Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
  • 3 months ago
Sunday Morning Live 18 August 2024

In this episode, we examine self-ownership and its implications for personal agency and societal norms. I address a listener's question, asserting that experience, rather than theory, is key to understanding self-ownership. We discuss the dangers of societal norms, particularly regarding child abuse, and the complicity of adults.
Additionally, we analyze generational differences among GenX, Millennials, and Gen Z, exploring how upbringing influences moral decisions. The conversation emphasizes the importance of challenging established beliefs to build a more ethical society, inviting listeners to reflect on their own values and their broader impacts.

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Transcript
00:00:00Well well well good morning everybody 18th of August 2024 we are going philosophy centric and it is a Sunday morning church of the human brain.
00:00:13Congregation thank you for joining me on this fine fine morning of intense slurry sludgy british style raininess in what should be a sunny day in august.
00:00:232024 I didn't really care about the weather that much until until my daughter started working in ice cream.
00:00:35So yeah if you could like on the stream tips donation support free domain dot com slash donate more than welcome free domain dot com slash donate and let's get to your comments and do our general greetings.
00:00:51Val started the chat today by saying balls excellent good to know it's good to know what you're sitting on or if you even notice them.
00:01:03All right and let's get your questions tell us how to solve all the world's problems in 10 words or less peaceful parenting reason evidence humility.
00:01:13All right hello Steph I recently watched a video discussing.
00:01:25Self-ownership but the host was acting Dave Smith well I guess oh did you mean asking please check your typos I recently watched a video discussing self-ownership but the host was asking Dave Smith to prove that he owns himself and self-ownership exists.
00:01:41Dave did not have a great answer and with my current level of study neither do I would you be able to give an argument to this question how do you own yourself and how does self-ownership exist thank you love the show.
00:01:54Well the great thing well one of the many great things about being a bold-faced empiricist is that you look first not for theoretical arguments but for evidence in the present.
00:02:11Let me say that again take it to the bridge tell me again as an empiricist in a debate I look not to abstract arguments first and foremost I look for the evidence embedded in the interaction.
00:02:29So for instance when I debated two communists who were cheering on my platforming I pointed out that they were siding with multinational corporations against a working class hero who'd come from virtually nothing to.
00:02:45Fairly near the top of the intellectual profession and they were siding instead of siding with the working class proletariat guy which would be me they were siding with the giant multinational corporations and they were the worst effing communists.
00:02:57In the world right so that's not looking for abstract arguments that's looking for the evidence in what's happening immediately right so if somebody says to you language cannot convey any meaning.
00:03:10Then rather than running into these abstract arguments which is to eject from empiricism into the platonic realm of ideals and manipulating language you simply take the evidence that's right there in front of you when you say.
00:03:24So you're using language to communicate that language cannot communicate meaning.
00:03:32So you then put the onus on the other person to say how what they're doing accords with what they're arguing.
00:03:43Communists are supposed to be supporting the proletariat against the capitalists these two communists were supporting the multinational semi-fascistic corporations against the proletariat.
00:03:57So if I were in Dave Smith's shoes what I would say if somebody said to me prove self-ownership I would say I want you to ask me that question without exercising self-ownership.
00:04:13Then you're done it's really that simple ask me that question but without exercising self-ownership.
00:04:21Of course it is impossible to ask a question without exercising self-ownership so you're done you don't jump out of the empirical evidence of what's actually happening right there in front of you.
00:04:34Into some abstract arguments well the neurology this and the ontological that and the no don't care ask me the question without exercising self-ownership.
00:04:46And you'll realize it's just a bunch of sophist bullshit designed to waste time while political power flows over the remnants of your liberties.
00:04:59Ask me the question without exercising self-ownership.
00:05:05Another way of doing it is if somebody says to me Steph I need you to prove self-ownership.
00:05:12Then I would say how do you know that it's me who's answering your question how do you know to address the question to me and how do you know that it's me answering your question.
00:05:25Well because you're the one who's saying right so you're saying to me Steph there's an entity called you that I want you to exercise self-ownership which I know is coming out of you because you're exercising self-ownership and I need you to disprove self-ownership.
00:05:42One of the big contributions one of the major contributions I've made to philosophy is that you do not argue the content of the argument without examining the form of the argument.
00:05:55Like 90% of philosophical problems prove to me that you exist you're assuming I exist in order to talk to me done prove to me self-ownership how can I do that without first exercising self-ownership and how can you even ask the question without first exercising self-ownership.
00:06:20But prove to me that reason is superior to force well you're asking me to prove something to you you're not challenging me to a violent duel therefore you already accept that reason is superior to force right you understand right forget about the content of the argument what matters is all of the assumptions baked into the form and process of the argument.
00:07:16It'd be like somebody saying Steph I want you to make an oral argument that proves that my ears work it's like what the fact that you're asking for an oral argument you through sound means that you already accept that your ears work so what are you doing it's just a big waste of time.
00:07:33No right I just started listening to your novel just poor such great writing donation from me is incoming tonight thank you I rewrote I rewrote the entire second half of that book it's one of the big rewrites I've ever done in my life the first half of that book was an absolute joy and pleasure to write and then I hit a giant wall of what on earth comes next and I tried so many different things.
00:08:03So yes justpornovel.com it is the certainly the opening of that book I think the book as a whole is great the opening the first.
00:08:1010 to 12 chapters are about as good as anything I'm ever going to do thank you for the tip toss a lovely like on the stream if you would like I appreciate that.
00:08:19Listening now to peaceful parenting can't say I am surprised by the content been listening for 10 years.
00:08:24All right.
00:08:34Staff emits an interesting vibe today I wonder how this will play out.
00:08:41Autumn is here in Winnipeg leaves falling and yes there is a distant buzzing.
00:08:46Of the insects as they gather their storms to strip the bones out of the flesh of the people.
00:08:55The year seems to have just flown by yeah it does seem to be.
00:09:03I was a most Dave Smith debating Andrew Wilson.
00:09:13Yes we have I have answered the morality brother sister incest.
00:09:17Love catching you live Stefan love your ass I do give good donkey what can I tell you.
00:09:29All right prove to me German exists without using German written or spoken.
00:09:38I don't quite follow that one never finished just poor I'm afraid of the stick lady.
00:09:44Stick lady I'm not sure who the stick lady is.
00:09:50That I cannot fathom I cannot follow I do not know.
00:10:03Thank you James.
00:10:05I hope this donation could help lead to an intro to the conscience presentation.
00:10:13It is something I'm familiar with but would love to have a single presentation to refer to it.
00:10:17I believe a lot of others will gain value from a presentation like this.
00:10:24Well I could do it now main villain of the book the stick lady.
00:10:29Well I could do it now main villain of the book the stick lady.
00:10:35Do you mean Lady Barbara?
00:10:42Do you mean Lady Barbara?
00:10:45Yeah see philosophy is not so much examining others philosophy at least for the first 20
00:10:50years or 10 years or whatever philosophy is about examining the premises of your own actions.
00:10:59What do I have to accept to be true in order to act within the world?
00:11:05Because I am acting within the world we all are and what do I have to accept to be true in order
00:11:12to act within the world? What do I have to accept to be true in order to debate or argue within the
00:11:20world? It is about introspection not cross-examination. So in order to debate within
00:11:33the world in order to argue and interact within the world just think about something as simple
00:11:39as walking down to the street corner to get a coffee. I used to live many years ago on a street
00:11:49called Tecumseh and it had a baker's dozen coffee on the corner coffee shop on the corner that just
00:11:54had god-tier caffeine experiences just fantastic. So you wake up and you're like oh I don't have
00:12:04any coffee I really want a coffee I'll walk to the corner store to get a coffee all right great.
00:12:14So just to do something as simple as that what do you have to accept what do you have to believe?
00:12:21Well you have to accept number one that you've woken up you have to accept that you have an
00:12:30objective way of differentiating a dream state from a waking state. So you have to accept that
00:12:37you've woken up you have to accept that you're in your bed you have to accept that there's a
00:12:41to accept that there's a spatial difference between your bed
00:12:45and the coffee shop you have to accept that there's such a thing as gravity
00:12:49you have to accept that there's no way to get to the coffee shop
00:12:54without getting out of bed. You have to be able to navigate the world you have to be able to
00:12:59navigate your environment you have to accept the objective definition of reality provided to your
00:13:05brain by the senses. You have to accept both internal stimuli I would like a coffee and
00:13:13external reality I can't get it by lying in bed daydreaming. You have to get up you have to accept
00:13:20certain social conventions in that if you sleep in your underpants you're going to have to throw
00:13:26on a piece of clothing or two or hopefully three in order to go to the coffee shop. You're going
00:13:30to have to accept that there's a such a thing as mathematics because the coffee costs a dollar fifty
00:13:35and you need a dollar fifty in order to pay for the coffee. You're going to have to protect yourself
00:13:40against the elements if it's raining you're going to probably take an umbrella if it's really sunny
00:13:44you might put on a hat or some sunglasses. All of these things you have to accept as real you have
00:13:49to accept that the coffee is real you have to accept that there's an economic self-interest
00:13:53for the coffee owner you have to accept that you have to pay for it and therefore it's better than
00:13:56stealing you have to accept that if there's a lineup you can't just elbow your way through
00:14:00in you can't you have to accept that a peace negotiation and economic exchange is better than
00:14:06violence because you're not crashing in through the plate glass window scattering everyone with
00:14:09your gunfire and grabbing a coffee from the container. You have to accept the social conventions
00:14:16of standing in line of having clothes of paying you have to accept even if you have an untoward
00:14:21thought let's say there's some real sexy woman standing in line that you don't grab her that
00:14:25you don't comment loudly how sexy she is you have an inner voice you have an outer voice you have to
00:14:30accept that language has meaning because you have to you don't just grunt scratch your ass and point
00:14:35at coffee what you do is you say hey could I get a medium coffee please one cream no sugar that's
00:14:40my particular drug of choice you have to accept all of these things just to get some coffee in your belly
00:14:50there's a certain amount of social trust you have to have that they're not just going to
00:14:54take your dollar fifty and not give you a coffee that the coffee is not going to be rancid full of
00:14:58poison or rat feces there's just think of the incredible amount of assumptions that you have
00:15:05to make just to wake up and get a cup of coffee and then you you can choose to sit in the coffee
00:15:12shop and have your coffee but there's a certain social convention which is you don't sit there
00:15:17all day on one cup of coffee because you know they got to make money and they got to cycle
00:15:20their tables and so on and there'll be a sign there used to say uh you can sit for 20 minutes
00:15:26if you have a coffee which is you know randomly enforced depending on how how busy it is
00:15:33you have to accept that the coffee is going to be within a narrow goldilocks band of temperature
00:15:37it's not going to be so cold that it's gross it's not going to be so hot that you burn yourself
00:15:42right that was the mcdonald's issue some woman spilled a coffee that was volcanic
00:15:46temperature and burnt herself which was put off as a laughable lawsuit mostly because of marketing
00:15:54so you just think of all of the
00:15:59objective rational mathematical language-based movement-based social convention-based realities
00:16:07that you have to accept just to get out of bed then get a coffee and then people are like
00:16:13philosophy is really complicated no it's not
00:16:18it's really not just look at what you're doing look at what you're doing and all of the facts
00:16:26and realities that you have to accept in order to function within the day now let's say that you want
00:16:30to get on and debate with someone on x or facebook or whatever right you have to get okay again
00:16:36language has meaning there's objective reality uh the science works mathematics works engineering
00:16:42works because that's all reliant upon you trading digital insults back and forth so all of the
00:16:46things that you have to accept in order to just have a debate reason is superior to force language
00:16:54has meaning objectivity is is a value objective truths are valuable than subjective impressions
00:17:00it is false to claim that your subjective impressions are objective truths slander is
00:17:05a coward's way out of losing a debate all of these things you have to accept all of them all of them
00:17:12all of them
00:17:24i can i will find her name she was the one who was kicked out after confronting the rich guy
00:17:28mary mary o'donnell the villain interesting interesting interesting she's a complex character
00:17:36is she more sinned against or more sinning
00:17:42against
00:17:48uh steph if you were to write a horror novel based on so many call-ins what would the main
00:17:55what would be the main scary element oh the main scary element in a horror story that i would write
00:18:00and maybe you've got a very interesting idea but the main horror element is not the people who do
00:18:06evil unto you but all the people who enable the people who do evil unto you the worst thing about
00:18:13my childhood wasn't my mother the worst thing about my childhood was society as a whole and
00:18:17realizing the people like my mother run the show in society my mother is the queen of the universe
00:18:25in which we exist my mother runs the show people like my mother they run the show they make it work
00:18:33they do what they want everybody parts before them everybody appeases them
00:18:39everybody insults the victims and praises and appeases the abusers
00:18:48the real horror of child abuse is not the abusers it is all the people who enable ignore
00:18:54support appease prop up and praise the abusers
00:19:02you
00:19:08so the real horror is not the devil but all the people who claim to be saints but worship the devil
00:19:20my mother did not operate in a void she did not operate in a singular will i'll give you an
00:19:27example so i did a call and show yesterday with a fellow
00:19:34whose mother is in her 50s and his mother
00:19:43has a boyfriend also in his 50s and his mother's boyfriend kind of creeped on his 18 year old sister
00:19:54and he was kind of appalled by this of course as he should be so he went around to the family
00:20:01and said can you believe that this guy mom's boyfriend creeped on the 18 year old sister
00:20:06my sister and everybody appeased oh he makes her happy it's not great but you know
00:20:15she just recovered from an illness she deserves some happiness blah blah blah right
00:20:19so i pointed out to him that his his mother's boyfriend who had just recently come into the
00:20:27family structure a couple of months prior had accurately sized up and assessed his family far
00:20:34prior had accurately sized up and assessed his family far better than he had
00:20:43and my mother
00:20:47absolutely accurately obsessed assessed the nature of the world decades before i did
00:20:53she was right i was wrong she was accurate i was naive pollyannish pollyannish and foolishly
00:21:00optimistic my mother was a far better philosopher
00:21:08than i was for the first for the first 30 to 35 years of my life my mother had a more accurate
00:21:16understanding of the nature of society and of the cowardice of everyone than i did
00:21:23and i was shocked that my mother could get away with what she did
00:21:29my mother was not my mother understood it and knew it and relied upon it
00:21:33and knew that nobody would call for help that nobody would come and intervene that nobody
00:21:37would ever do anything and it didn't matter where we went it didn't matter if we lived in ireland
00:21:41as we did it didn't matter if we lived in england it didn't matter if i lived in other places in
00:21:46england or in london it didn't matter when we went to africa it didn't matter when we came to canada
00:21:50it didn't matter when we stayed in the States, it didn't matter when we went to Scotland,
00:21:53which we did, and I actually took entrance exams for schools in Scotland,
00:21:57it didn't matter, didn't matter where we went. People were all the same spineless fucking cowards.
00:22:05She knew. She, my mother, understood the nature of society
00:22:12far more accurately than I did for probably over 30 years.
00:22:17Just as the guy I talked to yesterday, his mother's boyfriend sized up the corruption
00:22:27within the family and knew that he could creep on the 18-year-old girl
00:22:32and would receive no pushback. So he comes bungeeing in,
00:22:36assesses the family in a very rapid manner and has a more accurate view of the family
00:22:43than this guy is who's been in the family nigh on a quarter century.
00:22:52Learning to learn from evil is one of the most humbling experiences of the pursuit of virtue.
00:23:02Learning to learn from evil is one of the most humbling experiences in the path to virtue
00:23:08because evil people have a lot to teach us about the nature of society
00:23:14because they understand it in so many ways better than we do.
00:23:19I was fueled by optimism of reason and virtue and passion and entertainment
00:23:25being an effective block against the spread of evil.
00:23:30Evil people laughed at me and shut me down knowing that 95% of people would forget about me
00:23:38like I'd never existed. I thought there was a little more loyalty. I thought there'd be a
00:23:42little bit more passion and compassion and so on. And they were like, no, they find you entertaining,
00:23:50dance bald spot head monkey. But when you're gone, one website over, they will forget about you
00:23:59like you were never there. And I was like, no, that won't be the case. Because everyone says
00:24:05they love me. I mean, I just did what eight and a half million views on Twitter with two people
00:24:13posting about me. Are many more people here? A few. Welcome. Nice to have you with us.
00:24:23So I didn't think the deplatforming would work as well as it did. I was wrong. The bad people
00:24:33were right. Learning to kneel before the bitter instructions wielded like swords and whips
00:24:40from the corrupt is one of the most humbling processes of the pursuit of virtue.
00:24:46Never be afraid to learn from anyone and everyone.
00:24:51Am I rewatching Seinfeld at the moment? I am not.
00:24:57Do you think there is an issue with conservative leaning music being too smiley and happy
00:25:01so that it non-explicitly encourages the audience to repress anger they have at abusive people?
00:25:06I've never really thought about it. I don't really think so.
00:25:15Tried that nitro cold brew you talked about the other day. That thing hits you.
00:25:19It's a little concentrated. Are you still working on a true crime podcast? True crime podcast. I am
00:25:26going to record this afternoon, I think, about the Turpin family.
00:25:32I jumped back and forth thinking Mary was a villain through that book.
00:25:36That was a great experience. I've never read a book where I jumped all over like that before.
00:25:45You also have to assume that having a computer with access to all information on demand in your
00:25:49pocket, then the best use of the time is to argue with people online.
00:25:55Have you heard Tucker Carlson talk about the health benefits of nicotine? Have you
00:25:58looked into that at all? Doesn't it raise testosterone and stuff like that?
00:26:05I'm of two minds about supplements and aging. Part of me is like, embrace the aging process.
00:26:11Another part of me is, hey, if you can prop it up for a while, why not?
00:26:20I saw a grandma at a coffee shop yesterday, verbally abusing and spanking her granddaughter.
00:26:27I knew I had to speak up and tell the grandmother what she was doing was wrong,
00:26:30and I failed to do so, feeling awful about my inaction. I'm not going to argue with you there.
00:26:44It seems that bonds between people are a lot weaker than you might think.
00:26:49Joker's argument in The Dark Knight is similar to that of evil people, that one will turn
00:27:03on one another without hesitation. Batman's belief is that good will shine through, I think.
00:27:11I don't know. Isn't Batman just a psycho using
00:27:15criminality as an excuse to beat the living hell out of people?
00:27:22Batman is a manifestation of people's intense frustration
00:27:28with the legal system, the legal system that benefits the rich, that stretches things out
00:27:33for years, where the process is the punishment, and where people who make false accusations are
00:27:37very rarely punished. People are incredibly frustrated with the legal system as a whole,
00:27:42and so they wish for the cities to be cleaned up through vigilante justice.
00:27:46The problem with vigilante justice is it often gets things wrong, and it's heavily susceptible
00:27:50to manipulation. This is sort of an example from Vietnam, that because the Viet Cong,
00:27:56the communists, were hiding among the general population, the US said,
00:28:02well, if you tell us who the Viet Cong are, we'll go and take them out, and they offered rewards
00:28:07and so on. Then people just, oh, this guy slept with my wife five years ago. Yeah, he's totally
00:28:10Viet Cong, and then they'd go kill the guy, and just some aspects of the military became
00:28:16sort of paid for higher hitmen in a sort of analogous way.
00:28:23So Batman is a giant manifestation of the hellish despair
00:28:30that people have regarding the justice system, the quote justice system.
00:28:34But Batman, if he wanted to deal with crime, he returned to childhood.
00:28:47You can't deal with crime without dealing with childhood,
00:28:51at least not in, I mean, I get it, you've got to deal with it in the moment and so on, right?
00:28:54But I would love to read a horror novel as Steph described just now.
00:29:08I wonder if you could do a podcast series about British elite public schools and their issues
00:29:12slash benefits. That would be interesting. I'm not sure how philosophical that would be,
00:29:17and I certainly did go to an elite British government. Public school means private school.
00:29:22It's kind of a nomenclature flip, but if you want to know about the elite private schools
00:29:33in England, the best person to go to is George Orwell. He wrote some amazing stuff about all of
00:29:37that. Is it that the average person lacks the courage to confront the bad people?
00:29:49I don't know what that means.
00:29:53What do you mean lacks the courage?
00:29:59I mean, the entire purpose of courage is that you have to lack it in order to have it.
00:30:14The whole point of courage is its will against resistance. I don't need courage
00:30:22to walk down the stairs in the morning. I would need courage to climb down a mountain
00:30:27because it would be scary. So it lacks the courage. The entire purpose of courage is
00:30:33you're supposed to lack it in order to do it. It's not courageous unless you lack courage.
00:30:38The whole purpose of courage is to backfill against fear and have you do something that's
00:30:42virtuous or good or positive against your own fear and anxiety.
00:30:46What do you mean lacks? Courage is a lack. That's what we need, the virtue. I don't want to do it.
00:30:50It's too scary. Courage is what tells you you have to do it even if it's scary.
00:30:56There's no such thing as lacks the courage. Courage is a lack. Courage is what you use
00:31:01to overcome the lack. People don't lack courage. That's a tautology. Courage is an absence.
00:31:12They lack the virtue to confront the bad people.
00:31:23They lack the courage to confront the bad people.
00:31:27Sorry, they lack the virtue to confront the bad people.
00:31:34But courage is always about it. You need courage because you don't want to do it.
00:31:42The whole point of philosophy is to have you go against what is easier and destructive in the
00:31:50short run. It is easier to appease evildoers in the short run. The problem is it costs
00:31:59you your entire fucking civilization in the long run. So it was easier for people to forget me
00:32:10when I was deplatformed rather than say, gosh, this guy was treated badly. He did good things.
00:32:17He told difficult truths. He's been treated badly. Maybe I should spend five minutes going to
00:32:27sign up and support and send him a message of encouragement.
00:32:30But instead it was like, oh, okay, he's gone. He's gone.
00:32:33And it wasn't that people forgot me. That's not true. If people had truly forgot me,
00:32:42then when stuff was posted on Twitter recently that got eight and a half million views,
00:32:46people would be like, who? Right. They didn't forget me at all.
00:32:53They just found it easier to watch me be dragged out of the town square and thrown off a cliff
00:33:02than to lift a finger to say, hey, maybe not. Maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we shouldn't.
00:33:13It's like people are, thousands of people are following me as I give a great speech down the
00:33:18road and then I get jumped, beaten, thrown in a ditch and everyone just keeps on walking like
00:33:23they were there for no other purpose. See, the problem with not protecting the victims of child
00:33:36abuse is that they grow up with no desire to save your ass against the evildoers. In other words,
00:33:44if you turn over the children through your indifference to the evildoers who are abusing
00:33:48them, when those children grow up, they will have no desire to risk their skin to save you
00:33:54from evildoers either, which is the whole boomer thing, right? The boomers did basically fuck all
00:34:00about child abuse. In fact, they added to it in general with crappy schools, with bad demographics,
00:34:06with national debts, with letting everything decay in front of them.
00:34:12So, what happens is the young then grow up with no desire to reciprocate, protect the boomers
00:34:22from evildoers. So, if bad things start happening to the boomers, and it will, then people will be
00:34:27like, eh, you failed to protect us. So, if let's say they start taxing unrealized capital gains,
00:34:35which is going to hit the boomers, or there are problems with paying out
00:34:41retirement benefits, people are like, eh, right? I mean, you reap what you sow.
00:34:50If the older generation fails to lift a fucking finger to protect the younger generation from
00:34:57child abuse, then the older generation will not be protected from the evildoers they nurtured and
00:35:11grew. So, somebody says, I have read your novel, The Future. Great book.
00:35:30Sure, we can, and I think rightfully, call the protagonist a villain, though given his
00:35:37life history, is he both victim and victimizer at the same time. Not an excuse, because he could
00:35:43have chosen to live differently. Morality can be tricky to sort through. Do I need courage to take
00:35:54an afternoon nap in my own bed versus go march against a tyrannical government? Yeah. They stop
00:36:01following you, partly because they knew that listening would put them in a collision course
00:36:06with their families and society, so the deep platform became an easy excuse to jump ship.
00:36:24If you don't care about the young working poor, do not be shocked when cries of eat the rich ring
00:36:28out. The Future is by far your best book. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. How should it be,
00:36:35in your view, if you hear a child being abused, what steps should be taken? Will
00:36:38interventions of a government agency be better or worse for the victim?
00:36:44Well, that's an argument from consequences.
00:36:51So, the great challenge in intervening in situations of child abuse is to not surrender to
00:37:00rage. That's a great challenge. So, in situations where I've intervened, my approach has been to say
00:37:09to the parent, this is not how you want to parent, is it? I mean, this isn't what you dreamed about
00:37:14when you wanted to become a mother or a father. This is not how it should be. And listen, I
00:37:21sympathize, I understand. You experience a lot of frustration, and I'm sure it's getting kind
00:37:26of circular. Like, the more frustrated you get, the more aggressive you get, and therefore,
00:37:29the more difficult your kids get, and so on, right? But this is not the way that you want to
00:37:39be as a parent, and it's going to cost you down the road. Like, you know you're going to get older,
00:37:42and they're going to get bigger, right? So, when the teenage years come, it's going to be really
00:37:47tough. So, you know, try and find a deep breath. There's lots of resources out there. I recommend
00:37:55Parent Effectiveness Training, of course, peacefulparenting.com, and so on. So, this isn't
00:38:01how you want things to go. It isn't going to pay off for you in the long run at all. I understand
00:38:05the frustration, but there are ways to cool the temperature. So, the problem is, of course, if
00:38:14you go up and say, you know, what kind of jerk hits their kids? What's the matter with you, right?
00:38:17Then you escalate. Then you are provoking the same humiliation that the abusive parents
00:38:26experience as children, which will then cause them to further humiliate their own children,
00:38:30right? So, when it comes to intervening in situations of child abuse, your sole focus
00:38:35is what is best for the children. And if you approach the parents who are abusive with
00:38:40aggression, then they will later take that aggression out on their children.
00:38:44You are behaving so badly that some guy came up and talked trash to me, and like,
00:38:48right? So, you want to be as peaceful and reasonable as possible.
00:39:09All right, let's see here.
00:39:14What sin did Gen X commit with regards to society? Did we carry on in the same footsteps
00:39:23as the boomers, i.e. kept on working without looking up to see society
00:39:27failing, or did we miss something else entirely?
00:39:31Somebody replied and says, we never engaged. We were the dropout generation.
00:39:36I think that Gen X was slightly better at processing child abuse. Is that true? Because,
00:39:56I mean, I'm Gen X. What's interesting, so I think Gen X is, I'm just sort of thinking about
00:40:06my friends when I was younger, the people I grew up with and stayed with into my early 30s,
00:40:13mid-30s really. So, I think with regards to Gen X, the pattern that I've noticed is that
00:40:25Gen X overtly abused their children less than boomers, but still don't acknowledge child abuse.
00:40:34So, of the people I grew up with, not one person ever gave me a shred of sympathy
00:40:42for the abuse I suffered as a child. However, as far as I know, they did not
00:40:47abuse their own children, certainly not to the same degree as a lot of the boomer parents.
00:40:52So, maybe it's a transitional thing, but the next generation, millennials, the Gen A,
00:41:07they're also not acknowledging child abuse, really. When you see somebody with tattoos
00:41:18online, most of it Lauren Boebert posted a picture of herself. Boy, it doesn't take much
00:41:22to get conservative Christian women into their bikinis posting thirst pics online, right?
00:41:32And you see that she's got these sort of half-Aztec flame racing stripe tattoos all over her
00:41:38side. You see a woman with tattoos in society as a whole, and people are like
00:41:45trashy, bad, wrong, blah, right?
00:41:56But it's just, they're branded as people easy to victimize by their child abusers, right?
00:42:05They're just branded. A cattle that is branded by its owner has said, this is mine and
00:42:11it belongs to me, and if you find it, return it. It's not your cattle, it's not loose, right?
00:42:15So, they're branded. They're branded in the same way that thieves have a secret handshake.
00:42:21Tattoos are victim of child abuse, easy to exploit. It's just branding. It's a sign for
00:42:28other people to come and exploit and manipulate and control and bully.
00:42:40What do you think of avoiding talking about political opinions
00:42:43until old age and focusing on self-improvement instead in the meantime?
00:42:52Well, the 10 years 06 to 2016 were the absolute glory peaks of free speech
00:42:59in the history of the world. But you see, once free speech began to actually have an effect,
00:43:05so people would say, well, you can have free speech, but we'll gatekeep the magazines,
00:43:09the movies, the TV shows, the books, the publishing, whatever, the universities.
00:43:13So, you can have free speech, but you can't have a platform,
00:43:17because in order for your free speech to have an effect, it has to be broadcast in a wider medium.
00:43:22So, we gatekeep and control the broadcast to a wider medium.
00:43:29No problem. Have all the free speech you want. You just can't get your free speech
00:43:35out to the world, because we control the pathways, the avenues, and the gatekeeping for that.
00:43:40Now, of course, the internet removed the gatekeepers, and we can have this conversation,
00:43:47you and I, without gatekeepers, without somebody saying, no, no, no, can't do it,
00:43:52de-platformed. I mean, as far as that goes, I mean, it still happens and all of that, but
00:43:56I'm talking 2006 to 2016.
00:44:07You could finally exercise free speech. Free speech was largely illusory,
00:44:11as long as bad people control the means of production. As long as bad people control
00:44:19theaters and book publishers and movie studios and television studios and
00:44:25universities and so on, you can have all the free speech in the world, you can't add to anything.
00:44:30So, free speech was safe to give to people when you could gatekeep and control. The only way to
00:44:35really effectively manifest free speech, which is to talk to a wider group.
00:44:38So, there was a 10-year window where the powers that be were shocked and surprised
00:44:45and did not process, and I did everything I could over those 10 years to get as much
00:44:54suppressed facts out to the world as humanly possible, because I knew it wasn't going to last.
00:45:01I talked about it not lasting.
00:45:04Because I knew it wasn't going to last. I talked about it not lasting. I was almost amazed that
00:45:13people got away with it, that we, the people, got away with that much free speech
00:45:17for 10 glorious years. It was amazing. What a ride.
00:45:23What a ride. This is why I wouldn't want to be born any other time in history. We had these 10
00:45:27glorious years where we could pump out the facts. While everybody was still gatekeeping
00:45:32the decaying institutions, we were out there in the new world of the human mind,
00:45:38getting ideas out that had been suppressed for centuries or millennia.
00:45:44It was glorious, amazing. I half burnt myself out,
00:45:51shooting the flares of truth up into the sky, suddenly unstormed with censorship.
00:45:58Then the powers that be recognized that free speech was actually manifesting for the first
00:46:07time in human history, and they moved to shut it down. Oh, are you talking to people? No,
00:46:13no, we can't have that. Oh, are you actually changing things? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no,
00:46:17no, no, no, no, no, no. Thank you very much. We can't have a political candidate who actually
00:46:22reflects the will of the people. That's not how this works. We choose figureheads.
00:46:28Bitcoin will bring back free speech better than the 2016 era.
00:46:45Maybe. What do you think about millennials?
00:46:50Gen X starts after 1975. Is that right?
00:46:59All right. So boomers are to 65, right? So I'm 66.
00:47:06So what's between 65 and 75?
00:47:12Yeah, generation X, the generation generally defined as people born from 1965 to 1980.
00:47:17So you're wrong.
00:47:22Gen X starts after 1975? I think you are incorrect.
00:47:29No, I'm not.
00:47:39Britannica says generation X born between 1965 and 1980, although some sources use
00:47:46slightly different ranges. So after baby boomers, before millennials.
00:48:00All right. I'm a proud Pakistani veteran of the great meme wars. Yeah, they were amazing,
00:48:14right? Just amazing. Steph, how do we do a philosophical audit on our lives and
00:48:18relationships? I want to know if I'm living my values.
00:48:24What do you mean a philosophical audit? I don't know what that means.
00:48:27You want to know if you're living your values? How would you not know if you're living your
00:48:34values? If your values are truth, how often do you lie, avoid and dissemble?
00:48:41If your values are honesty, how often do you misrepresent
00:48:46yourself and your relations with others? It's not complicated, is it?
00:48:50If your value is courage, how often do you fail and quail before necessary conversations? How
00:48:55often do you avoid? How often do you distract rather than speak openly and honestly to people?
00:49:01How often do you punk out when it comes to, and we all do from time to time, right? So,
00:49:05but how often do you punk out when it comes to
00:49:09necessary conversations in the pursuit of virtue, in the spread of virtue?
00:49:13In the pursuit of virtue, in the spread of virtue.
00:49:17If you know people in your life who've done immoral things, particularly against children,
00:49:22are you honest and direct in your calling out of them? I'm not sure. Like this.
00:49:29It's like somebody saying,
00:49:32Steph, I'm a vegan. How do I do a nutritional audit on my life and eating? I want to know
00:49:40if I'm actually a vegan. I don't understand what that would even mean.
00:49:44Just look at what you're putting in your mouth. Is it vegan? Then you're a vegan.
00:49:49If it's not vegan, you're not a vegan. It's not that complicated.
00:50:03We got to see in real time how all the institutions teamed up to oppose Trump at every turn.
00:50:07Oh, yeah. Was it the view? You get an old, when Trump used to go on the view, oh, my friend,
00:50:11now he's just this evil Nazi, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's all very boring. And what's very sad
00:50:17about all of this is it works. That's what's very sad about it, is it all works beautifully.
00:50:26But if the general population does not protect its philosophers,
00:50:31then the philosophers in general will not protect the general population.
00:50:35And in terms of not protecting your philosophers,
00:50:41there's two things, right? I mean, you don't have to go and get into trouble by protecting
00:50:47philosophers, but an encouraging note, signing up for a free membership at a website,
00:50:54speaking positively in public or in private, and so on. These are things, right? But if
00:51:03and it's a very deep question that I ask myself all the time, all the time,
00:51:07like probably every second day, I ask myself this sort of big and deep question, which is,
00:51:15do we say you reap what you sow? Or do we say, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they
00:51:22do? Do we look at people as full adults who are responsible for every one of their choices,
00:51:29as full adults who are responsible for every one of their choices, or as programmed
00:51:35toddlers who don't have any particular free will because they've never been taught to think for
00:51:41themselves? Are people who do wrong in society as a whole, on average, conscious or unconscious
00:51:50perpetrators, or relatively innocent victims of mass propaganda? Yeah, if you call out the
00:51:59child abusers, you will immediately get the same treatment as death. Yeah, I was reading this woman
00:52:03on Twitter the other night. I had one of these odd donut sleep nights. You get those every once
00:52:09in a while. You go to bed, you wake up a couple hours later, like, bing! And I'm like, why? Why
00:52:16am I awake? I kind of lie there half sodden, and then I suddenly realize, hey, I've been awake for
00:52:19a while. And then I'll sort of turn over and try to get back to sleep. But anyway, I couldn't get
00:52:25back to sleep. It turned out I forgot to eat dinner, so I was kind of hungry. So I went down,
00:52:28had a little food. And I was reading, and I was reading about this woman on Twitter. And she's a
00:52:34researcher in narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths, and other forms of dominant controlling and
00:52:41abusive personalities. And she puts the numbers at about 10%, but higher in positions of power.
00:52:48And she was relatively innocuous, although very powerful and a great read, until
00:52:53she pointed out that one of those positions of power could include
00:52:57the mental health professions. And then, right, so.
00:53:03My values were defined by all the videos I watch. I have not taken the time to outline my actual values.
00:53:09What? My values are defined by all the videos I watch. I have not taken the time to outline my
00:53:21actual values. I don't even know what that means. So you want to say, how do I do an audit on
00:53:28something I haven't defined? How do I audit the process known as flibbertigibbet? Well,
00:53:35what is flibbertigibbet? Don't know. Well, then how on earth are you asking me to audit something?
00:53:42I don't know what that means. Oh, funny. You're just avoiding. You're avoiding. Avoiding morality.
00:53:55All right. Gen Z is born between 97 and 2012. Is that right?
00:54:06So millennials, I think, would be the first generation. I have this vague theory. There's
00:54:12no proof to it, anything. There's this vague theory that video games are significantly
00:54:18responsible for the collapse in testosterone. You know, 45% of young men 18 to 24 have never
00:54:25approached a woman. I find this completely incomprehensible. I can't even tell you.
00:54:34I find this completely incomprehensible that almost half of young men have never approached
00:54:39a girl. I don't mean a cold approach in a grocery store like they've never gone up and talked to a
00:54:44girl and asked her out. So everything is mis-styled in the young man's brain and body.
00:54:55Everything is mis-styled. Of course you have anxiety about asking girls out. That's inevitable.
00:55:00And your desire for a girlfriend is supposed to overcome that. So why isn't it? Why isn't it?
00:55:14Why isn't it? I don't know. I mean, but one of the things I think is happening is video games.
00:55:21Now, it's a fairly lengthy discussion. I'll just boil it down real briefly here. Maybe
00:55:28we can talk about it more. We're going to go donor-only in a few minutes. You can go to
00:55:32freedomain.locals.com, sign up for a subscription. You can join us for the donor-only part.
00:55:37But video games, I think, create a lot of stress with physical immobility.
00:55:48And I think stress is a known suppressor of testosterone. And stress is supposed to get
00:55:53bled off with physical activity, right? Fight or flight, right?
00:56:03So I think video games, by creating stress with no physical release, I think have
00:56:10created a lower testosterone situation.
00:56:13Well, there's a huge amount of profit in avoiding
00:56:27parental abuse. There's a huge amount of profit. It's not just psychological,
00:56:31like defending bad parents and so on. There's a massive amount of
00:56:35profit in avoiding dealing with child abuse. Because then you get to Medicaid kids, you get to
00:56:47prison industrial complex, you get to have a criminal class that you can use to frighten
00:56:53the general population into believing that the only solutions are political solutions and
00:56:57more power and so on. So unfortunately, there's just way too much profit because
00:57:03largely of government money. There's way too much profit in avoiding child abuse.
00:57:07So if you actually start to talk about solving real problems in society by dealing with child
00:57:11abuse and holding parents accountable, massive multi-trillion dollar power structures oppose
00:57:17everything you're doing.
00:57:25Is that why I've never been asked out? I have to ask boys out? What the heck?
00:57:28Yeah, that's why. Well, I mean, good lord, have you read about this testosterone level thing?
00:57:37Good lord.
00:57:43Let me see. I remember the number vaguely, but I don't want to get it wrong.
00:57:46What is it? The young men today have a fairly small percentage
00:58:01of the testosterone that their grandparents had.
00:58:10So I want to see what are the latest.
00:58:13Yeah, average testosterone level of American men has been dropping as much as 1% per year.
00:58:23A 65-year-old man in 1987 had about 17% more testosterone than a 65-year-old man in 2004.
00:58:30This isn't just Americans. An increasing number of young men are complaining of sexual concerns,
00:58:36diminished libido, erectile problems, more commonly seen in women.
00:58:43In older men.
00:58:47Testosterone promotes attention, memory, spatial reasoning, and energy,
00:58:50especially, essentially, it makes you sharper. It increases libido and muscle mass.
00:58:55When testosterone levels get too low, men can begin to feel fatigued, lose sexual interest,
00:59:00gain weight, and lose muscle mass. There's a link between low testosterone levels and depression.
00:59:08There's also a wide association between low testosterone levels and disease.
00:59:13One study found that people with a testosterone deficiency, less than 300 nanograms of
00:59:17testosterone per deciliter, were at greater risk for obesity, cardiovascular disease,
00:59:21hypertension, diabetes, and other diseases. Is this correlation, not causation?
00:59:28Nobody knows. People smoke fewer cigarettes. Smoking raises testosterone levels,
00:59:37for sure. Obesity and testosterone create a vicious circle.
00:59:42Obese men tend to have lower testosterone, and men with lower testosterone tend to become obese.
00:59:53So, with regards to boys and video games,
01:00:00low testosterone is an adaptation to enslavement.
01:00:06In my view. It's just my opinion. No proof, no science, just my opinion.
01:00:10Low testosterone is a physiological adaptation to being enslaved.
01:00:16Oh yeah, young men these days have this sort of poofy broccoli hair, and none of them can
01:00:20grow a beard at all. And they are more obsessed with video games than talking to girls.
01:00:26I mean, it's wild. It's wild. Yeah, body fat generates estrogen, that's right.
01:00:37Young men today seem to me almost like alien life forms.
01:00:50Somebody says, I didn't know it was almost 50%. One of the reasons I never asked anyone out was
01:00:53that it was too dangerous to ask girls out. Nope. Nope. You perceived it as too dangerous.
01:00:59But what is the danger of asking a girl out?
01:01:06Asking a girl out on a date isn't going to get your me toot. I mean, maybe she'll laugh at you.
01:01:11What's the worst thing she can say? No, no, she could say, eww, ah, you give me the ick.
01:01:17Right? Okay. But then you just, if you ask a girl out and she treats you badly,
01:01:22it's because you're making stupid decisions about who to ask out.
01:01:25It means you're asking out the girl only based on looks and lust, which is stupid.
01:01:30Understandable. Understandable. I've made those mistakes myself.
01:01:34But it's stupid. If you ask a girl out and she's like, ew, as if, never, you've got to be kidding,
01:01:41who do you think you are? Then you just asked out a shallow, cruel woman. Right?
01:01:52So the video game thing is interesting because one of the things that happens with direct slaves,
01:01:58like Roman slaves and all of that, Roman slaves, what happens is they're stressed and they get
01:02:04act. Right? So they're mad at their slave owner, but they can't ever act. They can't do anything.
01:02:08They can't run away. They can't fight. So they're both stressed and physically paralyzed at the same
01:02:13time. And that is what video games do, is they stress you while you're physically paralyzed.
01:02:18You mean little mouse movements don't count. Right? So I think it recreates stress
01:02:25and physical inactivity, stress and an inability to fight or flight that reproduces
01:02:31the physiology of slavery in young men.
01:02:41All right. So yeah, maybe we'll do the conscience stuff.
01:02:50Let's see here. Yeah. Eat a healthy diet, exercise more, get a good night's sleep,
01:02:54avoid eating or drinking from plastic containers and so on. Right? So
01:03:00sorry, I will. This is from bigthink.com. And there's tons of articles about this,
01:03:05but if I were a man who was young, I would certainly get my testosterone levels checked.
01:03:15All right. So I'm going to try this. There's a way I do believe, I do believe when I'm not with
01:03:22you, I lose my mind. All right. So there is a way to get to, there is a way to get to,
01:03:37there we go. So we are going to locals supporters only, local supporters only.
01:03:48So freedom.locals.com, you can sign up there. That's going to be in 30 seconds. I'll give you
01:03:54a link so you can even sign up for free. You can sign up for free and I'll put the link in here.
01:04:01You also get the truth about the French revolution, AIs all over the place, private live streams,
01:04:06premium call-in shows, 22 part history of philosopher series, all kinds of amazing,
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01:04:27All right.
01:04:32Easy access to pornography. If you watch that, you don't need to go out and find women.
01:04:36I don't know. That's saying that the only value that women have is sex and that's
01:04:45unfair and wrong and disrespectful and terrible. And right. So it's not that
01:04:50you want a girlfriend for cuddling, for chats, for walks, for watching movies,
01:04:55for exercising together, for playing sports, you know, lots of things. Right.
01:05:00I don't believe pornography can do much of that. Right. I will add more philosophers.
01:05:04I was actually just reading this morning about Emanuel Kant, but the next one is the
01:05:08Everest known as Emanuel Kant. So that's just a giant one as a whole. All right. So let's see.
01:05:17I think we have gone.