Stefan Molyneux
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Sunday Morning Live 24 November 2024

In this episode, I delve into contemporary issues intertwining culture, philosophy, and societal norms, starting with gratitude for community support and addressing insightful listener questions. We discuss the rise of new age spiritualism among young adults, expressing concern over the dangers of seeking comfort in unearned beliefs instead of pursuing genuine personal growth. I highlight alarming statistics on societal ignorance regarding essential topics like history and science, critiquing the elite's role in perpetuating mediocrity.

Exploring relational dynamics, I reflect on the importance of coachability and humility, particularly within romantic partnerships, where respect and adaptability are crucial. The episode concludes with a nostalgic look at simpler times characterized by trust and community, encouraging listeners to seek meaningful discussions that promote reasoned thinking and self-improvement amidst modern challenges.

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Transcript
00:00Good morning everybody, 24, 11, 24, hope you're doing well, good morning, good morning, welcome
00:07to your Sunday morning live.
00:09We'll do some public, then we'll do some donors, thank you to those who have tipped, I really
00:19really appreciate it, and we have a lot to talk about, yes, we have a lot to talk about,
00:26and we are ready to roll, let me get straight to your questions, what do we got here, sorry
00:31if you have to retype your questions, let's see here, good morning Steph, I just listened
00:39to the full three and a half hours of Eugene Ward's presentation, then I listened to it
00:42again, it was mind blowing, the way you presented the theories in an engaging fashion was incredible,
00:47my brain has been stretched to a new way of thinking, you are amazing, just donate at
00:51a free domain dot com slash donate, thank you, I really really appreciate it, signing
00:58up for a one year subscription on Locals next month, thank you very much, I appreciate that,
01:02I appreciate that, somebody say, somebody stop me, I noticed a trend, which cousins,
01:09friends, female, unmarried, childless, thirties, got into new age spiritualism, they pay 50
01:14euros for sessions where some vegan plays handpan and sings sad songs, do yoga breathing
01:19to open their chakla and dance around a so called entity until everyone cries and loves
01:24each other and is healed from past trauma, there are 3,000 euro weekend retreats with
01:28similar stuff, they believe lighting up sage cleans the air of bad energy, how to debate
01:33this nonsense before it gets out of hand, people who fuck with mysticism are always
01:39absorbed by demons, people who fuck with mysticism are always absorbed by demons and
01:48in this I am entirely in alignment with the Christians, it is very very dangerous stuff
01:57to mess around with mysticism, I have seen great minds be taken down by mysticism more
02:04than any other single drug that is there and how do you deal with people, mysticism
02:14is the desire for the unearned, everybody wants to feel good without doing good, greatest
02:20drug that there is, even Anna Kasparian has talked about politics as a cult and has apologized
02:28for all that she wronged along the way, though I am sure nobody is specific in particular
02:35because that would be too much responsibility, but everybody wants to feel good without doing
02:40good, everybody wants to feel good without pursuing virtue, without being honest, without
02:45confronting evildoers, without promoting goodness, I mean politics is a massive drug which people
02:53trade their actual freedoms in return for feeling good about themselves, like I saw
02:58this podcast, I think it's two liberal women, they've got those tight half smiley faces
03:04and the way too blonde hair to be conservative, but they, or at least Christian, so they pointed
03:14out that over 23 million Americans believe that chocolate milk comes from where, where
03:20do over 23 million Americans think that chocolate milk come from, where, oh where, where does
03:30chocolate milk come from?
03:34While we're answering that, no, once people go the mysticism route, they're saying well
03:38I desperately want to avoid unhappiness, yeah, they believe it comes from brown cows, they
03:43believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows, I can't believe I'm pushing 60, man, pretty
03:50good, so yeah, they believe it comes from brown cows, you tell me how you reason with
03:56that, how do you reason with that, you can't reason with that, and there, you know, it's
04:00like the per capita problem, it's because of the per capita, it's like the per capita
04:06issue or the how would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast this morning, but I did eat
04:10breakfast this morning, or the people who say, oh you have a general rule, I can think
04:15of an exception, therefore your rule is disproven, well you can't, Spock eyebrow 101, I can do
04:24it on this side, I can't do it on this side, I can curl this lip, can't curl this lip,
04:29curl this lip, can't curl this lip, yeah, they believe chocolate milk comes from brown
04:34cows, the, see when you're a smart person, you generally hang around with smart people,
04:42and you lose track of how unbelievably unintelligent most people are, right, you, you just forget
04:56how much stuff, how much crazy stuff is believed by, by people as a whole, what's the Scott
05:07Adams thinks, 25% of the population gets things completely wrong, so what do people
05:18believe, right, 7% of Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows, there's a fairly
05:27large number of Americans who believe they're being systematically harassed and stalked
05:31by groups of people, this is called gang stalking, I actually did a call-in show with a gang
05:35stalking victim many years ago who believed that because he heard thumps coming from his
05:39cupboard that he was being followed and controlled by people as a whole, let's see here, a quarter
05:52of Americans believe God has a role to play in who wins the Superbowl, 12 million Americans
05:59believe lizard people secretly run the US, let's see here, 11% of Americans 18 and older
06:09thought that HTML was the name of a terrifying sexually transmitted disease, when it actually
06:15generally is propaganda transmission, as many Americans believe in Bigfoot as the Big Bang
06:20Theory, and a significant portion of Americans, 41% of adult Americans believe that dinosaurs
06:31and humans roamed the earth at the same time, barely anyone in America knows anything about
06:40the Constitution, but of course everybody knows who Kim Kardashian is, Big Boob Satan,
06:49so yeah, that's the world that you live in, right?
06:56That's the world, so you know, this is another reason why I don't particularly miss debating
07:02people on social media, somebody says I met a guy who believes using yogurt is as good
07:10as using sunscreen, because quote if it helps you when you're sunburned why would it not
07:13protect you from sunburn, yeah, you know and we can sort of make fun of these people
07:20and I get that and there is that temptation, I view these people as intentionally crippled
07:27by parents and teachers and extended family, right?
07:32They have been maimed, they have been crippled, they have been abused, they have been destroyed,
07:39because less intelligent people can absolutely believe true things, it's just that they are
07:49really, really wrecked and destroyed by just absolutely terrible behavior, 37% of Americans
08:03could not name a single right protected by the Bill of Rights, only 26% of Americans
08:07can name all three branches of government and 33% a third of Americans could not name
08:11a single branch of government.
08:20More than half said undocumented immigrants, I don't know what undocumented immigrants,
08:26that's like undocumented taxpayers with people who aren't paying their taxes, just strange,
08:30but the courts have ruled that some rights apply to undocumented immigrants, due process
08:34of law and so on, right?
08:40One in four Americans think that the sun orbits the earth, in 2018 there are still Americans
08:50who believe that if you venture too far off the horizon you'll slip off the edge of the
08:54earth, 34% of Americans reject evolution entirely, so what can I tell you, what can
09:15I tell you?
09:17Now of course they throw in vaccine skepticism and climate change among all of this stuff,
09:21I think that's all settled science, oh well, so yeah, that's stuff that we wouldn't take
09:25particularly seriously.
09:32So I mean these people have been intentionally wrecked and destroyed, right?
09:37Okay, somebody writes, because I discovered Ayn Rand late in life, how early in the life
09:41of a young adult should Atlas Shrugged be mandatory reading?
09:44Well not mandatory, but Atlas Shrugged is an amusing and interesting and engaging fairy
09:50tale, right?
09:51It is a fairy tale.
09:56I mean it's good, it's well done, it's well written, I find it a great, I prefer The Fountainhead
10:01myself, but it's still, it's a great book, but it's fundamentally wrong, it's fundamentally
10:07wrong about how the war was going to be waged against the productive, right?
10:13She doesn't get DEI in there, and so on, right?
10:16So yeah, it's just a bunch of stuff that she didn't understand and didn't process and
10:23understand, right?
10:31Somebody says, I tried educating vegans about how some, or at least one, amino acid can't
10:36be found in vegan protein, and they said they could get their protein from mushrooms.
10:40I looked it up and it would take 18 cups of cooked mushrooms for 40 grams.
10:45Maybe they just really like mushrooms.
10:54What is your favorite time period for family home architecture?
10:57I gotta tell you, I'm really partial to country cottages, I just really, I like country cottages
11:03as a whole.
11:04Edwardian is nice, I don't like the modern brutalism, I think it's just appalling.
11:09Vertical ice cube trays, you know, because I used to work, I never worked in one of those
11:12really, really tall buildings, but I used to work in offices.
11:16Now when I drive by and I see the people kind of hunched over in their chairs and so on,
11:21staring at their screens, turning into a question mark as a whole, it's brutal to see.
11:26Brutal to see.
11:29Horrible to see.
11:33I stay alive to keep watching Stefan and spite my enemies.
11:36Well, both of those should be equally valid.
11:40Both of those should be equally valid.
11:47What else have we got?
11:48I mean, I'm sure you've seen those videos of the guy just asking, like, really basic
11:53questions and just saying, yes.
12:04I'm just looking for numbers as a whole.
12:11I mean, people believe fact-checkers, right?
12:15It's the ministry of truth, people actually believe fact-checkers.
12:20Like there's such a thing as a fact-checker.
12:22You know, if somebody had the kind of epistemology where they just knew what was true, the last
12:29place they'd be working is for a fact-checking organization.
12:34If you just absolutely knew what was true and were able to differentiate truth from
12:37falsehood, you would use that power to evaluate business proposals and know which ones were
12:42valid or invalid, which marketing plans were true or false, and so on.
12:48I mean, for a culture that let Theranos flourish for year after year after year, despite the
12:56fact that it was all completely ridiculous and obviously ridiculous, well, it's crazy.
13:06Fifteen percent of Americans were unsure of the Earth's shape.
13:11Fifty-six million people take to this theory.
13:18So seven percent of Americans think the moon landing is faked, fifteen percent, well, the
13:31JFK stuff, who knows, right, who knows?
13:40Anyway, you can sort of look this stuff up.
13:46Yeah, the lizard people stuff is, I mean, it's pretty wild.
13:54It's pretty wild.
13:57The idea that the governments around the world are working with space aliens.
14:04I mean, the only way that space aliens get here is if they're a totally free society,
14:10and so the idea that space aliens would get here and then work with governments would
14:14be like saying that Malcolm X is going to go back in time and work with slave owners.
14:19I do not think so.
14:22I do not think so.
14:25Yeah, so the sort of modern architecture, you can argue that it's more efficient, but
14:32to give up beauty for money is fundamentally demonic, right?
14:36To give up beauty for money, to say, well, I can save a little bit of money by having
14:43windows that won't open and ugly architecture and so on, an undifferentiated brick of windows
14:52wall building without any beauty, without any inspiration, without it, it is to trade
14:57beauty for money is ugly materialism that is aimed to bribe you with money so that you
15:08give up on happiness, right?
15:11To take money instead of happiness, right?
15:14Take money instead of happiness.
15:17Yeah, I mean, the percentages, I did a whole series of untruths about Donald Trump.
15:22Yeah, Donald Trump told people to drink bleach and he dumped out the koi feeder on his own
15:29and oh my God, it's just, yeah, it's just terrible.
15:33But it's very easy for stupid people to think that other people are just stupid, right?
15:40That Trump, who is obviously very intelligent, that he's just an idiot, right?
15:47If you don't know any smart people, it's easy to believe that everyone is dumb.
15:53Oh yeah, the McCarthyism, yeah, yeah, people still, I mean, there are still conservatives
16:02who use the phrase McCarthyism as an impractical or witch hunt or something like that, right?
16:08Crazy.
16:09All right, let's, uh, any more?
16:34All right.
16:35Uh, yeah, Jim, Jim Cramer did say that Bitcoin is good, right, right?
16:44So I'm not talking about him in particular, but most financial analysts, quote financial
16:50analysts, in my particular thoughts and opinion, most financial analysts simply are parroting
16:59what their friends want, right?
17:00So if, if Bob, not Jim, if Bob says Bitcoin is a scam, it means that his friends want
17:08to buy Bitcoin.
17:10And if, if Bob, not Jim, if Bob says Bitcoin is, is great, it means that his friends want
17:18to sell Bitcoin.
17:19So I don't view this as anything objective at all.
17:24Do stupid people even know that they're stupid, right?
17:25Well, you know that old saying that when you die, you don't suffer, but everyone around
17:29you suffers.
17:30It's the same thing when you're stupid, right?
17:32And stupid is, is a, is derogatory, right?
17:36But it's just like saying short, right?
17:38There's just some people who are less intelligent.
17:40Um, they have an instinct about it, but it's tough for the ego.
17:49It's tough.
17:50Like everybody is, you know, the main character syndrome.
17:52Everybody thinks that they're great and everyone's life revolves around themselves.
17:54And then that's nothing in particular wrong with that.
17:56I mean, this, that's just the way that the mind works, but like, if you've ever been
18:05around somebody who's way more competent than you are, it is kind of humbling.
18:11It is kind of humbling.
18:12It's important to do that.
18:13You know, I mean, one of the things that's wild about Elon Musk is how little ego he
18:17has.
18:18Like there was somebody who said, oh, he was showing somebody his rocket setup and he said,
18:21oh, you should try this.
18:22And he's like, you know what?
18:23You're, you're right.
18:24We probably should.
18:25And then he, right.
18:26So he's not like, well, no, we're doing it this way.
18:28He's got no ego.
18:30And without ego, you can't be coached.
18:33Without being coached, you can't improve.
18:37So do you want to be good or do you want to think that you're good?
18:41I mean, so I'll tell you sort of a little example about this.
18:45So when I was in theater school, there was this woman who came up from New York and she
18:52was from the Stanislavski school of acting and the sort of Uta Hagen school of acting.
19:00And she was very harsh and she gave us the assignment of just spend five minutes doing
19:08something you would normally do.
19:11And that's your assignment.
19:13Don't try to act.
19:14Don't try to perform.
19:15Don't try to whatever, right?
19:19So embarrassing looking back.
19:21I was a young man.
19:23And so what I did was I pretended to be sorting my, I brought in a bunch of laundry and I
19:31pretended to be sorting my laundry.
19:33And then I ended up putting my hand in my sock and singing, I missed the Saturday dance,
19:40heard they crowded the floor, couldn't bear it without you.
19:45I don't get around much anymore.
19:48And I pretended to be singing with the sock.
19:56Now she enjoyed my singing.
19:58So she let me finish the song and she said, that's a lovely instrument, but you have completely
20:02failed the assignment.
20:03She was very harsh about it.
20:04That was terrible.
20:06You've never done anything like that in your life.
20:08You were self-conscious.
20:09You were showy.
20:12It was vain.
20:13You wanted to show off your singing, which was nice, but not the assignment.
20:17And she was very harsh about it.
20:19And I felt, you know, oh no.
20:22So anyway, so, and if it's any consolation, just about everyone failed the assignment.
20:28So the next thing I did, cause we got to do it again the next day.
20:31She's like, you all suck, do it again.
20:33So what I did the next day was I wet my hair.
20:38I pretended, I brought in a little cot and I pretended to be coming out of the shower
20:44and then choosing a CD to play, putting it in a CD player, putting on my headphones and
20:50lying back and listening to some music.
20:54And I remember a friend of mine was like, you have a CD player?
20:59Cause they were pretty rare back then.
21:00And yes, I was a bit of an audiophile.
21:01I had a CD player.
21:03It was secondhand, but it was good.
21:05Anyway, so I remember the teacher said, I've actually never seen anyone get it so wrong
21:12and then so right.
21:13And that was perfect.
21:14You weren't acting.
21:15It was like, we weren't even here.
21:16We got a little window into something you genuinely did in your life and there was none
21:19of this singing Sam Cooke sock stuff.
21:22So that's about being coachable, realizing that you've done something completely wrong.
21:27She was totally in the, she was totally right.
21:29I was a hamming it up and, and all of that.
21:32So are you coachable?
21:40Are you coachable?
21:41If you're not coachable, you can't, you can't improve.
21:54So less intelligent people, if they're around really smart people, they get lost and confused
22:01pretty quickly and they generally want to retreat to where they feel on an even level.
22:06So society segregates by IQ and this is an old Charles Murray argument that you used
22:13to have a small town and that people would mix in terms of IQ.
22:16But what happened is the elites, the colleges and the businesses, they go through and they
22:21relentlessly scoop people up out of communities.
22:24So the really smart guy in a sort of small town would have become the local lawyer or
22:28doctor or something like that, or maybe a businessman.
22:33And so there would have been a mix, right?
22:35But now what happens is there's this scoop, right?
22:38And then the scoop comes through and it takes all the smart people out of local communities.
22:43And so you end up with a bunch of, you know, half dummies left behind.
22:49All the smart people have gone.
22:50And everybody knows this, if you've been around small towns, that the smart people are just
22:54chomping at the bit and dying, dying to get out of their small towns.
22:59And so it used to be that there was more commingling, that there was more commingling
23:06of levels of intelligence.
23:10So the smart guy would be in the same kind of club as the not so smart guy and they'd
23:17mingle and mix.
23:18And what would happen is the smart guy would help to educate the less smart guy and so
23:22on.
23:23You'd be a mentor.
23:24And so the intelligent stuff would kind of mix into the community.
23:27But if you've got this scoop coming through, all the smart people get taken off to Harvard
23:31and MIT and Princeton and all of Yale, then they're all gone.
23:35And then there's nobody left in a sense to guide the community towards something better.
23:39And the other thing that happens, of course, is the welfare towns, right?
23:43When I worked up north, there were all these welfare towns.
23:44So what would happen is there'd be a mine or some natural resource, a town would grow
23:48up around it, and then the mine would be exhausted or the government would change the rules and
23:51you couldn't mine anymore.
23:53And normally people would just leave and you'd end up with a ghost town.
23:56But because of the welfare state and so on, and unemployment insurance, they just stay.
24:02They just stay and just kind of rot.
24:05And they feel like a long, long way away.
24:10What do you think of participating in a TikTok livestream with a smart host?
24:13I don't know what to think about that.
24:14Steph, why do people use Theater Kid as an insult as someone who didn't really hang around
24:18them growing up and didn't think about them?
24:20I don't get it.
24:22So Theater Kid, so my sort of earlier example about singing Don't Get Around Much Anymore
24:28by Mouthing a Sock and pretending that's something I do on a regular basis, it's self-conscious
24:34performance for the sake of gaining attention.
24:37He said, hoping that people are watching the livestream.
24:39No, but it's self-conscious performance for the sake of gaining attention and being admired.
24:44That's what the Theater Kid problem is.
24:47So an artist should be generous with his humanity and not do what he's doing for the
24:52sake of admiration.
24:53Like there was this woman who was going to run the Ministry of Information or whatever
24:56it was called.
24:57And she was a Theater Kid.
24:58She wrote these sort of anti-disinformation songs and this sort of self-conscious, look
25:03what a great singer I am, look how engaging, look how much talent I have, and so on.
25:08Whereas the people who are really good artists are generous with their humanity to the point
25:13where you're not admiring them, you're just enjoying the story, right?
25:16You're just enjoying the story, you're not admiring how talented the actor is.
25:22So that is, it's kind of narcissistic to say that you should watch me.
25:36It would be like if I was doing livestreams and I just wanted everyone to praise just
25:40how smart I am, what a great communicator I am, how good I am with analogies and I just
25:45wanted praise, praise, praise.
25:46No, no, no.
25:47I mean, I don't mind a little bit of praise, but the purpose of what I'm doing is to try
25:51and bring philosophy alive and to light in your mind, right?
25:55That's the goal of what it is that I'm doing.
25:57I'm not trying to have you think about me, I'm trying to have you think about philosophy.
26:01In the same way, really good artists don't want you to think about them, they want you
26:05to think about, they want you to enjoy the story, if that makes sense.
26:11So the Theater Kids are the ones who make performance all about them rather than serving
26:15the story.
26:16Yeah, he's the number one player in the world in Diablo 4, I mean, but then that's just
26:23an IQ and reflexes thing, right?
26:25People who have higher IQ tend to have more reflexes, tend to be healthier, tend to be
26:29more moral, they tend to be, you know, just whatever you want to say better.
26:35Doesn't mean that there are, you know, any sort of fundamental differences in terms of
26:39So, I've been thinking about fetishes, let's see here, anyone on Blue Sky, Left Safe Space,
26:52Echo Chamber, Ghetto, can you imagine, can you imagine if I tried to get a, if I tried
27:00to get on Blue Sky, I think that's pretty funny.
27:04Now Blue Sky, yeah, Robert Johnson, some early era Clapton, Blue Sky, yeah, but not
27:09Blue Sky.
27:10Excuse me, while I kiss the sky, software engineering doomed, well God, I hope so.
27:18More than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI than reviewed and accepted
27:21by engineers, yeah, yeah, yeah, software engineering is doomed, for sure, well and this has always
27:32been the case, is that the purpose of a programming environment is to have you write as little
27:41code as possible, yeah, Blue Sky, Mr. Blue Sky, so, yeah, so, so, the first coding that
27:52I did was, well, I mean, the first coding I did was on a PET-2K computer, then I programmed
27:59on an Atari 400, then I programmed on a 286, and I programmed in DOS, and once I got to
28:06Windows, it was great, right?
28:09I wrote I.O. programs for floppy disks way back in the day, where you had to read and
28:14write the sectors of the disk, and then you basically just say, save this file, open this
28:19file, right?
28:20I mean, I remember when I wrote a program many years ago to help people find and filter
28:25podcasts, you know, I, there was some way of working with XML that you could add bits
28:32to the XML and take them away and add properties, and I just, I was trying to figure it out,
28:36there was no particular documentation, and I'm like, screw it, I'm just going to write
28:41the XML as a text file and just format it, format the text file as XML, so I just created
28:45it and then wrote in disk.io the text file, rather than use the interface for building
28:52XML through an abstraction layer.
28:55So yeah, so in Windows, if you want to get input from a listener, sorry, if you want
29:00to get input from a watcher, and you want to say, do you want to exit, yes or no, you
29:04just say y equals message box bracket, and then you give all the parameters, do you want
29:10to quit, and then you choose, is it yes, no, cancel, or whatever it is, right?
29:13And so you don't have to write the code to bring up a message box, whereas in DOS you
29:18did have to do that kind of stuff, right?
29:19So yeah, the whole point is to code less and less and less, and if AI can handle most
29:23of the stuff you have to do, then you can just figure stuff out.
29:28Wasn't DOS just a cheap imitation of Unix?
29:32Well DOS was bought from a guy for $75,000, right?
29:38All right.
29:40Did you see the horrendous stuff coming out of the Destiny leaks?
29:45I did have the soul catastrophe of reading a couple of posts from the Destiny leaks.
29:58And there's not enough bleach for my soul to undo that tinked.
30:02Who turned you on to Bitcoin?
30:03It was listeners.
30:06So yeah.
30:12The fastest way to kill a good game or competent industry is to make it work.
30:16A game I used to play bans negative judgments now.
30:18Even a word like bad, yeah.
30:21The story of how Microsoft and Apple ripped off Xerox back in the 70s is very interesting.
30:29I mean, everyone builds on everyone else, right?
30:32I don't know.
30:33I mean, I'm not a big one into intellectual property as a whole.
30:36I love classical music, and classical music only arose in countries which didn't have
30:42strong copyright laws so that you could actually work with and adapt other people's music without
30:47getting sued into oblivion.
30:49So I mean, ripped off.
30:53I mean, everyone builds off everyone else, right?
30:56Do you think chat GPT is a good dating coach?
30:58I was actually chatting about this with a friend of mine the other day.
31:01He was having trouble figuring out how to talk to girls online.
31:03I'm like, well, why don't you just ask the AI to get things started, right?
31:07Ask the AI to jumpstart your conversations.
31:10I don't know.
31:11I don't know.
31:17So yeah, fetishists.
31:19I think it's interesting.
31:22One thing I've kind of noticed, if you look at polyamorous relationships or something
31:26like that, or you look at fetishists as a whole, you know, Tarantino and feet.
31:31Well, it would be feet because he lives in America, and America is not metric.
31:35Otherwise, he'd really be into meters.
31:38Or miters if he was really into chemistry.
31:41So the polyamorous tend not to be very attractive, right?
31:48And fetishists tend to be less attractive.
31:51So I think a fetish is a way of raising your sexual market value within a small
31:58niche group of people because you can't compete in the general arena of
32:02attractiveness.
32:05So I just had that sort of thought.
32:09All right.
32:10Questions, comments, issues?
32:11Of course.
32:12Absolutely.
32:13Welcome.
32:15NPR CEO Catherine Maher.
32:18It's like Bill Maher?
32:19Anyway.
32:20Truth is a distraction from getting things done.
32:24The very confident, and I guess she's quite pretty for the business.
32:29But yeah, just truth is a distraction from getting things done.
32:35That's just appalling.
32:36That's just absolutely, absolutely horrible.
32:39Absolutely horrible as a whole.
32:44I mean, I know that's not really much of an argument, but the idea that you can
32:47get things done in the opposition of truth means that you wish to achieve a
32:51tangible lie.
32:53Ooh, horrible.
32:56So this was interesting.
32:59The effect of conspicuous consumption on men's testosterone levels.
33:05A study reports that men's testosterone levels increased and decreased
33:09partially directionally after driving an expensive sports car and an old
33:13family sedan respectively.
33:15So driving an expensive sports car raised your testosterone levels.
33:19Isn't that wild?
33:21Additionally, the location of the drive, either a busy downtown area or a
33:25semi-deserted highway, partially moderated this response.
33:31When men's social status was threatened by the wealth displays of a male
33:35confederate in the presence of a female moderator, their testosterone levels
33:38increased.
33:41Isn't that wild?
33:44So I wonder if estrogen increases for women when they buy shoes or purses,
33:49because that's a mystery that is too deep.
33:52Care to comment on the new Jaguar car marketing?
33:55So success is failure in a state of society, right?
33:59Success is failure in a state of society, because whatever becomes really
34:02successful gets hijacked by ideologues to push socialism or communism.
34:07So if you get a really successful show, then people will jump on it to push
34:14their ideological messages, which is why success is failure.
34:20Whatever becomes successful then destroys itself, because if a lot of
34:25people are watching something because it's quality, then ideologues hijack
34:28it in order to push their horrible messages, their lies, and because they
34:32wish to... Ideology is that which has to be presented through propaganda
34:39because it's not experienced in life.
34:42Ideology is that which has to be presented through propaganda because it's
34:46not presented through life.
34:49So whatever's being pushed through the propagandistic arms is being pushed
34:58because people are not experiencing it in their life and they want to
35:01substitute the false empiricism of art for the true empiricism of life.
35:13And Jaguar was just one of the most macho brands when I was around.
35:20And, you know, there's this battle in society, right?
35:23And I'm part of this battle, so I'm not condemning it or putting it down,
35:27I'm just sort of observing it.
35:28So there's this battle in society between normal and new, right?
35:34The progressive versus the conservative.
35:36Conservative is to pretend you're going to conserve that which already is,
35:40which you fail at.
35:41You simply are the left, but on a time delay for the most part.
35:44So there is a battle between the conservative and the new.
35:48And this is mirrored in evolution, right?
35:50So there is a battle between the stability of the organism and the evolution
35:55of random genes.
35:57So the human mind evolved through a whole series,
36:01thousands of genes each contribute a little bit towards intelligence,
36:05and the human mind is destabilized by progression in terms of evolution,
36:12and yet the net result of it has been positive.
36:15If you look at animals that have not evolved as a whole,
36:19like hundreds of millions of years for like what,
36:21sharks and crocodiles and stuff, they can't win against human beings.
36:24So they have chosen stability over evolution,
36:29or rather evolution has picked that for them in a sense, right?
36:34I mean, human beings can wipe out any species in the world, right?
36:39So it's like society wants what is familiar,
36:43but societies that only choose what is familiar lose to societies that progress.
36:48And I talk about this in my documentary on Hong Kong and China and history.
36:53So the Chinese were 6,000 years of relentless stability.
36:58And one of the reasons that China lost to the West was the ships were all destroyed,
37:03the plans, the architecture, the schematics, the expertise,
37:06all of it was destroyed because it was considered destabilizing
37:10to have ships in society, right?
37:12If you look at like aboriginal society in Australia,
37:16it was basically the same for about 40,000 years.
37:19Whereas in the West, we have all of these creative destruction,
37:22this destabilization and so on.
37:24So people want what is familiar, and I understand that.
37:27I really have got a whole novel about this called Just Poor,
37:30which is a love for that which is familiar, right?
37:33To grow up in a small town in the Middle Ages,
37:36to know everyone, to have a sense of your place in the world and in the universe,
37:40to have a guaranteed access for the most part to a wife, a husband, children, offspring,
37:46to be part of a community that you know your whole life,
37:49to have that familiarity is really, I yearn as most people do, I yearn for that.
37:55I yearn for that.
37:58Because so much of your life in the modern world is trying to figure out what to do,
38:04where you fit in, to gather friends, to try and date in this sort of chaotic maelstrom
38:08of this sort of tumbling sock rotation of laundry chaos,
38:14trying to figure out where you fit, where you sit, who you're going to marry,
38:18what you're going to do, so many options, so many choices,
38:21as opposed to, well, your father was a blacksmith, you're going to be a blacksmith,
38:25and you're going to go to church twice a week, and you're going to have a wife and kids,
38:28and you're going to know your place in society, you're going to know your place in the universe.
38:31We have an appeal for that.
38:33I achingly think back sometimes on all of the parts of my childhood that are gone.
38:40I was telling my daughter about some of the jobs I had the other day.
38:44One of the jobs I had was I was an office cleaner in my early mid-teens.
38:48I actually cleaned my doctor's office, I cleaned a travel agent's office
38:54and some other business office, and so I'd go into the mall late at night,
38:57I had my own keys for the mall, and I'd go in and I would clean offices.
39:01It was nice, I'd just put my headphones on, sing, and I remember listening to Live Police
39:07and a Crooked Cops album, I remember listening to Abbey Road,
39:11and just having a great old time, it was fine, just doing the cleaning,
39:15emptying the garbage and all that.
39:17But that mall is long gone.
39:19That mall, I mean, I was actually back there a couple of years ago,
39:22taking my daughter to the Science Center, we roamed around my old neighborhood,
39:25and I bought her with things that don't mean much to her,
39:28but it's all gone. It's all gone.
39:32And I have nostalgia for a world that has been scrubbed from existence.
39:37Like, there was this woman, she did a video, she went to sort of rural Ireland,
39:43and she's from America, and she went to go and pay for her gas,
39:47and she's like, where do I put my credit card?
39:49And so she couldn't figure it out, she went into the gas station,
39:53and she said, well, where do I put my credit card?
39:55And they're like, oh, you just get your gas and just come in and pay, right?
40:02And she's like, well, what's to stop me from just pumping my gas and driving off?
40:07And she's like, well, we trust you. We trust you.
40:10I grew up in that high-trust society, and for the younger people,
40:13like, I'm really sorry that you never experienced it.
40:17I'm really sorry that you never experienced what it's like to be trusted as a whole.
40:28There were no tags on clothing. Nothing was locked up.
40:32The price stickers for everything were just put on it.
40:35You could switch them around if you wanted.
40:37There was very little shoplifting. Everybody trusted each other.
40:40I could roam the neighborhood.
40:44A lot of times, you just weren't allowed.
40:46I don't care where you're going, just don't be at home, right?
40:48Drink from the hose. Nobody ever got any swimming lessons, right?
40:52There were no car seats.
40:56There was an old Jeff Foxworthy thing when he was coming up with a show,
40:59and the writer said, well, what do you remember as a kid?
41:01He's like, I remember lying on the front of the car.
41:04And my dad driving, and every now and then, he'd speed up.
41:07He'd just hold me from, like, what am I doing lying on the front dash of the car as a little toddler?
41:14I mean, there were, what was it?
41:20Cheektowaga. We've turned Buffalo Auditorium into a mud pit.
41:25Cheektowaga, Tanawanda, they always seemed to be on fire.
41:28Because WNED, whatever it was, it was Channel 7 from Buffalo.
41:33Everything was always on fire.
41:35It seemed like there was nothing but airstrikes and arson going on there.
41:38But I just remember 11 o'clock.
41:40It's 11 o'clock. Do you know where your children are?
41:45We could roam anywhere, do anything.
41:48And there was nothing to do at home.
41:54There's nothing to do at home.
41:56There's nothing on TV.
41:58I mean, it changed with video games a little bit,
42:00but video games back in the day were kind of boring.
42:05They certainly weren't as immersive as they are now, or as complicated.
42:10So we had no money, and there was nothing to do at home.
42:14So you'd go out and roam around.
42:16And yes, I would find, my brother and I knew where creeks were.
42:20We'd go and drink from creeks.
42:23Toughen up your immune system.
42:26So the endless inventiveness of having to come up with things to do with no money was wild.
42:33So we'd build forts in the woods, build tree houses.
42:36We'd go garbage picking and assemble bikes and just come up with stuff to do.
42:41I mean, of course, and we worked because things got pretty boring.
42:46And certainly when your friends got jobs, they would do things that cost some money.
42:50Like I still remember, it was $1.90 to go see a movie
42:53because it was $0.20 on the bus to go downtown or to Young & Egg.
42:57And it was $1.50 to get into the movie.
42:59And then it was $0.20 to get back.
43:03It was your $1.90, right?
43:06So when your friends got jobs and had money, you had to get a job and get money
43:11because they would all be doing stuff that cost money, and you couldn't go.
43:14So it kind of flowed all that way.
43:17So the high-trust society, you don't know, man.
43:21You don't know.
43:23It's really, really sad.
43:26It's really sad.
43:27I had the first Pong video game, and we were amused by it.
43:29Yeah, I remember the Pong video game. My uncle had it.
43:32My uncle had it.
43:36We used to leave our doors unlocked. Yeah, for sure.
43:40Yes, for sure.
43:47Yeah, I mean, and there was a high-trust society between men and women as well.
43:53I mean, the Me Too movement, I think, as a whole, is just a way to weaponize women against disfavored men.
43:59Not that women don't have complaints. They certainly do.
44:02But men have complaints as well, and nobody seems to care about that at all.
44:13The high-trust society was in its dying throes when I was a teenager,
44:16but I have a few memories of pumping gas and paying for it afterwards.
44:19Yeah.
44:21Somebody says, I live in such a high-trust society, and it's great, really worth the various downsides.
44:25Yeah, for sure.
44:27In elementary school, my friends and I would find cans to turn in for penny candy at the local general store.
44:32Yeah, that's right.
44:36I moved to a place where it's still pretty high-trust.
44:39It's like a different world. Yeah.
44:41Yeah, I mean, different cultures.
44:44You know, if you grew up in a sort of Christian culture of universalism,
44:49where you owe moral responsibilities to everyone,
44:53then it's tough to understand there's a lot of other cultures where you only owe moral obligations
44:58to other members of your own culture, and you don't owe it to people outside your culture.
45:02So that's sort of inevitable that your trust is going to founder based upon that sort of basic reality.
45:10Yeah, it's just quite sad.
45:13I mean, it's going to come back, but it's not going to be the most enjoyable transition.
45:23All right, let's do another couple of thoughts.
45:26What do we got?
45:34Do you prefer long hair and women?
45:39I am in Canada.
45:42Do you prefer long hair and women?
45:45That to me is sort of a big, it's a big test.
45:48It's a big test.
45:50If women cut their hair short saying it's just easier, that is a big test.
45:56That is a big test.
45:58So generally, generally, especially if you're married,
46:01if you're in some sort of long-term monogamous relationship,
46:06one sort of basic aspect of love is do things that your partner finds attractive.
46:14Do things that your partner finds attractive.
46:17That's pretty important, right?
46:19That's pretty important.
46:21And you got no tips today? Zero?
46:23I know we started a little late, but let's not forget to tip the old staff bot, would you?
46:28So it's one of the things that you want to look for when you're dating
46:34is do standards get relaxed and fail and fall away as you continue to date, right?
46:42That's important, right?
46:44It sort of reminds me, you know, when you get a new notebook as a kid, right?
46:49Your first page, you'd write everything neatly,
46:51and later it's just epileptic chicken scratch,
46:53like you've just thumped a bunch of inked up daddy long legs.
47:00Thank you for the freedom.com slash donate tip, I appreciate that.
47:05So when you're dating someone, they, you know, they know what you like.
47:12Do they continue to do what you like?
47:14Or do they start to relax?
47:15That's a really, really important thing.
47:17It's a really, really important thing to see if the standards are devolving,
47:21even before you get married, they're just going to accelerate after marriage.
47:24Because some people view a monopoly or monogamy as an additional responsibility, right?
47:30And some people view a monopoly or monogamy as a reason to get lazy.
47:35So some people say, well, if I'm going to have a monopoly on romantic and sexual activity with you,
47:41I better work as hard as I can to stay as attractive as possible,
47:44because you can't go anywhere else,
47:46therefore I have an additional responsibility to provide better things, right?
47:51And other people are like, whew, wow, I guess I'm locked in.
48:01I've got you locked in, you have no options really anymore,
48:04so I'm just going to decay my standards, right?
48:07Oh, you just renewed your subscription, thank you very much.
48:11Do you think it's possible that society reverts to what we had in the US in the late 1950s,
48:15or will progressives continue to destroy society?
48:19Well, that's up to you.
48:24And again, to me, the United States in the 1950s is not some perfect ideal,
48:30but in terms of society, yeah, it'll end up being in an optimum state,
48:37because we either end up with an optimum state society, like a truly free society,
48:41or we've got nothing.
48:44Because the end result of statism is always war and economic collapse, right?
48:49It is absolutely inevitable.
48:51The inevitable result of statism is always war and or economic collapse.
48:57No empire sustains itself, no society sustains itself,
49:01so we either get sick and tired of this cycle and start looking for something different,
49:07or we just keep repeating this cycle,
49:10where wealth leads to a bigger government, leads to war, slash economic collapse.
49:16So at some point we'll get tired of this cycle and we'll start looking for alternatives,
49:20and I'll be right there, maybe not in person, but certainly online and in writing,
49:24I'll be right there to lead humanity to the promised land.
49:28A full acceptance of the non-aggression principle, respect for property rights, and we're there.
49:33We can then have a beautiful, sustainable society,
49:37or, you know, we can just continue with this success is failure, right?
49:42Success in a state of society always leads to destruction.
49:51Yeah, if a man starts exercising and dressing in nicer clothes, his wife knows he's cheating on her.
49:55Yeah, yeah, for sure, we're just going to maintain that stuff, right?
49:59But, you know, it's pretty, I don't know, it's fairly easy.
50:03It's fairly easy to have a man not cheat on you, isn't it?
50:06I mean, unless you've chosen some total sociopath, in which case, well, don't choose total sociopaths.
50:11But ladies, it's actually fairly easy to have a man not cheat on you, just so you know.
50:17It's really not that complicated.
50:19All right, so for men, how is it, how do you get a woman to stop a man from cheating on her?
50:30The best gift this season to someone you care about is a subscription to Steph.
50:33Well, thank you, I appreciate that.
50:34I can't help but agree, I really do appreciate that.
50:39Thank you for the tip.
50:41I have not listened to the Tears for Fears new album, although I was a fairly big fan of them when they were younger.
50:46The Bad Man song is great.
50:48The stuff they did with Alita Adams is really, really good.
50:53I did try listening to the new David Gilmour album, and it's about as inspiring as the new Yes album,
50:59which is about as inspiring as the new Sting album, which is about as inspiring as the new Paul McCartney album,
51:03which is like, there's no juice left in the squeeze.
51:07There's no...
51:12Yeah, I mean, it's pretty easy to not, to have a man not cheat on you.
51:18Just be reasonably attractive and bang his brains out.
51:21It's really not that...
51:23It's really, you know, men go out to eat when there's nothing to eat at home.
51:27Right, you've seen that, you know, shocked Pikachu face, like a woman whose husband cheats on him when she hasn't had sex with him for two years.
51:35Her husband cheats on her.
51:43If you were a single man, which country would you favor to live plus work in, digital work, other than Canada?
51:49I love the US.
51:51I love, love the US.
51:53Love the US.
51:54Although Canada, well, Canada's going to swing, right?
51:57I mean, we can see that sort of coming as a whole.
51:59I mean, society does try to restore balance, right?
52:05Can capitalism not always become a tool for oppression in a multicultural society?
52:12So, just read my novel, The Future.
52:14I've got a whole novel called The Future, which deals with all of this,
52:17and it's engaging and entertaining and enjoyable, and you should check it out.
52:21All right, any other last questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems in our grand $20 donation day?
52:31Hey, that's fine.
52:32I understand the economy is tough.
52:34No problem.
52:35No problem.
52:38Yeah, we achieve it through peaceful parenting.
52:40Yeah, there's no other way.
52:41I just did another, I did another review of the gentle parenting argument,
52:46because it's close, and yet, it's infinitely close, yet infinitely far, right?
52:52And in it, I talk about, which I'll sort of mention here, because I think that's important as well.
52:57Women generally communicate to share feelings and experiences.
53:01Men generally communicate in order to change behavior, right?
53:04So, a man will say to a woman, do you want to, would you like to come out on a date with me this Friday?
53:09He's aiming to change her behavior, right?
53:11And to have her change her behavior to come out on a date with him.
53:14If a man says, can you pass me the salt?
53:16He's asking you to change your behavior, so you pass him the salt, right?
53:19So, men communicate in order to change behavior.
53:21Women communicate in order to share feelings and thoughts.
53:28So, in the peaceful parenting paradigm, the child's upset, right?
53:33And the mom says, I can really see that you're upset, right?
53:39And this is why men and women sometimes communicate in a way that's confusing or frustrating,
53:44because the woman is sharing her experiences and thoughts and feelings,
53:50and the man is trying to solve her problem.
53:52So, if the woman comes home and complains about work, the man is like, well, you should try this, and you should try this,
53:55because men are trying to communicate in order to change behavior.
54:00Hey, I'm hungry. We should go hunt. Okay, let's go hunt, right?
54:05Whereas, women communicate in order to share thoughts, feelings, and experiences,
54:09and this mismatch is confusing, and it is confusing with regards to parenting, right?
54:16So, if the child is upset, and the mom is doing this gentle parenting thing of saying,
54:21I can really see that you're upset, okay, and?
54:24We're supposed to change behavior.
54:26So, for men, it's like if your teenage son is lounging around, and you say, hey, can you go and,
54:30what's it, Asshole Son? Was it a weird Al Yankovic takeoff on Black Hole Son?
54:34Asshole Son, mow the lawn.
54:36So, you say, hey, would you mind going to mow the lawn? It's really getting long.
54:39You said you'd do it, right?
54:40And if your son says to you, like, yeah, man, I can totally see that you really, really want me to mow the lawn.
54:46I really get that.
54:47And then he goes back to playing his video games or whatever, right?
54:50That wouldn't be particularly satisfying for you, right?
54:52Like, well, no, can you, I'd really like you to mow the lawn.
54:56Yeah, man, I totally get that you want me to do that.
54:58I empathize with that.
54:59It's like, no, no, no, mow the lawn, whatever you're going to do, right?
55:03So, and then the way I sort of try to explain it to women is if you're on a date and the guy wants to kiss you,
55:10but you don't want to kiss the guy, right?
55:12And he says, oh, no, so the only reason you don't want to kiss me is you had a little bit too much Indian food,
55:19so you're kind of full, feeling a little bloated, but otherwise you'd want to kiss me.
55:22And he comes in to kiss you again.
55:23You heard, no, no, no, I don't, I really don't want to kiss you.
55:25Like, I'm just not feeling it.
55:26It's like, I don't want to kiss you.
55:27I don't want to kiss you.
55:28And he's like, yeah, yeah, I totally empathize with the fact that you don't want to kiss me.
55:31I totally understand.
55:32Then he comes in to kiss you again.
55:33He'd be like, you're not listening.
55:34Don't kiss me, right?
55:35You're trying, you're communicating not to share experiences and thoughts,
55:38but to get the man to change his behavior to have him stop kissing you, right?
55:41And so if all you do is validate people's feelings without really listening and changing your behavior,
55:46it's kind of manipulative and kind of annoying, which is why it doesn't tend to work.
55:51What is up when a man is respected by other men but not by women?
55:56You know, you'd have to give me more details about that.
55:59Now, listen, don't forget, freedomain.com slash call.
56:03Freedomain.com slash call.
56:06I would really, really appreciate that.
56:08I would really, really appreciate that.
56:10And helping me out with freedomain.com slash donate would be very, very helpful as well.
56:18Very, very helpful as well.
56:20And I look forward to your support.
56:25Freedomain.com slash donate.
56:26I really, really thank everyone for dropping by today.
56:28Sorry we had a slightly late techie tech start, but it's just fine.
56:34It's just fine.
56:37And you will donate on freedomain.com slash donate.
56:39I appreciate that.
56:40Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
56:43And remember, no shows Wednesday and Friday next week.
56:47I'll tell you the story at some point.
56:49And, yeah, you're welcome to do a call in freedomain.com slash call.
56:53I did a really interesting call in yesterday, just before we end here.
56:56I did a really interesting call in yesterday.
56:58I can't remember a time when I've done this before.
57:01This was a guy calling in with significant family dating issues.
57:07Yeah, we started a bit late for me to do a supporter-only thing, but maybe I'll do one Monday or Tuesday.
57:12But it was a guy who called in who wanted to talk about dating, family, relationship issues.
57:21And he was referred to me and knew nothing, really, about what I do.
57:25So I kind of had to—it might be a good introductory show for people because I had to sort of build up the basic reasoning as to what I do on the fly with no history.
57:34Because normally people who call in have been listening for a long time, right?
57:38And so it was a really interesting call.
57:43I'm sure that will go out early this week.
57:45It was a really interesting call because it was something that was breaking someone into the entire philosophy of morality, relationships, parent-child, dating, and so on.
58:01Breaking somebody in over a course of two hours who had no experience whatsoever.
58:05So I hope you'll check that out.
58:07But it was a really, really interesting call as a whole.
58:12All right. Well, thanks, everyone, so much.
58:13Have yourself a wonderful, wonderful couple of days.
58:16I will talk to you—I'll do a show before Wednesday for sure.
58:20And then I'll be out for a couple of days.
58:22And then I'll be back.
58:26All right. Lots of love, everyone.
58:28Take care. Thanks, Emil. Bye.