• 3 months ago
In this episode, I explore the connections between love, virtue, and emotional experiences. I discuss whether true love can extend to pets, arguing that moral virtue is essential. I analyze the literary trope of orphans, showing how it allows authors to address resilience and redemption without familial complexities.
I also tackle unequal friendships, emphasizing the need to recognize and address exploitative dynamics for healthier relationships. Sharing insights from my entrepreneurial journey, I stress the importance of family support during transitions.
In romantic contexts, I highlight red flags in potential partners and the value of personal growth and mutual respect. I conclude with reflections on loyalty, inspired by Samwise from "The Lord of the Rings," encouraging listeners to pursue genuine connections based on shared commitment and emotional health.

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Transcript
00:00Morning, morning everybody. Stephen Molyneux from Free Domain. Hey, pinch-punch first day
00:05of the month. It is the first of September, not the month that you wake me up but it ends.
00:13But we have one question and some old questions. I actually found them. So, I don't think I've
00:22answered them before and I wanted to make sure that I at least got around to answering
00:26them once, if not twice. Somebody writes, if love is our involuntary response to virtue
00:31and protecting slash defending is considered virtuous, would that mean that we can love
00:36our pets and they can love us if we're of great moral character? I believe, not prove,
00:42that animals understand our intentions, behaviors to feel safe with us and we'll feel safe when
00:46they fiercely defend us. No. So, if protecting and defending is considered virtuous, then
00:53we must fall in rabid passionate love, romantic love perhaps, with our own immune system
00:59or a brick wall or a roof or other things that shelter us. We then must love our airbags
01:07and marry them after they deploy in a car accident. No, protecting and defending is
01:13not virtuous. Animals are following pre-programmed patterns without reference to higher moral
01:18ideals. Don't get me wrong. I love animals. I really do. And I love pets. I grew up with
01:27hamsters and mice and the relatives of mine in Ireland had a wonderful cock espanol named
01:34Brandy. I could never understand why she had no tail. But, and I remember when I was in
01:39Africa as a teenager, there were dogs so keen on having their hair brushed that back when
01:47I would pick up a brush to brush my hair as a teenager, they would jump on me because
01:50they thought I would brush them. Absolutely delightful creatures, but the dogs are instinctual
01:56animals. They have no language skills, of course. They cannot compare proposed actions
02:01to ideal standards. They do not have morality. And sure, yeah, dogs will behave better in
02:07general and so on when they're well-treated, although not always. And that is a reflection
02:15on the quality of the owner, but they are loving the positive experience. They do not
02:20love the morals of the owner. They just love the fact that the owner is kind, pets them,
02:26and gives the food and so on, right? So they do not practice morality. And if love is our
02:32involuntary response to virtue, virtue is our capacity. Well, free will is our capacity
02:38to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, and those ideal standards are virtues, and
02:43those who consistently choose virtue are virtuous. Since dogs cannot compare proposed actions
02:48to ideal standards, they cannot be virtuous, and therefore they cannot be loved. I mean,
02:52you can have affection from them and all of that. Sure. All right. All right. Excuse me.
03:05Question. Why is it that in pretty much all famous novels with child characters, the children
03:12are written as orphans? Well, that's interesting. So one of the reasons why writers like to
03:21write about children as orphans is that most suffering for children in life, if they are
03:29abused, most suffering is going to come from their family. Writers do not like to write
03:34about that too much. Or if they do write about it, the people who abuse the children have
03:40to have lots of excuses and so on, right? Like, well, the male left, the man left,
03:47and the mom is stressed, or she has some debilitating drug addiction or something. Writing genuinely
03:52evil characters is very, very hard for most writers. So they want to put a child in peril.
04:00And of course, for a child to be in peril, if the child is an orphan, the child is automatically
04:06in more peril because most people would get some kind of security from their families,
04:11right? I mean, I understand I just said that the families are dangerous, but you wouldn't
04:18get all of a twist if all of a twist had a family. Even if the family was bad, all of
04:23a twist would still not be out wandering the streets and so on, right? So that's one is
04:28that they don't want to deal, they want to put children in danger, and orphans are easier
04:33to put in danger. A second is they don't want to write about the dangers that come
04:36from within the family. And the third is it's just easier. I mean, I remember when I was
04:44writing my novel, The Present, there's a scene with like 20 characters. That's brutally tough
04:49to write. It's brutally tough to write to keep all the characters straight. They all
04:53have a distinct voice. They all have their own perspectives and approaches. You have
04:58to know who's speaking. It has to be clear. And it's a brutally difficult scene to write.
05:04And I probably failed to write that for like a week before screwing my courage to the sticking
05:09place and getting it down. So when you write an orphan, you have child in danger, and other
05:17characters who are both good and bad who aren't direct family, so it's less emotionally charged.
05:22And you have less complexities. You know, it's one of the things that I look at when
05:26I'm trying to figure out good art or bad art is you look at the characters and you
05:30say, do they have a family? I mean, we all have families, right? We all have families
05:36of origin for sure. So when you look at these characters, do they have families? Can you
05:43imagine that they have difficulties with their mother? Can you imagine that they have a favorite
05:48uncle? Can you imagine that at some point in their life, they are going to have to go
05:57to some family gathering they don't want to or some other family gathering they do want
06:00to? Does their cousin ever call? Do they have a relationship with siblings? Are they embedded
06:06in some kind of family structure, which most people are. And when characters in shows have
06:15no family, then I put them in the general level of character development of a pornography
06:21actress. So, all right. Dear Steph, please elaborate on the duty of close friends in
06:27regards to your personal happiness. My consideration of the subject is derived from your narrative
06:32describing the dissolution of your first engagement from a relationship of seven years. My circumstance
06:37was similar in duration to what was and is an amazing person, yet nevertheless amicably
06:41divorced a few years later, totaling 13. The inquiry surrounds a friend of 20 plus
06:46years whose marriage I was thanked for helping preserve after potential infidelity by his
06:50wife only a few years earlier, and was later dubbed godparent of their subsequent child
06:54who nevertheless, in reference to my divorce, didn't have a single question regarding it
06:58until over a year and a half later after distancing herself. Okay, I got lost. Sorry. All right.
07:04A friend of 20 plus years, I was thankful it preserved the marriage of their subsequent
07:09child, who nevertheless, oh, so it's the friend, not the wife or the child. This is confusing,
07:18right? Who nevertheless, in reference to my divorce, didn't have a single question regarding
07:21it until over a year and a half later after distancing myself, nor mentioned her name,
07:26and was the same friend I consulted as to whether I should marry after expressing doubts
07:30regarding compatibility despite our genuine affection. While I don't know if we should
07:34have married or divorced, and to be fair, believe him to be an otherwise decent person
07:38who wouldn't know either, what concerns me, however, is having people in my life who appear
07:43to lack equal or any concern about important decisions in my life and their outcomes. Wherefore,
07:51it's an unusual word, but I appreciate it, it would be helpful if you could describe
07:55what philosophical standards underpinned your decision to eventually dissociate with those
07:58you described as indifferent to your happiness. Okay, so let me make sure I understand this
08:03correctly. So you helped preserve your friend's marriage, and he didn't ask you anything
08:12about your divorce. So that's a hierarchy. So the hierarchy is the slave cares about
08:19the moods of his boss, of the slave owner, and the slave owner does not care about the
08:25moods of the slave. The boss cares less about the happiness of the employee than the employee
08:37cares about the happiness of the boss, right? Because if the employee is unhappy but productive,
08:45the boss is fine. If the boss is unhappy, then he might fire based on bad temper or
08:50something like that. So this is a hierarchical relationship. And when you pour effort into
08:56other people, and they don't pour effort back into you, those people are exercising a hierarchy,
09:02they are exercising dominance. Now we can say it's unconscious, we can say it's instinctive,
09:07we can say they don't mean it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because resource
09:11transfers occur or don't occur, whether or not there's some deep hidden incentive or
09:20motive. And if you've been in a relationship with someone for 20 years, first of all, have
09:25you fought the hierarchy? Have you say, I deserve as much consideration as you? Have
09:29you said to this person, it bothers me that I help with your relationship and you don't
09:34help with my relationship? I mean, I remember when a friend of mine had a baby, I spent
09:39all weekend at his place cleaning, making sure the place was spotless. And I just, at
09:47the end of it, I just remember biking home and I was like, that's never gonna happen
09:50the other way. I'll be lucky to get a card. So that's just hierarchy. People get a great
09:55deal of pleasure exploiting others. And now, again, is it exploitation if it's voluntary?
10:03That's a gray area for sure, right? Let's just say people get a great deal of pleasure
10:08out of having other people do things for them, right? They really do. And I understand
10:13why, because it shows that you're higher on the hierarchy. To have other people labor
10:17for you when you don't have to labor for them is greatly, greatly pleasurable. Now, people
10:22with a conscience, they feel bad about this after a while and they don't like it and they
10:27feel like, oh, things have become kind of unbalanced and all of that. And they make
10:35sure that they reciprocate. But there's a lot of people who get a great deal of pleasure
10:38out of you investing into them when they don't have to invest into you. It's just a base
10:42of the brain dopamine thing. It's, you know, the bonobo monkeys going higher on the hierarchy,
10:48getting more dopamine and so on. It's just, it's an addiction. And they don't get the
10:52dopamine if they help you. They get the dopamine if you help them and they don't have to help
10:57you, but they don't get the dopamine if they help you and they want their dopamine, so
11:03they don't help you. So, indifferent to your happiness? Well, oh gosh. I mean, yeah, there
11:16have been a couple of instances where I got this. When I was about 20, I got really heavily
11:26invested in an ex-girlfriend and was thinking about her night and day and all of that. And
11:32yeah, my friends would just, on the tape player, they would play that old song that
11:38used to, that Jeannie Becker had some show about fashion. You're my obsession. You're
11:44my obsession. And they would play that and sort of make jokes about it and no particular
11:49care when I was going through a significant period of insomnia. There's no particular
11:54care or thought or anything like that. And indifferent to my happiness? Yeah. Do people
12:02care how you're doing? Do people care whether you're happy or not? If you're unhappy, do
12:08they sit down with you and take, you know, people have a lot of leisure time these days.
12:12They really do. I mean, look at video games, look at Netflix, look at movies. People have
12:18a lot of free time these days. And do they apply any of that free time to finding out
12:23how you're doing, to helping you out if you're unhappy? And if you've helped out other people
12:28and they don't help you out back, it's exploitive. And you're participating in that exploitation.
12:32But it just means that you grew up in a household where your resources, time, attention, and
12:41emotional support was demanded and never reciprocated. So you're just trained to do that. You're
12:45trained to serve. You're trained to be a slave. Like parents who demand that children serve
12:48them are raising slaves. And at some point, you have to break out of that. I think if
12:53you want to be happy, right? All right. Any advice for an employee who's transitioning
13:03from to entrepreneurship while supporting a wife and two kids? Well, entrepreneurship
13:09is I mean, you there's a certain amount of you can work smarter, but entrepreneurship,
13:16you win just by working harder. You just win by working harder. You know, when I was an
13:22entrepreneur in the software field, I did kind of half create the category of software
13:28that we were selling in. But as it became more and more popular, other big companies
13:32like Microsoft and IBM came in with their own offerings in the space. So how can I possibly
13:36compete against them? Well, I just worked harder. And I was more innovative. And I poured
13:45on the charisma. And I was great fun to work with. And prices were reasonable. And we were
13:52the extra distance. And so you just have to work harder. It's tough to do when you're
13:57supporting a wife and two kids, but and have a have a conversation with your family. Make
14:01sure they're on board. Make sure that they agree with you that you're gonna have to spend
14:04more time working and less time around the family. Do you have a favorite character from
14:08Lord of the Rings books, films? If so, what do you find particularly compelling about
14:11this individual? Yeah, I think I mean, I think like a lot of people, my favorite character
14:15is Samwise. That level of loyalty and dedication is something that I aspire to, in my relationships.
14:25And there's something that I hugely respect where you can just really, really focus on
14:30that, which is good for the other person. And of course, there was a selfish motive
14:35as well in that Samwise was preserving his capacity to have 19,000 kids with Rosie. Because
14:42of course, if the ring hadn't been destroyed, if Thorin had gotten the ring, then it would
14:46have been tragic for the entire Middle Earth. But so he was serving his own needs as well.
14:53But just that level of loyalty to just be there for someone, it's just so incredibly
14:59powerful and deeply moving to me. And I, you know, I mean, of course, I'm not at all close
15:05to my only brother. And I think that level of loyalty that they had was very moving to
15:11me. When I read it, I read it half in tears at the first and second and third time that
15:17I read it because life is just so much simpler when you find a value and a virtue and dedicate
15:22yourself to it. I mean, I'm 42 years into philosophy, and I have more thirst and desire
15:28for it than ever. And I'm 22 years into my relationship with my wife, and I love her
15:36more than ever. And I didn't start with the ungrinchiest heart in the known planet. And
15:42feeling my heart swell over the decades has been really one of the greatest joys of my
15:48life. All right, hi Steph, I've fallen for a woman who's incapable of loving and or feels
15:53herself to be unlovable. We have a history of three years of friendship, closeness and
15:57memories and even casual sexual intimacy during the first year that we stopped because the
16:01sex was making the relationship too toxic. After this, the friendship and closeness gradually
16:05developed into a very close relationship. Anyway, I'm hurting a lot and I feel like
16:09a victim of a broken person as I open my heart to her and it's met with coldness and no communication.
16:14Of course, this is a lesson I still need to learn from the neglect of my toxic mother
16:18in my early teens and I'm also dealing with this in therapy. But moving on, I've already
16:22found a new circle of friends whom I care about and I'm planning an event where there
16:26will be awesome quality women with high potential for life partner. So my question is, how do
16:31you recognize women who do not have this issue of being unable to love or who feel
16:35that they're not worth loving? I suppose it's about them embracing reason, at least to some
16:40extent trying to do something good in the world and about me being connected to my feelings
16:45to recoil from bad women. Do you have some additional advice? Well, so I mean you're
16:49asking for red flags. So red flags in women are being single into their mid to late twenties.
16:57Red flags in women are tattoos. Red flags in women are strange oddities in appearance,
17:05you know, nose rings, tongue rings, those weird circle things in the ears, excessive
17:10makeup. It is also a red flag in women to have a highly sexualized presentation and
17:17to be overly flirtatious and drop hints of sexual access very, very early on. That's
17:24a way of drugging you in a sense. I mean, you can get roofied by cleavage as much as
17:27by any other drug. And it is, if she's surrounded by dysfunctional people and one of the problems
17:36with being a woman and a man to that degree as well, but women have a shorter runway.
17:42If you're single in your late twenties, mid late twenties, early thirties, if you're single,
17:47then you are likely surrounded by other women who are also single because married women
17:51and married men don't have that much in common with single men and single women. And of course,
17:56if the married men and women are having children, then the life of the singleton is just so
18:00different that there really is very little to say between them. So if she's going to
18:05be surrounded by other single friends, if they are single male friends, then she's friends
18:11on them. And if they are single female friends, they will likely undermine any budding relationship
18:17because single women keep other single women single as a whole, misery loves company. So
18:23if she has a caustic relationship or toxic relationship with any primary family members
18:28such as parents and siblings, it's another massive red flag. And of course, if she has
18:33an extensive sexual history, that's another red flag. If she's heavily in debt, that's
18:37another red flag. If she pursued a useless degree and works not in that field and has
18:44no sense of guilt about taking social resources while providing nothing back in return, if
18:50she took a degree in, I don't know, geography and she doesn't work in the field of archaeology
18:57and she's no sense of like, yeah, okay, I feel pretty bad because I took the space from
19:01someone who could have pursued something in this field and I don't even pursue something
19:04in this field and it costs society a lot of money and I feel kind of bad about that. If
19:10she is working at a job far below her intellectual capacities and with no particular plan for
19:19moving forward and if she... And that's fine. I mean, I was unemployed when I met my wife,
19:24but I was working on two novels and taking a writing course at Canada's most prestigious
19:31writing center. So, if she has no job prospects and no intellectually stimulating hobbies,
19:41if she's like, you know, hiking and concerts and so on, right? But she's not like, yeah,
19:47I've just been rereading The Brothers Karamazov and so on, right? So, if they have a huge
19:57degree of sentimentality, then, you know, if they're overly affectionate to pets and
20:02sentimentalize things, if they have knowledge in a field which is paper thin and they can't
20:09admit it, right? So, if they talk about politics and you ask them some questions and they just
20:13get kind of blank and hostile, a huge red flag, it means that they're faking their way
20:17through life and there's no accessibility to heart when it's ringed by pretend knowledge
20:22that is actually a fiery motive, bottomless ignorance. So, all of these things I would
20:26suggest.
20:27All right. Limerence. Yeah, you know what? I think we've done some of this, right? Yes,
20:35I think. Okay. So, I think some of these we've done. All right. So, I really do appreciate
20:40your time, care, and attention this morning. And yeah, is Gary happy? Is his wife still
20:47amazing? Fascinating. So, yes, I think I did limerence. I remember looking it up in
20:53the past. So, I've probably done a few of these before, but what the heck? I'm sure
20:56there's a few more flavors and bits here and there that are of value. So, thanks everyone
21:01so much. Have yourself a wonderful morning. I'm going to go get ready for my 11 o'clock
21:04show. Lots of love. Take care. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Bye.