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In this episode, I explore listener questions on personal and societal challenges, covering topics like emotional struggles, online relationships, and the impact of social media on parenting. I provide philosophical insights on approaching these complex issues, emphasizing the importance of seeking therapy for emotional well-being. I discuss the dynamics of online relationships, the influence of societal norms on loneliness, and the role of absent fathers in children's emotional development. The episode underscores the significance of genuine human connections over material possessions in fostering emotional fulfillment and healthy relationships.

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Transcript
00:00All right, so good morning everybody. It's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain
00:03Questions from freedomainsnotlocals.com. And to the fellow who had the vivid dream
00:10about harming his daughter, I would really strongly suggest you get to a talk therapist,
00:15really strongly urge you to do that. If you can't afford it, just contact me privately
00:19and I'll send you some money to go to therapy. But my guess would be that you had violent parents
00:25yourself, you're trying to be a peaceful parent, or you are being a peaceful parent. You say of
00:30course that you're not violent with your daughter when you are with her on a daily basis. So my
00:35guess would be that you have a violent parent yourself or a parent with violent impulses,
00:41or maybe a parent who acted out violently, and that a parent is outraged that you are doing good
00:47in the world and the impulses to violence are jumping from parent, your parent to you.
00:54And that would be something to really keep an eye on. So again, I would strongly,
00:58strongly suggest get to therapy. If you can't afford it, just send me a message,
01:02we'll figure it out how you can get there. But that would be my suggestion there.
01:07Somebody says, somebody stop me. And we've got, I've been talking online with this woman,
01:1618 to 21, I'm 25 to 28 years old, to whom my online friend introduced me to for about two
01:21weeks now. We've covered such topics as children, how to raise them, public schools, marriage,
01:25divorce, mental health troubles, values, political views, hobbies, interests, and
01:28among other things. We've got plenty of commonalities, and we agree on basically
01:32all the major topics. You don't know that. You're just talking to someone online.
01:37So having healthy skepticism is important when dealing with people. There are a lot of people,
01:45I'm not saying this woman is one of them, but there are a lot of people who would try to
01:48manipulate you by agreeing with you. We both want children to get married and never divorce,
01:57raise happy, healthy children, etc. But then there's the big issue, which is distance.
02:02We live on almost the opposite sides of the globe. We haven't yet settled on a meeting,
02:07and she seems quite reluctant to do so, even if it were, even if I were the one taking on the
02:10costs of that trip. So suspicions arise as to if she is who she says she is. Currently,
02:16she wants to wait two to three years before her first in-person meeting. She sent me a couple of
02:20photos of her, but none that prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is her. She hasn't
02:23agreed to a voice or video call with me either. It'd be great if she is real, but I'm afraid I'm
02:28just deluding myself. I'm rather torn on if I should focus more on looking for other women
02:33through friends, dating apps, social gatherings, etc., or simply focus on her. I wonder how long
02:37I should wait or push for a video call before abandoning all hope. Hope to hear back from you
02:41on this. Thanks for taking the time to read. Now, look, it's easy to mock, but don't. I mean,
02:47this is obviously somebody who's very passionate about getting married and having children,
02:51and he's found someone on the other side of the world who claims to want the same things.
02:56Of course, if it's like, well, we're going to have to wait two to three years before meeting,
03:01and there's no voice call and no video call, I mean, the most likely answer to this as to why
03:10she wants to wait before meeting is because she's overweight or something like she needs to
03:16change something about her appearance and she's got a long way to go. That would be my guess.
03:21So, as a male, you understand, if you live in the West, you have the ticket to the West, which is
03:30pretty important for women around the world. You happen to have accidentally inherited something
03:36which is citizenship in the West, which a lot of women want. And so, you have this inheritance,
03:43and you have a value to offer women around the world that you didn't earn and isn't native to
03:49you and will, if it's a motivation, I'm not saying it is here, but just recognize that
03:54if you're some sort of passport bro or whatever, that you are strip mining the success of your
04:00ancestors in order to attract women who want access to those same resources. So, that's not
04:10great, and it's not going to lead you to a good place. Now, no, she's not. I mean,
04:18she's absolutely not who she says she is. Like, there's no question of that. So,
04:22if she sent you pictures, and let's say she's attractive, then if she's really interested in you,
04:29then she would have a video call. Women are not shy about displaying their assets. I don't mean
04:36like T&A, I just mean like if she's pretty, then she'll have a call with you, because that would
04:39further cement your attraction to her. So, a woman who hides her face, who hides her voice,
04:45is either not a woman, or it's something else, or it's not who she says she is, or not,
04:52and all of that. So, the idea that you agree on things, but she won't agree to meet you for a
05:00couple of years, that's like you don't agree on the same things, because openness and transparency
05:07are important. And a voice call or a video call is essential for establishing trust over the
05:16anonymous faceless channels of the internet. So, if she won't have a voice or video call with you,
05:22you don't agree on the same things, because one of the foundational things that you would need
05:26in this kind of relationship is trust. I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a scam,
05:31because I guess you've offered to send her, oh no, you would take on the cost of the trip.
05:37So, you wouldn't, yeah, so she hasn't asked you for money, I guess you'd pay for that.
05:40So, this is a dangerous situation. Honestly, I just want to be frank with you, this is a dangerous
05:48situation. It's dangerous in a couple of ways. The most important thing that I would tell you about,
05:55you know, this may sound like fatherly advice or something like that, but
05:59is that you have got to get your shit together in terms of self-protection online.
06:04Like, sorry man, get your head out of your ass, shake it off, you have got to get your shit
06:09together when it comes to protection, self-protection online. There's a lot of scammers,
06:14there's a lot of skeevy weird stuff out there on the internet, and you've got to get your
06:20shit together. Are you literally, you've talked to this woman, or you've talked to this person,
06:25I assume it's all been on text, it's been two weeks, and you want to spend thousands of dollars
06:31flying out to meet her after faceless, voiceless conversations over text for two weeks? Are you
06:38crazy? What are you doing? This is madness. Listen, I'm a big one for enthusiasm, I really
06:46am a big one for enthusiasm, but you've text chatted with this woman for two weeks and you're
06:52talking, you're offering to spend thousands of dollars to fly out and meet her? She says,
06:59we're not going to meet for a couple of years? She says, no voice chats, no video chats?
07:04Seriously, bro, get your shit together when it comes to self-protection on the internet.
07:11This is not good. And this speaks to a kind of loneliness, and frankly, a kind of desperation
07:19that is going to get you into serious trouble. So you have to find a way to deal with the isolation
07:24and the loneliness. And listen, you want to call in at freedomain.com, call in at freedomain.com,
07:30send me a message, we'll talk. But you don't know anything about this woman. I mean,
07:37I'm fairly convinced she isn't AI, but maybe you meet her and there's a Newton handheld PDA on the
07:44desk or something, right? The big issue is distance. Okay, so what is the plan? Let's say
07:50that she is everything that she says she is, you have no way of verifying any of that. She's just
07:56typing, right? You say, I want a big family. Do you want a big family? Oh, yes, I want a big
08:01family. And then once she knows that you want a big family, she can talk about, she knows you're
08:08probably conservative and she can just play it from there. I mean, I don't think she's scamming
08:14you, at least she's not asked for any money yet. But you rushing headlong into this and pair bonding
08:20with a freaking font is not good. You are in a situation of desperation and in a situation of
08:27desperation, people make bad decisions. This is a bad decision. Now, the fact that you're eager to
08:36invest thousands of dollars and significant personal risk, I might add, you fly out to
08:42another country on the other side of the world to meet someone you've never met before and they
08:49know that you're relatively wealthy. They know when you meet them that you have credit cards,
08:54you might have cash on you, or I don't know, people still use traveler's checks or whatever.
08:58But that's highly risky. It's a highly risky situation. And the fact that you're willing
09:06to display this level of honestly, unbelievably dangerous enthusiasm for someone you've only
09:14typed with is going to signal you for muck. Maybe this woman isn't a scammer, but the next
09:19one might be or the next one might be. And it might be even worse. Like this is the kind of
09:23thing where you wake up in a foreign bathroom without a kidney. No, don't do it. Don't do it.
09:32I'm sure that the photo is pretty and so on. But if you can't even meet in person for a couple
09:40of years, you're going to be pushing 30. And then what? And then what? Let's say everything's the
09:46case. You talk with her for a couple of years. Eventually, you go out to meet her. Let's say
09:51she's everything that she says she is. Then what? So you're pushing 30 and you got to figure out
09:58how to make a relationship work from the other side of the world. Long distance relationships
10:05are time wasting garbage. If you want to waste time, I guess you could put yourself in a coma.
10:13I'm joking, of course. You put yourself in a coma and wake up a couple of years later,
10:16you still age, just last a couple of years. The same thing with long distance relationships.
10:21Long distance relationships are time wasting garbage. Solve the distance or don't bother.
10:28And you can't solve the distance here. I mean, if it's a long distance relationship, I don't know,
10:33like Newfoundland to British Columbia or New York to Los Angeles. Okay, at least you're in the same
10:38country. At least you can legally get married without any hassles. But even those are mostly
10:43time wasting garbage. There's no progress. You get horny, you meet up, you have a lot of sex,
10:51you go do cool places, but it's like having an affair. There's no reality. There's no normal,
10:58mundane stuff of life. It's just all about sex and personal collision and fun stuff and
11:05eagerness and sorrow. There's nothing real about it.
11:09So, long distance relationships are where sperm and egg go to die.
11:14You can't make any progress, you can't break up, and the opportunity costs are enormous.
11:20Because here's the problem, man. Here's the problem. This is why you are in danger no matter
11:24what, right? I mean, there's a not outside chance that this is some kind of scam or that the woman
11:32she's certainly not who she says she is. I mean, without a doubt, right? She's certainly not the
11:36picture because she knows, as everyone does know, and she would have a certain level of
11:41self-protection as well. So, she would know that the possibility that you would think she might be
11:46a scam would be very high. So, if she cared about you or had any sense of reality, she would say
11:55to herself, well, gee, you know, I mean, obviously, I could be a scam. Some pretty girl on
12:02the other side of the world could be anybody. It's like that old cartoon from the 90s, the dog
12:07typings as well on the internet. Nobody knows you're a dog. So, she would want to work very
12:13hard to reassure you that she wasn't a scam, and she's not doing that. Well, boy, right? If she
12:20is thoughtful and caring and a good person to, what, raise kids and mental health troubles,
12:28that's important as well. But if she cares about you, the first thing she'd want to do
12:34is establish herself as a real person with a voice and a video chat, right? That's the first
12:42thing she'd want to do is to reassure you she's a real person. Instead, she's saying we're going
12:45to wait for two to three years to even meet, and I assume that means wait two to three years,
12:50and there seems to be no schedule. Maybe it's two to three years to talk over the phone,
12:55to have a voice chat or a video chat, right? So, the danger is, no matter what, even if she's 100%
13:01legit, well, then she doesn't understand how to protect you. She doesn't have empathy for
13:06your thoughts and feelings, right? I mean, she could be in prison and she's getting out in two
13:12to three years. She could be in a mental asylum and stuck there for a couple of years. Like,
13:17there could be any number of things, but, I mean, come on, man. The problem is that out of
13:22desperation, your pair bonding tentacles are latching onto this woman with the grip of a
13:28circus strongman. And what that means is that you're going to pair bond with this text chatter
13:37and you're going to start obsessing about her and you're going to latch onto her and you're
13:44going to waste a lot of time and you don't have a lot of time to waste. If you're in your mid to
13:48late 20s, stop faffing around with text chats and find a real woman, local, to date. I mean,
13:56if you were 18, 20, whatever, right? I mean, it'd still be a waste of time, but at least you'd have
14:01some time to waste. You don't have time to waste. So, you're going to latch onto this woman.
14:08You're going to be in another problem with long-distance relationships. It's long-distance
14:11relationships, not that this is a relationship yet. There are havens for projection. You can
14:16project all of your dreams and ideals and perfections on the person because you don't
14:24have to deal with prosaic reality. It's all a fly out, body collision, sex and restaurant fest
14:31with no particular reality to it whatsoever. So, you're going to pair bond with this
14:37text message person. I mean, sounds like you're already doing it if you're willing to throw
14:41thousands of dollars at two weeks of texting. And the fact that she's still interested in you
14:48when you are throwing thousands of dollars at two weeks of texting, potentially go fly out,
14:52meet her, other side of the world, disrupt your life, get on a plane, fly for 14 hours,
15:00have a time change, go to a hotel, stay in a hotel, meet up with someone. Why? Because you
15:06texted for two weeks. If she had any sense of self-protection, she would stop texting with you
15:15and say, if you said, well, we've been texting for a couple of weeks, I've never talked to you,
15:19I've never seen you really. And so, I'm going to fly out and spend time with you. She'd be like,
15:24whoa there, bucko. You understand, this would be huge red flags for any mentally healthy woman.
15:31It's a huge red flag that you're willing to drop your whole life, fly all around the world for two
15:35weeks of texting. That's a lack of judgment. I'm not saying you lack judgment as a whole,
15:40I'm just saying here, lack of judgment, lack of self-protection, lack of prioritization,
15:44lack of resource allocation that's intelligent. So, you're going to pair bond with this fantasy.
15:52She certainly isn't who she says she is. Otherwise, she would verify it. And because
15:57she claims to be thoughtful and caring and whatever, then the first thing she'd do is
16:04reassure you that she's real with a video chat. She'd be eager to prove that so that you wouldn't
16:10think she was potentially a scam. So, if she cared about you, she would do a video chat
16:16to put your mind at ease. But she is not giving a video chat, which means either she just plain
16:23isn't who she says she is or she doesn't care about you enough to reassure your fears, concerns,
16:30legit concerns. And again, the temptation for mockery here, I sympathize. I really do.
16:36Obviously, you're lonely, you want to get married, and this is being held up. But what this is going
16:42to do is waste potentially years of your life and ungodly amounts of money, and it is going to render
16:51you undateable for years if you pursue this. You're setting yourself up for a huge failure
16:58and a huge waste of precious fertility years as a young man. And the woman in your life who might
17:05be a good woman in your life is going to sail past while you're busy typing with a potential sex
17:12worker on the other side of the world. The opportunity costs of pursuing this kind of thing,
17:17you're going to have to, sorry man, at my advice, pull your head out of your ass and shake it off.
17:23This is a hole with no bottom. It is a scam of some kind, right? It's not made a financial scam,
17:29but it's a scam of some kind. And she doesn't care about you, otherwise she'd reassure your concerns.
17:35Or she'd say, listen, if I'm unavailable to meet for a couple of years and I care about you,
17:39clearly you should go and find somebody else. She might be married, right? And maybe she is.
17:43Who she says she is, maybe she's married, right? Maybe she's claiming something, but in the video
17:48chat, she might be revealed as grindingly poor in some backwater village in the middle of nowhere,
17:52which, you know, I mean, it's not her fault, and I sympathize with all of that, but as far as
17:56a marriage partner goes, probably not ideal. She also, you know, may not, it also may be I need
18:02to learn how to speak English better. She might be using some kind of translator. Maybe she doesn't
18:07speak English well at all or speak English at all, man. And maybe she's just running things
18:10through a translator that would probably show up. I don't know how good these things are,
18:13but probably show up. But no, bro, this is not it. This is not the solution to your isolation.
18:19This is going to exacerbate your isolation. Because what's going to happen is you're going
18:22to pair a bond and you're going to dream and daydream, and it's all going to be perfect,
18:26and my life is solved, and I'm going to get married, and this woman's going to be wonderful.
18:30So you're going to stop looking for alternatives, and this isn't going to work out,
18:33and you're going to spend years and ungodly amounts of money on this, and then you're going
18:37to come out the other end bitter and angry and frustrated and mad at yourself and mad at everyone
18:42around you who didn't tell you the truth, and you then will be harder to date because you'll be
18:47bitter, suspicious, angry, and frustrated. No, don't do it. Don't do it. You gotta get a grip.
18:55And again, great sympathies for the isolation of the loneliness that would lead you to this
18:59kind of stuff. But here's the other thing, too. You gotta think, look, this isn't going to work.
19:04This is not going to work. It's not even going to come close to working. It's going to be
19:07incredibly destructive, even if she is who she says she is, which she isn't because she won't
19:11validate it. You understand? I really want to emphasize this point. You think she's a caring
19:15person, so either physically she isn't who she says she is, or emotionally she isn't, or both.
19:21Because if she's a caring person, she would be rushing to say, look, I understand. There's a
19:26lot of scams out there, and we're on the other side of the world. The first thing I want to do
19:31is reassure you that I am who I say I am. And so absolutely, let's hop on a video chat to put
19:37your mind at ease because I care about you. She's not doing that. So yeah, she's not who she says
19:44she is. She's not who you believe she is. She's not who you fantasize she is, because a caring
19:49person would validate who they were. The other thing, too, is I want you to think of, let's say
19:58you spend, I mean, minimum, let's say you spend six months and you fantasize about her, and you
20:07pair a bond with her, but then things don't work out for whatever reason. She won't talk to you.
20:13Eventually, at some point, you wake up from the sexual lust phase, and you're like,
20:18how the hell could I have ever believed that? Was I crazy? So then you're going to spend another
20:24six months recovering, getting your finances back in order, trying to recover the pieces of your
20:29heart that you scattered to the four oriental winds or whatever's going on. And then, let's say,
20:34a couple of months after that, you meet some woman, and she's like, hey, what's your dating
20:39history? Oh yeah, no, I got involved with a text-only chat with some woman who wouldn't agree
20:44to meet for a couple of years and wouldn't agree to a voice or video chat, and I spent thousands
20:49of dollars on this, and I really got my heart broken. So what is the woman going to think?
20:55Like, what is the new, quality, decent, local woman going to think when you unburden to her
21:00your history of falling in love with a font? She's going to think, this guy has the judgment
21:05of a soap dish. And look, I sympathize with it, and I'm just trying to give you this,
21:11maybe it's a sort of elder male protective sense of things, but
21:15you are also, like, this journey that you might be on is going to stamp you as crazy to other
21:20crazy people, and it's going to stamp you as unsuitable for sane, healthy people. This is
21:26what I mean when I say this is hugely dangerous. And now, this is early on, right? And what's
21:32happening, of course, there's a whole lot of stuff to untangle here, so I'll just be brief, but
21:37yeah, don't do it because you either have to lie about it, and she may find out at one point or
21:42another, some friend may mention something, she might find a text message or an email while she's
21:46looking for something else, so that's not good. So you either lie about it, which is going to
21:50make you emotionally distant, or you tell the truth about it, in which case a sane woman will
21:55run for the hills because she can't trust herself to somebody who makes these kinds of judgments.
22:02But the other thing, too, is you're going to have to go through, like, when this doesn't work out
22:06and is a disaster on every level, what's going to happen is you're going to end up mad at everyone
22:12in your life who didn't help protect you. Like, how did you end up in a situation where you're
22:17texting me? And look, I'm happy that you're texting me, I think it's a great thing,
22:21but obviously a radically controversial philosopher in the middle of nowhere relative to you
22:28is kind of a last port of call, and I do know that people would rather talk about people in
22:33their lives they have established relationships with who care about them about their problems
22:37rather than talk to me. So I'm like the ER, I'm sort of aware of that. So you're talking to me
22:42because nobody else in your life is helping you or has credibility. That's another issue. If you're
22:47surrounded by people who aren't going to help pull your head out of your ass regarding this kind of
22:51stuff, then when the disasters happen, that's bad. Because why are you coming to me rather than
23:00talking to your father or maybe brothers or cousins or friends? And why don't you listen
23:06to them? Why aren't they putting you in a way that helps you listen? So this is not a font on
23:11the other side of the world problem. This is an entire structural problem regarding your
23:16relationships. You have to find a way to get to better relationships so that you're not exposed
23:20vulnerable and potentially going to mess up your life in this way. So I hope that helps. And again,
23:26call in at freedomain.com if you'd like to help. All right, so Freedomain, I remember you saying
23:34something about a desert phase when we're transitioning from a dysfunctional life to a
23:38more virtuous one. I think I'm going through this phase right now. The old relationships are falling
23:44one by one. While I don't think I'm functional enough to find, attract and keep good people
23:48around me. Have you found something similar? Any tips on how to deal with the loneliness?
23:54Well, it's not loneliness. It's not loneliness. I want you to think of if you are walking in some
24:03lonely place and you see a funny looking rock and then you decide to excavate it and you find
24:11a pretty statue from some ancient civilization, right? And you say, look, I've made a statue.
24:18Well, that would be an inaccurate statement. Oh, look, I've uncovered a statue. It's the
24:22accurate statement. You didn't make the statue. You just made it visible. It's not creating it.
24:28It's just revealing it. It's the same thing with loneliness. If you are in pretend relationships,
24:35which is just historically attached dysfunctional proximity, if this is the state of the
24:41relationships, and then you say, you know what? I'm not going to spend my life on trash planet.
24:46I'm going to head out for better people. I'm going to aim for better people. Well,
24:52are you suddenly becoming lonely after having all of these rich and wonderful and connected
24:57relationships? Well, of course not. So the reason you might abandon existing non-relationships in
25:03pursuit of real relationships is because you are lonely in your existing relationships. They're
25:09not real relationships. They are in fact blocking you from real relationships by giving you pretend
25:13relationships in the same way that I assume heroin blocks you from self-knowledge by giving
25:18you the pretense of happiness rather than the real thing. If you are stuck in a room and you
25:26have a bunch of plastic fruit around you and you kind of eat it just out of habit, but it tastes
25:32bad and then you're bored, you try another bite and so on, but you're not getting any nutrition
25:38and you leave that room to get some food because there's no real food in the room and you're
25:43hungry. Now, when you're walking down the hall away from that room, do you say, oh my gosh,
25:47suddenly I'm really hungry. It's like, no, you left the room because there was just plastic fruit.
25:52You weren't getting any nutrition. You're hungry. So you're going in search of real food.
25:56You understand? You left the room because there was no food in it. You're looking for food.
25:59There's plastic food. You left that room because there's no food in it. You're walking down the
26:02hall. Oh my God, I'm hungry. No, walking down the hallway did not cause your hunger.
26:08You left the room with plastic food because you're hungry and you can't survive there.
26:14So don't blame the hallway. Don't blame the journey. Oh my gosh, you know, being philosophical
26:20is making me lonely. Nope. Searching for truth is making me lonely. Wanting genuine,
26:26real, honest relationships is making me lonely. Wanting people to care about me in my life when
26:32I've been surrounded for years or decades with people who don't care about me in my life,
26:36that's making me lonely. No. The people who don't care about you are making you lonely.
26:41You follow? Of course you follow. You guys are smart. Sorry. Insult to your intelligence. Of
26:45course you follow. So if you get lost in the woods and you wait for a day or two and then
26:52you're really seriously running out of food, at some point you're going to have to strike
26:56off in a direction. I assume I know a lot of people stay, say, wait and stay where you are
27:00or whatever. But let's say for whatever reason, you know no one's coming. So you start heading
27:05off, right? You got to strike out somewhere because if you stay in the woods, you're going
27:10to die. It's got no food, right? Sorry, I know this is a really extreme scenario, but I really
27:15want to hammer the point home, right? So when you start walking, you're accepting that staying
27:24is going to get you killed. So you start walking in the direction of where you think a store,
27:28a town, a person, a hut, wherever you can get some food, right? So walking is accepting panic.
27:38Walking is accepting that staying is dying. Walking feels terrible because you're accepting
27:45that you have to try something or you're going to die. So when you wake up to the lack of connection,
27:50lack of love, lack of care in your relationships, when you wake up to that in the world, then you
27:56realize it's been plastic fruit and deepwood starvation your whole life. So the loneliness
28:05does not come from you becoming philosophical and looking for something better. The loneliness
28:10is what makes you do that or what impels that. You know, I'm not looking for a wife. I'm not
28:19looking for another sexual partner. I'm not looking for romance. I'm not looking for love
28:24because I already have that and it's as good as it can be. I can't imagine better. I couldn't
28:29design better. So I have all that. So when you have something, you don't look. The reason you're
28:35going across the desert is because to stay is to die or to recognize that the death you've
28:41been experiencing through isolation has already been happening. The loneliness you feel that is
28:47so intense when you start looking for better relationships or real relationships in your life,
28:52the loneliness that you feel is the result of history. It's not the result of the desert.
28:57You go to the desert because you die in the desert, right? You cross the desert. You try
29:02to find something outside of the desert because you wake up and what you thought was a town is
29:08in fact a desert full of sand people and dust. And you're like, well, I just woke up from a
29:14kind of drug trip or a delusion that I was among people. I'm in fact among dry simulacrum of real
29:20people in the shape of sand. I'm going to die here. So I've got to strike off to something
29:24better. You say, oh my gosh, I'm so thirsty. Well, you've woke up to your thirst. The thirst was not
29:30created by philosophy. The loneliness is not created by crossing the desert. Here we are
29:35piling up the analogies, but it's important. This is how our brain works at its deepest level.
29:41So you are awake to the isolation, to the lack of connection. And it is the loneliness in where
29:50you are that drives you across the desert. The desert does not create the loneliness.
29:55Because if you think the desert creates the loneliness, oh, I was in this wonderful,
29:59it was a good town. It wasn't great. It was decent enough. It was okay. Then you cross
30:04the desert looking for something better. Then when the desert get hard, what do you do? You go back.
30:10You go back. You go back to the sand people. Right? You go back to the sand people.
30:16Sure. Whereas if you know, it's just dry, dusty, pretend people in some
30:24weird sculpted freeze in the desert, then that you won't be tempted to go back.
30:29Yes, I was crossing the desert, but the idea of going back was repulsive to me because back there
30:35was nothing, worse than nothing. It was the block to what was.
30:40So the way to deal with the loneliness, and the loneliness is like a curse inflicted
30:46by those who want to manipulate and control you through isolation and distance.
30:52The loneliness is a curse put on you by dysfunctional people so that you'll collapse
30:58your standards and come back to them because they collapsed their standards and stayed in
31:02isolated, manipulated, false lying trash planet. So it's just a curse. It's just a curse put on
31:08you. So when you wake up to the fact that dysfunctional people don't have anything
31:12positive to offer you, they immediately pivot to abuse and loneliness. Oh, you're just drifting
31:18away from everyone. You're just so isolated. You'll never have any friends with anyone.
31:21You're too ideological. You're too abstract. This is terrible. Loneliness is just a curse put on you
31:27by people who have nothing to offer you except removing the curse.
31:32Right? Like the guy who breaks your leg will dangle a crutch in front of you, right?
31:38Look, I have something of value to offer you. It's like, well, only because you broke my leg, right?
31:42So, all right. Let's do one more quickly. Hopefully this helps y'all.
31:48Social media marketing seems to have been a chokehold, particularly when it comes to
31:52expensive toys for kids. I see these influencers with beautiful playrooms for their children,
31:58undoubtedly thousands of dollars of items. And I feel a massive fear of missing out,
32:02almost as if I'm depriving my daughters of the magic of childhood if I don't drop
32:06serious loot on these products. If I think rationally, I know my daughter's perfectly
32:10content collecting rocks and just interacting with her environment or me. So why do I feel
32:14so inadequate compared to these Instagram moms? I know it's fake. I know it's selling me on a
32:18product. Why can't I resist the urge to spend, right? So I'll tell you a big secret about
32:22children's toys. Children's toys, it's father absence. And you'll notice as father absence
32:31has increased, children's toys and the addiction to children toys has also increased. So let's say
32:38you make $25 an hour and there's a toy that costs $50. That's two hours you can't spend with your
32:44family because you're making that money. So shiny toys are absent fathers. Yes, I know sometimes
32:52it's the woman, but we'll just talk in general, right? Like the 95% of the situation. We can
32:57handle the odds. We really can. So when you look at a room full of toys, I see a father who has to
33:05work to pay for them. So the presence of toys is the absence of the father. And this was true even
33:14when the toys were handmade. Usually it's men who are making the toys. The presence of toys
33:21is the absence of the father. And as fathers have left the home, children have been bribed with toys.
33:28So you're part of a general social trend, which is to replace people with objects. So family bonds
33:36and parental bonds and child bonds are weakened so that we're easier to push around control and
33:42manipulate. I mean, I remember as a young man, there were these crazy, like, hysterical waves
33:51of agada habits with kids. There was like, gosh, what were they, Cabbage Patch Dolls,
33:56Tickle Me Elmo. There were Beanie Babies. There were, you know, and now there's a Pokemon stuff
34:01and I'm, you know, Dragon Ball and, you know, all this crazy stuff. And what is it? Well,
34:09it's obviously the transfer of money. And it is fathers absent from the family to pay for,
34:19you know, bullshit, shiny trinkets that are meaningless. And they're saying for your children
34:24to be happy, you have to go to work. You have to give them stuff that represents the time you
34:30didn't spend with them. I mean, people were paying these absurd amounts of money, you know,
34:35hundreds of dollars or sometimes even more for these ridiculous toys. Well, it's a Cabbage
34:40Patch Kid. It's like a manufactured hysterica, like sort of tulip mania, right? It's a manufactured
34:45hysteria. And of course, it's a form of money transfer. It's a form of manipulation. And it's
34:50a way of bribing children with father absence so they place more value on things than people.
34:56And if you can get people to place more value on things than people,
34:59then you can make a lot of money. Society gets really destabilized. Family bonds are weakened.
35:04And children, like removing children from the home is the foundational mission of everybody
35:09who wants to prey on children, right? Which is why taking children to daycare, taking children
35:15to kindergarten, taking children to school is not so much about the presence of propaganda.
35:22It's about the absence of fathers. And the reason I say the absence of fathers or the absence of
35:27males is that, I mean, I worked in daycares. I was like the only male for, you know, it felt
35:33like thousands of miles around. So the purpose of society, when it wishes to gain more control,
35:39the purpose of politics, when they wish to gain more control over the citizenry, is to remove
35:45fathers from the home or to remove males from the children's environment. And, you know,
35:51the rise of woke culture, it's just the rise of unrestrained female nature. Unrestrained being
35:57it's not balanced by the masculine, right? I mean, the masculine unbalanced by the feminine is not
36:01ideal. And the feminine unbalanced by the masculine is not ideal. We're a team. We're
36:06supposed to work together. But, you know, the tone police and this bizarre human resources psychology,
36:14like every male space, the women demand to come in and then they start tone policing and
36:20snapping at people and you get this whole HR mentality. And, you know, it's funny because,
36:26you know, there are these memes like, you know, when you've told a joke so good at work that HR
36:31wants to hear it, you know, there's this kind of fear, right? About this kind of power that is
36:37censorious and tone policing and all about aggressive feelings rather than objective reality.
36:44So, the urge to spend? Yeah, I mean, I get it. I get it. You have been programmed and we all are.
36:52I say this with great sympathy and I'm certainly not above or immune to it, but you have been
36:56programmed to think that love means not being there. And, of course, to some degree for men,
37:02that's true, right? A woman serves the home by being there. A man serves the home by being away,
37:06right? And going to get hunted resources or whatever, gathering or having a job or whatever.
37:11So, you have been… So, women are programmed to take care of children to the point where this
37:17becomes obsessive reality shielding helicopter parenting that stifles children and makes them
37:24soft, flaccid, fat, uncompetitive and resentful. People think, oh, the video games, it's a problem
37:32with the kids. No, in general, it's a problem with the parents. Hey, if you're home playing
37:36video games, I know you're safe, right? So, women's desire to keep men safe is supposed
37:40to be balanced by men's desire to expose them to risk, right? You know, that old meme of the
37:45woman throwing up the toddler on the beach. You know, what's actually happening is the toddler
37:51is going up one or two feet. What the toddler feels is going up five or seven feet and what
37:56the wife sees is the toddler going up like 20 feet, right? Because she's a very strong sense
38:01of danger and that's great, you know? I mean, you wouldn't want toddlers to be raised by only men
38:08because they'd be exposed to a little bit too much risk and indifference, right? But excessive
38:14child-proofing is adult-proofing, like you don't get to adulthood because you don't know how to
38:17manage risk. And because you don't know how to manage risk, you're easily programmed, right?
38:22When you don't know how to manage risk, when you've not grown up learning how to manage risk,
38:26and that's one of the most essential things that all living organisms with higher functions need
38:30to do is to learn how to manage risk. But when you don't know how to manage risk, you can be
38:34told that things are risky and you don't have any sense of proportion. So-and-so is a threat to our
38:39democracy and you go, oh, this is scary, right? Excessive CO2, plant food is a threat to the
38:44survival of the planet. Like you don't have any way of gauging threats because you haven't been
38:49out there exploring the world, making mistakes and getting your strawberry knees and learning
38:52how to balance risk and reward. So the video game thing has a lot to do with fearful moms
39:00and lower social trust and all of that. But yeah, fearful moms preferring their kids to be home so
39:04they know they're safe, but the kids aren't safe because they're not out there learning how to
39:08manage risk. So excessive safety is the greatest risk of all. We know that from the utopia,
39:15mouse utopia experiments and from looking out the window. So yeah, selling a product, absolutely.
39:21And of course, it's easier to buy your kids something sometimes than to engage them in
39:26some cool imaginative play. Like it's a lot of work to create, you know, we're going to take
39:31this cardboard box and pretend we're going to Mars, you know. If you're not used to play and
39:37all of that, it can be a lot of work. And rather than relate to each other, you will try sometimes
39:42to relate through toys, right? And, you know, learning to play and all of that's fine. But
39:47rather than having a conversation or do some mutual imaginative play that bonds you, it can be,
39:51let's roll the dice on a Monopoly board. And that's our structured time together. And again,
39:56I'm not saying there's anything bad. I played board games with my daughter, but, you know,
39:59you need to balance it with the actual connection stuff. So what I would do if I were in your shoes
40:04is I would look back at your own childhood and say, did your parents buy you stuff rather than
40:11spend time with you, right? Which transfers children's allegiance to the media and transfers
40:18money from the family to the makers of toys. So everybody benefits except you and your kids.
40:25So did you have a situation where your parents were like, well, you know, we put a roof over
40:29your head. We bought you all these things. We took you on vacations. You had a new bike every year.
40:33And that's our value. No, it's not. No, it's not. And of course, it's a way of programming people
40:40to think that, well, the government has real value because it gives you stuff. Well, your parents
40:44have real value because they gave you stuff, but everything they gave you was time they were away
40:48from you. And they chose that time away from you and gave you stuff for reasons other than
40:54affection. Now, of course, you understand it's, I'm not talking about two extremes here. So I'm
41:00not saying never buy your children toys. You understand that, right? You follow that, right?
41:05But the toys that you buy your child should in general be something that you can play together
41:09and connect with, right? So my daughter was really into amphibians. So, you know,
41:15sometimes she bought these little plastic tubes of, like, lizards and frogs and so on,
41:20and we would play with them together. So the toys is something that, and sometimes you would play
41:23with them alone, but the toys in general were ways in which we could connect. So, of course,
41:28I'm not saying, but, you know, you see this, that it's crazy just how, like, you go to kids'
41:34birthday parties and it's just this massive cavalcade of toys that the kid's never going to
41:41play with, really. There's no way to differentiate or focus on that, and there's so many toys,
41:48and it's parental absence. It's adult absence every single time. Every single time. All right.
41:55Well, I hope that this helps, and thank you everyone so much for these great
41:59questions. Love you guys to death, and freedomain.com slash donate. If you'd like to help
42:04out the show, really, really would appreciate it. freedomain.com slash donate. Lots of love from up
42:08here, all my friends. I will talk to you soon. Bye.