- 5 minutes ago
The episode reflects on Ayn Rand as a major moral novelist whose work defended freedom, integrity, and free markets, while also noting the speaker’s criticism that her ethical and political philosophy remained incomplete. It discusses Rand’s public reception, her personal relationships, and the claim that her affair with Nathaniel Branden damaged both her life and her movement.
The conversation also turns to Western culture, with an argument that Greek universalism and Christian mysticism make it difficult to accept real differences in human abilities and outcomes. It closes with practical comments on dating apps and marriage, and with criticism of false claims in the Lindsay Clancy discussion, which he says weaken trust and make relationships harder.
0:00:00 Ayn Rand And Virtue
0:03:24 Black Pill And Human Suffering
0:05:09 Atlas Shrugged And Moral Recoil
0:15:38 Rand's Moral Vision
0:21:14 Christian Universalism And Western Decline
0:31:19 Dating Apps And Real-Life Romance
0:36:15 Living Together After Marriage
0:43:19 Hostile Questions And Free Advice
0:45:53 Lust, Virtue, And Relationships
0:47:24 Good Faith And Conviction
0:48:24 Lindsay Clancy And Social Contagion
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The conversation also turns to Western culture, with an argument that Greek universalism and Christian mysticism make it difficult to accept real differences in human abilities and outcomes. It closes with practical comments on dating apps and marriage, and with criticism of false claims in the Lindsay Clancy discussion, which he says weaken trust and make relationships harder.
0:00:00 Ayn Rand And Virtue
0:03:24 Black Pill And Human Suffering
0:05:09 Atlas Shrugged And Moral Recoil
0:15:38 Rand's Moral Vision
0:21:14 Christian Universalism And Western Decline
0:31:19 Dating Apps And Real-Life Romance
0:36:15 Living Together After Marriage
0:43:19 Hostile Questions And Free Advice
0:45:53 Lust, Virtue, And Relationships
0:47:24 Good Faith And Conviction
0:48:24 Lindsay Clancy And Social Contagion
Support philosophy! https://freedomain.com/donate/
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
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00All right. Good morning, everybody. Just finishing off the questions from the fine
00:04folks on X. You can follow me at Stefan Molyneux on X and freedoman.com slash donate to help out
00:12the show. We'd really appreciate that. Thank you so much. All right. Ayn Rand, genius or speed freak?
00:20Well, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds may be about LSD and drugs. Some of Pink Floyd's creativity
00:28came out of her drugs. And so working for 13 years, as she did, of course, on Atlas Shrugged
00:37was a monstrous undertaking two years on John Galt's speech. And, you know, it's funny because
00:46we look at big philosophers and we see sort of the pinnacles of their mind and their thinking and so
00:50on. And we forget that this intellect, towering as it is, sits on an ordinary human frame of vanity,
01:00frailty and decay. And Ayn Rand was quite concerned about her weight. From what I've read, she used to
01:08show her legs off when she was in her early 60s to Nathaniel Brandon and was quite proud of her
01:15legs.
01:17And that's interesting. I mean, look, we all have our little vanities and so on.
01:24When I was in my late teens, I used to suck my cheeks in because the hollow cheeked look was
01:33quite popular back then. I used to occasionally or sometimes suck my cheeks in to make my face look
01:38cleaner. And a girlfriend I had at the time, I mentioned this to her. And then later on,
01:44she was studying a 19th century novel about a little damsel who sucked in her cheeks.
01:51She said, hey, do you like this little damsel who sucks in her cheeks? It's very funny.
01:58It's very funny. So, yeah, there are these little petty vanities and so on, which I don't begrudge
02:04anyone. But Ayn Rand was quite concerned about her weight and going the Russian babushka wide-hipped
02:14morphology later on in life. And one of the things that she did, of course, was to take, I guess,
02:25what were pretty commonly prescribed speed pills to help control her weight. And I'm pretty sure,
02:31of course, this made her irascible, irritable, and depressed. Ayn Rand spent, gosh, she died in the
02:39early 80s. And I think Atlas Shrugged was finished in 1953. So, she spent, you know, a couple of
02:45decades kind of down. And I remember when I first saw her being interviewed, I was quite struck by how
02:55sort of hard-eyed and suspicious and sometimes hostile she seemed to be. This is back when I
03:02was obviously kind of naive about the media and so on. And she had a very, very tough time of
03:10it.
03:10And it is a very tough time of it at times. If you want to make the world a better
03:15place, if you want
03:16to reason with people, you better get used to, well, quite a bit of disappointment. Quite a bit of
03:22disappointment. And that's something that everybody has to deal with in their own way.
03:30The black pill, right? The black pill. There is going to be an absolutely enormous amount
03:37of human suffering that no amount of reasoning appears able to prevent. I'm just going to say
03:45that again because you need to prepare. There is going to be a truly staggering amount of human
03:52suffering that is coming that no reasoning, no evidence, no facts, no arguments, no debate
03:59seems able to prevent. I do not know why people would rather suffer enormously than think originally.
04:10I mean, we can say genetic adaptation and so on. But seeing advanced civilizations stride confidently
04:21towards a cliff edge is a wild process. It's a wild process. I don't know why people would rather
04:32suffer enormously than think for themselves. But that is the state of most people.
04:40That is the state of most people. They are addicts to conformity. They are addicts to not thinking.
04:47They are addicts to approval. And the planet has accumulated an enormous biomass of people who
04:57don't think. And the people who don't think, and this is again back to the Atlas Shrugged
05:03approach or thesis, is that the people who don't think are generally sustained by the people who do
05:08think. And the Atlas Shrugged is, well, what if the people who do think get tired of the people who
05:14don't
05:14think, and oppose thinking, and attack thinking? So, she was engaged in this 13-year, I'm thinking five
05:22years of the Fountainhead, 13 years for Atlas Shrugged. She was engaged in this project. And then when she
05:28released Atlas Shrugged, you know, it's tough. It's tough for authors. It is tough for authors, for the most
05:34part. Because having been an author myself, you know, I get comments on my books here and there,
05:40but, and obviously I've not been anywhere near as successful in this venture as Ayn Rand, or
05:46what was it, Alice Rosenbaum, what was her name originally? So, it's tough because especially when
05:53you create a deeply moral novel, a novel that is deeply about morality, you expect it to come out
06:03and have a big change in the world. Especially when you've poured 13 years of relentless effort
06:09into crafting every single word on every single page. She can tell you why every single paragraph
06:16is written the way that it is. And people have tried, when she was alive, of course, people have
06:21tried to pick a random paragraph and say, why was it written this way? And she can tell you why
06:26every
06:27word was there. Now, is that a speed freak or a control freak? I, it doesn't really matter. She is,
06:35like
06:35Victor Hugo, called the Master of Human Tears. She was one of the few writers who could make me weep.
06:39And the story of the young man who was called non-absolute for a while, the young man who
06:47changes his mind later, and the tenderness of Hank Reardon towards him, is quite moving. And
06:54it is very tough for writers who have a big moral mission to cast their treasured letters out into
07:06a largely indifferent world. Now, again, Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged, is certainly one of the
07:13greatest novels regarding human freedom and free markets and small government and integrity and
07:18virtue that exists. And it has had an enormous influence on millions of people. In some surveys,
07:26it was ranked second only to the Bible and its influence. And yet the logic of the system that
07:32she decried and opposed grinds on, grinds on. Now, humanity is kind of like a slowly
07:42being ground up worker caught in some industrial machine. He can't escape. The gears turn agonizingly
07:48slowly, and he is crushed atom by atom, cell by cell over decades. It is kind of a nightmare if
07:56you
07:56focus too much on it. And the way that she was received was pretty, pretty hostile. I think it
08:04was one conservative commentator, was it William Buckley, who said, you can almost hear a screaming
08:08to the gas chambers go and so on. And, you know, that's, that's pretty harsh. When you bring virtue
08:16to the world, and you see the world's reaction to virtue, all while the world, all while the world
08:22claims to be virtuous, it is a rough process, man. It is a rough process. It is like you bring
08:31the best food to a starving man. A machinist count the ribs like a xylophone starving man.
08:40And instead of thanking you for the food that will save him, he bites not the food, but you,
08:46choose at you, like a rabid animal. That is story of bringing virtue to the world. Now, if I were
08:55trying to bring virtue to a bunch of chimpanzees, that would be a different matter, because chimpanzees
09:01don't claim that they love virtue and want nothing more but to be virtuous. But everyone preens on
09:08their own virtue, and then when questioned or challenged on their virtues, they attack.
09:16Virtue is a dopamine delivery skin suit worn by very immoral people as a whole to parade and
09:25pretend that they are virtuous when all they are is conformist. It is the most artificial drug that
09:34people take is unquestioned moral pretend superiority. That is the most foundational addiction
09:42in the world. It is people addicted to feeling virtuous rather than being virtuous. It is the
09:51greatest drug. It runs pretty much the entire world. And any time a real moralist comes along,
09:59it interferes with the dopamine eviction of pretend virtue, moral theories, moral men, moral women.
10:07When we come along, we interfere or block or stop the dopamine drip of pretend virtue with real
10:17questions. And of course, we all know what happens to addicts when you interfere with their addiction,
10:27when you interfere with their supply. There's a scene of Gary Oldman played Sid Vicious in a movie
10:33many years ago. And there's a scene where he's in prison and undergoing heroin withdrawal. And it's
10:40brutal. But it's even more brutal with moral withdrawal. When you don't get the dopamine of
10:46pretend virtue anymore, it's even worse. Because the heroin addict knows that the heroin addiction
10:56is wrong and destructive and bad for him. And also can't get himself to believe deep down that if he
11:06commits a crime was stabbing Nancy Spungen or something like that. If he commits a crime and he's put in
11:13jail and he can't get his heroin and he goes through the immense suffering of withdrawal from heroin, he
11:19cannot really convince himself deep down that the police who arrested him and the jailer who keeps
11:28him in prison, that they just hate him and they're evil and he's good and virtuous and kind and noble.
11:33Right? He can't nazify those who are keeping him from his drug. He recognizes he stabbed someone in this
11:44case. He's in prison. He can't get his drug. And he suffers. But he does not hate, usually. He may
11:55be
11:55angry at it, but he doesn't morally hate and call evil the cops who arrested him and the jailers who
12:01keep him in prison. I mean, he may. These assholes, if only they would let me get mad. But he
12:07doesn't.
12:08And he also can't sustain it. Even if he were to come up with that as a moral narrative, he
12:12can't sustain it.
12:13Right? He can't sustain that. If he were to write an essay saying, well, yes, it's true that I stabbed
12:20someone, but the people who are keeping me from my drugs in prison are evil people and they're like
12:25Nazis and, right, that wouldn't gain much traction, to put it mildly, in the world as a whole. It would
12:34be the rantings of an addict. Nobody would take it particularly seriously. We would have sympathy
12:40for that suffering, to some degree. But we would not join in his moral castigation of the police and
12:50his jailers. But that's not the way that it is in the world. In the world, the moralist who asks
12:59questions or points out inconsistencies, the moralist is viewed as an entirely corrupt and evil
13:10police system, right? Policeman, jailer, utterly corrupt and evil. And the moralist is perceived to be
13:21a totalitarian dictator who tortures people for reasons of sadism. And everyone believes that.
13:29It's like the sadism of the camp guards portrayed in Schindler's List or, except for communists,
13:38the people who read the Gulag Archipelago and see the brutality and evil of the camp guards,
13:46the prison guards, and so on. And that is how the moralist is viewed, as an unjust dictator who arrests,
13:55destroys, destroys, torments, and tortures people for reasons of blank-eyed ideological or emotional
14:03sadism. That's how the moralist is perceived. And that, of course, is so that evil can continue to
14:10rule the world, as it generally does. Evil needs to build up an immune system to moralists. It needs
14:17to have people's minds automatically recoil from and attack, you know, genuine, deep, curious,
14:24empirical, and rational questions of ethics. And so when you bring moral standards to the world,
14:33people recoil because you're taking away their sense that they live a virtuous life in a virtuous
14:41environment. And people will call you evil or immoral because you are interfering with the dopamine and
14:53exposing the, you know, potential, it's not true for everyone, but the potential moral horrors
15:00in their lives, their environments, their relationships, their work, their marriage,
15:05their parenting. And, of course, everybody looks at people in history who supported evil regimes and
15:12say, my gosh, how could they? I would do better. And then, I don't know how many people passed the
15:19test
15:19over the COVID years, which were relatively minor compared to more evil regimes in history.
15:26Now, they mostly failed. Or if they succeeded, they succeeded for reasons of conformity and
15:32irrationality, such as more fundamentalist religious principles. So, Ayn Rand put a work of
15:43significant moral import out into the world. I don't think she solved the problem of morality
15:48at its essence in the way that UPB does. Universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular
15:54ethics, available for free on my website at freedomain.com slash books. So, I don't think
15:59she solved the foundational problem of morality, but she made a very powerful case for integrity
16:06and a massive reduction in the violations of the non-aggression principle. She couldn't go all the
16:14way, right? So, she would have these debates with Murray Rothbard, who, like myself, was an anarcho-capitalist,
16:20and he would talk about protection agencies and police agencies privately hired, and Ayn Rand would
16:26just snap at him. Well, what happens if they disagree? Then you have civil war, and therefore,
16:30we need the government. And, oh, it's in part because she could not overturn the tyranny in her
16:36own nature. And that tyranny, in her own nature, produced some great works. And it also wrecked her
16:43personal relationships, because she got romantically involved with a student of hers, Nathaniel Brandon,
16:50who was a psychologist, and her husband, Frank O'Connor, Ayn Rand's husband, Frank O'Connor,
16:56who didn't do much with his life other than paint a bit. But he was very handsome. So, she got
17:03involved
17:04in an affair with Nathaniel Brandon, which went on for quite some time, and they would order
17:08Barbara Brandon out of the house so they could have sex. And, you know, she says, well, we did it
17:12with
17:13everybody's knowledge and so on. But to me, it was an abuse of power. Not evil, but immoral. And Barbara
17:21Brandon would wander the streets in agony and tears as her husband's mentor banged him senseless. And
17:29then she became absolutely enraged by Nathaniel Brandon, because he was then dating a woman in her
17:3760s, and he was 20 plus years younger. Well, he withdrew from the affair, because she wasn't just
17:45in her 60s, but a woman who did not exercise and smoked like a chimney. It probably wasn't great
17:51from that standpoint. So, then she flew into rages and destroyed her movement in many ways.
17:59And the idea that, you know, mere physical lust would overtake a moral mission is hard to really
18:09follow. She's asking people to give up unjust benefits from political power, but she can't
18:18control her own lust to the point of doing what is best for the movement, which is to not have
18:22an
18:22affair that mostly destroys the movement. I mean, it wasn't just that, but it had a lot to do with
18:27it.
18:27So, was she making good decisions after decades on speed? Probably not. Probably not. And,
18:34of course, you know, nobody has to demand perfection from their moralists, but the problem is that it's
18:43so, it was so greedy and unempathetic towards the other people in her life that it was wantonly
18:53destructive. And, you know, one of the problems, of course, is that people who promote the free
18:58market and voluntary charity are often portrayed as cold-hearted and selfish and greedy, and they
19:06just want to keep what's theirs, and they don't have any sympathy for the poor, and just, you know,
19:10want them to starve on the streets, and, you know, they want to have their third bottle of Dom
19:14Perignon while people are dying from lack of health care in the squalid streets 20 floors below.
19:20And one of the things that, it's not a conscious plan, of course, I try not to have this, I
19:28certainly
19:28don't have conscious plans as far as, well, I'll present this face to the public, and that will
19:32solve this problem in the ideology. I try to be as honest and authentic as possible, but
19:37I think it's pretty clear that I have pretty deep wells and reservoirs of empathy and sympathy,
19:46because people call me up and talk about their lives, and I offer, I think, some tender comfort
19:51and big hugs and affection and praise and sympathy and so on. And so, I don't think the people as
19:58a
19:58whole can say, well, Steph's just cold-hearted and doesn't have any empathy, and that's why he's a
20:02free market guy, you know, that kind of stuff, right? But it's a little bit more believable with
20:08regards to Ayn Rand. So, sorry, long speech, but genius or speed freak? Why not both? And nobody
20:18expects everyone to go all the way, except maybe at a chi-fi party, but nobody expects anyone to go
20:24all the way. I mean, there are things that I'm sure, you know, down the road, people will review what
20:29it is that I've done with my life, and will say he didn't go all the way on some particular
20:35topic.
20:37But I think that people will understand, hopefully they will understand, that there are certain topics
20:43that I don't go all the way on, I just can't, because of, well, we know, we know. So, I
20:51hope there'll
20:51be some kindness about that. But there was no reason, foundationally, why Ayn Rand couldn't go all the
20:59way to a truly free market society. But again, she couldn't overcome the tyranny in her own mind,
21:03so she couldn't understand how cooperation between entities could work, because she was not
21:08very cooperative with the entities around her. That would be my guess. All right, next question.
21:16What in the evolutionary history of Europeans, their social orders and the values that arose
21:23therefrom causes them to acquiesce to their own undermining? That's a big question. I mean,
21:29Western nations are certainly in some trouble in terms of historical continuity, to put it mildly.
21:36And so, I would say that it is a combination of Greek universalism and Christian mysticism that
21:49has a particularly negative effect for long-term continuity in Western nations. And what I mean by
21:59that is, the morals are universal, and the soul is universal. And so, because the soul is universal
22:11in Christianity, then all differences in group outcomes must be because of a lack of opportunity,
22:22a lack of knowledge, injustice, sexism, bigotry of every kind that you could imagine.
22:29Because if everyone is kind of foundationally the same, made in the image of God, and we all have
22:34souls that are equal to each other, then all differences in group outcomes must be because of
22:44some lack of knowledge, some lack of exposure to better information, or better techniques, or a certain
22:50lack of freedom, perhaps, or a bigotry, and so on. And so, the argument would be,
22:59if you have two twins, Bob and Jeff, you have two twins, Bob and Jeff, and one does really well,
23:08and the other does really badly, that would be a challenging question, right? Because you'd have
23:15to say, well, they pretty much share genetics, they're identical twins, right? They share genetics,
23:20and let's say one of them can run really fast, and the other one can't run at all, or runs
23:28really
23:28slowly. And let's say this is when their kids, they're getting the same meals, they're in the
23:33same environment, you know, not smokers, one of them isn't a smoker, or something like that. So,
23:37if you have two twins, identical twins, and one of them runs really fast, and the other one can barely
23:45run at all, well, you would look for some other factor. Can't be genetics, has to be some other
23:53factor. So, you would look for that. There must be some illness, some ailment, some problem, some
23:59exposure to toxins, or I don't know what, right? Or, you know, maybe one of them had some sort of
24:07abuse that was outside the family, and that has made them depressed, and therefore they don't want
24:12to exercise, and, you know, you would look for something, because it would need some explanation,
24:18right? There was an old movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito called Twins. Of course,
24:24Schwarzenegger and DeVito are sort of opposites in terms of size and strength, and
24:29that was funny. If you have two twins, identical twins, and one of them is six foot four, and the
24:36other one is four foot eleven, but they share identical genes, that would be a challenge.
24:43You'd have to look for some other factor. Maybe there was some illness that hit the thyroid,
24:51maybe there was some starvation factor, or, you know, because why would two identical twins end
24:58up at opposite ends of the height spectrum? You'd need some explanation. So, of course,
25:05in Christian mysticism or religious mysticism as a whole, everyone is an identical twin.
25:12Everyone in the world, because we're all made in the image of God, we all have equal souls,
25:16so everybody is kind of an identical twin. Now, of course, you can say, ah, yes, but there are taller
25:22and shorter people. There are people with blue eyes and brown eyes and green eyes. There are people who
25:26have faster reflexes, like, so, in terms of the body, but in terms of the mind, the essence of
25:32humanity, we're all equal, which is why Christians resist the reality that the mind is the subjective
25:40experience of the physical brain. Because you can do scans, and you can see that people's physical
25:45brains are different. Male and female brains are different, and, you know, I've mentioned this
25:51before, but there were studies before GPS of London cabbies, cabbies who drove cabs in London,
26:00England, not London, Canada. And because London, England is a famous lower intestine map of chaos
26:06and confusion, it wasn't laid out in grids, just so it evolved from medieval peasantry, it's crazy
26:13difficult to get around if you don't know what you're doing, again, prior to GPS. And the spatial
26:18reasoning centers of the cabbies strengthened and improved. If somebody learns a language,
26:24you can see some map of that in their brain. And so, people being born with vastly different brains
26:32is tough for Christianity. The differences in the brains between people is vastly greater
26:42than the physical differences between people. You know, maybe the tallest guy, Robert Walpole,
26:48or whatever his name was, and not counting the dwarfism, which is a separate categorization,
26:54because it's sort of an ailment, but the shortest guy is like half as tall as the tallest guy,
27:03or maybe 40% as tall, or something like that, right? Or maybe 30% as tall. So, you know,
27:08two, three times, right? But, you know, and the short guy can still sink a basket. The tall guy can
27:16sink the basket a little easier, but the short guy can still sink a basket. But the difference
27:21between lower levels of IQ and the highest levels of IQ is, I mean, there really is in many ways
27:29no
27:29comparison in terms of what somebody with an IQ of, say, 70 or 75 compared to somebody with an IQ
27:37of
27:37160 or 170. It is a greater difference in many ways than any physical difference. I mean, I went
27:48bald kind of young, and some men keep their hair like Ronald Reagan or people like that. They keep
27:55their hair into their old age and don't seem to lose any of it, although, of course, he did dye
27:59his
27:59hair, which may not have been great for his brain. But anyway, so I had hair, I lost hair. I
28:06guess I
28:07could get hair back with a transplant or something like that. But keeping your hair versus losing your
28:12hair, being taller or shorter, having different body types, mesomorph, ectomorph, whatever they
28:18are, right? That, I mean, even a human being, you know, if you're obese, maybe you weigh twice or 50
28:26%
28:27more, 200 pounds or 300 pounds or 200 pounds or 400%. So, two, 400 pounds is 100% double your
28:34normal
28:34weight. And so, but that's still a difference of degree. Whereas below average intelligence to
28:42genius level is not just, it's not just the same brain processes, but faster. That's not how it is.
28:51It's not like, well, Einstein could get to the theory of relativity in a year, but somebody with an IQ
29:00of 75 or 80 might take 10 years. It's just different. I mean, I wish it wasn't. I genuinely
29:08wish it wasn't. But it is. It's the same thing with people who have extraordinary musical abilities.
29:15I mean, I took singing lessons for years, but I'm never going to sing like Ben Hepner or Luciano
29:19Pavarotti or Sting or Freddie Mercury or whoever, right? It's a physical difference. And they're not,
29:26like, twice as good at singing as I am. They can sing very well. And I can sing in a
29:34mediocre
29:34amateur fashion. It's not, right? I can't fill stadiums. They can. So, if you take the universalism
29:45of morals, which I fully accept and believe in, all human beings, except for people who have
29:51very significant intellectual deficiencies for some biological cause or reason or something like
29:57that, yeah, all human beings are equal under the law. Male, female, ethnicity, race, all human beings
30:03are equal under the law. So, that I accept. That is a valid reality. And so, as far as Greek
30:13universalism goes, we have that, but then you combined it with the mind universalism of the
30:20Christian mystics. And what do you end up with? Well, you end up with, we're going to go to Bali,
30:30let's say, in the 18th or 19th centuries, and we're going to turn Bali into London or Paris or Stuttgart
30:39or Copenhagen or things like that, right? Because it's just all the same. They just need
30:46the same information that we have. And the universalism of the Greeks, which is universalism
30:52of morals, the Socratic method is universal. Logic is universal. So, the Socratic universalism
31:01of the Greeks, at least, I'm not saying that all Greeks, but, you know, this is sort of what's
31:05been handed down. Combined with the mystical, superstitious universalism of religion has
31:14been too potent a combination for philosophy to reason with. All right. What is your opinion
31:20on dating apps? What is your opinion on dating apps? I have no particular problem with them.
31:27I think that they're, to a large degree, a humiliation ritual for men. And it's very tempting,
31:33of course, as a man, I assume, to set up a dating profile. I mean, I remember, gosh, many years
31:40ago,
31:41decades ago, when I was still single, I did sign up for a dating app. And, you know, obviously,
31:46everyone says, well, it was mostly out of curiosity, but I was kind of curious. And, I mean, I could
31:51tell
31:51pretty quickly it was just all dudes, right? There's a, they used to have these party lines that you
31:56could call into for, you know, 99 cents a minute or whatever. And there's an old Simpson episode where
32:01these men are all dialing into these party lines, because, you know, there's always some
32:05hot woman in the lingerie and these late night ads. Are you lonely? Call me. I'm Chloe. I'm just
32:11sitting here thinking. I'm bored. Call me. You know, that kind of stuff, right? Sort of soft focus,
32:17diamond on the lights and saxophones in the background. And, of course, you know, there's an
32:22old Simpsons skit where, or bit where, the men are all calling into the party line. And eventually,
32:27the Indian guys like, are there any women here? And that's really... So, it's mostly a humiliation
32:35ritual for men. And if you're a man and you're not, you know, top 5% of male looks, you
32:41know,
32:42obviously, me too, right? But if you're a man and you're not in the top 5% of male looks,
32:47then dating apps are pretty tough. Pretty tough. But they're easier, right? So, it's easier to go on
32:52a dating app than it is to talk to a woman in public. And by talk to a woman in
32:57public, I'm not
32:58saying, you know, go up and ask a woman out. That's kind of weird. But talk to a woman in
33:04public
33:04like, hey, I just ordered the same thing. If a coffee shop or something like that, right? And just
33:10see if she gives you a smile. See if she's receptive to chatting or anything like that. And, of course,
33:16if she's not, she could be having a bad day. She might already have a boyfriend. She might,
33:20whatever, right? Then, you know, have a great day and you move on, right? But that's tougher
33:24than going onto a dating app. It's tougher to talk to people in real life. But if you're not in
33:29the top
33:295% or maybe 10% of male attractiveness, then you have to rely on, you know, charm, charisma,
33:35storytelling, the ability to make people laugh, and the qualities of your personality. But, of course,
33:42the qualities of your personality don't usually come across too well on dating apps.
33:50I mean, the way I met my wife was by talking to a woman in the real world, right? I
33:57said,
33:57how are you doing? She said, great. She said, how are you doing? I said, fantastic. I just got my
34:01first book published. And we went from there, right? And had this absolutely electric evening
34:08of conversation that has gone on now for a quarter century and honored, privileged to be with her
34:13every day. So, whereas on dating apps, I'm just some bald guy. You know, yeah, decent looking,
34:21whatever, blue eyes and squarish jaw, blah, blah, blah. But I'm just some guy. She's going to swipe
34:27left, especially if she's like, oh, I like my man with hair or something like that. And see, a bald
34:32guy
34:32has more luck if he's a bad boy. You know, if he's some bouncer looking guy or whatever, right? Then
34:37the sort of thuggish bad boy vibe can hit certain women in the fields. But if you're a nice guy
34:45and you're bald, then you just come across as an accountant or something like that, right?
34:51So, dating apps are shallow and appearance-based by definition. I think there was one that used to
34:58match people up, but I think they got banned or something. This is a very edge of the memory story.
35:02So, I would say that dating apps are fine, but you got to meet, you got to talk to people
35:10in real
35:10life. Develop the skill of being friendly, unthreatening, curious, positive, warm, and so on.
35:20So, and chat not just with attractive women. Don't just chat with attractive women. You know,
35:27if there's some unattractive woman serving you coffee, give her a smile, maybe make a joke or
35:31something, you know, or something like that. You know, hold the door for old ladies and hope they
35:38have a great day. And so, just be friendly and positive to everyone as a whole. That's sort of
35:44my way of going through life, is be friendly and positive to everyone, right? Treat people the best
35:49you can when you first meet them. After that, treat them as they treat you. And that way, if you're
35:55friendly towards a woman you're attracted to, you won't get the sweats of doing something weird or
36:00unusual or bad or something like that, right? Out of the ordinary. So, I think dating apps are fine,
36:07but they're very shallow. They're appearance-based as a whole. And don't forget to actually talk to
36:14people in real life. All right. Do you have any advice for newlyweds who will be living with each
36:19other for the first time? Yeah, I mean, each of you will have habits that you have the choice to
36:27find endearing or annoying. I mean, I mentioned this before, my wife has a habit of tidying things
36:33up. In other words, of moving things, right? I was looking for a headphone the other day, and she'd put
36:39it in the cupboard. Now, the place looks great, and I'm not a particularly messy person at all, but my
36:47wife
36:48is very tidy and a great homemaker, and she moves stuff. Now, her argument would be, well, you leave stuff
36:54out, so to speak. And that's totally, totally fair, right? So, the fact is, though, that my wife moves
37:00things. Now, I can either get annoyed, or why do you keep moving things? I put things down for a
37:05moment. I can't find them. So, in half my day, looking for things, just leave my thing. It's like
37:08that kind of stuff, right? But what I did is I just gave her a nickname called Heidi. H-E
37:13-I-D-I,
37:13German name. Heidi, right? Because she hides things. And it's endearing. She is a force
37:23of organizational anti-entropy physics. And it's great. Her capacity to keep things organized in
37:31her mind and in her environment is a great benefit to me. So, there'll be things that
37:38your partner does that you have the choice to find endearing and quirky or annoying and unpleasant.
37:43I would vote for the endearing and quirky. So, my wife would, you know, if I leave a coffee cup
37:51somewhere, you can say, oh, my God, if that person really cared about me, they wouldn't
37:55leave their coffee cup. They know how much it bothers me. Right? And then you can just start
37:58building these resentments, right? I have a great line in my novel, The God of Atheists,
38:02about a woman who's been married for a long time. And I say, she'd gathered resentment in the
38:07marriage like an elk gathered burrs. And at this point in the marriage, she was far more burr than elk.
38:13So, just brushing through, right? Stuff sticks to you.
38:15Hmm. So, you have to dismantle any growing resentment and you have to because you chose
38:20that person. And irritation at others that you have chosen to have in your life is a form of
38:26vanity. It's a form of vanity. Does my wife do things from time to time that are mildly inconvenient
38:33to me? Yes. I do things from time to time that are mildly inconvenient to her. Yes. Yes. Yes,
38:40I do. So, that's number one. Number two is, assuming that you're male and female,
38:48you are living with a delightfully incomprehensible space alien. I've said women are delightfully
38:54incomprehensible to men, not to themselves or anything like that. And men are delightfully,
38:58hopefully delightfully incomprehensible to women. Right? My wife has said to me many times over the
39:04years, I wish I could spend an hour in your brain or just 10 minutes in your brain with all
39:10these
39:10ideas churning up and all of these insights and thoughts and so on. Now, of course, she has her
39:14own thoughts and insights and ideas, but I'm a little bit of a idea geyser, hamster wheel running brain
39:20thing. So, she doesn't understand how I am, you know, such a raw force of creative reason. And I don't
39:30understand how she keeps all the things that she keeps in her head regarding her household.
39:35She has a brilliance in her area. I have, I think, a brilliance in my areas. And it's good,
39:41right? It's good, right? Not everyone in the band can be a drummer, unless it's Stomp or something like
39:47that, right? But you don't go to see a band with four drummers, right? Bassist, singer, keyboardist,
39:56guitarist, drummer. That's what you do. That's what you're going for. Not everyone in the band
40:02can do all the same things. And I remember being quite surprised that Brian May, the guitarist for
40:08Queen and singer from time to time, 39 and the lovely song All Dead, All Dead. But he did the
40:16piano for
40:18Save Me. Brian May, the guitarist, did the piano for Save Me. They used to tour with a guy named
40:23Brian
40:23Edney or something like that, because Freddie would sometimes forget his piano stuff. And I think
40:31maybe he did piano on Teo Toriati from time to time, the guitarist. So, but in general, you know,
40:36he's a guitarist and right singer. And so people have different roles. People have different roles
40:42in the band and people have different roles in the marriage. I grew up with men and women are the
40:47same
40:47in different bodies, right? That's Christian mysticism as well. All men and women are made
40:53in the image of God. So we are basically the same in different bodies. Now, I know Christians might
40:59disagree and say, well, God has designed us for different roles and so on. But Christianity,
41:05unlike, say, Islam, has been unable to resist Marxist feminism. And for reasons that are interesting,
41:13which I sort of don't want to get into in detail here, but certainly I was raised with the idea
41:17that men and women are the same. And that is the blank slate stuff I was talking about before. Men
41:23and
41:23women are the same. And the only difference is the bodies. And that's irrelevant. Men and women are the
41:31same. And I remember shortly after I got married, looking at my wife and saying, she's really different
41:38from me. And that's good. I mean, I'm straight. Therefore, I wish to be with a female. And that's
41:46not just the physical, right? I mean, that is the mental. Yes, yes, women are mental. That's what I
41:51said. Just kidding. So just recognize that, you know, vive la différence. I used to have that T-shirt
41:57when I was a kid, two kids looking in their underwear and actually kind of looking back. And it may
42:03not
42:03have been super appropriate to have that in my wardrobe, but hey, I didn't have much control over my
42:06wardrobe. And it was vive la différence, right? Celebrate the difference between men and women.
42:13Your husband is very different from you, my dear. And you, my dear, are very different from your
42:18husband. And so recognize that there are differences, that there are brain ways of looking at the way and
42:24brain operations that are fundamentally different. And that's good. That's good. So don't expect your
42:31wife to be like a male friend. And for the woman, don't expect your husband to be like a female
42:35friend. That's not how it works. And this is something a friend of mine said to me many years
42:39ago when I was in my mid-teens, where he was saying, if you want to understand women, like you
42:45have to understand that, imagine being half your size and going through the world with a backpack, a
42:54clear backpack full of $100 bills strapped on your back. Imagine how your worldview would be if you
43:02were much smaller and in possession of something enormously valuable that everyone could see.
43:08Well, that would make me a little anxious, a little jumpy and in need of protection. And
43:13of course, he was talking about women and sex. So, all right, hope that helps. Why do you cry
43:21about women being radical when women clearly follow us, who created OnlyFans? Yeah, so when somebody
43:28opens a question with, why do you cry about, that's, I mean, obviously, that's an insult.
43:35It's hierarchical. It's aggressive. It's unpleasant. And, you know, I really, like somebody said about
43:45one of my posts the other day, oh, this is a pathetic response. You need to do this, that,
43:49and the other. Now, I don't reward ill-tempered, kind of nasty and aggressive people. I don't.
43:57Now, if somebody says, I'm really frustrated by your stance on this, help me understand, or I
44:02really oppose your stance on this and so on. But it's like, well, why do you cry about, you know,
44:06it's like people who say mommy issues and, you know, small dick energy and stuff like that.
44:10It's just nasty. It's just kind of nasty. And I don't want to reward nasty people. So, the guy
44:17who said, well, this tweet is pathetic and you need to do this, that, and the other to redeem
44:21yourself, you know, stupid stuff like that. And I just posted like, so you call me pathetic and then
44:26you ask me to do something for you. Why would I work for free? Because, you know, nobody's
44:33paying me for these answers. Freedomain.com slash donate. Nobody's paying me. So, people
44:38are asking me for a favor. Now, I'm offering it out there and say, I'd be happy to answer
44:41your questions. But I'm taking 45 years of concentrated philosophy knowledge and handing
44:47it out for free. Now, that's kind of unusual in the world. Normally, if somebody is a fairly
44:52world-renowned expert in something, you kind of have to pay them a lot to do work for you.
44:59Like, if I was a lawyer, I could be $1,000 or $1,500 an hour. Anthony Robbins, you know,
45:04charges a huge amount of money for sort of coaching and so on. And so, I am a fairly big
45:12expert in philosophy and I'm charging nothing. I'm charging nothing. I mean, go to Warren Buffett
45:23and say, I want you to spend 20 minutes or half an hour answering a question for me for free.
45:29I mean,
45:29if you're not related or he doesn't know you, then he's probably going to charge you quite a bit if
45:34he'd even do it at all. You know, rock stars can charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for a
45:40private concert or more. And that's just music. This is wisdom. So, I'm not going to answer this
45:47question because I don't want to reward this kind of petty bitchiness. All right. Why does just
45:54asking questions make most relationships unsurvivable? Well, most relationships are
46:02fading lust masquerading as sustainable virtues. And you've heard me ask this of people a million
46:08times and my colon shows, what do you love about your wife? What do you love about your boyfriend
46:12or husband? And so, people crash together for reasons of lust and lust fades if it's not sustained
46:21by virtue. I mean, it's called making love, not just mammalian rutting. You and me, baby,
46:28we ain't nothing but mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. So, if you just
46:34ask
46:35questions of yourself, what virtues do I truly admire in this person? What makes this person
46:41great and wonderful and all of that? What virtues do I truly admire in this person? Those are reasonable
46:47questions. And if the relationship is based on fading lust, because, you know, there's a scene in the
46:56original Conan, which is far inferior to the second Conan with Grace Jones and Wilt Chamberlain. It's a very
47:03funny film. But in the original Conan, he meets a hot, sexy woman in the middle of nowhere, and then
47:10halfway through lovemaking, she turns into this ghastly witch and so on. And this is most people's
47:16experience if they crash together based on lust, and then they're stuck with the person that they
47:21don't particularly like, and then the sex goes away. So, all right. Is it possible for you to have a
47:27good faith argument considering your mind is already made? I'm not sure what you mean. A good faith
47:33argument, I mean, I literally just did this in my debate with Jay Dyer. Not that you have to have
47:37seen
47:37that, but you should watch it. In my debate with Jay Dyer, I did say, hey, make the case, I'd
47:43love to hear
47:44it, right? That was my big question. And I did not interrupt his response. I let him make the case.
47:50And then he
47:51interrupted everything that I said, because he didn't want me to be able to get a point out.
47:54Obviously, for reasons of insecurity. So, is my mind already made? So, a good faith argument. I'm
48:02happy to be convinced of things that I don't already accept or believe. But it has to be
48:06according to reason and evidence. I'm not just going to change my mind out of desire or being
48:13bullied or aggressed against or something like that. So, all right. You are a real ones to fan.
48:19Always look forward to reading and sharing your incredible content, sir. Thank you very much. I
48:24appreciate that. Last question. Lindsay Clancy's lawyer is now arguing that she did not kill her
48:28children. He's going with many TikTok arguments that Patrick's errands would have taken longer
48:32than an hour and that her body temperature could not have been as low as it was. Total 180 thoughts.
48:37Yeah. So, as far as I know it, Lindsay Clancy did stipulate that she killed her children,
48:40as did her lawyer. And it was just the degree of criminal responsibility she had for killing her
48:46children. So, every time in the world, like the world is an aggregation of everybody's individual
48:54decisions. Like the moral world, the social world that we live in is an aggregation of everybody's
49:02individual decisions. So, if some, it's usually a woman in this case, in this particular Lindsay
49:09thing, right? So, if some woman goes online and says, oh, Lindsay Clancy didn't kill her children,
49:17whatever it is, right? Then she's contributing to the irrationality of the world, bit by bit,
49:24right? Everybody who's ill, who goes around coughing and touching and so on, is spreading that illness,
49:31right? Assuming it's communicable, right? And so, the irrationality of the world is part of
49:39everybody's responsibility. I try to be very responsible about the information and arguments
49:45that I put out. I have to issue corrections once in a while, almost, I mean, always because of some
49:51accident or something I didn't know about and so on. So, I try to be very careful about the arguments
49:58that I put out into the world or, of course, in my social circle as well. So, if people, for
50:04reasons
50:05of excitement or dopamine or giddiness or a desire for social approval or a desire for clicks or views,
50:11if they say, as many people have, again, mostly women over the past couple of months,
50:17Lindsay Clancy did not kill her, right? This is what they say, did not kill her children.
50:22Well, then they are contributing to the craziness of the world. I don't know how people live with
50:28themselves when they do that, but clearly they do. Now, when you add to the craziness of the world,
50:35of course, when you add to the craziness of the world, then the world gets crazier. And so,
50:41I obviously can't read Lindsay Clancy's lawyer's mind, so I can only do this from a theoretical
50:47perspective. I don't know what his motivations are. But in a sort of analogous situation,
50:54it would be the case that he might look at social media and say, well, geez, you know,
50:58there's this big groundswell movement that Lindsay Clancy didn't do it. So, if I say Lindsay Clancy
51:03didn't do it, there's going to be a lot of people who rally even more around her cause,
51:07right? So, again, I'm not saying that's his motives. It's just a complete theoretical. I don't
51:12know his motives. I can't read his mind, but this is a complete theoretical.
51:17So, social contagion, right? If the idea that Lindsay Clancy did not kill her children becomes
51:23part of the mindset of the world, then that's going to adjust people's perceptions and strategies
51:28and approaches and goals and so on. And people also don't realize that when they put out things
51:34like Lindsay Clancy did not kill her children, right? She did kill her children, just to be clear,
51:39she did kill her children. It's just that was she legally responsible, which is to say morally
51:45responsible, or was she under the grip of a psychosis and not in control of herself and so on.
51:49So, the degree of responsibility was the question at the heart of the trial, not whether she did it
51:54or not. And so, and I say this to women in particular, when you put out crazy stuff that's
52:01counterfactual and you don't correct it, you are scaring men. You are scaring men. Now, I get that
52:08women feel like they don't need men because they can use the government to take resources from men,
52:12and they do as a collective, not individually, of course, but as a collective. So, when you say
52:18crazy stuff and you can't be corrected, sane men won't want to date you. They won't want to marry you.
52:25I mean, this is a pretty important test. Can the woman process reality? Because if a woman can't
52:31process, or anyone, right? We're just talking about women in this case, mostly women defending this
52:35woman, you're Lindsay Clancy, but if a woman can't process reality, can't be corrected,
52:44says things that are false, and when you point out that the false doubles down, you can't date her,
52:50you can't marry her, especially when you combine that with the somewhat sketchy allegations coming
52:54out of Cornell. So, if you can't correct someone, you can't have a relationship with them because all
53:03you can do is conform and comply based on threats and bullying. And I know that women can say crazy
53:11stuff because they can always run to the government for money, but that's not going to last. And the
53:15problem is, of course, and this is a real shame because, of course, I have a daughter, but the
53:20backlash against women is pretty tough these days, pretty tough to see. And, of course, like all of
53:28these things, when you push things too far in one direction, the back snap tends to go too far in
53:33the other direction, right? Reasoning finds the middle ground, but emotional reaction tends to go
53:37from one extreme to the other. And so, it's not going to go super well in the long run. Women
53:45are
53:46going to run out, the government's going to run out of money, and then women are going to turn to
53:49men
53:50for help and aid, especially if they have kids and welfare checks. They either stop coming or
53:55the currency gets so inflated that they can't really afford things, and then women as a whole
54:01will turn to men for protection and resources. And the men, well, I mean, the great problem,
54:09the great danger is that the men will be kind of grossed out by some of the stuff that some
54:13of the
54:14women, a lot of the women, have said and done. And they will, you know, men go in their own
54:20way,
54:20the Sandman style, they'll MGTOW and do the do-si-do out the door. And we can say, ah, yes,
54:27but maybe
54:27that's just and fair and right, but it does mean the end of our civilization as a whole. So, something
54:33to think about. All right, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Thank you so, so much for
54:38these great and wonderful questions. I will get to the other social media platform questions soon,
54:43and I really appreciate if you could, you know, like, share, subscribe, follow, all of that kind
54:48of fun stuff. And we'll talk to you tonight, 7 p.m. Take care. Bye.
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