Fleeing the City of ZOMBIES! Listener Questions

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux talks about fleeing the city of zombies by choosing solitude over people who just repeat clichés instead of thinking. He answers listener questions on women testing male authority, how men size up status and money, and why ethics start with telling the truth.  0:00:00 Eastern European Pair-Bonding 0:03:58 Male Hierarchy Signals 0:07:22 Money, Status, and Cars 0:11:24 Testing Authority in Relationships 0:20:07 Sexual Selectivity Tests 0:23:21 Ethics Starts with Truth 0:24:13 Desert of Unthinking People 0:31:58 The Ought From Is Debate 0:34:19 Ignorance Versus Malevolence 0:38:34 One and Many Problem 0:39:08 Libertarianism and Cancer 0:43:56 Advice to My Younger Self 0:47:46 Freedom and the Word 0:51:48 Childhood Shapes Reality 0:56:12 Enforcing Rules Without Force 1:01:01 Why Not More Rome? 1:01:38 Pareto and the Left Behind 1:06:31 Caring for the Incompetent 1:09:43 Choice Under Compulsion 1:12:50 Abstract Objects Explained 1:14:57 Child Sacrifice and Scarcity  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

Transcript

00:00:00Good morning, everybody. Stephen Molyneux from FreedomAid. And let's do a few more questions

00:00:05from the fine folks on X. Thank you very much for sending these in. I hope that I'm helpful.

00:00:11You have mentioned, says someone, you have mentioned several times your displeasure,

00:00:15tongue-in-cheek, with Eastern European women's mindset, dare I say pathology. Can you please

00:00:20elaborate on this from a historical and philosophical perspective, any personal experience

00:00:25outside your mother, romantic or otherwise? So, in my experience, this is not philosophical,

00:00:31just so you know, this is just sort of personal thoughts and observations. So, in my experience,

00:00:39the Eastern European women, and my mother was not Eastern European, my mother was born in

00:00:46Germany, but in my experience, Eastern European women have very passionate, very strong

00:00:54but unstable pairbots. And most of the sort of Eastern European history has been characterized

00:01:03by significant levels of violence. And, of course, there was communism and all of that,

00:01:10which was pretty, well, brutal. And communism, of course, is much longer in Russia than it was

00:01:15in Eastern Europe, which was mostly swallowed up post-Second World War. So, Eastern European

00:01:22European women, in general, grew up in a situation of predation and violence. And so, they would have

00:01:31to have very strong attachments, but also very challenging attachments. You know what they call

00:01:37the shite test, which is a woman needs to test if you have the ability to protect her. And the

00:01:46way

00:01:47that the woman finds out, if you have the ability to protect her, is to fight you and see if

00:01:53you win.

00:01:54It's a form of pretending to be an enemy in order to figure out if you can protect her from

00:02:00real enemies.

00:02:02So, when a woman finds out that you really like her or you really want to get together with her,

00:02:09maybe get married or whatever, then there will be a strong attachment. If she likes you back,

00:02:15there'll be a strong attachment. And then, at some point, she will attempt to dominate you.

00:02:22It's all unconscious, right? It's not. And I don't have any issue with it. It's just the way things

00:02:27are. So, she will attempt to dominate you in order to find out if you are strong enough

00:02:34to resist her and to maintain your dominance. And this is a way of also testing, not just in terms

00:02:41of

00:02:42whether you will be physically able to fight another man to protect her and the children.

00:02:49But also, she's testing to see how you do with conflict to make sure that you can dominate

00:02:55other men. This is not to do necessarily with physical violence, because most male conflicts

00:03:01are resolved with dominance, not violence. In the same way, you sort of look at dogs. There's a

00:03:09dominance hierarchy among dogs, and they don't establish. The alpha dog, the alpha wolf, does not

00:03:17establish dominance by killing other creatures. The other wolves happens in the ape kingdom as well.

00:03:25But there is a submission, right? The alpha dog beats or wins the physical contest against the other

00:03:34dog. And then the other dog signals surrender, and so on, right? So, most male conflicts are resolved

00:03:43with dominance. Or if there is violence, it is not fatal violence. And men, when they meet each other,

00:03:52are engaged in this constant sorting mechanism. I mean, I think women are too, but it's a whole bunch

00:03:57of different standards. And I don't know if women are even particularly aware of this, perhaps

00:04:01unconsciously, but men, when they meet each other, are constantly sorting themselves into a dominance

00:04:08hierarchy. You know, it's like pushing a whole, like if you push cards together, you know, there's not

00:04:14that many cards that they sort of fold together, and one goes above the other. And if you push pieces

00:04:19of

00:04:19paper together, they will sort of fold themselves, or they'll sort of push themselves into a hierarchy.

00:04:24So, men are constantly engaged when they meet each other in looking for signs of where they stand in

00:04:31the hierarchy. And so, when men meet each other, they're scanning for visual signals of hierarchy,

00:04:37and a lot of those tend to be fitness and wealth. Fitness and wealth. Also, the attractiveness of your

00:04:45spouse, and the success of your children. And this is why men, oh, what do you do for a living?

00:04:53And

00:04:54they will gauge each other's level of physical fitness, looking for beer bellies, or, you know,

00:05:00they'll gauge each other's teeth. Are your teeth well maintained? And they will gauge each other,

00:05:06do you, do you have stubble? A stubble is fine when you're younger, it can make you look attractive.

00:05:11Stubble when you're older, it just makes you look kind of homeless. And so, they will check out

00:05:16each other's cars, and they're just looking for where people stand in the dominance hierarchy.

00:05:25And men, male friendships tend to occur when similar levels of hierarchy are maintained. I mean,

00:05:34you can have the sort of, you know, alpha, beta relationships, and so on. But in general,

00:05:40men are scanning, of course, they can see height, and they can see eye contact, firmness of handshake,

00:05:45and so on. And so, men are looking for dominance, and where they fit in the hierarchy relative to

00:05:54this other person. And this is, to some degree, unconscious. I mean, I remember when I first got a

00:06:03car allowance in the business world. I mean, I haven't hopped in my childhood, which is like

00:06:0845 years ago, 50 years ago. But I mean, I grew up brutally poor. And to get a good salary

00:06:17back in

00:06:18the day, to be flown all over the world for business, to stay in five-star hotels, was, I mean,

00:06:25it was a pretty, it was a pretty heady process. I really had to sort of pinch myself. Business travel

00:06:29was one of the greatest things in my life. It was just great. And when I first got a car

00:06:37allowance,

00:06:39I, of course, wanted to go and get some secondhand beta car and keep the allowance. And

00:06:48the board members sat me down and said, no, no, this is not free money for you to buy a

00:06:55beta car.

00:06:56When you go to pick up clients, when you drive them around, then what you need to do is be

00:07:03in a

00:07:03nice car. Because the clients are going to judge the company by the car. And so I ended up getting

00:07:11a Volvo S70. It's a really great car. I tried, I drove a whole bunch of them to try and

00:07:15figure out,

00:07:16again, a very heady experience for me. I grew up taking the bus, of course, and biking everywhere.

00:07:21So I remember I was, there was a Audi Tiptronic that was really cool, but it was going to take

00:07:28me 12 months to get it. And so I ended up buying a Volvo S70. And it was very, it

00:07:37was a very cool car.

00:07:38I really liked that car. It was a tiny bit of a lemon over time. I remember listing at one

00:07:43point,

00:07:43there were eight things wrong with it. The carbox didn't work and, and so on. But it was funny because

00:07:48I remember I decided not to spring for the CD player. And I just had a tape player, which turned

00:07:53out to be great because I could listen to audio books in some mysterious fashion. I could plug

00:07:59a headphone jack into a media player and then listen to audio books or music in my car, which I

00:08:07wouldn't have been able to do with the tape, with the CD deck. So this is kind of funny thing

00:08:10where

00:08:10you go a little cheaper and it turns out to be far more, far better. But I remember meeting,

00:08:16meeting, doesn't really matter who some guy who was in my life, who came into my life through my

00:08:22wife. And I remember him giving me this approval like, oh yeah, you know, that's a nice car. It

00:08:30says a lot about you. It says, it says something about your confidence. It says something about your

00:08:34appreciation of quality. It's, you know, and all this kind of stuff. And my brother and I had very

00:08:39different, in fact, opposing views about money. And he very much was a spender and I very

00:08:46much was a hoarder. It's even beyond saver, just kind of a hoarder. And I remember him saying to

00:08:52me, and it was actually really good advice. So he said, he said that you need to have more faith

00:08:57in the future. You hoard because you don't have as much faith in the future. And it was actually

00:09:03very good advice. There've been certainly times in my life where my brother has given me very good

00:09:07advice. And I've tried to, I've tried to, I don't know, we had a friend when I was younger, we

00:09:16played D&D

00:09:17together and so on. And he was sort of famously cheap. This is the guy who, when we ordered pizza,

00:09:24as we

00:09:24often did, when we played Dungeons and Dragons, a couple of bucks each we could pay, he bought out a

00:09:28coupon

00:09:29and the coupon for $3 off was his contribution. And we had a very spirited debate about whether that

00:09:35was a real contribution or not. And we came to the conclusion that it was a real contribution,

00:09:40but it came at the cost of looking like a cheap bastard. Because it wasn't a contribution if anyone

00:09:47else had the coupon, because it was only one coupon per order, right? And so technically it reduced

00:09:55the price of the pizza, but it also made you look like a cheap son of a gun. And was

00:10:03it worth,

00:10:03like it would be better to spend $3 and not look like a cheap son of a gun. And of

00:10:07course,

00:10:07as long as nobody else had the coupon, it was only one coupon per order. So we used to make

00:10:14fun of

00:10:14this guy, which was, oh, let's just call him Bob. It wasn't his real name. Oh, Bob's opening his wallet.

00:10:25And the moths are flying out. Bob's opening his wallet. He'd pretend to cough and fall over

00:10:31because of the dust coming out of this very rarely opened wallet. So I wasn't that bad. I wasn't that

00:10:36bad. And it's funny because the things that I wanted to buy when I was younger turned out to be

00:10:42pretty useful, right? So I inherited some money from my grandmother. My mother supplemented that,

00:10:47and I got a computer, which is how I learned how to program when I was like 11 or 12.

00:10:54And

00:10:55that ended up being quite a career for me. So that was actually one of the best events of my

00:10:59life

00:10:59was spending $1,200 when we were broke. It's a lot of money back then on an Atari 800 and

00:11:07came with

00:11:08its 8K of RAM, later upgraded to 40K of RAM. Cause I, I bought some memory sticks from a very

00:11:14shady guy

00:11:14named Luigi in a parking lot. Well, let's just say I was not deeply embedded in the social contract.

00:11:21So sorry to sort of go back to this. So yeah, male hierarchy. So a woman, particularly in my

00:11:28experience, the Eastern European woman wants to be contained or restrained and feels more

00:11:33comfortable when her passions are matched by certain aspects of male authority. Now does not mean

00:11:40violence. It does not mean brutality. It does not mean abuse, nothing like that. And so you will

00:11:46occasionally get these fairly wild acts of rebellion that you need to have authority over. And what that

00:11:56means is you don't fight back. You don't just laugh at her because that's obviously highly provocative.

00:12:04And you just, you kind of take it, you don't respond and you don't allow your position to be

00:12:12budged. And I have found this to be true in general. And my wife accepted, of course, but I found

00:12:19this to

00:12:20be true that you will, in relationships with women, every now and then you will get these acts of

00:12:26rebellion or, or aggression or something like that. And it's, it's fine. You know, men have,

00:12:31we have our own quirks and challenges to live with and all of that. So none of this is negative

00:12:36towards

00:12:37women. And what's happening is the woman can't relax if she doesn't feel protected. This is,

00:12:44you know, I know we have police and all of that, but this is sort of very deep and basic

00:12:48stuff in

00:12:48female psychology. So a woman can't relax unless she feels protected. And she is usually, like women did

00:12:58not evolve usually to be privy to male dominance hierarchy displays, right? So she wasn't out there

00:13:06hunting the mastodon or whatever with the men and figuring out who was in charge and who was not in

00:13:11charge. And so the woman, women have to test to see if men have retained their dominance when men are

00:13:20young. Because a woman has to figure out what trajectory a man is going to be on, right? In other

00:13:27words, if he's making, let's just sort of take modern figures. If he's making, when he's young,

00:13:35say $25,000 or $30,000 a year, she needs to know if he's going to make more over time.

00:13:42And the way that

00:13:44she finds out deep down whether he's going to make more over time is she challenges his authority

00:13:51in the same way that a man would challenge in a dominance display. And if he is able to successfully

00:13:57navigate her challenge to his authority, again, which does not mean dominance or violence or

00:14:02aggression or brutality or abuse or anything like that. But if he's able to confidently navigate his

00:14:07way through the woman's authority challenge, which is not authority over her, just want to be clear,

00:14:13right? Because it's, you know, fraught, fraught language, right? Not authority over her, but is

00:14:18he going to have the capacity to rise in the male dominance hierarchy? And so she will test him to

00:14:28see how he deals with a challenge to his dominance or authority or where he's going to sit in the

00:14:36hierarchy. And she needs to know that he can confidently navigate that and come out ahead. And then she can

00:14:41relax knowing that he's going to end up making more than 25 or 30k a year because he's going to

00:14:46navigate his way up in the dominance hierarchy. Because with men, the best way to navigate up in

00:14:52the dominance hierarchy is to win respect through personal authority, through confidence and so on.

00:15:02So I think because Eastern European and Russian women grew up among significant brutality,

00:15:09then their challenges to their men tend to be pretty florid, pretty significant. And so they will

00:15:19sometimes treat their men with contempt or they will challenge their men. And it's pretty, it's a pretty

00:15:26wild phenomenon or situation to be in. And they're looking for a man who can remain authoritative

00:15:32with that. I mean, in the British culture, right? So in English culture, these challenges, these shite

00:15:42tests, as they're called, they tend to be, you know, snippy. They tend to be eye-rolly. They tend to

00:15:50be

00:15:52more icy. Because men have to rise in England, or used to when I was there, you had to rise

00:16:00in this class,

00:16:01this icy, rigid, class-based structure, which in England can sometimes be close to a caste

00:16:06structure, which is the IQ protector in India. And so British women tend to be icier. But they don't

00:16:17want to win. They want the man to win so that they can relax and feel secure that the man

00:16:21is going to

00:16:21be able to confidently move his way up in the dominance hierarchy. And because if the man is

00:16:27violent towards a woman's aggression, then the big concern is that if a man chooses violence as

00:16:35his way to move up the hierarchy, he probably is not long for this world, like in most cultures.

00:16:40Because sure, you could dominate a bunch of men, but you keep rolling that dice. Sooner or later,

00:16:44you're going to come across a man who's very violent and doesn't care about the future.

00:16:48And so she doesn't want violence deep down. I mean, she's willing, obviously, some women are willing

00:16:54to accept violence if you're in a very violent environment, because the man's capacity for

00:16:57violence is all that is going to keep her safe. But in some relatively decent structure in society,

00:17:03which usually means some sort of centralized government, some police system, and so on,

00:17:07then the woman is going to want authority without abuse or violence. And so with British women,

00:17:16you get this sort of icy, eye-rolling, frigid, cold-hearted sort of contempt thing that you have

00:17:24to deal with as a man. And again, none of this is negative towards women, but the woman is going

00:17:33to challenge authority and is going to want you to successfully navigate that in a mature fashion.

00:17:41In other words, she's going to tempt you with either subjugation or escalation. And what you want

00:17:46is just to maintain composure and listen, but not submit or surrender. And then she can relax and know

00:17:57that, you know, it's like if you think someone is bad at driving and you're the passenger, then you're

00:18:03going to be kind of nervous and you're going to challenge them to make sure that they are paying

00:18:07attention and know what they're doing. So the typical sort of females, it's sort of well portrayed

00:18:12in the John Cleese movie with Kevin Kline and, oh, what's her name? Jennifer, Janet Leeskid. I can't

00:18:23remember her name. So A Fish Called Wanda has the, you know, passionate, warm-hearted American girl and

00:18:33also has the sort of ice queen British girl, his wife, the woman. And so with Eastern European women

00:18:43and Russian women in general, you will get these sort of volcanic eruptions of resistance. And

00:18:48sometimes it sort of feels like contempt or outright hostility because the bond is very strong. And with

00:18:54the bond comes a certain panic that they bonded to the wrong guy because in this sort of chaotic

00:18:58violent, violent, and obviously in Russia, endlessly cold in the winter environment, you need

00:19:03a dominant guy. And women, of course, they have this contradiction, right? So women want a dominant guy

00:19:11who's tender, affectionate, and loving at home. So again, this is all just fairly subjective nonsense.

00:19:18Hopefully it's helpful to other people. Again, just talking sort of personal experience.

00:19:24So with Eastern European women, you're going to get these sort of volcanic acts of contempt or

00:19:29rebellion or hostility or aggression. And navigating those is quite tricky for, I mean, maybe if you're

00:19:38Eastern European yourself, it's a little easier, but certainly for the tender British souls, it could

00:19:44be a bit more of a challenge. So hopefully that makes some kind of sense. I mean, it's a wild

00:19:51ride,

00:19:51but you get some pretty great loyalty and passion out of it. There is a sort of exuberant passion

00:19:56in the Eastern European women. And tempting you with something that you don't really want,

00:20:05you know, I'll sort of, just so it's even-handed, right? So for men, they also do something similar,

00:20:13which is the self-restraint test or the purity test or the confidence test. So a man

00:20:21wants a woman who really likes sex, but is not easy to sleep with, right? This is the combination

00:20:28that men biologically deep down are looking for. Because if a woman doesn't like sex and men generally

00:20:36have like two to four times the sexual desire of women, if the woman doesn't like sex, then the man

00:20:45is in for a frigid life of discomfort and you need ejaculations for prostate comfort as you get

00:20:51older and so on. And so he's just in a life of frustration and tension and his pair bonding is

00:20:58weakened and so on, right? So if the woman doesn't like sex. So a man wants a woman who likes

00:21:03sex,

00:21:03but if she likes sex and she's easy to sleep with, then she's less attractive because she could sleep

00:21:11with other men, she could cheat on you and so on. So women will provoke a conflict sometimes, sometimes,

00:21:18not all women, right? Women will provoke conflict with a man that they desperately don't want to win

00:21:23and men will try to sleep with women who they desperately deep down don't want to sleep with

00:21:30them. I don't know that women have really understood this. It's a real shame. So a man wants a woman

00:21:38who wants to sleep with him and who likes sex, but won't sleep with him early on because that shows

00:21:43maturity, self-restraint, self-control and so on. And that raises a woman's quality. And of course,

00:21:50you know, this has been entirely corrupted by sort of modern culture. And in that,

00:21:56modern culture is saying, go sleep with women right away, right? This is...

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