- 1 day ago
Philosopher Stefan Molyneux's 26 April 2026 Sunday Morning Live shreds self-gaslighting sleep delusions, creative failure traps and societal identity pressures to seize mindset agency and forge your unyielding reality.
0:00:00 Freedom Is The Main Thing
0:00:13 Gaslighting Yourself
0:03:26 The Power of Perception
0:06:04 Embracing Failure
0:07:56 The Weight of Expectations
0:09:29 The Curse of Genius
0:13:16 Life's Shape and Direction
0:13:33 The Nature of Success
0:17:24 The Illusion of Control
0:20:03 Gaslighting and Reality
0:22:02 Social Pressures and Appearance
0:28:03 Grooming and Self-Image
0:30:36 The Reality of Relationships
0:34:13 Creating Your Own Reality
0:38:13 The Art of Preparation
0:40:03 The Dangers of Aiming Too High
0:42:55 The Burden of Expectations
0:45:22 Deplatforming and Consequences
0:50:06 The Nature of Violence
0:53:34 The Cost of Effectiveness
0:56:02 Choices and Consequences
0:58:00 The Cycle of Addiction
1:00:52 The Illusion of Free Will
1:03:22 The Complexity of Choices
1:05:08 The Slippery Slope of Decisions
1:07:26 Teaching Resilience
1:09:02 The Nature of Responsibility
1:11:46 The Addiction to Victimhood
1:14:39 The Path to Accountability
1:17:14 Society and Personal Responsibility
1:20:14 The Reality of Life Choices
1:25:15 Conclusion and Reflection
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0:00:00 Freedom Is The Main Thing
0:00:13 Gaslighting Yourself
0:03:26 The Power of Perception
0:06:04 Embracing Failure
0:07:56 The Weight of Expectations
0:09:29 The Curse of Genius
0:13:16 Life's Shape and Direction
0:13:33 The Nature of Success
0:17:24 The Illusion of Control
0:20:03 Gaslighting and Reality
0:22:02 Social Pressures and Appearance
0:28:03 Grooming and Self-Image
0:30:36 The Reality of Relationships
0:34:13 Creating Your Own Reality
0:38:13 The Art of Preparation
0:40:03 The Dangers of Aiming Too High
0:42:55 The Burden of Expectations
0:45:22 Deplatforming and Consequences
0:50:06 The Nature of Violence
0:53:34 The Cost of Effectiveness
0:56:02 Choices and Consequences
0:58:00 The Cycle of Addiction
1:00:52 The Illusion of Free Will
1:03:22 The Complexity of Choices
1:05:08 The Slippery Slope of Decisions
1:07:26 Teaching Resilience
1:09:02 The Nature of Responsibility
1:11:46 The Addiction to Victimhood
1:14:39 The Path to Accountability
1:17:14 Society and Personal Responsibility
1:20:14 The Reality of Life Choices
1:25:15 Conclusion and Reflection
GET FREEDOMAIN MERCH! https://shop.freedomain.com/
SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux
Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1
GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK!
https://peacefulparenting.com/
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
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!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:00Morning, morning, morning, friends. Hope you're doing well. Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
00:00:06Freedom is the main thing. Freedom should be your domain. Freedomain.com,
00:00:11freedomain.com, session 8, to help out the show. And welcome to your Sunday morning.
00:00:18And I hope you had a good sleep. You know, it's actually quite interesting.
00:00:23One of the most helpful things to do in your life is to gaslight yourself. I'm not sure if you
00:00:31know
00:00:32all about this, but it's quite interesting. Now, I know this sounds a little anti-philosophical.
00:00:37I understand that and bear with me as I sort of mention it a little bit. But placebo sleep affects
00:00:46cognitive functioning. It's just sort of one example out of many. But it's very interesting.
00:00:54So, the placebo effect. This is from the abstract of the paper. The placebo effect is any outcome
00:01:00that is not attributed to a specific treatment, but rather to an individual's mindset. The phenomenon
00:01:06can extend beyond its typical use in pharmaceutical drugs to involve aspects of everyday life, such as
00:01:12the effect of sleep on cognitive functioning. In two studies examining whether perceived sleep
00:01:19quality affects cognitive functioning, 164 participants reported their previous night's
00:01:24sleep quality. They were then randomly assigned to one of two sleep quality conditions or two
00:01:30control conditions. Those in the above average sleep quality condition were informed that they had
00:01:45only spent 16.2% of their time in REM sleep. Assigned sleep quality but not self-reported sleep quality
00:01:53significantly predicted participant scores in a bunch of cognitive tests. In other words, if you were told
00:02:01you had slept well, you did well in cognitive tests. If you were told you had slept badly,
00:02:07you did badly in cognitive tests. There's another study which I thought was interesting.
00:02:14Sorry, it's a bit redundant. If I didn't think it was interesting, why would I bring it up? These and
00:02:20all of these, I'm trying to iron out my little verbal tics that waste time. Wait, am I telling you
00:02:27that?
00:02:27Am I doing it too? I don't know. This could go on and on. But there was a study where
00:02:32it was supposed
00:02:33to be a study on the effects of facial disfigurement on being hired. So some women were given a facial
00:02:40disfigurement with makeup and prosthetics and so on. And some women were given a big wart or something,
00:02:49nothing sort of major, and they couldn't see it from the inside of their own faces. And they were sent
00:02:54on job interviews. And some of the women had the facial disfigurement kept on, and others of them
00:03:01had it taken off in a surreptitious way before they went into the interviews. And of course, the women
00:03:06who went in thinking they had a facial disfigurement when they didn't reported that people looked down
00:03:14on them because they had a facial disfigurement. They experienced bigotry, prejudice, that sort of
00:03:20John Candy, take 50 cents, go and have a rat and gnaw off that giant mole or whatever it was
00:03:25in Uncle Buck. But the women who didn't have a facial disfigurement but thought they did
00:03:33reported all of the horrors of how much prejudice they faced in these job interviews because they
00:03:39were so facially disfigured. I myself, on the occasional times that I've slept poorly,
00:03:49I don't particularly like to eat before I go to bed, but I like even less waking up hungry in
00:03:54the
00:03:54middle of the night. When you have muscles, I say this advisedly, knowing that I'm far from a
00:04:01bodybuilder, but when you have muscles, they burn a lot of calories while you sleep. And every now and
00:04:08then, if I haven't timed it just right, I'll wake up at three o'clock in the morning hungry, and
00:04:12I find
00:04:12it very hard to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, it's just hardwired for my childhood. When you
00:04:17grow up without food, like I grew up, what do they say? Very food insecure. I grew up very food
00:04:22insecure. And so, I constantly have to fight the urge to overeat even now, decades after that's
00:04:29largely ended. I mean, I'm married to a Greek woman. Food insecure is quite the opposite of the
00:04:34Greek culture, to put it mildly. So, I sort of have to balance and manage my food intake. I can't
00:04:41just
00:04:41eat what I feel like. I have to constantly... What was it Julia Roberts said in Notting Hill?
00:04:46I'm an actress and a movie star, which means I've been hungry for over 20 years. That's kind of true.
00:04:52But on those times where, for one reason or another, I've slept badly, I just tell myself I'm not tired.
00:05:00I mean, it's not all quite that simple. When I went on a speaking tour in Australia in 2018 with
00:05:09Myth L Southern, we went to the Southern Hemisphere. When I went on that tour, of course, I mean,
00:05:17you flip night and day and you've got interviews and horrible plane rides and, you know, sleep is
00:05:24sort of at a premium. But I just told myself, no, I'm not tired. Same thing when I went to
00:05:30Hong Kong
00:05:30to do my documentary on the communist, rebellions against communists there, the umbrella people.
00:05:37And so on those times when I'm tired, and it doesn't work 100% of the time, but it's, you
00:05:44know,
00:05:44what if I'm just not tired? And I'll try my, you know, that kind of spacey helium-headed feeling
00:05:50you get when you're tired. Just what if I'm not tired? What if I'm fine? I'll be plenty of time
00:05:56to
00:05:56rest when I'm dead. So, gaslighting yourself, in a way, is actually quite a productive thing to do.
00:06:05And it should not be underestimated. People who think they're tired. And with regards to failure,
00:06:12oh, that's the big one, man. That is the big one. Most people, I mean, everyone fails almost all the
00:06:18time. I've done thousands of shows. If you listen to people who've listened to my show for a while,
00:06:26they say, oh, I remember that one. Oh, that one was really good. And then, you know, a lot of
00:06:30them
00:06:30just kind of come and go. I mean, obviously, I try to do high quality every time I do a
00:06:34show.
00:06:34But what people remember, and what people stick with, and what sticks with people is singular,
00:06:41right? So, people remember maybe five out of a hundred shows that they listen to. It's five
00:06:47percent. My big video from many years ago, The Story of Your Enslavement, it was something that
00:06:53really changed a lot of people, put me on the map a little bit. And I've done a whole bunch
00:07:00of those
00:07:00videos, even the sort of back before AI, you had to take little snippets. And it was always a little
00:07:05dicey, especially when you're controversial, when you take little snippets of movies and shows,
00:07:10you're supposed to be able to do that as sort of fair use. But if you get copyright claims,
00:07:16it was too risky. It was too risky to continue doing those things. I'm working on a script at
00:07:21the moment, which, because of AI, means that you can actually not have to worry about copyright
00:07:26claims, which is good. But failure is everywhere, all the time. I mean, as I sort of mentioned before,
00:07:35Shakespeare wrote dozens and dozens of plays, and Charles Dickens wrote dozens
00:07:40and dozens of novels, and we remember vividly, I mean, the average person, average literate person
00:07:46remembers vividly maybe 10 out of 30 or, well, 10 out of 50 plus, you know, 5 or 6 out
00:07:56of 30 plus.
00:07:57So even the greatest geniuses have a generalized failure rate of 80 percent, 75 percent, 70 percent.
00:08:06Even the greatest stone geniuses. You know, I watched the movie Hamnet. Hamnet was a word
00:08:14interchangeable with Hamlet, and Hamnet was Shakespeare's child who died. And I watched a
00:08:20movie about it. Oh, I really, really get truly angry at movies because I stay away from the woke
00:08:26stuff. I just find it repulsive. It is like a virus trying to invade my brain, this endless woke stuff,
00:08:33because woke is really the attempt to substitute the opposite of the truth for the truth. And
00:08:41through media and programming and propaganda. And I watched this movie Hamnet. Ah, man,
00:08:47it bugged the ever-living heck out of me. And I very rarely don't finish a movie. My wife's even
00:08:53more like, I have to know how it ends. It's like, you know, it's all made up. One thing if
00:08:57it's a
00:08:57documentary, but... And we just gave up on it. First of all, there's this women fall in your
00:09:04screen screaming, you know, okay, we know childbirth can be uncomfortable. I get that. Childbirth can
00:09:10be painful. I get that. But from what women have told me, it's the kind of pain you forget and
00:09:14you
00:09:14look forward to your next baby and all of that. But just like screaming, showing women an extreme
00:09:21discomfort in childbirth is just another one of these depopulation agendas just make women frightened.
00:09:28of childbirth. And it was really sad. If I didn't know that it was Shakespeare in the movie,
00:09:36right, because it's a young Shakespeare, I would not at all think that he was the greatest
00:09:41genius of language anywhere in the world for all of human history. He was inarticulate, told bad
00:09:47stories. He claimed he himself, oh, I have difficulty talking to people like he's half autistic and this
00:09:53idea that genius is autistic. Shakespeare was a man about town. He ran a theater company. He acted.
00:09:59He invested. He was married. Very socially competent and confident. It's just a cope.
00:10:07People say, oh, well, you know, I could be a genius, but then I'd be so tortured and tormented
00:10:11and isolated. It's like a curse you put on people who are smarter than you. It's very sad.
00:10:15Right. And in this movie, it's like, first of all, if you're going to take on a character
00:10:21like Shakespeare, like you're going to write the dialogue of the greatest language genius the world
00:10:28has ever seen. I mean, there's no comparison between Shakespeare and any other writer or poet,
00:10:37because there's no one who even comes close. It's really quite shocking. And you should do this at
00:10:41some point. It's very interesting. Look, look at all the turns of phrase we have because of
00:10:46Shakespeare. Look at all the little snippets and bonbons and so on that we have because of
00:10:51Shakespeare. It's, it's pretty wild. Maybe we'll go into them if, if you want to chat, I'm happy to
00:10:57chat. But yeah, if you're going to take on the task of writing for Shakespeare, man, you better bring
00:11:02your A game. Because you're saying this is what the greatest language genius in history, this is what he
00:11:10would have said. This is what his dialogue was like. The guy who wrote the greatest dialogue in
00:11:15the history of the world, I'm writing dialogue for him. I mean, can you imagine? The audacity is
00:11:22staggering. And listen, hey, I have no problem with audacity. It's a great audio editing software. And
00:11:29also, I have no problem with audacity, man. Go big or go home. Try your best. Yes. All right,
00:11:35fine. I mean, I wrote a novel with many famous people in it. The novel is called Almost, and you
00:11:42should check it out. It's a great book. It's a story of a German and a British family from World
00:11:47War I to World War II. And Shakespeare, sorry, Shakespeare, the other wordsmith, Churchill is a
00:11:54character in the book. So I'm going to write for one of the most eloquent public speakers in British
00:12:01political history. Okay, I'll write his dialogue. I'll take that on. I'll do that crazy task and so
00:12:07on. But you've really got to dig deep and bring your A game. And just having this guy mumbling and
00:12:14tortured and tormented and I can't write and he's thumping his head on the table in the middle of the
00:12:20night. Like, look, creativity is not supposed to be hell. What are you, a masochist? I mean,
00:12:27there's occasionally times where it's a challenge. Of course, right? You get a little stuck. I have,
00:12:33I was talking to a friend of mine about my novel, Just Poor, last night. And I love the book.
00:12:39The
00:12:39first two thirds is some of the best stuff that I'm ever going to write. It's a wonderful book.
00:12:44You can get it at freedomain.com slash books as you can with the novel almost. They're free.
00:12:48Throw in the audiobook, man. Like, I'm a trained actor. I kind of know what I'm doing
00:12:51around this stuff. And it's really, really well done. And I've never quite liked the last
00:12:59quarter of it, the last third of it. I've rewritten it two times. And I may at some point try
00:13:07it one
00:13:07more time. But that's all right. I mean, maybe if I was more of a historical perfectionist,
00:13:12I'd get everything just right. But Ayn Rand did and she didn't change the world. So, in fact,
00:13:18she just got depressed. That was a really, really sad story. So, I'll trace my thoughts back. Hamlet
00:13:24and so on. Woke stuff. So, gaslighting yourself is important. You know, I've often thought of how,
00:13:32again, don't want to make this about myself. If you have questions or comments, happy to get your
00:13:35thoughts. But I've often thought, because I think back to a particular time occasionally when I,
00:13:41as I get older, you kind of look at the shape of your life. When you're younger, hurly-burly,
00:13:46that's when the hurly-burly's done. Lion from Queen, the band, also the title of a play by David
00:13:53Mamet, and also from Shakespeare, from Shakespeare, hurly-burly. And in the chaos of your life and
00:14:00the sort of forward thrust of getting things done in the moment, it's hard to see the shape of your
00:14:06life. But lives have a shape. They have a very definitive shape. And even the lack of shape.
00:14:14The shapelessness is a kind of shape. The absence of something is also indication of something.
00:14:19If you don't work out, you're not working out shapes your body into a pair. So,
00:14:28life has a particular kind of shape to it. And if you live by principles, then you're fighting your
00:14:34battles and having your wins and your losses and so on over the course of your life. And
00:14:42it is sort of like, if you're a soldier, then you fight your battles. Maybe you have a bit of
00:14:47leave.
00:14:47You know, think of in a trench in World War I. You're just trying to survive the day and
00:14:52do the damage on the enemy, avoid damage from the enemy, and so on. And then, of course,
00:15:00historians look at the shape of World War II. And you can, of course, after you're a soldier,
00:15:04a number of soldiers have done this, you become a historian of the war you actually fought in.
00:15:09In fact, Adolf Hitler was one of those people he fought in World War I, and then didn't become a
00:15:16formal historian, but wrote a history of World War I from the Nazi perspective when he was in prison.
00:15:25So, life has a kind of shape to it, which sometimes you only see afterwards. It's really
00:15:30tough to say, I'm going to have this shape to my life as a whole early on. Because, again,
00:15:36you're just surviving and fighting. And, of course, the other thing is you don't know
00:15:40your own capacities. I mean, there are some people who do know their own capacities.
00:15:45Freddie Mercury, the singer for Queen, when he was starting out, he and Roger Taylor had a store
00:15:53selling funky clothing. I think it was in Kensington Market or something like that.
00:15:57And early on, he said, I'm destined for stardom. I'm going to be a big star. I'm going to be
00:16:03a
00:16:03superstar. And when people would take photographs of him early, he would demand that they allow him
00:16:09to destroy the photographs he did not consider sufficiently flattering. I mean, he had a, I guess he was
00:16:14he was, quote, straight, then became bi and then eventually openly came out as gay. And
00:16:21he knew early on or believed. But here's the thing, too. There's lots of people who thought
00:16:26they were going to be famous, who had giant ambitions and thought they were going to be
00:16:31superstars, who didn't actually become superstars. So, it's not causal. So, some people do. And I knew,
00:16:39in general, that I was going to be destined for fairly big things, or I was going to be able
00:16:44to
00:16:44achieve fairly big things. But I didn't know in what area I tried. Obviously, I tried the arts.
00:16:50I tried acting, writing, directing, writing plays. I wrote novels. I wrote poetry. I went into the
00:16:58business world. And then I started doing philosophy. Now, I tried academia as well. I got a graduate degree.
00:17:05And I just kept casting about trying to find something that would fit. And I really had to
00:17:10wait for technology to catch up with what fit with me. Because I wrote about podcasting in the
00:17:1690s. You know, 15 years, 10 years before it became a thing. I wrote about it in the early 2000s,
00:17:28in a novel called The God of Atheists, which again, you should check out, where a guy speaks to a
00:17:34camera
00:17:35on a computer to the world. And it's long before YouTube, long before RSS feeds and podcasting and
00:17:45so on. And so, I finally found something that kind of worked and really fit. And it's the most
00:17:50important thing for me that I could be doing for the world. So, the shape of life, when you look
00:17:58back
00:17:58in it, becomes more clear. And one of the things that I remember was there was a French podcaster
00:18:05sort of very early on, when I was just, just, just starting out. I can't remember his name,
00:18:11Tremblay, something like that, Quebec, sorry, French Quebec, something called the Moral Razor.
00:18:17And he had me on his show. And I'd never done anything like that before being on someone's show.
00:18:22And I remember feeling extraordinarily tentative. Like, I don't know if I'm any good at this or not.
00:18:27I have no idea. And my default position is to believe I'm not good at something.
00:18:33That way, I have something to prove. And that way, I work extra hard to be good at it, right?
00:18:39So,
00:18:40I say to myself, if I have a debate coming up, I say to myself, the default position is going
00:18:46to be
00:18:46to fail at the debate. So, I have to work to not fail at the debate. I have to prepare.
00:18:51I have to
00:18:52make notes. I have to do my research. And for donors, I will usually say, here are the new
00:18:59arguments I'm going to make in this debate. I always want to come to debates with new arguments,
00:19:03because otherwise, people can just look up my old arguments, and it's way too easy to counter them,
00:19:07or at least to know where I'm coming from. And I remember being very tentative and very uncertain
00:19:17about whether I was providing value, whether I was going to do a good job, and so on. And that
00:19:22helps.
00:19:24I always feel like I have to earn everything all the time. And I think that's what keeps things fresh.
00:19:28It keeps me from things becoming automatic as a whole. So, the shape of life often shows up later,
00:19:36and all we can do is live day to day on principles, and then the general patterns emerge later. And
00:19:44the general patterns should always have to do with honor, honesty, integrity, virtue, and courage.
00:19:50That's what they should generally have to do. I certainly don't achieve those with every moment
00:19:55of every day, but that's sort of what I'm aiming at. And if I could do that, and part of
00:20:01that
00:20:02is to gaslight yourself. Now, gaslighting yourself isn't saying, I did wonderfully. That's vanity.
00:20:08Like, I did wonderfully no matter what. Oh, it was great no matter what. Part of gaslighting yourself
00:20:13is positive and negative. Because everyone thinks gaslight is just saying that things are better
00:20:17than they are. But part of gaslighting yourself, I gaslight myself if I have a debate that I'm going
00:20:23to do. And I'm sort of looking at a couple of debates down the road. If I have a debate
00:20:28that I'm
00:20:28going to do, I gaslight myself. Like, I could go in saying, look, I mean, I've been debating since
00:20:33my teens. You know, it's 40 plus years. I know what I'm doing. I could just go in, and I
00:20:39could do
00:20:39this in my sleep, and I could be sort of confident, and I could have some reasons for doing that.
00:20:44But gaslighting is also saying to yourself, for me, I'm going to do badly if I don't prepare, or at
00:20:51least I'm not going to do as well as I could, which to me is doing badly. I'm going to
00:20:58do badly if I
00:20:58don't prepare. That's really important. Gaslighting yourself is helpful. You can just tell yourself
00:21:05you're not tired. And to some degree, that will help. Not with medical stuff. You can't say,
00:21:09I don't have a sunburn, right? Or you shouldn't. But gaslighting yourself is much more powerful.
00:21:16I used to have great scorn for the Hamlet statement, there is nothing good or bad, but thinking
00:21:21makes it so. That's not true. Your beloved dog gets run over. That is not good. Now, of course,
00:21:28there are other positive things that come out of that. Maybe you get a new dog,
00:21:32and you don't get to see your old dog suffer, but maybe you get a new dog that you love
00:21:35even more,
00:21:36and so on. But in general, there are some things that are bad. You can get some good things out
00:21:42of
00:21:42the bad things, but that doesn't make the bad things good. So, gaslighting yourself, don't let the world
00:21:51dictate your perspective. And certainly, don't let other people dictate your perspective.
00:21:59Don't let other people... And I've seen this. I'm sure we've all seen this. It's a pretty wild
00:22:03phenomenon. When I was in my teens, it was the polo shirt, and I think it was Ralph Lauren and
00:22:11things
00:22:11like that. And when I was younger, I remember there were two mad passions that went on in boarding
00:22:17school. Sorry, that probably sounds a little sinister. But number one was we all got obsessed
00:22:25with making paper airplanes, and paper was in short supply. And I remember getting a very long lecture
00:22:31in front of everyone because I had ripped out a page with Roman coins from an encyclopedia my mother had
00:22:39gave me because I wanted to try a new design for a paper airplane. Paper airplanes were just a huge
00:22:45fad in boarding school. I was there from the ages of six to eight. And in boarding school, this fad
00:22:53came out of nowhere. I don't know how it started. It became huge for a couple of months, maybe two
00:23:00months, six weeks, two months. And then it just vanished, and people didn't care about paper airplanes
00:23:06anymore. Sorry. The other one that happened was a conqueror's or chestnuts. So we would get a
00:23:13chestnut. This was early Fortnite, early Unreal Tournament. We would get chestnuts, and we would
00:23:21find a way to put a hole through the chestnut with an awl or a compass. And then we would
00:23:25put a string
00:23:26through a chestnut, and you would hold a chestnut, and someone else would hit your chestnut with their
00:23:30chestnut on the string. And the one that didn't break won. And that was another. Mad passion conquers.
00:23:39Sounds like conqueror, maybe. I don't know. The mad passion that went on. And these things kind of come
00:23:43and go. And you see this, of course, with fashion. A particular look is in. You can go back and
00:23:51look at
00:23:52the giant hair and cheekbone makeup from the 80s. The particular fashion is in, and then it's not.
00:23:58It's out. It's bad. It's wrong. And you didn't. You can't even remotely think of being seen in last
00:24:06year's outfit. The big shoulders, big shoulder pads were in, in the 80s. It's sort of power woman,
00:24:11Melanie Griffith, poofy-haired stuff. And these passions, it's all just weak-minded people
00:24:20following particular dictated mating trends. If you're cool, you wear this. And it's kind of
00:24:26unfair, honestly. I mean, not that life has to be fair. I'm just sort of pointing it out.
00:24:31That the polo shirts that were big when I was a teenager, I mean, all you do, it's pretty simple,
00:24:37right? You just, you get really good-looking guys in polo shirts doing cool things like
00:24:44sailing. And I know it all seemed to be sailing. Maybe there were other things too. Or, you know,
00:24:50they're all in some ritzy, well-trimmed garden with a couple of cool gargoyles, all laughing and,
00:24:57and so on. And you just get a bunch of good-looking people and you shoot them from slightly below.
00:25:02So
00:25:02you're looking up at them as if they're elevated and you get the perfect faces and the perfect teeth
00:25:07and the perfect hair. And you just shoot that, you broadcast it out. And then everyone has to
00:25:12have a polo shirt. And it's pretty tough, man, because if you're poor, well, you don't get a
00:25:20polo shirt. If you're poor, like I was, and I didn't particularly do this, but my brother was
00:25:25quite a fashion plate. And I, you know, not say that necessarily as a huge negative, it just sort of
00:25:30effect. My brother would spend hours and hours scouring the goodwill. There was a Hasidic
00:25:38bazaar that used to go on downtown and he would just go down all day and look for cool clothes.
00:25:43And he really did find some cool clothes from time to time, found a great leather jacket and
00:25:46beautiful green sweater and so on that really did look cool and great. So you just have to spend time
00:25:52rather than money if you're poor to get these things. But they just kind of come and go. And
00:25:58other people to dictate the contents of their minds. And it is a way of saying, if you have to
00:26:04have a polo shirt, it's a way of saying, don't worry, everyone. I'm an NPC. I don't think for myself.
00:26:13I allow my perceptions to be manipulated for profit. And I've always disliked that stuff. And
00:26:23I get that it has a point and there's a signaling. There's a, you know, my team and
00:26:28tribalism and all of that. But I just, how sad, how sad to just be an empty vessel to be
00:26:35filled
00:26:35with whatever profitable bullcrap comes into the mind of some marketer out there in the middle of
00:26:43nowhere. Like drinking is one of those things where when I was younger, it was sort of heavily marketed.
00:26:49And it's just, it's very sad. It's very much an abandonment of your own consciousness. And because
00:26:55the juggernaut of marketing and advertising sales and propaganda, and the biggest propaganda, of
00:27:01course, by far is at the schools, because it's such a juggernaut, you can't live without it. You
00:27:07can live for it or against it, but you can't live in the absence of it because it's almost impossible
00:27:12to conceive. So it's almost impossible to conceive a life where you're reasoned with, and it's not just
00:27:18endless amounts of profitable propaganda. So my friends and I, who we were often, I mean, most of
00:27:27my friends were broke or had parents, even if they weren't broke, weren't going to, about to go and
00:27:32buy them a $40 polo shirt. So a lot of my friends lived in reaction to that. And they make
00:27:39fun and
00:27:39angry fun of the preppies. I think that comes from prep school, preparatory school. And they would
00:27:46just make fun of the preppies. And they would mock them. And they lived in reaction to all of this.
00:27:53And it's very sad. It's really, really important to think for yourself as best you can, and not get
00:27:58swept up in these. I mean, I think grooming is important. Taking care of your appearance is
00:28:03important. You should go to the dentist. You should exercise. You should have some sort of
00:28:09skincare routine, I believe, because it's kind of important to look decent. And, you know,
00:28:14it's important for yourself to look in the mirror and like what you see. It's important to look in
00:28:18the mirror and like what you see. Because, especially in the past, people would get to know you because
00:28:25you were in some small village or farm community or tribe. So everyone would get to know the qualities
00:28:32of your character. These days, we're all bouncing around like a bunch of brownie-in-motion
00:28:36atoms in a hysterical windstorm. And so we just pass. And we've got to make judgments very quickly
00:28:42on people and a reasonable amount of grooming. You know, you don't want too little. You also don't
00:28:48want too much. Some sort of femboy makeup tutorial is probably not the way to go. But some reasonable
00:28:56level of thinking for yourself. And as well as recognizing that you also do have a responsibility
00:29:01to have a decent amount of grooming so that you're reasonably attractive. But yeah. So I wanted
00:29:06to mention the gaslighting thing. It's really, really important. Do not let you be the squishy
00:29:12mud that the tire tracks of other people's perceptions and what happens in life just lands
00:29:16on you. Don't do it. Be an active participant in the creation of your reality. Now, when I know
00:29:25your reality, I know that sounds like subjectivism or some sort of internalized matrix thing. I'm not
00:29:31talking about that. But if you fail at something, do not brand yourself a failure. Failure is the
00:29:40natural condition of human life. If you're happily married, think about all of the women or men that
00:29:50you were attracted to in the past that didn't work out, either because you didn't talk to them,
00:29:54they just sat across from them in the subway, or you went on a date, but it wasn't compelling,
00:30:01or maybe you had a relationship, didn't work out. So before you get married, these days,
00:30:06most people get married in their late 20s, which is, you know, 12 years plus after they first entered
00:30:12into the dating market. And they've had probably thousands of women or men that they've been
00:30:17attracted to or would have dated. And either they didn't do anything, they just passed by,
00:30:22there was nothing, they asked them out, they got rejected right up front, because maybe the girl
00:30:27has a boyfriend and so on. And so you think of all the people that you were attracted to or
00:30:31would
00:30:32have dated or tried to date or did date before you got happily married. And it's probably in the
00:30:39thousands, not of people you dated or slept with for sure, but I hope, but just in terms of people
00:30:45you
00:30:45were attracted to and would have considered dating. I mean, think of in high school, right? I had a high
00:30:49school with like 2,500 students, and you know, probably 1250 of those were females, and I probably
00:30:58would have dated half of them. So, you know, that's half of 1250. Oh, Lord, 675. So that is a
00:31:09lot. And
00:31:10that's just in high school. And some of the girls would come and go. And so you understand. So of
00:31:16all
00:31:16the people you were attracted to, let's say you were attracted to a thousand people and you married
00:31:20one, well, it's a failure rate of 99.9%. That's life. Most of life is failure. And you have to
00:31:29enjoy something other than success. I remember being quite struck. Martina Navratilova or something
00:31:34like that, she was a tennis star. It could have been Chris Everett. She was a female tennis star.
00:31:38And she said, the thrill of victory lasts about 15 minutes. I think of that, right? To win
00:31:43Wimbledon. It's the top tennis tournament in the world. It takes an ungodly amount of training and
00:31:55suffering and dieting and exercise and stretching and recovery and icing and like just on and on and
00:32:02on. Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of hours to win Wimbledon. And if you're
00:32:12a lot of discomfort and you're not dating, you're not going to bars, you're not out there in the
00:32:18world, you're not learning how to play chess or learning how to play, it's just single-minded
00:32:23dedication to tennis and then you win. And of course, most of the time, right, tennis matches can
00:32:32go on for two or three hours. And most of your life, you're not in a winning tennis match and
00:32:38you're
00:32:38certainly not in the moment where you've won. Is this the best possible show I could ever possibly
00:32:44do? I doubt it, but I'm really trying to do something to provide value to you in the time
00:32:50that you're spending listening to me. I can't say, oh, that show I did, my God, late April 2026,
00:32:58that Sunday morning was electric, perfect, beautiful, wonderful. So is this the number one
00:33:04show I have ever done in my life? There's a show, Drew Carey and a couple other comedians,
00:33:14where, whose line is it anyway? And it was an improv show. And they came up with 22 minutes,
00:33:21it was 22 minutes of TV plus eight minutes of commercials. So they would come up with some
00:33:27funny stuff, right? What can you say? What can you say to your dog that you can't say to your
00:33:34girlfriend? And one of the guys came out and said, come. Pretty funny. Pretty funny. But I talked to
00:33:41someone who was in the audience once and he said they film for like eight or nine hours or 10
00:33:46hours
00:33:46sometimes just to come up with stuff that works for 22 minutes. And even all of those 22 minutes are
00:33:54not stellar. Think of all the movies you've seen in your life, which ones had a big impact on you
00:33:59that really helped you become who you are. There's very few. So don't let the world impress itself upon
00:34:08you, but be an active participant in the creation of your own reality. I was very tentative to think
00:34:16that I could succeed in what I was doing. I was very tentative about that. And the last thing I'll
00:34:23say, because, you know, it shouldn't be, it should be at least, I think I have a contractual obligation
00:34:27for three queen references per show. But if you look at Live Aid and you look at the design, Live
00:34:35Aid
00:34:35was a big concert to raise money for people in Africa so that they would have the strength in time
00:34:42to get to Europe. Although I don't think that was exactly discussed at the time, but there were
00:34:48two memorable acts in Live Aid. One was Led Zeppelin, which was a complete disaster. And the other
00:34:59was Queen, which is considered like the best 20 minutes of live entertainment in like human history.
00:35:07And Led Zeppelin, for a variety of reasons, barely practiced. And of course, their original drama had died
00:35:14many years before. And so they had Phil Collins fly from England to New York on the Concorde,
00:35:20as it was back then, which I think ended up being banned because you couldn't break the sound barrier
00:35:25or something. But Phil Collins flew over and they had almost no time to prepare. And it was a sludgy
00:35:34mess.
00:35:35Robert Plant's voice was shot because he was on tour. And it was just bad, just bad overall.
00:35:43And so that's a lack of preparation, even from very experienced musicians. Queen, on the other
00:35:47hand, spent two weeks rehearsing for their 20 minutes and picked exactly the right songs and
00:35:54so on. Because, you know, bands always want to play their new material, but the fans want the older
00:35:59material. And Queen, you know, agonized over the set list and practiced like crazy. Freddie Mercury was
00:36:05in bad shape, man, because I think he already had AIDS at this point. And he had a terrible
00:36:12throat infection. And his doctor said, for God's sakes, don't sing. And of course,
00:36:15he went out and belted it out. And, you know, whatever, probably probably for the best that he
00:36:19did. He said himself that being a rock and roll singer is just about basically abusing your voice
00:36:24until it breaks, which has happened, I think, to a bunch of musicians lately. John Bon Jovi has broken
00:36:30his voice, does not seem to be able to get it back. So Queen, because they were out of favor,
00:36:36because they had played South Africa and so on. And they were out of favor and they were
00:36:40considered long past their prime. And I think the Hot Space had the Hot Space album come out.
00:36:45So they had they had a big hit with Another One Bites the Dust. And actually, they weren't even
00:36:50going to release it as a single, but they were friends with Michael Jackson. And Michael Jackson
00:36:53said, you got to do it. It's great. You got this got to be a single. And so they put
00:36:59it out. It was one
00:36:59of their biggest hits ever and got them into the R&B station, got the big in the in the
00:37:03States,
00:37:03which they'd never really been before. And then they said, oh, I think Freddie was doing a whole
00:37:08bunch of sinister Hamburg nightclub Munich nightclub living where he was just exposed to constant
00:37:15disco. So they tried to do an entire A side of an album with just crap disco on it. And
00:37:20the B side
00:37:21of that album is underrated. It's really, really good. Cool Cat is great. Les Palables de Amor is
00:37:25great. I'm not a big fan of Put Out the Fire because it's an anti-gun message, but that's got
00:37:30under
00:37:30pressure. It's not a bad B side at all. But the A side is just terrible. So they were out
00:37:37of favor.
00:37:37And everyone thought they were past their prime. Queen was past their prime. And of course,
00:37:42one of the things that was wild about Live Aid was bands aren't used to seeing their audience.
00:37:47You know, if you've ever been, it's a wild phenomena. If you've ever been up on stage and well lit,
00:37:54because bands play at night, right? So you're up on the stage, you can't see the audience. You cannot see
00:37:59the audience past the lights, particularly when, like Queen and other acts, they have these big,
00:38:03giant, dazzling light shows. Queen had to have a big light show for the middle part of Bohemian
00:38:07Rhapsody where they just play the tape and leave the stage for a pee break and a smoke, I'm sure,
00:38:12for Freddie. So you can't see the audience. And one of the things that was wild for Queen, as I
00:38:18guess
00:38:18most of the artists that day, is you finally get to see your audience. It's really hard to see your
00:38:23audience. I remember being on stage a number of times. And if I was doing a soliloquy, because I
00:38:30played Macbeth, and you do a soliloquy, you're not supposed to exactly do it to the audience.
00:38:35But as an actor, you have to be aware of the audience. But you can't see them because you've
00:38:39got all these lights in your face. So they could see the audience, which I think was particularly
00:38:42electric. And Freddie had his famous sort of, oh, he does his vocal warm-up exercises with the crowd.
00:38:48And you could actually see them and dance with them and play with them. And so they ended up
00:38:52being a massive success because they knew that they were behind the eight ball on the back foot,
00:38:58and they were down in popularity, and there was quite a bit of hostility towards them, which is
00:39:02why they weren't included in the do-they-know-it's-Christmas thing. And so they created their own reality
00:39:09because they could have just coasted and said, listen, we've been doing tours for decades. We know how
00:39:14to do this. We'll be fine. But nope, they practiced and practiced and practiced because they want to
00:39:18get it just right. And of course, there's nothing like endless practice to make things look effortless
00:39:23and easy, right? So they gaslit themselves into thinking they were worse than they were. So they
00:39:30needed two weeks of practice for 20 minutes. And it's funny, it's just a by-the-by thing. Queen never
00:39:35made
00:39:36any money on their tours. They never made any money on their tours. They toured and toured and toured,
00:39:41and they spent all the money they made on making the tours better. It's a wild phenomenon.
00:39:47So yeah, just be an active participant. Queen was great that day because they thought they had
00:39:52the capacity to be really terrible. And so don't gaslight yourself into thinking you're better than
00:39:57you are so that you can achieve your potential. And for heaven's sakes, don't gaslight yourself into
00:40:02thinking that you're worse than you are. And aiming too high can lead you with nothing.
00:40:07Aiming too high can leave you with nothing. Now this is true for women and for men, that if you
00:40:15aim too high, like you're a 5 and you're aiming for a 10, and you don't have something to compensate
00:40:20like a really great sense of humor or charisma or something like that, or some material success
00:40:26perhaps, some great education, some great potential. If you aim too high, you'll end up with nothing.
00:40:31And so don't gaslight yourself into thinking you're better than you are either. This can really happen
00:40:36for females on the internet, right? Dating apps, social media, because they get, you know, hundreds
00:40:42and hundreds of men interested in them every day. And they start to feel like the Queen of Sheba,
00:40:47which means they can't settle down. They get so much dopamine from being pursued by endless hordes of
00:40:52men. I mean, to be a woman on social media these days, and particularly in dating apps,
00:40:57I mean, some reasonably attractive woman, but even the averages, you get the kind of attention
00:41:03that was reserved for rock stars or the Beatles in the past. I'm not kidding. Like, it's crazy
00:41:09what this does to women's pair bonding and their wiring mechanisms as a whole. And they're constantly
00:41:16swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. No, no, no, no, no. In the same way, like if you're, I don't know,
00:41:24Paul McCartney talked about how he had a lot of fun when he was with the Beatles, particularly when
00:41:30they first broke out. And by that, I assume he meant groupies. So, and there are rock stars who
00:41:36will point out someone, they'll make a signal to someone when they're on stage, this girl,
00:41:42bring her back after, right? And of course, you know, there are hundreds of girls all doled up,
00:41:47all hoping to be picked out by the rock star. And this bath is bigger than my whole apartment.
00:41:54So, these groupies, how many groupies are there? Hundreds and hundreds of groupies. And you just
00:41:58pick out one. And that groupie is almost certain to come backstage and have sex with you. She gets
00:42:05a cool story. She slept with Steven Tyler. And then she also gets to visit her gynecologist and get
00:42:11antibiotics. There are lots of things that can fall out of these kinds of stories. And holy crap,
00:42:19having hundreds of people clamoring to be with you is something that rock stars experienced in the
00:42:24past. And the average woman with a phone experiences in the present. It's extremely
00:42:30distortionary. And keep an eye out for that. Last thing. Last thing. And thank you for allowing me to
00:42:40have my hopefully productive rambles. I think they're productive. Last thing. And again, if you want to,
00:42:44if you want to chat, if people don't want to chat, I assume that you're getting great value out of
00:42:49what
00:42:49it is that I'm saying. I appreciate you listening. I really do. I love the fact that you're here.
00:42:54Otherwise, it would be a little odd. Like the people who post for nothing, just having long
00:42:58conversations with a brick wall. Oh, not ideal. So, I was remembering a conversation I had years ago
00:43:08with someone. It was not a friend, not a stranger, just, you know, one of these people who kind of
00:43:13floats around you see from time to time. And let's call him Jim. We can stay away from Bob for
00:43:19the
00:43:19moment and call him Jim. And Jim had a sister who was an addict. And it was not good. She
00:43:29was committed
00:43:30to the bit, as they say. And his sister, you know, this is many, many years after their childhood,
00:43:39I think a decade or two after their childhood. And his sister was just doing poorly and still living
00:43:44at home and still being an addict. And my friend Jim was, well, my acquaintance Jim was tormented by
00:43:53this. Oh, why? I didn't become an addict. She became an addict. Like, maybe it's because of this.
00:43:57Maybe it's because of that. Some birth order thing or she had this experience and so on. And
00:44:04it's tough, man. That way, madness lies. I'm telling you straight up. When you try to find
00:44:10causal dominoes for people's circumstances, you will go mad. You will go mad. It will torment and
00:44:20torture you. Well, why is he this way? And why am I that way? And why is she that way?
00:44:24And why?
00:44:24I, yeah, first of all, personality is actually genetic. Now, it's not like a personality is
00:44:30foundational to addictive. So, oh, there's an addictive personality. I mean,
00:44:33I don't even know really what that means. But there is no causality for people's choices.
00:44:41And this ties into the fact that you are, you have the absolute responsibility to be an active
00:44:48participant in the shaping of your perceptions. As I've said before, I got deplatformed. You know,
00:44:56when I saw Charlie Kirk, I accidentally saw the video of Charlie Kirk getting shot.
00:45:02I saw the picture, sorry, I saw the video. Oh, what's that? And it was horrendous. And honestly,
00:45:08I was facing the same threats. When I was out public speaking, bomb threats, death threats,
00:45:14threats of violence. And when I was speaking in Australia, feral leftists attacked the venue,
00:45:20attacked the buses. They threw giant batteries through the windows of the buses. They tried to
00:45:24tip the buses over. They just attacked. It really was like a zombie army, but fast-moving zombies,
00:45:30well-coordinated, well-paid, I think, too. When I tried to speak in New Zealand, the media whipped up
00:45:37a bunch of hysteria, of course. And then there were bomb threats that shut down the venue.
00:45:42When I tried to give a speech in Canada, there was, again, the same threats against the venue. The
00:45:50venue stopped. We managed to get a church. The priest's car was attacked. It was wild. And
00:45:58the amount of left, the leftist support for political violence is off the charts. They love it.
00:46:05They love it. Because they have convinced themselves that everyone who disagrees with them
00:46:11is about to become a full-on Nazi. And, you know, would you kill Hitler early in his career?
00:46:19Well, sure. So, yeah, once you portray everyone as Hitler or Nazis or whatever, you can just do
00:46:25whatever you want. It's a full-on permission to be as evil as you want to be. And if I
00:46:33look at
00:46:33deplatforming, well, it's entirely possible that the people who deplatformed me saved my life.
00:46:44Because it was only a matter of time until I was shot. I remember when I was on speaking tours,
00:46:52going to the bathroom, somebody would come in, and I half expected a knife through the back
00:46:59when I was at the urinal. I mean, it was really, it was that wild an experience.
00:47:05So, deplatforming, good or bad, never underestimate the worst luck that you're bad luck has saved you
00:47:13from. I can look at deplatforming as, ah, they took away my audience, they took away my life's work,
00:47:17they slashed my income. Absolutely, I can look at it that way, and I could certainly make a case for
00:47:23that. I don't know, because there's no alternative dimension wherein I was not deplatformed. But
00:47:30I'm here, I could easily make the case, I'm here because I was deplatformed. That those who
00:47:38deplatformed me were part of, and I know I say this advisedly, like it's just an analogy,
00:47:44sort of the Hegelian world spirit, right? So, if there was a world spirit that wanted the truth to come
00:47:50out, or if there was a God who wanted me to continue speaking, what God would say is,
00:47:57you need to deplatform him, so that he doesn't get killed, or put in a wheelchair with a shot
00:48:04through the spine, or something like that, right? You need to please deplatform him, because he is not,
00:48:11he thinks that the danger is exciting, he doesn't realize how dangerous it really is. Which means that
00:48:18the, quote, world spirit, or God himself, thought that it was better for me to keep speaking than to
00:48:26be martyred. And I suppose I agree. I'm very happy to be here. So, I agree. I agree. And again,
00:48:36I know that's just an analogy, but these are ways of looking at things. That deplatforming,
00:48:41being deplatformed, saved my life. Laura Luma was talking about that she said after Charlie Kirkus,
00:48:47there was a teacher of the year, a former computer scientist, and so on, was trying to
00:48:55assassinate Trump, we assume Trump, at the, was it the correspondence or the press dinner last night?
00:49:01And of course, if you want to know who supports violence, just look for everyone who uses the
00:49:07phrase security incident. There was a security incident. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what he faces.
00:49:15And Laura Luma was saying that after Charlie Kirk was shot, she just doesn't go to events anymore.
00:49:20She said, what's the point? Like, I can't go to events without massive security. And that's the life
00:49:26that you live in when you disagree with the left. It is as brutal as being in a viciously, violently,
00:49:39murderously dangerous relationship. Like if you're some woman, and you've got some roided up rage beast
00:49:46who beats the crap out of you every time you disagree with him, we would all know that that's
00:49:51an abusive relationship. But people who disagree with the left, you can disagree with the right,
00:49:55you can disagree with Christians, and so on. People who disagree with the left face violence,
00:50:00attacks, assaults, reputational destruction, income destruction, just for disagreeing.
00:50:05I mean, they don't fight fair. It's one of the things I really dislike about the left.
00:50:09I kind of hate the left for this. Is, I don't mind a fight, but you have to fight fair.
00:50:14Like,
00:50:14I'll get into a boxing ring, but not if you call in and don't even show up and call in
00:50:18an airstrike.
00:50:19And it's not a fair fight. I'll go into a boxing ring, but not if you poison me beforehand.
00:50:25So that you, quote, win the fight. It's that level of horrendous avoidance and manipulation.
00:50:31And, of course, the purpose of the media is to keep portraying people as, you know, horrible,
00:50:37evil, racist, Nazi, blah, blah, blah. And they do that to imprint upon people who are unstable
00:50:45the virtue and value of murder, assassination, violence, and so on. And people on the right,
00:50:53I'm not exactly on the right, of course. I'm a philosopher. I'm a little bit independent of
00:50:57these labels. But anti-leftists have all faced unfathomable levels of violence that people
00:51:02on the left can't understand. And people who are moderates can't understand it either.
00:51:07It's pretty easy to not be frightened of lions if you're a bird in a tree. Lions aren't going to
00:51:13fight to get to you. But only the zebra knows the reality of the lion. So, my perception with
00:51:22regards to something like deplatforming is, thank heavens, I got to see my daughter grow up. I got
00:51:28to spend more time with my wife. And I get to do a whole lot more philosophy being alive. Be
00:51:35an active
00:51:37participant in your view of reality. Now, you don't want to make up facts. But you really do have a
00:51:45choice about interpretations. Every woman who dumped me or who I dumped led me to my wife. 23, 24 years,
00:51:55it's been wonderful. And my heart grows a thousand times a day. Every breakup led me to that. This,
00:52:07that's what I live, what I love. I wanted to be effective in the realm of philosophy. That really was
00:52:15my metric. I'm an empiricist, which means, and also my training in the business world means that you
00:52:19actually have to get things done. You actually have to get the contract signed. You have to ship the
00:52:25product. You have to provide the service. You have to get things done. A business plan is not a
00:52:33profit. Daydreaming is not achievement. It's nothing wrong with daydreaming, but it's got to
00:52:39lead somewhere, right? And so, as a philosopher, I wanted to actually achieve things in the world.
00:52:45Not just write a bunch of stuff that no one cares or thinks about, doesn't add up to anything,
00:52:50doesn't really change anything. Like that line in the movie Shadowlands, Deborah Winger and Anthony
00:52:56Hopkins. Anthony Hopkins plays C.S. Lewis. And C.S. Lewis is an academic and talks to another academic
00:53:07just looking up from his work saying, doesn't it all just feel sort of pointless? The other academic
00:53:12says, well, yes, of course. I didn't want that. So, my choices were to be a windbag with some
00:53:21interesting ideas and arguments and some jokes and charm, perhaps, and not achieve anything in the
00:53:26world and then end up with a sense of emptiness. What have I really changed? The shape of your life
00:53:32is defined by what you've changed in the world. So, I could be ineffective in the world and then I
00:53:38would be safe from violence. Or I could be effective in the world, which means thwarting
00:53:42the interests of evildoers. I could be safe. I could be safe in the world, which means I get the
00:53:48despair of having changed nothing. I can be effective in the world, which means I summon
00:53:54violent opposition. And that's it. That's the only choice you have. You can retreat before evil,
00:54:01which leaves you with self-contempt, depression, anxiety, and feelings of existential disutility
00:54:08that you've wasted your life. Horrendous. Horrendous. Or you can be effective in the world,
00:54:15promote virtue, thwart evil, in which case you get attacked. So, you either attack yourself or you
00:54:22get attacked by others. There's really no other option. You either fall back before evildoers,
00:54:29in which case you have self-contempt. Again, where reasonably you can fight. Or you thwart,
00:54:36effectively thwart the goals, desires, and lusts of evildoers, in which case they attack the hell out
00:54:42of you. And the best you can hope for is surviving the attack. You can't stop the attack. You can
00:54:51only
00:54:52prevent the attack by being inconsequential. But all you can do is survive the attack because they
00:54:58don't fight fair. They don't fight fair. They don't take you on with reason and evidence, which is how
00:55:03you know they're wrong. If you're wrong, you can fight fair. If you're a good boxer, you don't need to
00:55:07cheat. You don't need to poison your opponent. You'll just take them on. If you're a good boxer.
00:55:13If you're a bad boxer, then... And of course, I predicted all of this, although I make predictions
00:55:18and then forget about them from time to time. But I sort of said, if anybody interferes with the
00:55:23goals, actions, plans, and ideals of evildoers, that the evildoers will cheat the system.
00:55:30Or cheat the system. And to be an active participant in the shaping of your perceptions of
00:55:36reality. You can't shape reality. I can't gaslight myself and say, I was never de-platformed. I mean,
00:55:42I could, but that would be kind of crazy, right? That would be unwell in the extreme. So,
00:55:48I can't just say I was never de-platformed. I was never attacked, right? My family was never
00:55:56attacked, right? I can't say that. That would be crazy. But what it means, right? You have no control
00:56:03over what it is. But you have a lot of control over what it means. Over what it means.
00:56:14And way too many people let other people define what it means, right? So, it's back to the polo
00:56:19story I was talking about earlier, the polo shirt story in the 80s. Well, what it means to be
00:56:24successful and attractive and hip and cool is wearing a polo shirt. F off. No, it doesn't.
00:56:30It doesn't. Shallow, ridiculous, pathetic adornment. Conformity. Useless. The useless
00:56:37shifting of money to empty-headed marketing sociopaths is not the definition of the good
00:56:42life. It's really not. And shouldn't be. Can't be. Isn't. Isn't. So, I haven't forgotten
00:56:51about Jim. Let's go back to Jim. Get back to the Jim. Go back to Jim. Jim with his sister,
00:56:56who's the addict. She was looking for causality. Why did she become an addict? Why did she
00:57:01make this choice? Why did she do that? And of course, like most addicts, she was horrendously
00:57:06manipulative. If you don't give me money, I'm just going to go out and sell my body. If you
00:57:10don't give me money, I'm just going to go and steal it. Then I'll go to jail. If you don't
00:57:14give me money, I'm going to kill myself. You know, just addicts are the ultimate NPCs because
00:57:19they're just programmed by the drug to get them more drugs, right? The cells that need
00:57:26the drugs are just the puppet masters. They're not even themselves. It's demonic possession,
00:57:31right? It's the analogy. It's demonic possession. And of course, when you grow up with someone
00:57:38who becomes an addict, you remember them when they were young and tenderhearted and nice
00:57:43and sweet and thoughtful and, you know, before they made the series of choices that they made
00:57:48in order to become addicts. I mean, it's not like the first cigarette you put in your
00:57:52mouth makes you a lifelong two-pack-a-day smoker. It's not like the first drink you ever put
00:57:56to your lips makes you a complete raving alcoholic. No. No. You make the choice and then you make
00:58:04a series of choices that ends up with you being an addict. You make a choice to try the drug
00:58:09and then you make a choice to do the drug again and again and again and again and then very
00:58:16quickly, the choices you make means that you don't make any more choices. Like, you can choose
00:58:21to jump off a cliff, hopefully into some nice quarry water below. You can choose to jump off a cliff,
00:58:29for sure, but after you've chosen to jump off a cliff, you can't choose to not fall. Gravity takes
00:58:36over and you fall, right? So, the little choices that you make lead to big choices you can't make.
00:58:47I, for instance, have made a choice to not run a marathon. I ran 25 miles once when I worked
00:58:53up north,
00:58:55but I've never run a marathon and I'm never going to run a marathon. I have a bit of a
00:59:00solid build body
00:59:02type and, you know, the skinny javelin-limbed runner. This is not my body type and I don't
00:59:09particularly enjoy running and also I'm not sure that I should really start training for a marathon
00:59:14when I'm going to be 60 this year. It doesn't seem right. Also, that thump, thump, thump on your face
00:59:21skin ages you. That's fine. People want to do it. It's great. But I have made choices consistently to
00:59:27not be a runner. I know I can still sprint. I actually did it last summer. I sprinted full
00:59:33tilt. I can still sprint, which is good. Most people can't after the age of 30. I can still
00:59:37sprint. And I, of course, have chosen to not be a runner and that means I can't choose to run
00:59:41a
00:59:41marathon. I can't stop this show right now, go find a marathon somewhere and run it. I can't do it.
00:59:47Physically, I cannot do it. So, because I've made the choice to not train for a marathon,
00:59:52I do not have the choice to run a marathon. And people become addicts because they make
00:59:57little choices and little choices. And then they end up in a state of no choice.
01:00:04You know, my mother made choices over the course of her life that gave her a bad conscience. And
01:00:09I've known a lot of people like this. They make choices over the course of their life
01:00:12and they end up with a bad conscience. Now, everything they did that was bad or wrong,
01:00:18they chose to do. And they no longer have the choice to have a good conscience.
01:00:26They no longer have the choice to look at themselves with respect. They have no choice
01:00:31for that. They cannot do it. Every cigarette you smoke, if you're a smoker, is a choice.
01:00:38Nobody's got a gun to your head. And if somebody paid you a million dollars to not smoke for five
01:00:42minutes, you'd put that cigarette down. So, every cigarette that you smoke is a choice.
01:00:49Yes. The damage to your lungs is not a choice. You have no choice for that. That's life.
01:00:57So, what we do is we look at people after they don't have a choice. And they say, or we
01:01:04say,
01:01:05well, they never had a choice. Because when you see an addict in the grips with their addiction,
01:01:10you say, they don't have a choice to not be an addict. Look, they're desperate. They can't sleep.
01:01:15They pace. They're so tormented. If they can't get the drug, they feel like they're going to die.
01:01:21And, right, they have no choice. They can't not be an addict. Okay, fine. But again,
01:01:30somebody who steps off a cliff, you say, well, it's not their fault. They fell. It's complicated,
01:01:36though, right? And yet not. See, here's quality philosophy. It is and is not at the same time.
01:01:44So, if somebody is pushed off a cliff, we don't blame them for falling, right?
01:01:48Right? Pushed off a cliff. And then, again, this is not necessarily a death situation you'd fall into.
01:01:55I love jumping off cliffs into quarry water. I love that. It's great. It's very exciting.
01:02:01Always check the depth. So, if somebody's pushed off a cliff, we don't yell at them and say,
01:02:08why did you fall? So, I was pushed. Okay. If somebody jumps off a cliff, we don't say,
01:02:15why did you fall? We say, why did you jump? Because the jumping is a choice. The falling is not.
01:02:21And what happens is, in life, we see people and we don't see the choice to jump. We see them
01:02:26falling.
01:02:27And we say, oh, my gosh. They must have been pushed by circumstances. They must have been
01:02:33pushed by their circumstances. Events conspired. Trauma conspired. Bad things. They had this and
01:02:38that and the other. Dominoes happened and they got pushed. And, of course, everyone who's falling,
01:02:44who wants you to catch them, will say, I was pushed. And this is the difference between the left
01:02:50and the right. The left says, you were pushed. The right says, you jumped. And I go with you jumped.
01:03:01I mean, there's some extreme circumstances and so on where we can say people don't effectively have
01:03:04free will. That's very much the minority, a tiny minority. Not guilty by reasons of insanity
01:03:11is very rare and very hard to prove. So, he saw his sister, Jim saw his sister,
01:03:20before she fell. And he says, what circumstance pushed her? And he, well, he said, he said birth
01:03:29order. And I was like, well, you know, birth order doesn't determine outcomes. Maybe it has an
01:03:34influence, but whatever, right? But doesn't determine outcomes. Because you still have to believe
01:03:40in birth order. You still have to believe in birth order. So, if you disbelieve in birth order,
01:03:46what effect does it really have? I was considered small and inconsequential in my family because I
01:03:52kind of armadilloed and curled up in order to survive the chaos. Doesn't mean I have to believe
01:03:57that for the rest of my life at all, right? In fact, I would consider it horrendous to do so.
01:04:03So, it's not birth order. So, well, my sister was traumatized as a child. Yeah, of course,
01:04:09that's not good. But it's not like everyone who's traumatized becomes a drug addict. That's not true.
01:04:15It's not causal. You know, everybody who's injected with a lethal drug will die. But not everyone who's
01:04:23traumatized becomes a horrendous manipulative drug addict. No. Were they pushed? Did they jump?
01:04:34Everybody who jumped will try to convince you that they were pushed, right? A woman who's a single
01:04:41mother will try to tell you that she became a single mother through no fault of her own. Thus
01:04:47putting herself in the moral category of a toddler or a baby. If a baby is hungry, we don't sit
01:04:55there
01:04:55and say, make your own scrambled eggs. Make your own sandwich. Make your own whatever, right? No. It's
01:05:00a cat, right? For babies. We don't say to toddlers who are poor, go get a job. Unless they're working
01:05:07for big tech. So, people will say, it's not my fault. Well, why are you a single mother? Well,
01:05:13you know, he loved me and then he left me. It's his fault. He lied to me. Blah, blah, blah,
01:05:18right? Yeah,
01:05:18like women have never evolved to figure out when men might lie to get sex. We couldn't possibly be
01:05:24here if women hadn't evolved the ability to tell when men lie to get sex. No, you went for looks.
01:05:30You went for the hot tattooed motorcycle guy rather than the mother more staid provider.
01:05:37You went for a high status guy that your girlfriends would giggle and say, oh, I'm so jealous. He's so
01:05:42hot. You make little choices. A little choice of snowball until you don't have choices. Like
01:05:53you've, it's like when you were a kid, you know, you, you, you run down a hill, running down that
01:05:59hill.
01:05:59You run down the hill, right? And running down the hill. And at some point you can't stop. Right?
01:06:06And, and your choice is to start running down the hill. Your choice is to build up speed. Once you've
01:06:10built up enough speed, you can't stop, especially if the hill gets steeper. Now, if all you see is
01:06:17some kid cartwheeling, windmilling down the hills, oh my God, right? No, you made the choice to start
01:06:23running down the hill. And I remember when I was teaching my daughter how to ski when she was little
01:06:30and we decided to take on some moguls and moguls are these little bumps that are really tricky to
01:06:35get around and people for some reason, but I mean, I assume it's just masochism. They like doing moguls
01:06:42and we started going down the moguls and I don't remember why we started. I, I, I'm not even going
01:06:49to say I thought I could do them, but we, maybe we're just skiing and there was some moguls and
01:06:53I don't know. I thought it'd be kind of fun to give it a try or whatever. And we got
01:06:56stuck on the
01:06:56hill. We couldn't, the hill was so steep. We had to take our skis off and we couldn't climb it.
01:07:04It was
01:07:04too slippery. And we were stuck on the hill. I remember my wife was down at the bottom. Are you
01:07:09okay?
01:07:10And we were stuck on the hill. We couldn't go down and we couldn't go back up. And eventually I
01:07:15figured out how to sort of dig my boots into the ice and we sort of slowly made our way
01:07:21back up the
01:07:22hill. And it was actually kind of funny. It was, nobody got hurt. It was, it was very memorable.
01:07:26It was kind of funny. And, you know, having self-created problems that you overcome is pretty
01:07:31important to teach your kids. So I made the choice to be in icy moguls in a snowstorm at night.
01:07:39I made the choice. And then I was stuck. And I really didn't want to get hauled out by the,
01:07:46by the snow patrol. It was, it was a memorable, memorable, memorable half hour or whatever it
01:07:53was. So Jim and his sister, he thinks back to before and after this, therefore, because of this,
01:08:01right, that the drug addiction happened after bad things happened, some abuse. So I don't know
01:08:06what the details were, but I think there was some abuse. So the drug addiction happened after the
01:08:11abuse. Therefore, the drug addiction happened because of the abuse. After this, therefore,
01:08:17because of this, right, temperatures crept up a little after the industrial revolution. Therefore,
01:08:23because of the industrial revolution. No, it's the sun. So Jim was tormented. What caused her addiction?
01:08:30What caused her to be in a state of no free will and just falling? After you've been an addict
01:08:36for,
01:08:37I don't know, 15 years or whatever. I mean, you don't really have much choice about anything.
01:08:41And he was tormented. And I remember saying to him just many years ago, there is no answer.
01:08:47There is no answer. Because if there's an answer, there's no free will.
01:08:53Why did his sister become an addict? Because she chose every time she used the drug. And then after
01:09:04a while, she had very little to no choice about not doing the drug. She jumped. And I really remember
01:09:15because he was very angry with his parents. Oh, my parents mistreated her. And that's why she became
01:09:19an addict. And I'm really angry at them and blah, blah, blah. And I said, but you can't be.
01:09:24Because if her abuses, threatening to kill herself and going to go to jail, sell my body, all that,
01:09:31like her emotional terrorism and manipulations and abuses, her abuses, you say, were caused by her
01:09:39parents, your parents, and you're angry at your parents. But you can't be. Because if you're angry
01:09:49at your parents, you're saying my parents should have done differently. But you can't say my
01:09:56sister had no free will, but my parents did. Because your parents themselves had really bad
01:10:01childhoods. Right? This Jim and his sister's parents also had really bad childhoods. If Jim's
01:10:08sister is not responsible for becoming a drug addict, then Jim's parents and his sister's parents
01:10:13are not responsible for being abusive. You can't say free will was in the nature of my parents,
01:10:21but not in the nature of my sister. We're human beings. You can't have separate dials. Oh,
01:10:29I'm going to dial, you know, think of those little slider bars for like equalizers in and so on,
01:10:34right? I'm going to slide the bar of free will way up for my parents. My parents could totally have
01:10:39chosen differently, even though they had terrible childhoods. But my sister is a victim of my
01:10:43parents. I'm going to dial down her free will. And this, of course, is generally gendered, right?
01:10:49It's by sex. It's by sex. We dial up free will for men. We dial down free will for women.
01:10:56And women
01:10:57prefer that. Because they get to be victims. And by being victims, they get to get resources.
01:11:02Especially through the government, right? A bit different with the charity, but through the
01:11:05government for sure, right? You can't get mad at your parents for all of their supposed free will
01:11:11and ability to do things differently and then say that your sister, her addiction was caused
01:11:17by her parents and she has no free will. Nope. The moment that someone is angry at someone else,
01:11:27they have accepted free will. And it is absolutely wrong to say human beings have free will,
01:11:36except for my sister, man, total victim. No choice. Everyone chooses stuff, except my sister,
01:11:43she was just the last in a whole series of dominoes to fall. She has no choice, no free will.
01:11:47I can't. I mean, I get that it's comfortable. I get that it serves a particular emotional need.
01:11:54But I just, I can't let people believe that. I mean, I'd like to in a way. I like to
01:12:00be liked.
01:12:00It's nice to be popular. It's nice for people to think positively. But not to that degree. Not to
01:12:06the degree where you're willing to go along with any delusion. And the real addiction is to victimhood.
01:12:12It's not to the drug. It's to victimhood. And I don't know if you've ever gone through this process.
01:12:17I don't know. It's a brutal process. I don't know if you've ever gone through the process
01:12:21of trying to peel self-pity of someone. Oh my god. It is demonic. Trying to peel self-pity from
01:12:32someone. Self-pity is somebody saying, I was pushed. And replacing self-pity, I was pushed,
01:12:39with the truth, you jumped, is horrendous. If you ever want to see the most feral aspects of human
01:12:47nature, go to professional victims and tell them they're not victims. Oof. That really does arouse
01:12:56the most feral aspects of human nature. It happened with parents who attacked me in the past. Abusive
01:13:03parents, or at least parents who their children said were abusive, their adult children. And they felt
01:13:09that they were the victims of, you know, bad internet guy, or whatever it was. Or their children who were
01:13:15just attacking them, or going no contact. For no reason, blah, they were victims, right? And of
01:13:22course, pointing out that they held their children responsible at the age of five, but they considered
01:13:25themselves not responsible at the age of 50, is pathetic. I mean, society can never tell me that
01:13:33there's a single goddamn adult who is not responsible for his or her life, because they held
01:13:37me responsible at the age of five for my choices. Hey, you didn't study for the test, you get an
01:13:42F.
01:13:43Hey, man, you knew the test was coming. You're five, you're not dumb, right? You're six, you're seven,
01:13:48you're, right? You know, you know the facts? Hey, you, you chose to, you chose to go out without a
01:13:56coat? You're cold. Well, that's what happens if you don't think things through, if you don't think
01:14:01things ahead. Oh, you were hungry, and you stole some food? Eh, it's too bad, man, you're going to
01:14:06the cop shop no matter what. You know, it's wrong, right? You can't do it. Oh, you're having trouble
01:14:12paying attention in class, even though your mother was smoking and typing in your room all night with
01:14:17an electric typewriter, the clackety-clackety-clack. Well, you know, you're tired in class, you're hungry,
01:14:23you've got no sleep. Oh, it's too bad, you get a detention. I remember I got lines, and I
01:14:33sprained my wrist horribly, and the teacher punished me for not finishing my lines, like I
01:14:38couldn't write. I mean, I was left-handed, I'm left-handed, right, so I couldn't write. I could
01:14:42have tried it on my right, but it's kind of awkward, and then she, and then I also knew if
01:14:45I tried it on
01:14:46my right, she would say that I was mocking her by writing the lines badly. It doesn't matter. It
01:14:52doesn't matter that you sprained your wrist. You're still responsible for doing your lines.
01:14:56It doesn't matter. When I was 11, 10, I got my first job when I was 10, and if I
01:15:03didn't produce
01:15:03enough, people said, oh, you're not producing enough, you're going to get fired. Okay, it's fine,
01:15:08I'll get consequences when I'm 10. Okay. Okay. I joined a swim team, and it was a $4 fee. I
01:15:17couldn't
01:15:17possibly afford it. There was no $4 in my household, and so I got dropped from the team. Okay. I
01:15:24don't have
01:15:24the money. I can't summon the money. All right. When I was going to boarding school once, I lost my
01:15:31ticket. I was seven. Okay. Well, you can't get on the train. My mother once dropped me. She picked
01:15:41me up from, I would go to summer camp quite a lot, and she picked me up from summer camp,
01:15:46dropped me
01:15:47downtown with no money, and it was a long, it was like a couple of hours to get home, maybe
01:15:52an hour and a
01:15:53half, maybe two hours, and I had a big heavy bag of all my stuff from summer camp, and I
01:15:58went around
01:15:59asking people, can I have a quarter to get on the bus because I can't get home, and people just
01:16:05rolled
01:16:05their eyes at me. Why are you here with no bus fare? Why are you so unprepared? Bro, I'm 11
01:16:11years old.
01:16:12My mom dropped me with no money and a big heavy bag because she had to go to work. All
01:16:18right. I mean,
01:16:19the bus dropped me at, I think it was Finch Subway. My mom met me at Finch, rode with me
01:16:23down to
01:16:24Eglinton, said, you've got to go. I've got to get to work, and no money. And people, I remember this
01:16:31one guy with a beard finally gave me a quarter, but he still rolled his eyes like, this is probably
01:16:35a
01:16:35scam, right? Like I'm 11 years old. I got this big giant bag, and I got no money. So people
01:16:42held me
01:16:42accountable. As a kid, little kid, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 15, I was held to the same standards.
01:16:51It doesn't matter that your mother is in an insane asylum. It doesn't matter that your mother
01:16:57has been institutionalized. You got to hand in your book report, kid. Doesn't matter. Okay. Hey,
01:17:05man, I think that's harsh. I wouldn't have those particular standards, but okay. People are
01:17:13responsible. And I was pushed into this family. I didn't choose this family. I was pushed into this
01:17:18family as a kid. I was pushed. I didn't jump. I didn't say, oh, I was floating like a bunch
01:17:23of
01:17:23souls floating around the earth like Saturn's rings, and I didn't say, oh, I'm going to go to that one.
01:17:27Oh, yeah, that's the one for me. I didn't choose that. I was definitely pushed, right? I had the
01:17:33family I had. I was pushed. And that's the way. That's the way. Society is like, hey, kid,
01:17:39you're going to be held to everyone else's standards. You know, you're going to be held
01:17:42to the same standards. I was held to the same standards. I had a friend of mine.
01:17:45His father was a professor. His mother was this absolutely lovely homemaker.
01:17:49Had a peaceful house, a lot of fun, swimming pool, upper middle class income. And I was held to the
01:17:55same standards as my friend. Okay. So I don't get any excuses, even for the things that are
01:18:01demonstrably not my fault. Okay. I accept that. I accept that I am dealt with as an entirely
01:18:11self-generated agent at the age of 5 or 10 or 15. No problem. Well, I mean, a slight problem.
01:18:19But I accept that society says that a 10-year-old is fully responsible. Fully responsible.
01:18:29If you didn't study as well as you could have or should have for this test, even though your mother
01:18:36has not left her bed in two or three weeks and you're running out of food, you still have to
01:18:44hand
01:18:45in your fracking homework assignment. Okay. Hey, that's society, man. Society is just like, man,
01:18:53you are responsible. And then it's kind of bewildering. You grow up and all of these women
01:18:58who've got kids without dads around. That was my fault. I'm not responsible.
01:19:04What? What? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What do you mean you're not
01:19:10responsible? I was held accountable when I was 10 years old for not studying for some stupid math test
01:19:19that gave me no practical skills in the long run at all. I didn't get any excuses. Nobody asked any
01:19:24questions. I mean, I was coming to school with holes in my clothing, hungry, rings under my eyes.
01:19:32I mean, I can see my pictures from back then, right? In the school pictures and so on. I look
01:19:36like a
01:19:36zombie. I look like, you know, lights on nobody home. I was hungry, skinny, no haircut,
01:19:44holes in my clothes. I smelled for a while. A friend of mine's dad had to intervene and say,
01:19:50bro, it's great having you around, but you got to get some deodorant. I didn't know. Nobody told
01:19:57me. So, yeah, society held me 100% accountable at the age of 10. Okay. So people are responsible.
01:20:08And then it's just the weirdest thing. Then you grow up and you go out into the world and everyone
01:20:12claims to be a victim. What? I wasn't a victim, despite the fact that I was home alone with my
01:20:19mother while she was going literally mad. And I got no excuses. Nobody ever checked in. Nobody
01:20:26asked me how I was doing. I had to do exactly the same work as everyone else, despite carrying this
01:20:31massive burden of my mother's hysterical mental decay and descent into madness to the point where she
01:20:37went to the doctor. He called security and they put her in an insane asylum for a long time. And
01:20:44nobody ever asked me how I was doing. I mean, I literally go and visit her. Not one single person
01:20:49at the insane asylum said, hey, um, you don't have a dad and you are 12. Um, how are you
01:20:58doing? They
01:20:58didn't care. I mean, I don't mean to laugh because it's so long ago now, but they didn't care.
01:21:04Yeah. And then society's like, well, but you know, we, we really care for the, the Africans.
01:21:10What? I don't care about shit. Don't give me that. Don't give me that. So yeah, I had to tell
01:21:16Jim,
01:21:18uh, I'm sorry, uh, but your sister's an a-hole and I remember his eyes widening. This is many,
01:21:25many years ago. His eyes were widening. I'm like, well, yeah. I mean, if your parents are a-holes,
01:21:31then your sister's an a-hole. If your parents are abusive, then your sister is abusive.
01:21:36I mean, she didn't become a drug addict when she was 10. She became a drug addict. It really
01:21:41hit full flower when she was an adult. So if your parents are responsible, your sister's responsible.
01:21:48And I mean, threatening to off yourself if you don't get your way, it's just about the most abusive
01:21:54thing that a human being can do. It's horrendous. It's horrendous. I mean, it's just about the
01:22:00ugliest, most brutal thing that you can do to another human being. It's to threaten that if
01:22:06you don't get your way. And I said, look, imagine Jim. Okay. No, I think he did have a kid.
01:22:13He had a
01:22:13son. And I said, imagine that you hire a babysitter. So she's 18. You hire a babysitter for your son
01:22:21and
01:22:22you and your wife go out and you come back home and you say to your son, how was your
01:22:27evening? And
01:22:29your son, haltingly and hesitatingly and not really knowing the words he's using, ends up telling you
01:22:35that the babysitter threatened to do that to herself if he didn't go to bed when she wanted him to.
01:22:42And she like held a knife out. And I mean, would you be tormented and say, oh my gosh, this,
01:22:48this babysitter, she must have had a really bad childhood and sympathy and what could have caused
01:22:54this? And it's not her fault. And no, you'd be really angry at the babysitter and you'd probably
01:22:59try and report her. Because you can, you can always slide your perception of people's causality
01:23:05back to before they became kind of evil. Always. I'm sure Joseph Stalin was not born evil. He was a
01:23:15little kid and all of that. I'm sure he was nice at times. You can always slide. And this is
01:23:22the
01:23:22more female perspective, right? Female coded. You keep sliding back your hostility towards someone
01:23:30or you keep sliding back the damage that someone's doing to you until you get to before they damaged
01:23:37people and then you have sympathy and it gets all muddy and confusing. But I know this for sure. I
01:23:42mean,
01:23:42I had a objectively terrible childhood. This isn't even like I didn't get a pony, right? Objectively
01:23:47terrible childhood. And I've never got a shred of sympathy from society about that at all. I mean,
01:23:54even if society says, oh, well, what Steph says is really bad and wrong. But, you know, you've got
01:23:58to understand he grew up and society didn't protect him and abandoned him to his crazy mother and so on.
01:24:05So, you know, let's have some simple... No, they don't give me... I'm just bad, right? Just bad. Just a
01:24:09bad
01:24:09guy. Okay. I accept that that's where society is. That I'm just a causeless bad guy and my past
01:24:21had no effect on me and so on. So, I can be fully morally responsible despite the terrible childhood
01:24:27I had. I'm just completely morally responsible as an adult. But then when adults play victims
01:24:35based on the past, in my mind, I honestly just laugh at it. Like, society doesn't believe that at all.
01:24:42Otherwise, they would have given me some excuses for what they perceive to be
01:24:45my bad or negative arguments or data or perspective or something like that.
01:24:50Nobody gives me any excuses. So, I don't give people any excuses. And if you get mad at the
01:24:55babysitter for threatening to offer self, if your child didn't obey her, you'd be enraged at that,
01:25:01as you should be. Then stop giving people excuses. The real addiction is always and forever. Two
01:25:08excuses. All right. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you for your consideration and interest in the
01:25:15lengthy talk. I think it was full of great gems, nuggets, and gold, baby. There's gold in them,
01:25:20our syllables. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I really would appreciate it
01:25:25enormously. Freedomain.com slash donate. Shop.freedomain.com for your merch. Peacefulparenting.com.
01:25:31Please share that book and the AI. Help do your part to make the world a better and more peaceful
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01:25:43from up here. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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