How to Have HOPE! Listener Questions

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux answers listener questions on how to face real challenges instead of dodging them, since avoiding difficulty just breeds boredom, regret, and emptiness. He ties Western progress to philosophy, free speech, and merit while pushing ostracism against surveillance and rejecting panic over population shifts.  0:00:00 Colonialism and Moral Judgment  0:08:21 The Burden of Western Progress  0:13:09 Ostracism Against Bad Ideas  0:19:37 Cut Ties or Stop Worrying  0:22:44 Population Decline and AI  0:28:26 Merit, Management, and Free Society  0:29:40 IQ, Wisdom, and Charity   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/FREEDOMAIN2026

Transcript

00:00All righty, righty. Hello, hello. More fine questions from the listeners on X, the readers

00:08on X, x.com slash Stefan Molyneux. What's your broad overview of the history of European

00:14colonization? Was it good for the nations who were colonized? Was it good for the European

00:18nations themselves? Well, there's a shortcut to knowing not just what I accept or believe,

00:28but what is rational and moral to accept or believe, which is, does the activity in question

00:35require the violation of property rights, the initiation of force, the non-aggression principle?

00:41So consequentialism, the broad patterns of success or failures. I've got whole videos on

00:52colonial colonization and so on, colonial behaviors on fdpodcast.com, just do a search for

00:59imperialism, colonialism, and so on. I've got whole videos on that. So the complex sort

01:04of pluses and minuses, I mean, they're interesting, they're fun to play around with, but let's just

01:08look at what is colonialism. Colonialism is the government taking over other countries in

01:16a color of the world, in the colors of your flag game with all of the other powers. So

01:24how does colonialism work in fact and in practice? Well, colonialism works in fact and in practice

01:31when the government initiates the use of force against its own citizens to extract from them

01:37the resources to go and rule India or Ghana or wherever, right? I mean, that's how it works.

01:44So when you say, was it good for the nations who were colonized? Was it good for the European

01:49nations themselves? What do you mean by good? So in England, for instance, the domestic population

01:57was both kidnapped and forced into violent indentured servitude in, say, the Royal Navy or other

02:06aspects of military force. And the working class population was pillaged and robbed at gunpoint,

02:16sword point, knife point, whatever you want to call it, in order to pay for all of these things.

02:22So that's all you need to know. It's pretty easy to figure out. So all you need to know is

02:28that

02:28people calling themselves the government initiated the use of force against other people they referred

02:33to as taxpayers or citizens in order to fund and fuel their evil and psychotic need to invade and

02:42conquer other countries. And so it's wrong. It's bad. It's immoral. As regards to whether it was

02:50beneficial to the countries themselves, in some cases, you could argue that there were particular

02:58advancements. Again, I've got a whole video on this about the British rule over India and how the British

03:05did help the Indians sort of advance in terms of technology and railways and so on.

03:13But this is a tough thing, you know. If you've ever known someone who has gained or inherited a lot

03:23of

03:23money that they obviously haven't earned and see how it affects their life, it's almost always

03:31catastrophic, certainly negative. They become paranoid, lazy, dissociated from reality. You

03:38know, we need a hard grind to survive as human beings. We got to the top of the food chain.

03:45We

03:45became the apex predators of the natural world and of each other because we embraced and loved a hard

03:50grind. The sword needs the whetstone. The muscle needs the resistance. The mind needs the problems,

03:57the challenges. People say life is hard. Good. It should be. That's the only way we ascend is through

04:05resistance, through problems, through challenges. And people say, okay, I understand that. You want

04:09your break. You want your rest from challenges. I understand that. We all do. There's nothing wrong

04:13with that. But we need opposition, challenge, problems. Your brain is a giant problem-solving machine.

04:22It's so obsessed with solving problems that when you fall asleep and it has no problems to solve,

04:28it invents dreams where you get chased, or there are problems, or there are negatives,

04:33or there are challenges to overcome. Your brain is a constant whack-a-whack-a-whack-a Pac-Man

04:38problem-eating machine. You feed it problems, or it makes problems up.

04:46I know. I understand. You know, for every hard workout, you need some rest time. I get all of

04:52that. But people get obsessed with this rest time. Like, oh my god, another problem. Hello? That's

04:57called life. Life is a series of problems. You either go out and embrace the problems and have

05:04real challenges, or you have the problem of feeling bored, restless, meaningless, uninspired,

05:11and full of regret for all the time you wasted by avoiding problems.

05:16You either have real problems that are useful and helpful to you, the world, and society, or

05:21you have fake problems where you just make yourself neurotic and crazy because you're not doing

05:25anything of any value or any worth.

05:30You either ask the girl out, which is scary, or you don't ask the girl out, in which case you

05:36feel

05:36the pain of regret and loss. Oh, some other guy asked her out. Oh, I should have. Ah, I'm such

05:41an

05:41idiot. So, when people get something for nothing, right? I guess, what, porn makes you feel like

05:51some sort of sexual god, or video games make you feel like you're achieving something, or you take

05:57pride in what other people have done, and so on. I mean, it's terrible.

06:05I had a guy I knew who inherited a lot of money from some distant great aunt. He was, like,

06:13the last

06:14relative. He didn't even know this woman. He inherited a bunch of money. Messed him up completely.

06:21He didn't know whether to go to work, whether to quit. If he quit work, he was bored. I mean,

06:25it's the notch problem. The guy who created Minecraft got, like, crazy math, like a billion

06:30dollars, or whatever it is, and he's bored as hell, because everyone else is working, and they

06:35have, so you say, oh, money's going to eliminate all these problems from my life, or, boy, if I get

06:40jacked, I won't have any trouble meeting girls, and I won't have any problems, or I get this promotion,

06:46or I get this girl to go out with all my problems. I need to put my problems in the

06:50rear view.

06:52I'll tell you this, man. The only time your problems are in the rear view is when you're

06:58staring at a big crowd of people because the portrait has been put next to your coffin because

07:04it's your funeral. That's the only time you'll be looking back at having no problems, and then

07:11you'll say, gee, I wish I had problems again because now I'm dead. I mean, if you could think,

07:18right, you'd say, what I wouldn't give for problems. And, of course, every problem seems

07:23like a big deal at the time, and then if you're living life well, then you wish you had yesterday's

07:33problems because now you've got bigger problems. The whole point of life is to chew and chew

07:38off bigger problems until life wipes you out with the biggest problem of all, also the solution

07:43to all problems called being dead. Stop avoiding problems. Embrace them. They're either real problems

07:53or they're made-up problems. You either have the problem of challenge or you have the problem of

07:57regret. You either have the problem of love or you have the problem of isolation. You either have the

08:02problem of ambition or you have the problem of meaninglessness. You either have the problem of

08:07fighting evil, or you have the regret, fear, and terror of letting evil wash over you and win and

08:11conquer and not being able to look at yourself in the mirror because you did nothing to fight

08:17growing evil. So I just wanted to sort of point that out. The reason I'm bringing this up in the

08:23context of imperialism is in the West, through a very powerful combination of the theory of Greek

08:35philosophy, the practicality of Roman law and politics, and the universalism of Christianity,

08:42we in the West did some absolutely incredible stuff when it came to building a world of no

08:51slavery, rights for women, private property, small government, rule of law, and so on. And we went

08:58through this whole process for a couple of hundred years of reproductively disabling through death in

09:05imprisonment or sending overseas the most violent one or two percent of our population, like the true

09:12psychos, right? We voluntarily disarmed ourselves in a violent world, which was fine as long as we were

09:20relatively isolated from that violent world. So we got rid of the most violent people, and therefore we

09:30ended up with a relatively peaceful society, and we let just a few more of our intelligent non-conformists

09:40live. Just a few more. We didn't just immediately kill them off and immediately string them up for

09:44blasphemy or going against the tribe or something like that. So we developed some actual, valid, genuine,

09:54universal, philosophical, legal, and moral principles. And so we got to do good stuff, right? Being a good

10:01person is very challenging, and that's great because, again, you either have real challenges or

10:08your brain will make them up for you. I mean, people who should take on big challenges, if they don't,

10:13they just become neurotics, hypochondriacs, and make up invisible conspiracy theories that consume their

10:20lives to no purpose. So it's real problems or fake problems. That's all you're going to get in life.

10:27There are no such thing as no problems except at your funeral. So in the West, we let a few

10:39more

10:40of our smarter people live and challenge the system, and therefore we got better systems over time.

10:48Socrates and Jesus, I mean, they were killed, and Galileo was tortured. But in general,

10:55we at least let the fruits of their labor spread throughout society. We're a little bit more

11:01tolerant. It's kind of a white male phenomenon. White males are the only demographic group fundamentally

11:06invested in free speech, because free speech is how society improves. Shooting the messages,

11:13being offended at negative speech. I mean, it's a bit more female than male. Men fight with fists

11:19and guns. Women fight with words and reputational destruction. So men want to ban violence. Women

11:25want to ban speech, because that's how each sex fights in general. But in the West, we got good stuff

11:34as a result of philosophical examination and extension and accepting the challenges of dissidents. And

11:44therefore, we got a lot of good stuff. You had the technology takeoff. 18th century agriculture,

11:5119th century manufacturing, and 20th century technology. We got that takeoff. And then we took

11:57all the fruits of that takeoff and spread it around the world. And that is to give people an inheritance

12:03that they have not earned. Have not earned. The other societies and cultures didn't get all the

12:10fruits of Western technology because they allowed for their dissidents to be able to survive and able

12:17to speak. And even if you killed them, you didn't burn all their papers and destroy. Like in ancient

12:21China, or not that ancient China, the guy who first came up with a really good sailing vessel,

12:26he was killed, his family was killed, all of his friends were killed, his business associates were killed,

12:31and his blueprints were all burned to the ground. And right, so there was nothing left, right? So they

12:36didn't get to sail. They got to be sailed upon by the British. And then you had the opium wars

12:42and so on,

12:42right? So giving people the fruits of challenges without requiring them to go through those challenges

12:52is a desperately bad idea. And that's what colonialism did. It was not good for the nations who were

13:01colonized. It was not good for the European nations. It was a great and terrible evil as a whole.

13:09What do you think can be done, next question, in order to stop the march towards the world with 100

13:14%

13:14and surveilled internet and computer use? Well, the weapon that the vast majority of people, and really the

13:25only weapon that the vast majority of people have in their arsenal, is ostracism.

13:31Bam, bam, bam! That's sorry if you were sleeping. That's the weapon that most people have.

13:41I've counseled ostracism as the foundational mechanism of social control for decades. And

13:49in order to prove the power of ostracism, I myself was willing to become ostracized, right? So

13:55I have not been thrown in jail for things that I've said, because things that I've said are true.

14:02And I have been willing to be ostracized to show the power of ostracism. It actually works really,

14:07really well. So ostracism is how you maintain social control. There are people, I guarantee this,

14:15if you're like 99.99% of people, there are people in your life who believe things that are evil,

14:25or would result in evil things. You know, socialists, communists, people who are fine with central

14:30banking, people who applaud all kinds of unjust and horrible uses of political power. I mean,

14:37not that there's any just uses of political power, but, you know, in the normie, in the normie sense,

14:42right? So there are people who are like, hey, you know what's great? Mandami in New York just froze

14:48the rents for everyone so that landlords can't increase rents. And be, yay, that's so cool.

14:59Yeah, well, I mean, that's just a violation of private property. It's just a violation. But the

15:06problem is, the problem with democracy is that the poor people outnumber the rich people, so the poor

15:12people vote to take away all the property. The rich people, then everyone then becomes poor.

15:16The renters outnumber the landlords. So the renters get to screw the landlords, and then the

15:25landlords don't want to be involved in being landlords anymore. So no new buildings get built,

15:33buildings don't get maintained anymore, and then everyone says, oh, no, these unintended second

15:39and third effects are just terrible. It's the fault of the landlords. Which is like, it's like

15:45enslaving a guy, and then saying that the problem is he seems quite lazy and unmotivated. It's like,

15:50well, maybe don't use force against people to get what you want, and society will be better off.

15:56So if you have people in your life who believe and advocate for terrible, horrible, awful things,

16:06like, here's a test, right? Here's the basic test of reality processing. It's very simple to do.

16:10It doesn't take more than 10 to 20 seconds. Say, you can just go to someone who's, you know, at

16:16all,

16:17even tangentially interested in politics, and you just say the following, or just ask the following

16:21question. We have catastrophic debt as a nation. What should we cut to balance the budget? What

16:30should we cut to pay off the debt? Because it's unfair for children to be born into, in America,

16:34$1.75 million in debt and unfunded liabilities. So just go to someone and say, we're catastrophically

16:42in debt as a nation. It's true of every Western nation. We're catastrophically in debt as a nation.

16:47What should we cut to pay off the debt? Now, people on the right will say, often social programs,

16:55people on the left will often say defense, and say, okay, how much should we cut,

17:00and what should be done. This is just to check whether anybody has even the slightest shred of

17:06reality processing at all. Catastrophically in debt, and you have to include unfunded

17:13liabilities, which are promises the government has made to people that it can't afford to pay for.

17:19We are catastrophically in debt. We have obligations that cannot be paid under the current system.

17:26What should be cut? What should be cut? And by how much?

17:32Right? Just basic reality processing. And if people hum and whore, and they can't make decisions,

17:37and they won't say stuff, I don't have in my life people who advocate for terrible, evil, catastrophic

17:46things. I just don't. There are people in your life who believe and advocate for things.

17:55things that will cause the destruction of your entire civilization. Open borders, you know, whatever, right?

18:04So, if you care about the future, then you reason with those people, and if they refuse to see reason,

18:10you ostracize them. Don't break bread with evildoers. I don't know why this is complicated,

18:16or difficult, or hard for people to understand. It's hard to do, I get all of that, but I don't

18:20know why.

18:21Anyway, so here's the thing. You don't want to worry yourself about something you're never going

18:30to do, right? Like, if you say, oh, I really want a six-pack, I want abs, like Jason Momoa

18:37in Supergirl.

18:38Hey, man, not the abs, not the abs. So, if you want abs, then do what you need to do

18:44to get abs. I

18:45don't know, a bunch of sit-ups, and don't eat, whatever. I don't know, whatever people do to get abs.

18:52If you don't want to do those things, don't worry about the abs, right? Don't have

18:58ideas, or goals, or preferences that you're not taking any steps towards achieving,

19:04right? If you want to be a musician, a professional musician, but you're not really

19:09practicing, and you're not trying to get paid gigs, then forget about it. Forget about it. Don't worry

19:16about it. So, if you're worried about the future, your most powerful tool, you say weapon, it's not

19:24really a weapon. I mean, if a woman doesn't want to date you, she says no to dating you. It's

19:30not a

19:30weapon, right? She's just practicing eugenics. But if you care about growing government power,

19:41then you have to talk to people and say, what in the government would you cut?

19:46And if they won't answer or don't answer, then you can reason with them, you know, a couple of

19:49conversations or whatever, try to bring some vague, gaseous puffs of rational air to their

19:57status-starved lungs. But if they continue to advocate for terrible, horrible, evil things,

20:05cut them off. Now, if you say, ah, I don't want to cut them off, you know, they're friends,

20:12they're family, we've had a long relationship, I need a place to go at Christmas. Fine. Fine.

20:19Then stop worrying about stuff. Because if you're not going to act on it,

20:22stop worrying about it. Worry should be reserved for things you're going to actually act on. If

20:30you're not going to do anything, stop thinking about it. Thinking about something and not doing

20:35anything is worse than a waste of time. Should I become a ballerina? Hmm. Should I become the lead

20:50singer for an Irish folk band? I'm not going to do any of those things. Should I become an excellent

21:01flautist or harpist? I don't play the flute, I don't play the harp, and I'm not going to. Should I

21:09become fluent in Gaelic or oldie Englishy? No, I don't worry about these things. I'm not going to do

21:20them. So if you're worried about the future, cross-examine the people around you. And if you

21:26believe it's going to lead to a horrible, evil, dystopian future, and if people around you, their

21:30beliefs are going to contribute to that or cause that to come about, then ostracize them. And if

21:34you don't want to ostracize them, fine. Then stop whining about something you're never going to do

21:39anything about. Ever! Stop it. Stop, oh, I don't want the future to be dystopian. I don't want the

21:48government to have too much power. I don't want this to... Okay, then cross-examine the people in

21:51your life. If the people in your life advocate for that kind of stuff, if they love the use of

21:56force,

21:56if they love to lick the bloody knife of political power, fuck them! And if you don't want to get

22:02rid

22:03of them, get rid of the worries, because you don't care about it that much. God. Do you expose your

22:10daughter to political commentators like Nicholas J... How do you pronounce that? Fuentes. Fuenta.

22:17Fuentes. I'm just kidding. He was on my show years ago. Um, what do you mean, expose? I don't know.

22:22I

22:22don't expose my daughter to political commentators at all. I mean, we have interesting conversations

22:27about philosophy, politics, morals, and some seriously goofy stuff, but I don't say,

22:34ooh, you've got to sit down and watch this, or you've got to sit down. I mean, I just prefer

22:37to

22:37have conversations with her. Um... Do-do-do... Do-do... You recently said you were okay with the

22:47population flattening out and worries about it were just an excuse for immigration, but then just

22:51tweeted, people need to have three kids for civilization to continue. So which is it? Is this just to get

22:56likes from Musk? I'm not sure what you mean. So, if the population flattens out, that is not an

23:04excuse for giant waves of immigration, because we have robots and AI to do labor. So we don't need

23:13that. Uh, and it's to do some seriously intellectual labor, too. I mean, it won't be particularly long.

23:20I mean, lawyers will fight it like crazy. Of course, they want to maintain their monopoly.

23:24Understandable, amoral, perhaps evil, but understandable. But doctors, of course, they

23:29don't want you going to AI, uploading a bunch of scans and asking a bunch of questions, even though

23:35doctors, you know, man, it's just this time, you know, like they're really busy. They're, uh-huh,

23:39yeah, yeah, uh-huh. Like they just don't want to hear, they don't want to listen. AI is very patient,

23:44will answer questions, is in no hurry, is in no rush. Same thing with lawyers. Every time you ask a

23:48lawyer a question, they take out another bit of your kidney to answer it, and if you can just get

23:52some reasonable AI answers. And lawyers aren't perfect, neither is AI, of course. But AI is cheap

24:00and patient. And so we are in an absolute state of flux as to how much labor in what areas

24:10will be

24:11needed in the future. And so a low birth rate is fine. If you look at times in the past,

24:18of course,

24:19when there was a massive loss of labor, obviously the big and horrible one that's most clear is the

24:26Black Death in Europe. We killed like a third, sometimes half of the population in places. And

24:32because so much labor was needed to till the land, to bring in the harvest and tend the livestock and

24:42so on, it was the beginning of the end of feudalism, right? End of serfdom, because you could negotiate

24:49for better wages and circumstances when labor goes down. So we are in the biggest state of flux

24:56that there has been since the 19th century when capital machinery began to replace the need for

25:04labor. And nobody knew where it was going to go. Nobody knows with robotics and AI where things are

25:12going to go in terms of the need for labor. So a falling population, it's self-correcting in general,

25:21right? So if you have a falling population and you don't have mass immigration, then it's self-correcting.

25:26Because what happens with a falling population, then wages go up and housing in particular goes

25:32down, right? Because there's fewer people who need houses and there's fewer people who are working.

25:38So what happens is housing and education and other things become much cheaper. Wages go up and

25:45therefore people can afford to have more kids. And it's a self-correcting problem if you just let

25:50it play its way out, like in the same way that a recession is a self-correcting problem. So do

25:55people

25:55forget that 1920, 1921, there was a worse stock market crash than 1929, but I think it was Hoover

26:01was president at the time. He didn't really do anything. And so it's self-corrected, right? But

26:08then with FDR and the 1929 crash put in sort of 13 grinding years of expanding state power to,

26:15quote, solve the problem culminating in World War II.

26:20So economics is self-correcting absent external government interventions. And so a falling birth

26:31rate solves itself. Because again, your dollar to cost ratio changes enormously, right? When there's a

26:41lot of people and it's tough, it's easier to make people than it is to build houses and more fun.

26:48So when there's a big population boom, housing prices go up and wages go down over time. When

26:52there's a population bust, wages go up and cost of living goes down enormously. I mean, just think of

26:57doctors have far fewer people to treat and therefore they have to lower their prices because you can shop

27:03things shop around, right? So it's a self-correcting problem. In the long run, people need to have kids

27:11though. And so I'm not sure what the contradiction is there. For civilization to continue, at some point,

27:18people are going to have to have more kids, right? If you have a birth rate of one or 1

27:22.2, whatever,

27:24then you're gone in a couple of generations. So the idea that the population falling is not a problem.

27:31A population continuing to fall is a problem. Like here's an analogy, right? You do hard cardio,

27:39right? And your heart rate goes to 130, 140, whatever it is, 150. And then you stop doing a

27:45hard cardio and your heart rate begins to fall. That's not a problem. In fact, it's bad if you stop

27:56doing cardio and your heart rate continues to, right? I don't know what's going on then, but

28:01maybe it's an excess of cocaine. I don't know, right? So it's bad

28:08if your heart rate continues to race even after you stop exercising. So having your heart rate go

28:13down is not a problem. If your heart rate continues to go down and then stops, well,

28:20you have a very brief problem and then no problems at all because you're dead.

28:23All right. So anyway, okay. Did that, what else we got? My manager passed away. I'm being thrust into

28:32his position and being asked to pick one of my co-workers to be my assistant. How do I choose?

28:38Well, if you are the boss, you must choose people based upon raw, brutal meritocracy. That's the only

28:46thing that will get other people's respect. If you choose someone because you like him and you

28:52enjoy each other's company and you laugh together and so on, the only way to maintain productivity in

28:58the workforce is to have a raw meritocracy, right? Which is, you know, one of the reasons why,

29:04I mean, the economy kind of died in 2007, 2008. It's just been propped up by

29:11money printing ever since. So yeah, you have to, and just recognize as well, like nobody feels ready

29:19for anything. Like nobody feels ready for anything. Everybody feels like a bit of a fraud, certainly to

29:24start with. So you're going to feel like, oh my God, I don't know how to be a manager. Read

29:27a bunch

29:27of books, watch a bunch of videos and so on. And just recognize everyone feels like a fraud when

29:34they're first doing stuff. And except that, that's just the price of growth.

29:40How can a free society deal with below average IQ people? They are incapable of higher order

29:45reasoning. Understand, I want a free society. I'm trying to figure out how to get there with the

29:49challenges. I see. Well, you don't deal with people in a free society. So a free society is one where,

30:05in general, property rights, non-aggression principle is respected. A free society comes out

30:09of peaceful parenting. If you have children who are parented peacefully and not beaten and dealt

30:16with rationally and educated well, according to reason and evidence, you don't get criminals,

30:21you don't get psychopaths, you don't get sociopaths, you don't get narcissists. Like these are all

30:26trauma responses to a brutal early abuse, right? Like really brutal early abuse, like babyhood gets you

30:35a psychopath. Brutal abuse, when someone is a toddler gets you a narcissist, a brutal abuse,

30:42abuse older, like three, four, five and up gets you a neurotic or any of these just broad generalizations,

30:49of course, right? But human dysfunction comes out of child abuse. Will there still be people with

30:56dysfunctions even if they're raised peacefully and well? Sure. But, you know, but much less. Like

31:04crazy amounts less.

31:09So

31:13in terms of how to deal with people, well, first of all, we recognize that

31:19since IQ is overwhelmingly genetic, like it's not 100% genetic like height or eye color, but it's

31:26overwhelmingly like 80% plus. It's 80% by late teens. It only goes up from there. So it's overwhelmingly

31:32genetic. Now still, 20% is a lot to work with. 15%, whatever, 20% is a lot to work

31:36with. And I'd

31:37rather be wise than intelligent. If you're intelligent without wisdom, then you can talk

31:42yourself in and out of anything. You can justify anything. You're your own worst enemy as far as being

31:47a sophist goes. So it's highly dangerous to be intelligent without being wise. It is far better

31:52to be wise and less intelligent, the more intelligent and less wise. So wisdom is the, I can't do anything

31:59to change your intelligence really, but I can do something to have you use your intelligence better

32:05and to be wise. You know, if your truck is stuck in mud, you can't just get it out by

32:12revving the

32:13engine. But wisdom says, you know, put some chains or cables or wood or something under the wheel so

32:19that then you can get out, right? So the revving your engine faster when you're going around in

32:24circles doesn't get you going anywhere faster. So wisdom is the more practical solution to these

32:28kinds of things. So we recognize, of course, that people who are less intelligent, it's not their fault.

32:34They're not at fault for it. They're not bad people because of it. Although there is a sweet

32:39spot to criminality around the IQ 85, which is unfortunate for a wide variety of reasons, of

32:44course. But, you know, we have sympathy, we have patience and we don't get mad at people for being

32:51less intelligent. It's not their fault. And we don't view people as better because they're smarter

32:57because they didn't earn it. I'm not a better person because I'm smarter than your average bear.

33:01I'm more responsible for using my intelligence to better the world and so on. So I'm not sure what

33:09you mean when you say, how do we deal with them? I mean, there are less intelligent people in a

33:13society. A society will have, a truly free society will have virtually infinite resources to deal with

33:21things. So, I mean, here's a tiny example, right? So if the federal registry in the United States,

33:26sort of regulations and so on, if they'd stayed at post-Second World War levels and wasn't

33:32unregulated, then the economy would have grown one to two percent greater every year. And what that

33:38means by now is people would have incomes, average income would be like $300,000 or more. Average

33:45income. Now, if people are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and of course they

33:49understand because they're educated about it, they're smart people. It's just, I don't want to say

33:52it's fortunate or unfortunate because sometimes you need the bluntness of less intelligent people

33:56and sometimes you need the common sense of less intelligent people. I mean, I remember when I

34:01worked in manual labor for some time and I would bring my sort of windy, airy, esoteric theories

34:07to the lunchroom and people would just laugh at me like that. Kid, that doesn't make any sense.

34:12Let me tell you why, right? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And so sometimes the common sense of

34:19lower IQ, more practical people is the seasoning that is needed to keep an intellectual grounded

34:24and so on. So they also have their part to play in the human story and they have their value

34:28to bring. And they do enjoy some of the, quote, simpler pleasures, which is actually really,

34:36really important to enjoy. So they can be enormously helpful in society. So if somebody's too

34:43unintelligent to succeed in a free society, I mean, people who have half a million dollars a year

34:49in income and recognize it's not that person's fault, there'd be charities set up. There would

34:53be ways to make those people's lives pleasant and productive and happy and so on. And so, I mean,

35:00people are nice. They generally care. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. So, I mean,

35:06there's not something to be done with. We would recognize that people are generally kind, especially

35:16if they're raised peacefully and well. They're generally kind and generous, understanding and

35:19helpful. They have sympathy, particularly for things that aren't people's fault, like low intelligence,

35:24and find a way to make those people's lives positive and beneficial and useful and so on,

35:31because everyone deserves, you know, at least the opportunity for a purpose in this life and in

35:36this world. So I hope this helps. Thank you for the questions. I've got more. I will definitely

35:41keep the answers coming. I love you guys for the questions. Really, really hope that what I provide

35:45is helpful if you do find it helpful. And remember, this is all ad-free. Like, I don't read ads.

35:49I don't

35:49have ads interrupting. And so if you could help out the show, I would really, really appreciate it.

35:55That's freedomain.com slash donate. Lots of love, my friends. Talk soon. Bye.

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