The True Roots of Addiction!

Stefan Molyneux

In this public portion of 15 February 2026's Sunday Morning Live, Stefan Molyneux examines the links between addiction, childhood trauma, and societal isolation, reflecting on its messy realities and the need for personal accountability in environments shaped by neglect. Drawing from his experiences and cultural insights, he shows how loneliness pushes people toward substances as a way to cope, tracing the cycles that trap those predisposed to it amid the tension between real connections and shallow societal demands. He highlights the challenge of building deep relationships in a world of empty interactions, framing addiction as an escape from inner turmoil, and calls for self-awareness to confront its broader damage while finding paths to healing through genuine bonds and candid talk.  The livestream continues to a donor-only hour! Subscribers can continue the livestream here:  Premium Content Hub: https://premium.freedomain.com/6301e4b3/the-true-roots-of-addiction  X: https://x.com/StefanMolyneux/status/2023845311567773984  Locals: https://freedomain.locals.com/post/7697186/the-true-roots-of-addiction  Subscribestar: https://www.subscribestar.com/posts/2352120  Freedomain Members: https://freedomain.com/the-true-roots-of-addiction/  Not yet a subscriber?  You can subscribe on:  X: https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Locals: https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025  Subscribestar: https://subscribestar.com/freedomain  Freedomain: https://fdrurl.com/members  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon!

Transcript

00:00So I hope you're having a great day. We're going to do callers over on Locals, and this is going

00:06to be donors only in a few minutes. However, we are in fact going to talk a little bit about

00:16drugs this morning. I have been talking to potheads on X. Now, I want to sort of make

00:25my position clear. We'll take it private in a minute or two. Let's make my position clear.

00:29First of all, look, I have a lot of sympathy for people with addictions. I always have. I've always

00:35talked about its roots in child abuse. I have a lot of sympathy for people with addictions.

00:42But that doesn't mean I have sympathy for every effect of child abuse, right? So I have sympathy

00:49for the effects of child abuse, but not every effect of child abuse. So people who abuse children

00:56were almost certainly themselves abused as children. And it is wrong to abuse children,

01:02obviously. And so the fact that you were abused does not give you a can't blanch to go on abusing

01:07children without moral judgment. If somebody was abused as a child and has a problem with pot,

01:15because it's helping them mask or deal with or overcome or minimize the symptoms of child abuse,

01:21I sympathize with that. I really do. I really do. I really do. But there's a problem.

01:29So the problem is if you are into drugs, in part, because of abuse or neglect that you suffered as

01:40a

01:40child, right? So especially neglect, right? Neglect, I think, drives people a lot towards drugs,

01:45because neglect makes you lonely. And being willing to do negative things gives you an instant community

01:53in this sad world, right? We say this again. If you were neglected, you're lonely. And a willingness

02:03to do bad things gives you instant society, instant, quote, friends, instant companionship

02:10in this sad world. There's a show made about 25 years ago called Freaks and Geeks, where there's this

02:22girl in high school who is torn between two extremes. One is the super nerdy people, and one are the

02:30people on their way to jail. And the super nerdy people are trying to get her to be nice and

02:37good,

02:38and the people on their way to jail are the ones trying to get her to take a bad road

02:45to start

02:47committing criminal acts. The normal people, of course, are nowhere to be seen. The show is called

02:52Freaks and Geeks. The freaks are the bad guys. The geeks, of course, are the turbo nerds. And if

03:00you are willing to do negative things, if you're willing to drink, if you're willing to be promiscuous,

03:05particularly as a female, of course, and if you're willing to do drugs, and if you're willing to

03:10go do dangerous, stupid, negative, destructive stuff to yourself and others, then you will have

03:19no shortage of companions. You will have no shortage of people who are more than happy in a very grim

03:26fashion to have you become one of them. So in my high school, it was the Outback gang, which sounds

03:33like cool, bronzed Australians who make that ambulance sound when they don't want something.

03:41Meow. Meow. So the Outback gang would sit there and smoke drugs and play hacky sack. Maybe it was a

03:52bit before hacky sack. Maybe that was a bit more later in university. But they were just out back,

03:58and they were doing that sort of stoner laugh, the cynical laugh. They were nihilistic and so on.

04:06And I've never really suffered from loneliness in my life because it's kind of crowded in here,

04:12and I usually have people around me. But if I was lonely, then it would have been tempting.

04:20It would have been tempting. Because the question in life when you're isolated is,

04:27is bad companionship better than no companionship? Well, that's an easy question to answer biologically,

04:33right? That's an easy question to answer. Bad companionship is infinitely better than no

04:39companionship because you need others to reproduce. And because you need others to reproduce, bad

04:45companionship companions are better than no companions. You know, the sort of proud Howard

04:48Rook isolated loners who held their standards high and, you know, were isolated, they just got

04:56ignored or they got ostracized or they went into a monastery or whatever, right? But their genes

05:00didn't reproduce. So I want you to think of it. I mean, I want you to, you don't have to,

05:08obviously,

05:08but I want you to think of it like this, that isolation in particular is the methodology by

05:15which the genes associated with addiction tend to replicate. So how do genes associated with

05:25addiction, which themselves want to survive, how do genes associated with addiction replicate? Well,

05:31they replicate through child abuse. And I think in particular, they replicate through isolation.

05:37Now, isolation can be physical, right? Maybe you're an only child or maybe your siblings are

05:44much older or much younger, or maybe you live in a kind of isolated area, or, you know, maybe you

05:50just

05:51have one of those weird, glossy NPC families where no one talks about anything and you just get

05:58useless shoot from the hip lessons from your dad and your mom is maybe more interested in God or

06:04community or something and you just, you can be surrounded by a cloud, a crowd and utterly alone.

06:09I mean, we all know that, right? So when you're isolated, you are desperate for companions,

06:15but you lack social skills. So if you're desperate for companions, but you lack social skills,

06:22what do you do? Social anxiety is the mechanism by which the genes associated with alcoholism

06:30reproduce. Because alcoholism usually covers up a lack of social skills, it covers up anxiety,

06:41and it covers up a feeling of worthlessness that is bitterly and angrily avoided. And therefore,

06:51the alcohol is for that. So all the genes associated, there are definitely genes associated

06:56with addiction. But all the genes associated with addiction are in a cycle. The genes associated with

07:02addiction want to produce the same mindsets in people that lend them to be more prone to addiction.

07:10I mean, imagine if, you know, in some alternate universe, imagine if the story of the angels in my

07:17book, The Future, came true. The angels are automated AI robotic protectors of children that

07:25prevent child abuse in a single generation. Amazing. It's, I think it's a fantastic, one of the

07:32greatest in me, plot and literary devices and instructional devices in the history of literature.

07:37But that's just me. Of course, I love my own books. I leave it to you to judge. The book

07:41is free at

07:42freedomain.com slash books. But imagine if child abuse was ended, then people who had the genes for

07:53addiction would be much less likely to have those genes activated. You know, I mean, Trump probably,

08:01Donald Trump probably carries the genes for addiction because his father was an alcoholic.

08:07I think his brother died of alcoholism, but he never touched alcohol. I think there's, you know,

08:12similar things happened in the Dr. Phil McGraw family, that shiny-headed purveyor of Tom Selleck

08:20NPC psychology. So those genes wouldn't be activated, which means people wouldn't cling together

08:30based on doing terrible stuff, which means that people who had the genes for addiction would be

08:39much more likely to mate with people who didn't have the genes for addiction, which means that over

08:43time, the genes for addiction would diminish. I mean, the genes for alcoholism want you, if you have

08:51the genes for alcoholism, then those genes want you to mate with another alcoholic, obviously, so that

08:58they're more likely to replicate and survive. The genes for social anxiety want you to mate with other

09:04people who are socially anxious. And the best way to do that is to enter into an addiction.

09:11Most people are empty-headed giant levers by which their genes reproduce and they don't even understand

09:17what they're doing and why. Addicts are addicts because their genes want them to reproduce with other

09:28addicts, so the genes for addiction have a higher chance to reproduce. You're a machine. The genes for

09:37violence want you to be around other violent people so that they have a greater chance to reproduce.

09:46The genes for depression want you to be around other depressed people so that they have a greater

09:51chance to reproduce. The genes for anxiety want you to be around other anxious people. So that's a filter,

09:57right? That's a filter. If you are philosophical, then you aim for the truth, not for this sort of

10:05I'm in the box of repetition compulsion that I've talked about over these many decades.

10:10I try not to be a blind photocopier. Gweet, gweet, gweet, gweet. Copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste.

10:19People who are isolated lack social skills, and therefore they need something that erases their

10:27identity in order to have anything in common with other people who have no social skills.

10:32Social skills being the ability to negotiate, the ability to talk about important issues without

10:39everyone losing their shite, the ability to connect with people, the ability to navigate what can be

10:47sometimes difficult and complex discourse, the ability to listen. And social competence at its root

10:58is the belief that you have something of value to offer in a conversation. And if you are,

11:05and I'm not talking to anyone here, of course, right, you're working on your way, as I am,

11:10towards authenticity and truth. But if you're philosophical, you never doubt that you have

11:17value to add in a conversation. Now, it may be that you have too much value to add in a

11:24conversation.

11:25I mean, I remember many years ago, a guy was working on something for me, and he mentioned he was

11:35going

11:35through a divorce. I mean, I've always been someone that people unpack their hearts to, which is great.

11:40I appreciate it. And I mentioned something about men's rights, and he got very tense. He got very tense.

11:51And what do you mean men's rights? Men don't have rights specific to men. Okay. So, you know,

11:58that's fine. As opposed to, hey, well, I've never heard that term. What do you mean? Right?

12:01That's open. Right. So, most people are just managing their own emptiness. They're managing their

12:08own self-hatred. They're managing their own feelings of worthlessness. They're managing their

12:14own sense of being fraudulent. They're managing their own sense of worthlessness. People who weren't

12:22allowed to become themselves by their parents have nothing individual to offer. And if you don't have

12:30anything of yourself to offer because your natural self has been opposed and attacked and undermined

12:36and criticized and you're bad, you're wrong, you're selfish, you're mean, you're stupid,

12:40you're dumb, you're whatever it is, well, then you don't have anything to offer or you feel like

12:46you don't have anything to offer. If you're down on yourself, what do you feel like you have to offer

12:50people if you're negative towards yourself? I mean, you either start talking to people honestly and

12:55say, well, you know, I mean, it's nice to meet you, but honestly, I don't feel like I have anything

13:00to offer people socially. I'm kind of broken and I just feel this, I feel this, like if you drop

13:08a

13:08bowling ball down a well, I just feel this sense of dread talking to people because I think I'm

13:14going to be exposed as kind of empty and, you know, I want people, but I don't feel like I

13:19have

13:20anything to offer them. You know, you can be honest about it, right? But, you know, what's going to

13:23happen to most people if you say something like that? Oh, whoa, well, good luck with all that.

13:27And they'll sort of Seinfeld their way slowly backwards out of the room like there's some

13:34higher caste Indian who accidentally entered into an enclave with a lower caste member of society.

13:42Whoops, I'm sorry, I did not mean to kick that hornet's nest. And away they go. And away they go.

13:51That's funny, you know, I always have these little scraps of songs in my head. I really do wish I

13:56was

13:56more musical. I love music, but there's an old George Thurgood recording of him doing

14:03Bad to the Bone, I think it is. And away we go. That's how he starts. He's a good blues

14:10guitarist

14:10and singer with a throaty baritone. It's really good. Who Do You Love? There's already two songs

14:16of his that I like. The cover of Who Do You Love? Which actually the Doors did as well quite

14:21well.

14:24And away we go. So you can't really be honest if you're down on yourself. Because it opens with a

14:30desperate plea for connection, a bottomless hole of negative self-regard. And, you know, I mean,

14:36people don't know how to get involved with that. They don't want to get involved with that. They may be

14:40curious and interested about that. But it's a dicey opening, I suppose. So they have to cover all that

14:48up, right? And so most people, you know, particularly with stuff like drugs or alcohol, more so, they don't

14:57have anything to say to each other. They don't have any positive self-regard. They don't feel like they

15:01have anything of value to offer each other. So they get drunk. They drink. And the drink is to

15:09cover up everything that they don't have to offer each other. I mean, I see drunk people. I see

15:16hurt people who desperately need to and want to connect but have nothing to connect with.

15:23And so people connect at the level of biology they operate at.

15:31So if a woman is really down on herself, doesn't feel like she has much to offer, wasn't

15:37loved as a child, maybe neglected, maybe abused, then she's operating at a fairly primitive level

15:45because her higher faculties were not developed. Like those kids who get abandoned or lost and end up

15:54raised by wolves. They don't have language and they never really learn language. There's a pretty narrow

15:59window when you're young to learn language, human language. So a young woman who's operating at a

16:07very low level, at a very primitive level, she can't connect with people in terms of thoughts or

16:13ideas or literature or conversational levels that are reasonably advanced. And honestly, it's not,

16:21it's, I mean, it sounds like a lot of this stuff, oh, social complexity. It sounds like an IQ thing.

16:25I mean, obviously, it's a little bit related to IQ, but I don't think hugely much. I mean, I've had

16:29pretty

16:29good conversations with people who aren't very smart, and I've had terrible conversations with people

16:35who are very intelligent. So it's probably a little bit related, but maybe a 0.2, 0.3 correlation,

16:41except at the extremes. But it is just a skill. I mean, I think it takes a fairly intelligent person

16:49to learn Japanese in his or her 40s. But of course, if you grow up in Japan and raised by

16:55Japanese

16:55parents, then you speak Japanese fluently. It's not an IQ thing. It's just an exposure thing.

17:01Very smart people can figure out social skills over time. Less intelligent people, if they're raised

17:07with good social skills, they just speak that language naturally. So I just sort of want to point

17:11out it's not exclusively some kind of IQ thing. So a woman who's been treated badly and who's been

17:19treated as an object, right? Obviously, that could be sexual abuse, but it could also be just, you know,

17:23you have to do your chores, you have to behave, you have to show credit to the family, you have

17:28to do all

17:28these kinds of things. So a woman who's, you know, and I say this with great sympathy, right? Who's

17:34operating at a very low level, her higher faculties, her individuation, right? I mean,

17:41the brain is three pounds out of a, you know, if it's three pounds out of a hundred pound female

17:48body, it's 3% of body mass, right? For a man of 200 pounds, 1.5% body mass, 2

17:54.25% if you're 150 pounds,

17:57something like that. So it's a very small part. And a brain, of course, is mostly primitive,

18:01right? Our consciousness is like the top 50 feet of Mount Everest. There's a whole planet,

18:08right? The planet is the body. The mountain is the mind. The conscious mind is just the tippy top.

18:13So we're mostly primitive. And we have to be lured into the higher dimensions. We have to be lured

18:18into sophistication. We have to be lured into individuation. Your kidney is kind of like my

18:24kidney. Your lungs are kind of like my lungs. Your skull is kind of like my skull. You know,

18:28the variations are small. Where we are individuated is in our neofrontal cortex,

18:35in our seat of reasoning, in like who we are is since we want to be loved, right? We want

18:41to be

18:42loved. We can't be loved because we have a stomach because pretty much everyone has a stomach.

18:48We can't be loved. Oh, I got, I got two legs. You should love me. It's like, well, you know,

18:52pretty much everyone, I hope that Olympic skier gets to keep both of hers. The 41 year old who in

18:57a

18:57mad dashed down the mountain, skied way too hard when she was way too old. But anyway,

19:04she has a 20 year career. She has like 24 major injuries and she still keeps going. That's wild.

19:09She's committed to excellence. That's one possibility. So we want to be loved for who we are.

19:17But who we are requires thinking for ourself, requires coming to our own conclusions, requires

19:23individuals, individuating ourselves from the masses. I mean, talk to, talk to women about if

19:30guys approach them, you know, online or in person. Hey, what you drinking? Sup? Hey, right? I mean,

19:39it's sad. It's, it's, it's sad. I mean, I think I'm going to do a whole show on kind of

19:45teach guys

19:45how to approach females because it's, it's sad, man. It's sad. And when the women imitate these

19:54men, it's always with this, you know, retarded lumberjack voice. Hey, what you drinking, man?

19:59Sup? I've seen you here before. You know, just like, I mean, terrible, right? But that's a signal

20:04to meet at the physical level rather than the intellectual level, which is where the only

20:10sustaining pair bonding can happen. So the woman who's operating at a very primitive level goes out

20:17into the world. How can she connect with people? Well, the most primitive things that we have

20:23are conformity and sexuality because conformity is a very, very animalistic. And please understand

20:34when I say animalistic, I don't mean that's negative. I don't mean that's negative, but it's

20:39not individual. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's not negative for me that my kidneys and

20:45my liver work. That's not negative for me at all. That's a, that's a big plus. That's a huge

20:49plus. That's a, a, a okay, good thing. But you would never be loved and pair bonded with

20:55those things. You need to be different in order to be loved. You need to be yourself. Being

21:00yourself distances you from the conformist, but it opens you up to the possibility of being

21:04truly loved. So a young woman who's, it's, it's, it's not that you're not allowed to develop

21:12these higher aspects of the self. It's that if you try to develop these higher aspects of the self,

21:21people will attack you venomously because you're in the primitive world of conformity and biology.

21:30Biology just means greed, lust, aggression, violence, right? Just the, the, the base monkey

21:40brain and lizard brain, right? These are the people that you, you bring up an uncomfortable

21:44question that just lash out, right? All they are is biological reaction. And if you try, like,

21:53there's a, there's a horrible low ceiling, you know, there's a, what's that, a movie, um,

21:58Being John Malkovich, I think, where there's this, is it Being John Malkovich? There's an elevator that

22:05goes up and there's a really low office space between floors eight and nine or something like

22:11that. There's very sort of very low ceiling. I think this is where claustrophobia comes from.

22:16Claustrophobia comes from a general terror of the smallness of the minds of the people who raised

22:21you. And if you are raised by people who operate at the animal level, who operate at the level of

22:33instinct, aggression, reaction, and do not intercede with their responses, right? You have that quarter

22:41a second if you have an impulse to say to yourself, is it good or bad or right or wrong?

22:46And if you

22:48operate, or if you're forced to operate at the level that's very low, that's very biological,

22:54trying to raise yourself above that level, which I think is the mission of most of us here,

22:59is most of us were raised in low, mean, restricted, reactive, unthinking, and aggressive and violent

23:07circumstances. And even if this wasn't the case at home, it certainly is the case these days in

23:13school, then trying to become bigger, trying to think for yourself, trying to rise above

23:22these circumstances, it feels like you were raised in a house where you were constantly distorted

23:27because the ceilings were four feet above the ground and you still had to move around. So you're

23:32crawling and you're maybe crab walking a little and it's just awkward. And then you're like,

23:37you need to straighten up. And if you need to straighten up, then you bump into the ceiling

23:40a lot. And then if people bump into the ceiling a lot, people get mad at you for leaving grease

23:45marks or bumps or marks on the ceiling. Stay down, stay low. Don't try to rise up. Don't try to

23:52get

23:52out. But it's cramping, particularly to those of us who maybe were blessed to slash cursed. It feels

23:59like sometimes with expansionist souls that we just, we need some straight spines. We desperately need

24:06some straight spines. We need to straighten up. And if that means abandoning these crazy low ceiling

24:14claustrophobic zoo prisons of other people's reactive limitations, well, so be it. I couldn't

24:21for the life of me like I was raised in such, you know, I used to dream of ceilings four

24:26feet high.

24:27My ceilings were two feet high. It was nothing but military belly crawls going on where I was.

24:35And I just, I couldn't, I had to straighten my spine. I had to get out. I had to, I

24:39had to be

24:39vertical. I just, I just had to. And it's painful as hell. It's painful and difficult as hell to get

24:45out of these low circumstances. So, sorry, to return to our young woman who, whose development of

24:51any higher individual faculties, individuated faculties, because everybody wants to be

24:56picked for who they are. But if you're not raised to think for yourself and be who you are,

25:02then you want to be picked for who you are, but you aren't who you are. That's the contradiction.

25:09That's the contradiction. I want to be chosen for me, but I don't really exist. Well, then you have to

25:16be chosen for something else. You have to be chosen because you're high status. You have to be chosen

25:19because you have a lot of money. You have to be chosen because you're pretty. You have to be

25:22chosen because you're hot. You have to be chosen because you're sexually available. You have to

25:25be chosen because, because, because, right? Because you're really great at sports. You have to be

25:29chosen because you're whatever. Right? This is back to my novel dissolution. Everybody wants to be

25:36chosen for who they are, but everybody wants to be like everybody else. I want to be chosen by this

25:46giant row of Toy Story 2, right, in Toy Story 2, Buzz Lightyear, gets into a toy store where he

25:53sees thousands of himself in boxes, in the shelves, right? It's a very, very good movie,

25:59very funny movie. Barbie, don't. So, everybody wants to be chosen for who they are, but most

26:08people are raised with this limitation that leaves them at the level of the animal. So, the woman

26:14who, as a girl, as a child, there's a battle between those who want to rise up and those who

26:19want to stay low, right? The hammer that sticks up gets, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down,

26:24the tall poppy gets cut. So, there's a, we want to be ourselves, we want to think for ourselves,

26:28and we're told to think for ourselves. I mean, I don't know if this is still the case, but, you

26:32know, it's always told, well, if everybody was jumping off the CN Tower or the Brooklyn Bridge,

26:35would you do it too? You have to think for yourself, blah, blah, blah, right? But then if you think

26:38for

26:38yourself, they hate that too. So, it's a bit of a paradox, but that's just society, right?

26:42In a very primitive state, as we are. So, the woman who's never allowed to develop her own

26:48thoughts, her own ideas, her own arguments, her own perspective, to reason from first principles,

26:55then she exists in a very primitive state. So, where do people meet if they're both existing

27:01in a very primitive state? Well, they meet at the biological. So, she puts out. So, she wants to

27:09be chosen for herself, but she doesn't have a self, because it was so violently opposed for

27:14her to develop one. So, she offers up sexual access. In other words, she wants to be chosen

27:20not for where she is, but for where she isn't, for her whole. And people who drink, they drink

27:28to meet at the level of mere biology. They do drunk. They do drugs, or they drink, or whatever,

27:35to meet at the level of mere biology. You can think of these creepy swingers clubs, you know,

27:39the orgies, the orgy clubs, the lubes and mustaches club, bathrobes. They meet at their physical.

27:47And the lower self wants to reproduce, right? The genes for the lower self want to reproduce,

27:51which is why the genes for the lower self attack the higher self with great ferocity.

27:58And, of course, women want to be chosen for who they are as individuals, but women tend to be

28:02highly conformist, which is why women will often put much more care into their physical appearance,

28:10because you can divide the boys, right, in general, into, like, the jocks, the nerds,

28:19and, you know, the breakfast club divisions. But girls tend to be, you know, graded in levels

28:26of popularity, and that's about it. So, addiction is so people have something in common when they are

28:34not individuated, when they are not able to think for themselves, when they don't reason for

28:40themselves, when they are not themselves. Because people who reason with each other have the delightful

28:46act of reasoning and thinking and chatting and, you know, exploring and not reacting, because,

28:53you know, smart people don't react. Or if they do react, they notice it and don't allow it to

28:57overwhelm their thinking, but less individuated people, they just react, right? You know, that

29:03triggered liberal female face meme. So, people drink so that they have something in common,

29:10which is the reduced identities of being drunk. They also don't have intimacy, connection, affection,

29:24love, and contact. And, you know, there's a famous saying among alcoholics, like,

29:29no great story ever started with... So, I had a salad, right? And so, what they do is they

29:37substitute stories for connection. Hey, remember that time when I was so drunk that blah, blah,

29:44blah, blah, blah. That's a story a guy told me many years ago. When I was chafing against

29:50a particular social circle that I was in, I mean, pretty briefly, I went to like five events,

29:55and they just drank. And I remember a guy there sort of impatiently telling me,

30:01oh, yeah, you're like that guy, we're up at the cottage, you know, everyone's up at the cottage,

30:05and it's a nice sunny day, and everyone's just on the dock, chilling, listening to some tunes,

30:11toonage. And you come on like, hey, let's play Pictionary, right? Everyone's like, uh, right,

30:17uh, right. Well, they're just sunning themselves like walruses. And, you know, I come along and say,

30:23hey, let's do something that actually engages our intellect. I'm not saying all the time, but maybe

30:27once for an hour over the course of an entire long weekend, we can do something other than drinking

30:33or recovering from drinking. Drinking is about erasing the knowledge that you're erasing the

30:42knowledge. Drinking is getting everyone to a lowest common denominator so that they can bond

30:48about who they aren't without being conscious that they're bonding over who they aren't.

30:55I remember my mom had a friend over her once when I was young, who was an alcoholic and just

31:05completely desperate to not never be alone. And I was trying to go to bed and this woman came in

31:11and was like, I remember she was talking about the newspaper that Globe and Mail should be called

31:17the grope and fail, you know, just had all of these, you know, just completely NPC talking points.

31:22Hey, what are you going to bed for, kid? Stay up, chat a little, have a little, right? It's like

31:28it's a school night. Nah, you'll be fine. You know, just this, this raw desperation to, to not be alone.

31:35I remember my mother was later with this woman held at gunpoint for several hours by this,

31:40one of these women's ex-boyfriends. It was really quite an ordeal, but just can't be alone.

31:46Can't be alone because there's nobody there. Because all addictions are about self-erasure,

31:51the substitution of raw need for the absence of an actual person. And of course, I mean,

31:59I know that there's a potential person there and so on. And I don't want this to sound terminal,

32:03like you've sawn off your arm, it's not going to regrow. But that's why people fight so ferociously

32:09to avoid being honest about their own addictions. Because if they're honest about their own addictions,

32:16then they unmask to themselves that they don't really exist. Like if all you are is pursuing

32:23addictions, making money, seeking status, and avoiding discomfort, you're an animal. And again,

32:30it's nothing wrong with animal. If we have an animal side, it's nothing wrong with that. But if

32:33that's all you are, then you're not really a person. You're just a cunning ape. I mean,

32:40I remember another guy I knew many years ago was telling me a story about how he had social anxiety

32:47and he would go to parties and there'd be pot and he would smoke the pot. And I remember him

32:53saying,

32:54like, it didn't really have any effect on me, but I really played it up just to get some laughs.

32:58And he used to play this game called find my feet, you know, and I would pretend. He said,

33:03I would pretend like I couldn't find my feet. And I was so stoned that and people would laugh. And,

33:07you know, at least I felt I was adding some value or something like that. And I would say things

33:14like, he would say, I would say things like, only your left hand knows you're right-handed, man.

33:19And people are like, whoa, you know, hey, maybe we're just in, maybe the solar system is an atom in

33:24the couch of another creature. And meeting at the level of the animal alone makes social insecurity worse,

33:35right? And this is why people crash out of their relationships is they meet at the level of the

33:42animal. And then they're shocked and appalled that people cheat on them. Well, of course,

33:49that's the price you pay for a meeting at the level of the animal is you get the loyalty of

33:56an animal

33:56animal. And not, not a K-selected animal either, but an R-selected animal. You know,

34:03the female monkey that raises her butt. Can she really be shocked when the male mates with another

34:09female monkey who raises her butt? It's like, well, no, she's offering up what everyone else can

34:14offer up. This is part of the discourse that's going on on social media. At the moment, it kind of

34:20bears up from time to time. And this is the discourse of like, well, God, I mean, geez, the guys

34:27who were

34:2830 who want a 21 year old, you know, it's creepy, and it's weird, and it's bad. And it's like,

34:32no, no, no.

34:36It's biological. It's biological. It's, it's, it's our selected biology. Seek out the youngest, most fertile

34:43females. And it's women who got a lot of value out of offering up sexual access when they're young,

34:50who are now aging out and getting mad that other women are doing what they did, offering up sexual

34:56access in return for male resources. And the resources don't tend to be money as quite as much

35:02now because of the welfare state and women can get money from men using the power of the government,

35:06but more so because it's status, right? It's high status. They don't want to be with a brokey and

35:13most young men are broke. You have, you have to be willing to disagree with people in order to be

35:19loved. There's absolutely no way to be loved without disagreeing with people. There's no way to be loved

35:26in this sad world. And listen, you can have a happy life in a sad world, right? But the world

35:31itself is

35:31very sad. It's very posturing. It's very, I just see the world mostly as isolated people desperate

35:39for affection, doing everything possible to gain affection rather than be virtuous.

35:44Because being virtuous means that you're going to be hated by evildoers. You're going to be targeted

35:48and attacked. And it's a sad thing that the price to pay for being loved is being hated and being

35:53rejected and scorned and isolated. That is the price we have to pay in this sad world for being loved.

36:00And there's no way to avoid that at all. Maybe if you move to the woods and just, you know,

36:04whatever,

36:04right? But you've, you know, you want your kids to not be isolated too, right? So, yeah, there's no way.

36:09There's no way to be loved in the world without being hated by the NPCs, without being hated by the

36:15normies, without being hated by, I mean, society as itself. The rulers all want to punish conformity

36:21because conformity means that people obey the rulers. So, the rulers always want to

36:28punish rebellion. Like, they'll preach rebellion. Like, you know, they'll preach rebellion in movies.

36:33You've got to be the cool kid who thinks for himself and goes against the crowd. But they do

36:36that just so they can single out people to be attacked. Oh, this rebel listened to our propaganda

36:42about how good it is to be a rebel. Fantastic. He's self-identified. Now we can attack and destroy

36:47him or try to. Love is a glowing prize in the heart of a deep and blindingly hot social fire

36:56of

36:57isolation, attack, and exclusion. And earlier when I said, like, we meet at the animal level with

37:04conformity and sexuality, and status is a little higher than that because animals have conformity

37:11and sexuality. That's like the lowest thing. I mean, if you look at flocks of birds, they only survive by

37:16all darting around in similar directions. There are schools of fish that conform. The salmon jump

37:23the currents, jump the waterfalls to get back to the spawning grounds. Even the insects act in tandem.

37:29The butterflies will spend some generations going from the north to that five trees in Mexico.

37:35The birds fly south for the winter. Conformity is a very, very low level. Very low level.

37:42And we need some conformity even to have individuality because we all need to use words

37:47that mean similar things and so on. You need to have some conformity. Even if it's hot,

37:52you can't walk around naked outside your own property. Hopefully outside of the visibility of

37:58others. But so conformity is conformity and sexuality are just about the lowest of our biological

38:09activities. It is, in a sense, the least human about us. What is human about us is our individual

38:14thoughts and capacity to reason and our moral courage of virtues, the things that you can actually

38:19be loved for. Conformity and sexuality is very low. Status is quite a low thing as well. The pecking order,

38:27right? I mean, most mammals that are social will have a pecking order. And that pecking order is

38:35pretty strictly reinforced. And the young people, the young monkeys want to climb it. The old monkeys

38:40want to keep them down. And so status is very low as well. It happens in lion prides, right? The

38:48alpha

38:49male. It happens in monkey prides. It's pretty low. Sexuality and conformity are the lowest, really,

38:55outside of pure biological function, but in terms of the mindsets. And then status is pretty low as

39:01well. And, you know, again, in a virtuous world, in a free world, in a peacefully parented world,

39:08then you can be loved by an individual and society at the same time. But in the sad world that

39:18we have,

39:19to be loved by an individual is to be hated by society. Now, I think it's worth the price,

39:25but I'm not going to say the price is inconsequential. The price has a big effect on your life.

39:30And really, I mean, sort of with the modern economy, it's really only been possible to

39:38be loved by an individual and survive society's hatred. It's a pretty recent phenomenon.

39:45It's a pretty recent phenomenon that you can survive without the tribe. And the tribalists

39:51are constantly attacking the individualists and all this, right? So, yeah, I just wanted to

39:57share some thoughts on addiction. Addiction is required because we cannot be lower animals without

40:05great pain. And if we want to act as lower animals, we have to erase the higher part of

40:13ourself in order to make that bearable. And that's what addiction does. It allows us to focus on

40:18something external rather than deal with the empty pain inside. In other words, most fundamentally,

40:27addiction is the mechanism that allows us to most easily lie to ourselves and believe it.

40:35All right. Sorry. Let me get to your comments and we will. Yeah, let's do that. Now we will go

40:41to

40:42local supporters only. And again, I really do appreciate your support of the show. We'll go to

40:47local supporters only. And I'm certainly happy to take calls there if you would like. And as always,

40:56thank you so much for your support of the show. It really does mean the world to me. And, you

41:01know,

41:01we're doing great work in the world. We really are doing great work in the world.

Category

Transcript

Comments

Recommended