- 3 days ago
Philosopher Stefan Molyneux answers listener questions and tells listeners to stop being so "kind," arguing that vanity and false niceness block virtue while honest anger, letting competent people face consequences, and friendship built on truth and consistency deliver real results. He pushes rejecting postmodern denial of objective truth so people can submit to reason and live without managing others' bad choices.
0:00:00 Family Duty and Self-Reliance
0:02:31 Let Them Fail
0:04:01 Advice Without Rescue
0:09:24 No Sympathy for Consequences
0:14:12 Elite Control of Birth Rates
0:20:43 Postmodernism and Truth
0:23:36 Miracles and Divine Proof
0:27:25 Why Work Matters
0:29:42 Punishment and Anger
0:35:21 Heaven, Death, and Fear
0:36:16 Math: Invented or Discovered?
0:37:54 Friendship Needs Virtue
0:38:27 War, Schools, and Honesty
0:00:00 Family Duty and Self-Reliance
0:02:31 Let Them Fail
0:04:01 Advice Without Rescue
0:09:24 No Sympathy for Consequences
0:14:12 Elite Control of Birth Rates
0:20:43 Postmodernism and Truth
0:23:36 Miracles and Divine Proof
0:27:25 Why Work Matters
0:29:42 Punishment and Anger
0:35:21 Heaven, Death, and Fear
0:36:16 Math: Invented or Discovered?
0:37:54 Friendship Needs Virtue
0:38:27 War, Schools, and Honesty
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00All righty, righty, good. Morning, everybody. Some great questions from the listeners at
00:09X on X. So we start with, so not a philosophical question, but you talk a lot about family
00:14dynamics. Have you ever talked about dealing with senior parents? I'm extremely anti-nursing home,
00:20but dealing with folks on their own that refuse any help or to move in near me and the grandkids.
00:26They refuse to turn over any control over their health or finances. I prefer not to come in and
00:31force my way into their affairs, but they're now in their 80s, and I think that to leave them be
00:37is
00:38going to start to border on negligence at some point, i.e. driving, med management, etc. Any advice
00:42would be appreciated. So the great enemy of virtue is not evil, but vanity. Vanity is a subset. Evil is
00:51a subset of vanity. There's something that's kind of missing from men in particular in the modern
01:00world, which is cold-hearted justice. Cold-hearted justice. We've sort of been replaced with this
01:06bend over backwards, turn the other cheek, love everyone, and it's terrible. Absolutely. We only
01:13have the modern world because of cold-hearted justice, at least in the West, and I'm talking,
01:18of course, about the one or two percent of evil people who were executed like every year for
01:24hundreds of years. So we have this kind of cold justice, and one of the problems, we used to have
01:28this kind of cold justice, and one of the problems we have in the world at the moment is that
01:33because
01:34we mostly got rid of our worst evildoers, what's happened is we now can afford to, quote, love
01:41everyone and be nice to everyone and be kind to everyone. It's not a reality. It's like the kid
01:48who's inherited $10 million wondering, gee, well, why does anyone take any jobs they don't like? Why
01:54does anybody, well, why don't you have a yacht? You know, this kind of thing, right? I mean, I had
02:01a
02:01friend when I was younger. This woman who, after Christmas, said, oh, here's all the things I got
02:09for Christmas. Her family was very wealthy, and she was talking about all the things she got for
02:13Christmas. I shouldn't laugh, but this is when I was in my late teens. And my mother gave me one
02:20glove
02:20for Christmas. She couldn't find the other one. They were secondhand.
02:29No glove, no love. So it was hard for her to understand what it's like growing up poor or being
02:37poor. So we have a kind of comfort that has come out of the cold justice of our ancestors, and
02:44now
02:44we think that we don't need any of that anymore. And assuming that your parents are not mentally
02:49incompetent, in which case, obviously, that's a matter for the laws and having them declared
02:53incompetent and all that kind of stuff, assuming your parents are not mentally incompetent, but
02:59they're just kind of, I don't need any help, and they're just kind of vain and aiming for a sort
03:05of
03:05rampant and perhaps pathological level of, quote, self-sufficiency, let them. Let them.
03:14Let them. My mother didn't want to take any feedback or allow me to have any room for scope
03:21or negotiations in our relationship. So if people don't take any feedback, let them fail.
03:35Let me say this again. If people don't take any feedback, let them fail. Now, again, assuming
03:44no mental incompetence and so on on the part of your parents. So if you have a friend who
03:50has a business idea that he's very enthusiastic about, but which seems kind of incoherent to
03:55you, then try to give him some feedback. I had a friend. Oh, gosh, this is many years ago.
04:05I had a friend many, many years ago who wrote a book and was involved in contract negotiations.
04:17Now, I have quite a lot of experience in contract negotiations because I helped to negotiate multi-million
04:25dollar software contracts back when I was a software entrepreneur. And so I said, oh, you know,
04:32I'd be happy to help or I can give you some tips or something like that. Did he listen? No.
04:40He decided
04:40to do it all himself and he got absolutely taken to the cleaners. Offer people help. I'm a nice guy.
04:50I actually really like to help people as a whole. I mean, that's sort of my whole thing online is
04:55to help
04:55people. So offer to help people. And if they take your help, wonderful. If they want to do it all
05:03themselves, let them do it all themselves. Even if you know it's going to go badly, let people learn.
05:10Right? So this is a male-female distinction. So men let people learn by failure if they won't take help.
05:21Women want to prevent people from learning by failure. And of course, it takes just a moment
05:27to understand why women deal with babies and toddlers. You can't let babies and toddlers learn
05:33by failure. Right? You can't say to the little toddler, oh yeah, well, you'll learn. You stick the
05:40fork in the electrical socket, you'll learn because it'd kill the kid, right? Or seriously damage the kid.
05:44So women are about preventing problems no matter what. And men are like, you know,
05:53once your kid is learning how to ride a bike, you can say you should take it slow and so
05:59on. Your
06:00kids will try to ride without hands on the handlebars. You can say, you know, I did it when
06:04I was younger, so who am I to say, right? You know, wear a helmet and all of that, knee
06:08pads,
06:09elbow pads, if they're just learning and it's, you know, concrete or something dangerous. But you
06:13know, your kids are going to fall. Your kids are going to fall. So if you're offering help to your
06:19parents and they are mentally competent and they don't want the help, let them fail. Say, oh, but the
06:25consequences of them failing could be so catastrophic. It's like, but you can't be other people's immune
06:30systems. Right? If you've got a sickly friend, you can't say, hey man, don't worry. I'm going to
06:36exercise and eat right so that I can be your immune system. Like this blending of consciousnesses is
06:43kind of creepy and kind of pathological and no identity based. If your parents want to do things
06:48on their own and they won't take any advice and they won't take any feedback, let them.
06:55You can't be somebody else's conscience. You can't be somebody else's common sense.
06:59You can't be somebody else's keep your head on a swivel, survival instinct, early warning signal,
07:05situational awareness consciousness. You can't do it. You can't digest food for other people.
07:10You can't poop for other people. And you can't be other people's common sense.
07:17I love to help people. And if people don't listen and they don't want my help, I move on. And
07:25I
07:25really do my best to be disciplined to not give it another moment's thought. And then when you know
07:31somebody is making a mistake and you know, it's going to go badly and they won't take any advice
07:35or feedback or they take advice and feedback, but don't really do it. Like you should do this. Like,
07:41yeah, I should do this. And then they don't do it. Then let them fail. People who won't learn by
07:47reason
07:48will have to learn through bitter consequences. We can see the whole West going through this process
07:53at the moment. People in the West and largely the boomers, but I have decided in their infinite
08:00wisdom to hang on to delusions in the face of reason and evidence. Okay. So if somebody who's
08:12not very handsome thinks he can be a model, you can take the pictures. You can say, look, you know,
08:16you kind of look different from this guy who's a real model. Hey, and if they then go and blow
08:19$10,000 on modeling courses, cause you know, people would take money for you for just about anything.
08:24Great. You know, if, if somebody who's not a very good singer wants to go and be a singer,
08:27I'm like, well, I don't think you should, or I don't think your voice sounds good. You're kind of,
08:34kind of pitchy. Uh, then if they want to still go do it, I mean, go do it.
08:41I mean, don't be there to catch them. Don't be there to fix things up. The price for me,
08:47and I think this is rational, the price of rejecting good advice is having no sympathy
08:53for the consequences. I mean, we've all had, and maybe you've been this person, but we've all had
08:58that one friend who's dating the girl who's crazy. He's dating the girl who's crazy. Maybe she's hot
09:04or whatever, but he's dating the girl who's crazy and crazy girls will often, you know, put out early
09:10and do crazy stuff in the bedroom and so on. So maybe he just gets sex hypnotized or whatever.
09:14And you say, Hey, I don't think this is healthy. I don't think this is right. I don't think
09:17this is good. I don't blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And the price for me, and again, I think
09:29this is reasonable. The price of rejecting good advice is no sympathy for the consequences. I don't
09:37think you should do that. Here's why. Here's why. Here's why. And you go and do that and it crashes
09:41out. Okay. I mean, I'm not going to help. I'm not going to fix it. I'm not even going to
09:45really
09:46listen. You know, you shouldn't date this girl. She's crazy. Hey man, she's stalking
09:50me. It's like, and like, I don't, I don't get involved in the problems caused by people
09:57not taking my advice. I mean, I'm pretty good at giving advice. It's kind of my whole gig,
10:04right? In a lot of ways. And yeah, if people don't listen to advice, you know, you should
10:10quit smoking. You should quit smoking. You should quit. Ah, I'm good. Okay. Well, then
10:15if you get sick from smoking, I'm not going to fist you in the hospital. Okay. The great
10:21thing about giving good advice is either people take it, in which case, hopefully their lives
10:25get better. Or if people don't take it, you're free of obligation, free of obligation. You
10:33know, you should really lose weight. Hey man, you're kind of gaining weight. You should
10:35really, no, I'm fine. I'm just big bone to bone. And then they get knee problems or hip
10:39problems or back problems or shortness of breath. And they're like complaining about
10:43it. It's like, and this is true for me. I have spent decades and I've spent over 40
10:51years giving the world good advice, over 20 of them in the public arena. And the great
10:58news is that if you give the world advice and the world doesn't listen, you don't have
11:04to care about where the world goes. I'm not going to give good advice and then get wrapped
11:12and bound up in the negative consequences from people who don't take my advice. Giving
11:20advice is a solemn responsibility. You should be very careful and try and give the very best
11:23advice you can with as much hedging as possible and as much reason and evidence as possible.
11:27But once you give advice that is good, if people fail to listen to it or refuse to listen to
11:33it, then consequences have to punish vanity. Vanity is a form of hedonism. Vanity is I
11:40want what I want. I won't restrain my desires, my ego, my status for the sake of reason and
11:46evidence. And, you know, when I was in theater school, I was one of the principals in the play
11:53King Lear, which is an amazing and powerful play, where an arrogant king is brought down by his own
12:00arrogance to the point where he finally says, I'm a very fond, foolish old man. And there's a
12:04gentleness with Cordelia and a tenderness that is very powerful. To break vanity is the essence of
12:14maturity. Vanity is a hangover from teenage years. You know, teenagers is the famous quote from Mark Twain,
12:21you know, I left home at 16 because my dad didn't know anything. When I returned a couple of years
12:25later, I was amazed at how much he'd learned in the interim, right? So I know better. I'm right. I'm
12:31perfect. I can't be wrong. This is all just vanity. And that's fine, whatever. It's a natural part of
12:38kind of growing up. But you got to break it. You've got to have that moment where you say, maybe
12:45I'm not
12:45right. Maybe there's things I can learn. Maybe other people have a better perspective.
12:49And if you do that, and for me, this has started around the age of 15 when I really began
12:54to study
12:55philosophy and realized I was wrong about religion. I was wrong about economics. I was wrong about
13:00reality. I was just wrong. And I have spent, you know, it'll be 45 years this September. I spent 45
13:09years taming the ego and turning it and bending it and sometimes wrestling with it to get to the truth
13:16because you have to have a strong ego to pursue the truth. And then you have to subsume your ego
13:20to submit to the truth. So it's a bit of a challenging, but exciting. It's like trying to
13:26ride a horse in two directions at the same time. So give good advice to your parents. And because you
13:33love your parents, you care about your parents, I hope. And so give good advice to your parents. And if
13:38they don't listen, hey, you know, I've given people some, a little bit of advice in my personal life
13:46about finances. And if they haven't listened, if they didn't listen, and they're complaining that
13:52they don't have any money, well, the good news is, if people don't take your good advice, you don't
13:58have to care. And you shouldn't. You shouldn't. Because we're all engaged in a process of educating
14:04mankind as a whole. And if you go around rescuing people who don't take good advice, you're just
14:10making good advice worthless. All right. Somebody writes, when people call in and offer sympathy for
14:15your childhood, and then they proceed to demonstrate that they haven't listened to you, and then they
14:19ask you to change your mind on key topics, how do you feel about the original sympathy that was
14:24offered? I don't quite understand that question.
14:29Normally, when people are calling in, they're calling in for help in their life. They're usually
14:34not offering sympathy for mine. So I'm afraid I don't quite follow that one. All right. I respect
14:41and appreciate your posting. You've commented a lot on declining birth and incentives. I agree.
14:46Do you think this is consciously designed by elites or just a side effect of some other elite motive or
14:52something else? For what it's worth, I'm 47 with three adult kids. Well, congratulations. I envy you.
14:56I think that's great. Yeah, it is. I mean, there's consciously designed. You can go back to sort of
15:02even the 1920s, 1930s, and you could look at the antenatalist propaganda. So yeah. And in particular,
15:09this accelerated after the Second World War. So after the Second World War, the elites couldn't kill us
15:14off with wars very easily because of nuclear weapons and biochemical weapons, perhaps, and
15:20biological weapons and so. So because the elites couldn't kill us off with...
15:27wars because the elites as a whole fairly demonic, right? They offer you things for free that then
15:34cost you everything, right? And this is the Faustian bargain. The devil appears in a puff of smoke and
15:40says, I'll give you your heart's desire, fame, women, fortune, talent, whatever it is you want.
15:47And then you get that and you have a short amount of great fun and then things hollow out and
15:53then
15:54things get worse and worse. And then you begin to be terrified in the last decades of your life
15:58about going to hell forever. All the pleasure is in the past. All the pain is in the future
16:02and it hasn't been worth it. That's the whole thing, right?
16:05So what happens is the elites offer you things for free, right? So they'll print money, they'll borrow
16:11money, they'll tax the wealthy. I mean, the wealthy pay the vast majority of taxes as a whole.
16:15And so they give you stuff for free. Free education, free health care, free welfare, free roads, free
16:22subsidized buses or free buses in some places. And so they'll just give you a bunch of stuff for free.
16:27Retirement, where there's no money in the retirement, they'll just tax the young.
16:29So they'll offer you a whole bunch of stuff for free. And then when they start running out of
16:35money, they've got to kill you off. I mean, if this happens, when governments run out of money,
16:39they'll often start a war or some sort of massive conflict or something like that so that they can
16:44get people to accept austerity. And when you're afraid, you generally can't rebel. So they'll provoke
16:49fear all the time so that you can't rebel because rebellion is anger and fear is compliance,
16:55which is why the young are constantly taught about, you know, the terrorist of global warming and
16:58everything but the real dangers. So when you want to reduce the population, but you can't
17:09start a war, this is true of the verbal classes. If you want to reduce the population, but you can't
17:14start a war, all you do is a bride, threaten and convince the women to defer having children.
17:20It's not super complicated. If you start having kids in your early 20s, you're probably going to
17:25have three to five to seven. If you start having kids in your mid thirties, you'll be lucky to get
17:29one. So all you do is you say, have fun now and settle down later, right? This is the Sheryl
17:36Sandberg
17:36leaning in thing, like go have a bunch of F boys all over the place. And then when you want
17:40to settle
17:40down, you know, choose a stable, reliable provider, blah, blah, blah, alpha F spader bucks. That's the
17:48general thing. So you just say, and it's not just to women, but you say to men and you say
17:53to women,
17:54continue to live like a teenager until well into your thirties. And then, and a few people will
17:59scrape out a couple of kids, but most people, certainly half of women are single, but no
18:05prospects in their thirties these days. So you just tell people, have your fun, have your travel. And
18:12you know, the iPhone was introduced and you can see the birth rates, AT&T carried at first, you can
18:17see
18:17the birth rates of the AT&T customers like go down. So it's very much the iPhone. And when you
18:23make
18:23this kind of swipe and picture technology, I mean, if easy and available to women, like if,
18:29if phones only ran DOS or Linux, women wouldn't be swiping. And then what you do is you prevent,
18:34present women with an infinity of choices and they can't settle down and they won't settle down.
18:39Cause there's always some new guy on the horizon, some better guy who's coming along, some guy they want
18:42to explore, some guy who's going to betray them. And so with a constant amount of, I mean, if you
18:49had, if you had tons of money and new job offers coming in every day, it'd be pretty tough for
18:53you
18:53to commit to a job because the next one might be better and so on. So yeah, you just tell
18:59people
19:00to wait, you present them with an infinity of choices. You get them to extend their adolescence
19:04and enjoy, you know, travel and brunches and selfies and all this other sorts of nonsensical
19:10time-wasting vanity garbage. And you tell people that pictures are real life. And you also tell
19:17people that marriage is drudgery. You know, you can see these really disturbing videos on acts of
19:21like dead-eyed women in sex positions, you know, doing this after marriage. And it's just, it's really
19:27creepy and horrible. Like, why would anybody want to be like that? And where's your passion for your
19:31partner and your love of sex? It's just really gross. And you've seen these videos where a woman
19:35is about to put on a wedding ring or an engagement ring and she sees herself scrubbing with crying
19:40babies and so on. Like, women don't have to clean if they live on their own. So yeah, you just
19:45say
19:45that you should, you know, shake your butt at the gym and you should go out for coffees and you
19:50should
19:50travel and you should work cool jobs and, you know, itty bitty titties in a bob and not settle down.
20:00You know, that settling down is drab, that you'll be a slave to a man, that all babies do is
20:06cry
20:06and you'll just be unhappy and you'll be ugly and you'll be fat and your hair will be messy and
20:12nobody will want you and your husband will be away and you'll be miserable. And so yeah, you just make
20:17not having children the fun thing and you make having children the unfun thing and you give people
20:23no moral principles or responsibility and then they just default into not having kids. It's a very
20:29civilized way of waging war. It really is. And what it does is it takes shallow, short-thinking
20:35hedonists out of the gene pool. I mean, I'm not saying that's the end of the world, but that's
20:40generally what happens. So, all right. Where did postmodernism come from? Postmodernism is about
20:48disarming you so you can be taken over. So postmodernism says that there's no such thing as truth.
20:52Everything's subjective, everything's relative, and it overcomplicates things, right? So I had a debate
20:57with a guy who wrote to me and said, I read your book on ethics and I want to disagree
21:02about this,
21:02that, and the other. And then when we started talking, he's like, well, I can't define me.
21:08I can't define you. That's your past self and all of that. And it all sounds, you know, I don't
21:14know,
21:15vaguely erudite and intelligent. But as I pointed out, saying that I wrote a book in the past is not
21:20exactly a philosophically brilliant move. Do you know, Steph, that the book you wrote 17 years,
21:27ago, was written in the past? That's my big, deep philosophical insight. It's like, no, it's not.
21:32Oh, and then at one point, I was talking about where property rights come from. And I was talking
21:36about building a cabin. And he said, but you came from your parents. And I'm like, so your other big
21:41philosophical insight is that human beings keep birth to human beings. It's so sad. You can always tell
21:51when people have been debating people less verbally adept than themselves, because they think that
22:00pointing out obvious things that everybody understands is some big philosophical insight.
22:05Yes, the book I wrote in the past was written in the past. I got it. Yes, human beings come
22:10from
22:10human beings. So it's very sad. It's very sad. So postmodernism says there's no truth. There's no
22:21objective rationality. There's no objectivity. The evidence of the census is faulty, and so on.
22:28And they do that just to disarm you. Because how do we disarm those who, how do we fight back
22:33against
22:33those who want to take us over? Well, with reason and evidence. It's the only way we can do it
22:36peacefully. So they take away your gun, so you can't do it forcefully. And then they take away
22:39your respect for reason and evidence, or everyone's respect for reason and evidence,
22:43so that they can just take you over and you can't really fight back. I mean, if an accountant wants
22:50to rip you off, he's going to teach you that numbers mean nothing. And that way he can steal from
22:53you.
22:55What is truth, Pontius Pilate? Truth is the accuracy of the relationship between things in the mind and
23:04things in the world, right? So if I say, these are my glasses and these are my glasses, that is
23:08a true
23:08statement. If I say, this is a pomegranate and they are my glasses, not a pomegranate, it's a false
23:12statement. Statements in the mind that are talking about things in reality or logical consistencies
23:19are true. Truth is the relationship between things in the mind that reference universals,
23:24things in the world, or universal concepts. And if things in the mind accurately describe universal
23:31concepts and things in the world, they're true. And that's what truth is. What do you make of modern
23:37Catholic miracles? Things like Fatima, Guadalupe, Eucharistic miracles, Shroud of Turin, etc. I have
23:44done limited research into them, but wonder what your thoughts were, if you've looked into them at all,
23:49I ask, as an atheist. Well, I mean, they're not, they're not true, right? They're not, they're not true,
23:55they're not real. And I never quite, well, I guess I kind of understand it. But if God intervenes in
24:02the
24:03world, then God can't say he doesn't intervene in the world because we have free will, right? So if
24:08Jesus did all the miracles that he is purported to have done, then people had direct evidence of
24:14divinity or magical powers, supernatural powers, all-powerful. If Jesus knew everything and was
24:21able to, you know, walk on water and bring back the dead and cure disease at a touch and so
24:26on,
24:28then God said, well, you have to believe in me because I'm going to give you this objective
24:32evidence, which is you literally are seeing miracles occurring. Okay. So if God says, well,
24:39you know that Jesus is divine because you saw him perform all these miracles, and that's the standard,
24:44then why doesn't he show miracles to everyone to show that God is divine? He already did it.
24:50He did it. He did it with Moses. He did it with Noah. He did it with Methuselah. He did
24:55it with Job.
24:57He literally came down and changed Job's entire life. So God is willing to prove himself, to show
25:05himself, to prove his divinity. So then why doesn't he? Right? People say, well, you need faith. It's like,
25:13no, you didn't need faith in the past because God literally came down and proved himself in a variety
25:18of formats, whether it was giving you visions that were completely true and predictive, whether it
25:23was handing you stone tablets with the Ten Commandments, whether it was giving you the
25:28instructions to build an ark. So it was saying that it's going to rain, and then it rained. And so
25:35God, in myth, in history, perfectly willing and happy and constantly interacting with human beings,
25:41talked to Adam and Eve directly. And so God is consistently throughout the Bible coming down
25:50and talking to people and giving them instructions and doing miracles and showing them the way and
25:55rescuing them from Egyptian slavery and leading them to the promised. Like, God's constantly doing all
26:01of this stuff. And yet, when science came along, God mysteriously decided to ghost humanity, like you
26:10can't find anything. So if God is interfering, then he can't say, well, I can't interfere because you have
26:18free will, in which case God is responsible for not interfering and not following his own moral
26:23precepts. So the parable of the Good Samaritan is go help people who are wounded, even at great danger
26:27to yourself. And God is perfectly willing to intervene in the affairs of humanity. But he doesn't
26:32help people who are wounded, despite the fact that it costs him nothing, he's at no risk. And therefore,
26:36God is not following his own moral commandments. And therefore, God is not good. That's not a
26:41complicated syllogism. So the more that God creates miracles, the more that he's responsible for the
26:49evils of the world. If God is completely hands off, like in the dais, you know, winds up the clock
26:53and then
26:53lets it tick, then there can't be any such thing as organized religion, because God isn't going to
26:59intervene or interfere or grant your wishes or, you know, pray, you're going to pray and get things
27:05like nothing like that's going to happen. So either God interferes in humanity, in which case he's
27:11responsible for the evils by his own morals, or God doesn't interfere at all, in which case the miracles
27:15are all lies. And there's no such thing as organized religion that can offer you anything
27:22as a benefit. So, all right, riddle me this, how can I get enough money to raise a humble family
27:28and
27:28thrive, but without ever working? And I don't want to live in a socialist commie hellscape either. Why do I
27:33not have this abundance? Am I just destined to live in the barrel? Right? Without ever working? So this is
27:45incomplete childhood. This is an incomplete childhood. So, of course, when you were a little
27:48kid, you weren't supposed to work, and your parents were supposed to provide for you, and so on.
27:55If your parents were abusive or neglectful, or something like that, then you weren't provided
28:01for emotionally, maybe you weren't provided for physically, and therefore that's an incomplete, like
28:07an incomplete emotional cycle. So, most people who don't get what they want from their parents
28:15go through life unable to grow up, and then they look for other institutions to provide
28:20what their parents didn't provide. It could be the government, could be the church, could be some
28:24other institution. You know, like the guys who grew up without fathers are drawn to the pickup
28:30community because they didn't get male instruction, and so they're very vulnerable to be exploited by
28:36rock-abbed a-holes offering them some imaginary bang-a-thon by negging women. And so, why don't
28:47you want to work? Work is good. Work is fun. Work is nice. Work is positive. Work is productive.
28:52Why don't you want to work? Work is self-respect, right? Because if you are not working for your
28:58survival, someone else has to do it, or you're going to die. And being reliant upon other people for your
29:04daily bread is a mark of immaturity and a lack of self-respect, a mark of exploitation,
29:12and exploitation always comes from insecurity. And so, why don't you want to work? You can call
29:20me in, call.freedomain.com, but you want a bunch of stuff without working, which means something bad
29:25happened to you as a toddler, and emotionally you haven't moved beyond that. And I say that not with
29:29any negativity or condemnation, uh, with sympathy, but that's, that's the key. Why don't you want to
29:34work? I want stuff, but don't have to work for it. That's, uh, parents, uh, who didn't give you
29:42things. Uh, next question. Please disentangle the concept of punishment. So, there are two kinds of
29:50punishment in the world, uh, active and passive. Uh, passive punishment is, you know, earlier I was
29:57talking about how if your friend doesn't take any good advice, uh, and disastrous things start
30:04happening, at some point you may choose to disconnect from the friendship. It's that, that there's
30:08consequences, right? If, uh, you go to a job and they, they don't pay you. I remember being at a
30:15company many years ago that was in financial trouble and I had dropped about two grand, a lot
30:21of money. And I dropped about two grand on expenses for the company. And it was month after month after
30:26month. They weren't giving me my expenses back. And I was very concerned that I wasn't going to get
30:31the money back. So I ended up just buying a bunch of stuff on the company credit card that I
30:36still had.
30:37And, uh, I told them all of that and it was fine, but I'm like, nope, you're not right. So,
30:42uh,
30:43that's sort of consequences. If you're not going to give me the money that you owe me, I'll just,
30:47I'll just take it, right? I mean, totally fine. So, uh, punishment is, let's say that you are a kid
30:56and your parents aren't peaceful parents and you do something that they don't like. So they hit you.
31:01So that's obviously punishment. Now, another thing you can do is be angry at people. And it's funny
31:08because peaceful parenting, I had a conversation with a couple not too long ago.
31:13about peaceful parenting. And they said, well, peaceful parenting means we can't get angry at
31:17our children. And I'm like, what, where does that come from? I've never said a peaceful parenting.
31:21I mean, obviously don't scream and abuse them and call them names. And that's, that's abused for
31:26sure. I wouldn't do that with anyone I care about. I don't think I would do that with anyone as
31:30a whole,
31:33but you can be angry at people you care about. Love and anger are not opposites. Love and indifference,
31:39you could say are opposites, love and rage, love and abuse, but, uh, you can be angry with people
31:45that you love. I mean, I have a pretty good relationship with myself. It's not to say I don't
31:50occasionally get upset, uh, with my, uh, self, right? So, I mean, I was traveling not too long ago
31:59and I had a camera, uh, in my backpack and I didn't pack it properly and it fell out and
32:05it broke and I
32:06was annoyed with myself for not packing it properly. Doesn't mean I hate myself or anything. It's just,
32:10you know, you can get annoyed with yourself, uh, even angry with yourself and that can be healthy,
32:14right? That can be, it tells you to change course or do something better or different and that's fine.
32:19Now, so, uh, there's active punishment like spanking. There's passive punishment, which is to
32:28disassociate. I suppose, yeah, there's something in the middle, which is to be angry with someone.
32:31So, uh, if your child, after repeated warnings, hurts themselves by doing something foolish,
32:37it's perfectly acceptable to be angry because the essence of relationships is, is honesty.
32:43And if you are honestly angry at your child, which can happen, I guess you've got to be self-critical,
32:48it can happen. If you are honestly angry with someone, you should say, I'm angry with you.
32:55You know, say, I'm angry with you. It doesn't mean that you're wrong. It doesn't mean that I'm right.
32:59I'm just telling you what I feel. Like, I feel very angry at you because I repeated you told you
33:02not
33:03to do this thing. You told me it was fine. You did it. And now there's a big problem. And
33:07I'm angry
33:07with you for not taking my advice and it bothers me. And, and you can talk about it. Of course,
33:11you don't say you little piece of S, you know, like whatever, you don't need, you idiot. You're
33:15so clumsy. You know, F in there. Like, that's just horrible. Right. But to be direct and openly
33:20honest, if your children are doing something, like, let's say you have a kid that's, that's
33:26hitting his, his brother. He said, I'm angry. It is a, do not, it bothers me. I'm, I got to
33:31protect
33:31this kid and you're hitting him. So you get angry. That's fine. You don't want to get abusive. You
33:35don't want to call people names or scream at them or threaten them. Uh, just be angry to be angry.
33:41I mean, I hope I've modeled some healthy, angry and call in shows when I feel manipulated
33:45or disrespected or, or all of that, when people keep interrupting me, I'm pretty firm with
33:49them. I say, do not interrupt me. I need to finish my thought. Do not interrupt me. I'm
33:54not yelling. I'm not calling them names. I'm just being firm and, and hopefully decisive
33:59and, and honest. So yeah, there's active punishment like whack, whack, whack. There is punishment
34:08through avoidance, which is more consequences. And then there's, in a sense, negative consequences
34:15through being direct, uh, and expressing negative feelings towards the person. And, uh, we should
34:22always aim that the sweet spot is, is in the middle because when we dissociate, there's no
34:26relationship. When we physically punish by attacking or screaming or yelling or calling
34:30names, uh, then that's a bad relationship. A relationship wherein we're honest, right? If you
34:36say to your wife, I love you and you're honest, that's a wonderful thing. Uh, if she does something,
34:42uh, foolish or she does something against your good advice, uh, or she does something for
34:47whatever reason, just makes you, uh, angry, right? You know, if you say, I really don't
34:54think you can park in this spot. Like it's too tight. No, I got it. And then I say, she
34:59dings
34:59another car. Okay. That's annoying. I say, I'm really, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm mad. I'm mad
35:03that she didn't take my advice. And, and also you can say, I'm kind of mad at myself that
35:07I didn't get out and check and all of this kind of stuff, but I'm just mad that we're
35:10in this situation right now. And that's fine. That's honest. There's nothing wrong with
35:14that. There's nothing wrong with you. You, in fact, you should be honest with people
35:16both about the pluses and the minuses. That's the only way you stay close. All right. Uh,
35:22not sure if that's philosophical, but I always wondered if you were given the choice of living
35:26forever by transcending your consciousness or your conscience into a computer, would that make it
35:30impossible to cross over to heaven? Uh, there's no such thing as heaven and there's no such thing
35:35as life after death. Life after death is having you wait in a waiting room for a doctor that will
35:41never show up. It just makes your illness get worse. Uh, what is man's biggest regret? Sorry.
35:46What is man's biggest non-death related fear? What is a woman's? So a man's biggest fear is not
35:51reproducing and a woman's biggest fear is reproducing with the wrong man. And women don't really have much
35:57of a fear of not reproducing because women can always get sex, but a man's biggest fear is to
36:01not reproduce. Uh, and there's a whole bunch of fears associated with that, like not winning in
36:07the resource competition, uh, losing status and so on. The man's biggest fear is not reproducing. A
36:11woman's biggest fear is reproducing with the wrong person. At least it was before the welfare state.
36:17Is mathematics invented or discovered? Is mathematics invented or discovered? So, uh, let's look at,
36:25sorry, I just dropped my classes. Let's look at, uh, equals MC squared. Was that invented or
36:30discovered? Well, as I said before, the relationship between concepts in the mind and objective things
36:36in the world or objective principles like reason, that is accuracy. So if there are two bananas and I
36:42say there are two bananas, have I invented that? No, because invented things have no relationship to
36:47the world as a whole. So if I invent some Dungeons and Dragons monster, or I draw my own Pokemon
36:52cards to
36:53take a cue from last night's live stream, if I do that, I'm inventing something. Uh, if I, uh, find
37:01a
37:02pot of gold in my backyard, I have not invented that pot of gold. I have discovered it. So inventions
37:08are things creating things that didn't exist before. And discovery is coming across things that did exist
37:15before, but you didn't know it. And mathematics are concepts invented to conceptualize sequences of
37:25like objects. Oh, look, there's three buses in a row. Like they have to be buses, right? Sequences of
37:29like objects. And it's not invented because it has to actually reference the like objects. And it's not
37:38discovered because we didn't trip over the number three in the desert. So it is something that is
37:44created with accuracy in the external world to consistently identify similar discrete objects.
37:52Hope that makes sense. Does friendship necessitate knowledge or merely kindness? Uh, no. Friendship,
37:58uh, is virtue, right? Friendship necessitates virtue. You cannot be friends without virtue because
38:03virtue is consistent positive behavior, consistent moral positive behavior, integrity. And therefore,
38:10if your friend is nice one day and mean the next day, you can't really be friends with him unless
38:13you're a masochist, in which case it's not really friendship, some sort of weird kink. So friendship
38:19necessitates a virtue. And virtue is not a kindness. A virtue, in fact, can be unkindness at times.
38:27Uh, if Iran and Israel are so smart in average IQ, why can they not figure out a peaceful way
38:32to deal
38:32with their differences? If it is violent parenting techniques, how come they're so smart despite
38:37abuse? So, uh, violent parenting techniques are not directly correlated with average IQ. And remember,
38:45Israel is divided into Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews, and of course, many others. And it's the
38:51Ashkenazi Jews that have the very highest verbal IQ in particular. So I would say that IQ in general
38:59in a population rises based upon successfully overcoming the kind of adversity that intelligence
39:05will help with, right? And so intelligence doesn't mean rationality. Intelligence a lot of times
39:16is necessary but not sufficient for rationality. But in the same way that you can't be dead and a
39:22basketball player, but not everyone who's alive is a basketball player. It's necessary but not
39:25sufficient. So if people believe things that are false, and the vanity in the human mind that can
39:34has them continue to believe things that are false and not subject their will, their angry, dominant will
39:39to reason and evidence, then they will come into conflict. And this is not true of just Iran and
39:45Israel, but everywhere. If people don't submit to reason, they will become violent, aggressive,
39:51destructive, abusive. We either reason together or we abuse each other. When a peaceful parent's
39:56children are put in public school because they're forced public school laws, are they in a similar
40:00situation to children of divorce, where they cannot be told the truth about the bad parent, aka the
40:04school teachers? Yeah, that's very true. That is very true. It's a very, very good point. Yes, of course.
40:10Can you go, can you put your kids in government schools and say, yeah, it's mostly, mostly Marxist
40:15propaganda. And the teachers are fools. And the work is either frightening you into submission or
40:23boring you into dissociation. And the schools are so bad that all they can do is drug boys who are
40:30bored
40:30by sitting, doing useless, busy work for seven hours a day. I mean, you can't tell the truth about
40:36teachers and government. My, my, my dad says, miss, my dad says that you're only here to collect a
40:45pension and take the summers off. And you don't actually really care about kids because the head
40:48of your union said that. Yeah. Good luck, right? Good luck. So yeah, when you put your children in
40:56situations of corruption that they're forced to be in and forced to obey in, then you, you have to lie.
41:02And that really breaks the bond. It's not really worth it. It's not at all worth it. All right.
41:06Thank you for the questions. I'll get to the rest later. Freedomand.com slash donate to help out the
41:10show. Really, really would appreciate it. Shop.freedomand.com for your merch. Peacefulparenting.com.
41:15for the free or bought book and freedomand.com slash donate. Thank you so much, my friends.
41:20Have a wonderful, wonderful day. Lots of love. We'll talk soon. Bye.
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