for the unearned

01:56:04 before.

01:56:08 It's not that greed

01:56:12 causes... sorry, it's not that scarcity causes greed, it's that greed causes scarcity.

01:56:16 Greed for the unearned causes scarcity. Like, you know, the

01:56:20 typical example being the woman who has sex with you right away

01:56:24 has a huge problem with sex, has a huge problem with self-esteem and you'll

01:56:28 end up having no sex over time because she doesn't really like sex because she has to use

01:56:32 it to manipulate men to get to like her and then you have to lie to her

01:56:36 and say, "Oh, shoot.

01:56:40 Microphone tipped a little there, but we're back."

01:56:44 Sorry,

01:56:48 microphone tipped a little bit there, I'm not sure when that happened, but I'm sure we'll survive.

01:56:52 So, yeah, a woman who'll have sex with you early will stop having sex with you later, which is why a lot of

01:56:56 people end up in these sexless marriages or relationships because

01:57:00 you had to lie to her and say, "No, no, no, it's you I care about." And it's like, "Nope,

01:57:04 you're just there for the sex. Let me just be sort of frank about that."

01:57:08 All right, look at that. We've done ourselves a cozy

01:57:12 two hours. Thank you for your tip,

01:57:16 my friend Gorzak, I appreciate that. Listen,

01:57:20 don't ever tip more than you can afford. Please, please, keep your money for

01:57:24 food, for rent, for all kinds of good things, right?

01:57:28 So, if that's what you've got,

01:57:32 please, I appreciate it, that's incredibly kind,

01:57:36 I'm grateful for it, and thank you so much.

01:57:40 And let's just get... I can't have been that long since my last tip

01:57:44 on locals, it can't be. It's the last

01:57:48 day of the year.

01:57:52 And I then do my finances.

01:57:56 So, if you could help out. As you know,

01:58:00 expenses have gone up because I have two

01:58:04 employees, so two people I work with now. So, if you could help that out. This is why we got

01:58:08 French Revolution, it's why we got the AI. And remember, listen, I'll give you this,

01:58:12 right? I mean, if you're listening to this or watching this later, you should definitely check this out,

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01:58:20 dot locals dot com slash support slash promo, all caps, UPB 2022. I'll put

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02:00:00 Revolutions, which is my very first book that I would consider sort of a real,

02:00:04 real kind of book, so. Have yourself an absolutely

02:00:08 gorgeous, lovely, beautiful, and wonderful

02:00:12 New Year's, I will talk to you, gosh,

02:00:16 when are we? Yeah, a lot of truth abouts and all of that.

02:00:20 Happy New Year tax season stuff, yeah, yeah, no kidding.

02:00:24 No kidding, no kidding. We'll donate directly on your

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02:00:36 this is like, 2024 is my 19th year

02:00:40 of philosophy in the public square.

02:00:44 I started in 2005. 2024

02:00:48 is my 19th year, or maybe it's my 20th year, I can never quite get that one down, but

02:00:52 it's my 19th year in the public square.

02:00:56 I probably should really do something, something on that

02:01:00 day of the actual anniversary.

02:01:04 Yeah, we'll figure out something to do that's cool, but yeah, 19 years, public philosophy, and look at that,

02:01:08 we're still doing new stuff, we're still doing cool stuff, and we're still

02:01:12 answering great questions. I've done some

02:01:16 fantastic call-in shows lately, which

02:01:20 maybe we'll throw one out, ah, you know, we'll throw one out tomorrow, nobody's going to listen to a call-in show on New Year's Eve,

02:01:24 so we'll throw some wild

02:01:28 stuff that's been working. I talked

02:01:32 to a guy yesterday who's got dreams of murdering his girlfriend, that was quite

02:01:36 intense and exciting, she also had dreams of him murdering her, so we had to

02:01:40 really unpack that kind of stuff, and some

02:01:44 really wild call-in shows, which we'll get round to, but I've been fairly busy on a variety

02:01:48 of tech and administrative stuff. Oh, just the joys of

02:01:52 the entrepreneurial life, so yeah, we will see you guys next year, and

02:01:56 what is it, the third that we're going to do our next one, right?

02:02:00 That's right, it's the third, so we will see you on the third. I, of course,

02:02:04 have got a couple of shows before then, and

02:02:08 I can afford a lemon. Thank you, that's over on D-Live, I appreciate that as well. So have yourselves

02:02:12 a wonderful afternoon and evening, and happy, happy New Year,

02:02:16 and I will talk to you soon. Podcast number one, November 20th, 2005,

02:02:20 some articles were written before that, yes, that's right, that's right.

02:02:24 We should do a 20-year anniversary philosophy retreat, ooh, that's a, ah,

02:02:28 that's a good idea, that's a very good idea. Alright, lots of love everyone,

02:02:32 up to you soon, bye, happy new year!

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